"Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... present light afflictions are intended, not merely to work out for us an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, but also to heighten our sense and enjoyment of it by a recollection of the miseries experienced in this life. They are intended to form but a short and discordant prelude to an everlasting harmony. If they should not prove so in fact, the fault will be our own, without the least impeachment of the beneficent design of the great Author and Ruler of ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... individuals impelled onward, first to obtain, and thence to preserve, power, and who cannot struggle against the fate which necessitates them to soar, until, by the moral gravitation of human things, the point which has no beyond is attained; and the next effort to rise is but the prelude of their fall. In such states Time indeed moves with gigantic strides; years concentrate what would be the epochs of centuries in the march of less popular institutions. The planet of their fortunes rolls with an ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vocabulary is poor and worn. Even a poet, therefore, can give of love but a meagre expression, while the philosopher, who renounces dramatic representation, is condemned to be avowedly inadequate. Love, to the lover, is a noble and immense inspiration; to the naturalist it is a thin veil and prelude to the self-assertion of lust. This opposition has prevented philosophers from doing justice to the subject. Two things need to be admitted by anyone who would not go wholly astray in such speculation: one, that love has an animal basis; the other, that it has an ideal object. Since ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... transitions now possible for mortal mind will be found to be equally 90:12 possible for the body. Then being will be recognized as spiritual, and death will be obsolete, though now some insist that death is the necessary prelude ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the reader is Thursday night, on Tuesday morning we left London, spent one day in Paris, and are now sleeping among the Alps, sharpish work, but very satisfactory, and a prelude to better things by and by. The next day we made rather a mistake, instead of going straight on to Briancon we went up a valley towards Mont Pelvoux (a mountain nearly 14,000 feet high), intending to cross a high pass above La Berarde down to Briancon, but when we got to St. Christophe we were ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... told Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him, saying that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with Thurio, but that she was stubborn and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... — to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to death — to feel no surprise at sickness — but when the sick man dies to wonder, and to believe ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... on the subject of language will fitly prelude a consideration of the training in the schools and colleges of Atlantis. During the first map period Toltec was the universal language, not only throughout the continent but in the western islands and that part of the eastern continent which ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... devoted to the voyage. Mr. Pratt has here endeavored to picture in a symphonic prelude "the peaceful progress upon the waters, the jubilant feeling of Columbus, and a flight of birds"—subjects dissimilar enough certainly to lend variety to any orchestral composition. The part, in addition to this prelude, contains the recitation by a sailor of "The Legend of St. Brandon's ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... a prelude to real disaster: the fleet arrived safe at Panormus, where they remained a short time. On their departure for Italy, the wind and weather were favourable till they reached Cape Palinurus; here a dreadful storm arose, in which 160 galleys, and a considerable number of transports, were lost. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing. Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... by the active operation of different minds, facts are observed, examined, and the precise conditions of their appearance determined. All such work in science is the prelude to other work; and the efforts of Boyle and Hooke cleared the way for the optical career of Newton. He conquered the difficulty which Hooke had found insuperable, and determined by accurate measurements the relation of the thickness of the film to the colour it displays. In doing this his first ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... forgot it, which is not strange, for so great was the strain upon him, so well did he know that this scene was but the prelude to terrible events, that for a moment, only for a moment, his steady reason was shaken and he saw a vision. Martin, the huge, patient, ox-like Martin, was changed into a red Vengeance; he saw him, great ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the pulse, this alteration of strain, this change of tune a prelude, a transition to a new piece of music? Every living creature exists to be devoured by another; man alone has apparently eluded these barrack-regulations, this military duty, and fattens himself up for the earth, that shattered ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... his mother, was snatched from her, and violently transferred from one fierce guardian to another; each regarding the possession of his person as a sanction to tyranny. He had been introduced to the two winsome young Douglases only as a prelude to their murder, and every day brought tidings of some fresh violence; nay, for the second time, a murder was perpetrated in the ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pretext of which they availed themselves to produce division and prepare the entrance of Jacobinism in that country, the proposal of armistice, one of the known and regular engines of the revolution, which was, as usual, the immediate prelude to military execution, attended with cruelty and barbarity, of which there are few examples: all these are known to the world. The country they attacked was one which had long been the faithful ally of France, which, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... any reader wishes to make experiments, he, or she, should not be astonished if the first crystal figure represents 'the sheeted dead,' or a person ill in bed. For some reason, or no reason, this is rather a usual prelude, signifying nothing.] ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the second moment, all the rest had joined them in their confused contemplation. But the third moment witnessed a drastic change in their behavior, for their initial bewilderment wore off and suddenly, with a united prelude of the drawing in of a breath, they all began speaking at once, resulting in a clamorous din that lasted for a few moments, before things hushed again and we could hear a few individual voices discussing loudly. ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... to me even now. If I could properly train up a number of dogs, tigers and other ferocious beasts, and put a few lines of these on the field of battle, that, I thought, would serve very well as an inspiriting prelude. With our personal prowess let loose thereafter, victory should by no means be out of reach. And, as the picture of this wonderfully simple strategy waxed vivid in my imagination, the victory of my side ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... in the last chapter was but the prelude to a night of troubles. Fortunately, as we have before mentioned, night did not now add darkness to their difficulties. Soon after passing the bergs, a stiff breeze sprang up off shore, between which and the Dolphin there was a thick ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... dread this beginning, as it was generally the prelude to something disagreeable. But she was learning, also, to submit to disagreeable things. She only ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... door were noiselessly drawn, and that of the lock forced back; then the two little parties stole out, in the order in which they had been directed. The guerillas had just begun to fire heavily, as a prelude, Terence had no doubt, to a serious attack upon the church. Fortunately there were no houses at the back of the church, and no shout indicated that the party were seen. They therefore kept together, until ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... under the continued thunder of the guns sharp commands, and the tread of many troops moving. He knew that the Southern forces were going into position, and he felt himself that the tremendous fire was the prelude to a great attack. His excitement grew. He strained his eyes, but he could see nothing in the dark ravine, or out there where the cannon roared, save the rapid, red flashes under the dim horizon. He had ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... neither partner nor censor in his plans and movements. The graceful and appropriate manner in which the old veteran leaves the field, which age and infirmity will no longer allow him to command, is but a fitting prelude to the military rule of one upon whose brow the dew of youth still rests, and who brings to his responsible task the highest qualities, combined with a veneration for the noble virtues and an emulation of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... broken down the fair mind itself,—but it had all created a gracious form for the memory to dwell on, an undying association with the "Tancredi," as beautiful, instructive, and joy-giving as the "Divino Amore" of Raphael, the exquisite onyx heads in the "Cabinet of Gems," or that divine prelude the Englishman was at that moment pouring out from his piano in a neighboring palazzo, in a flood of harmony as golden and rich as the wine of Capri, every note of which, we know, had been a life-drop wrung from the proud, breaking heart of Chopin, when he sat alone, that solemn, stormy midnight, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... with her introductions to ex-Cabinet Ministers in England and her other relations with great people; that such a woman could never play an intimate part in my life. Her friendliness could not be the prelude to friendship with the assistant editor of The Mass; it probably meant no more than a courteous deference to John Crondall's whim, I told myself. But I would call at the South Kensington flat, certainly; it would be boorish to refrain, and—there was no denying I should have been mightily perturbed ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Austrian Government drove them out. The same fate overtook the inmates of many monasteries and convents at Bruges in the reign of Joseph II., whose reforming zeal led to that revolt of the Austrian Netherlands which was the prelude to the invasion of Flanders by the army of the ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... first the foe made onset, they the maid in battle slew. Near a lake, did Eocho's[FN50] daughter, Dartaid, in the battle fall, From that lake, and her who perished, hath been named that region all: Emly Darta is that country; Tain bo Dartae is the tale: And, as prelude, 'tis recited, till the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... diverted from my contemplation of this magnificent scenery, by a fall of heavy rain drops, as the prelude of an impending shower. Seeing a gate open, and hearing a familiar clicking behind the hedge, I stepped through into a little blacksmith's shop, about as large an American smoke-house for curing bacon. The first object that my eyes rested on, was a full-grown man nine years of age, and nearly ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... he can do it," said Bob, with no small amount of pride; and Leander, with his head held so high that it was almost impossible to see his instrument, struck one or two notes as a prelude, while Joe took his station at a point about as far distant from the ring as the door of the tent would ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, sobbing 'neath the rain. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... not continue, and these sleepless nights or the agitated sleep which maddened him should return, and following them, this over-excitement of the brain in troubling the nutrition of the encephalic mass, it might be the prelude of some ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... a fortnight ago, I have, after a pretty close trial, been declared the successful competitor. The grand sequence is this, that at the end of the session I must come forward in the presence of many of the Edinburgh grandees and deliver a Latin oration as a prelude to receiving the medal. Although I have little fear that an oration will be forthcoming of the ordinary length and quality, I doubt that the trepidation of so unusual a position will cause me to break down in the delivery of it; ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... smile! O heart of man, What strange capacities of grief and joy Are thine! How vain, how ruthless such, if given For transient things alone! O life of man! What wert thou but some laughing demon's scoff, If prelude only to the eternal grave! 'Deep cries to deep'—ay, but the deepest deep Crying to summits of the mount of God Drags forth for echo, 'Immortality.' It was the Death Divine that vanquished death! Shorn of that Death Divine the Life Divine, Albeit its feeblest tear had cleansed all worlds, Cancelled ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... in, and gave him a place among the musicians, and commanded that he should give them a trial of his powers. So the minstrel, after playing a prelude on his harp, sang a song of the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosophers' church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Pres, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame. This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of Paris, a sort of chimera; it ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... The announced expedient and prelude to an alliance with France and Spain against ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... of these pages, my intention and hope are to bring home incidentally to American readers this vast extent of the struggle to which our own Declaration of Independence was but the prelude; with perchance the further needed lesson for the future, that questions the most remote from our own shores may involve us in unforeseen difficulties, especially if we permit a train of communication to be laid by which the outside fire can leap step by step to ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... were long closeted together, and at the proper, ceremonious hour for visitors they repaired to the house of Capulet, who did not hide his sense of the honor done him by the prince. With scarcely any prelude Hamlet unfolded the motive of his visit, and was listened to with rapt attention by old Capulet, who inwardly blessed his stars that he had not given his daughter's hand to the County Paris, as he was on the point of doing. The ladies were not visible on this occasion; the ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... is certain to the pure and true: success to falsehood and corruption, tyranny and aggression, is only the prelude to a greater and an irremediable fall.—STUBBS, Seventeen Lectures, 20. The Carlylean faith, that the cause we fight for, so far as it is true, is sure of victory, is the necessary basis of all effective activity for good.—CAIRD, Evolution ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... strengthened in heart and hope by its contemplation. And as they observe and rejoice over these trophies of Labor's might and beneficence, shall they not also perceive foreshadowed here that fairer, grander, gladder Future for them and theirs, whereof this show is a prelude and a prediction—wherein Labor shall build, replenish and adorn mansions as stately, as graceful, as commodious as this, not for others' delight and wonder, but for its own use and enjoyment—for the life-long homes of the builders, their wives and their children, who ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of interest to us for another reason. It was the prelude to the first scene of Indian warfare which the eyes of Europeans were to behold in the northern region of the American continent. The Spaniards had been long established in the south, but no English settlement had yet been made on the shores of the New World, and the French had but ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... people and rulers. It is not the most vital conception of our Lord's nature and work. The prophet does not here pierce to the core, as in his fifty-third chapter with its vision of the Suffering Servant, but this is prelude to that, and the office assigned here to the Servant cannot be fully discharged without that ascribed to Him there, as the prophet begins to discern almost immediately. The text gives us a striking view of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... second centuries, but of Lactantius and Augustine, of the mediaeval Church, of the earlier and later Renaissance, and even now, when the Renaissance is a piece of past history, of the modern world to which the Renaissance was the prelude. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... of each of these four elderly ladies, their distinct idiosyncrasies, and their former high position as members of a now moribund nobility, left a lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps, from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... turning back, any more than there had been after Hiroshima, four-hundred-and-fifty-odd years ago. Why, he had even been considering just where, against the mountains back of Bwork, he would drop a demonstration bomb as a prelude to a ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... kick, with undiminished vigour, at the cellar-door. The accounts of his ferocity as related by Mrs. Sowerberry and Charlotte, were of so startling a nature, that Mr. Bumble judged it prudent to parley, before opening the door. With this view he gave a kick at the outside, by way of prelude; and, then, applying his mouth to the keyhole, said, in a deep and ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... jerk always led to another, so one blow was usually the prelude to a thrashing. Johnnie saw that he must stop the thing right there; must have instant help in diverting Barber. Taking a quick, deep breath, he sounded his call for ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... other and it. If you choose to murder each other that is your affair: I can't help it. But where music is concerned,—hands off! I will not suffer you to debase the loveliness of the world by heaping up in the same basket things holy and things shameful, by giving, as you do at present, the prelude to Parsifal between a fantasia on the Daughter of the Regiment and a saxophone quartette, or an adagio of Beethoven between a cakewalk and the rubbish of Leoncavallo. You boast of being a musical people. You pretend to love music. What sort of music do you love? ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... goblin-fancier. The personification of Death is as old as poetry; it is wrought with moving gentleness in that last scene in the arbour of Will's inn. The wafted scent of the heliotropes, which had never been planted in the garden since Marjory's death, the light in the room that had been hers, prelude the arrival at the gate of the stranger's carriage, with the black pine tops standing above it like plumes. And Will o' the Mill makes the acquaintance of his physician and friend, and goes at last upon his travels. In the other story, Markheim meets with his own double ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... himself had wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and twenty ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... distant mountains and to hush into breathless silence everything it touched. Not a bird sang, not an insect ticked, not a leaf stirred. One might have said all nature slept, had it not been for an uncomfortable sensation that the silence was but the silence of intense expectation—merely the prelude to some unpleasant revelation that was to follow. At this juncture my feelings were certainly novel—entirely different from any ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... evening was only the prelude for a horrid day, a day doubly horrid due to the mystery that ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse and breath that grew fainter and fainter except when a long, deep and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... important place in German literature, and in grandeur of design and beauty of execution it far surpasses any other poetical production of this period. The "Horny Siegfried," one of the poems of the Heldenbuch, serves as a sort of prelude to the Nibelungen. In that, Siegfried appears as the personification of manly beauty, virtue, and prowess; invulnerable, from having bathed in the blood of some dragons which he had slain, save in one spot between his shoulders, upon which a leaf happened to fall. Having rescued the beautiful ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... had gone to the country, remaining there quietly for a year, regaining her health and spirits, and had now returned to her uncle's home, lightening her mourning, going out a little, taking up her old interests again one by one—a fitting and dignified prelude for a new establishment of her own. She could not help being pleased and gratified at the warmth of her reception; and she found, as Austin had predicted, that "New York looked pretty good to her." It is doubtful whether ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... which first glowed in the cheeks of Cecilia from expectation, now rose yet higher from resentment: she thought herself already insulted by a prelude so ostentatious and humiliating to the proposals which were to follow; and she angrily determined, with whatever pain to her heart, to assert her own dignity by refusing them at once, too well satisfied by what she now saw of the present, that Mr Monckton ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... Heeren, "was always accompanied by some instrument. The bard was provided with a harp on which he played a prelude, to elevate and inspire his mind, and with which he accompanied the song when begun. His voice probably preserved a medium between singing and recitation; the words, and not the melody were regarded by the listeners, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... long prelude, stating how fortunate Monette was to have such a friend as himself, a man who knew everybody and everything, he proceeded to inform him of the pleasing intelligence that his daughter was in the habit of meeting, and going to some place (he forgot to say where) with ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... praying for strength in their infirmity, and more simplicity of heart; and would in their penitence shun the concourse that besets them, and hide their heads in some retired quiet spot of peace, out of reach of this assault of temptation. And this, Eusebius, is the best prelude I can devise to the story I have to tell you. It is of a poor old woman; shall I magnify her offence? It was magnified indeed in her eyes. Smaller, therefore, shall it be—because of its very largeness to her. But it will not do to soften offences, Eusebius. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... the young naval officer "steers his course only by the feel of the wind," the scene when the door of the inn bursts open and reveals in the candlelight the savage beauty of the gipsy girl with evil, slanting eyes, and the inhuman ugliness of the old hags, are a fitting prelude to the horrors of the chamber, where the corpse of the missing sailor is found in the wardrobe. We pass with Byrne through the different stages of suspicion and dread until, completely baffled in his attempt to account for the manner in which ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... sent him a demand that he should surrender the special privileges which had been conferred upon him by Artabanus III., and resume the ordinary status of a Parthian feudatory. Izates, who feared that if he yielded he would find that this demand was only a prelude to others more intolerable, replied by a positive refusal, and immediately prepared to resist an invasion. He sent his wives and children to the strongest fortress within his dominions, collected ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... was the lightening of the pressure, the slight recoil, which could only be a prelude to another assault upon his last stronghold. He clutched his three facts to him as a shield, groping for others which might have afforded a ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... about on horizontal bars. We both sat forward on our narrow bench, elbows on knees and face in hands, saying nothing, practically seeing nothing, aware only of a far off, deep down, infernal pit in which was being played the Orcagnesque prelude to a bizarre tragedy. I, who had gone through the programme before, yet suffered the spell of Auriol's suspense. Long before she had thrown aside the useless veil. In these dim altitudes no one could be recognized from the ring. Her knuckles were bent into her cheeks and her eyes were staring ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Well, of course the ladies know,— I have my doubts. No matter,—here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech. 'T is like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings; Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. "The world's a stage,"—as Shakespeare said, one day; The stage a world—was what he meant ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... A prelude was played on the piano, and Legras standing there in his velvet jacket sang "La Chemise," the horrible song which brought all Paris to hear him. All the lust and vice that crowd the streets of the great city appeared with their filth and their poison; and amid the picture of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... meridian, and Richelieu in his dawn. Gallantry found its convenience in a certain medley of ranks. Men were equalized by the same vices as they were later on, perhaps, by the same ideas. Degradation of rank, an aristocratic prelude, began what the revolution was to complete. It was not very far off the time when Jelyotte was seen publicly sitting, in broad daylight, on the bed of the Marquise d'Epinay. It is true (for manners re-echo each other) that in the sixteenth ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... however, that, both Justin and Philo, unlike the prelude to the Fourth Gospel (i. 1), place the Logos in a secondary position to God the Father, another point indicating a less ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... descend from the east, and that with an incredible quickness; and though the noise seemed to bear on the water, yet without agitating it, or discovering any more wind on the river than before. This frightful noise was only the prelude of a most violent tempest. The hurricane, the most furious ever felt in the province, lasted three days. As it arose from the south-west and north-east, it reached all the settlements which were along the Missisippi; and was felt for some leagues more or less strong, in proportion to the greater ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... take his leave. As the door closed, the bashful Prosper felt the murky eyes of the widow fixed upon him. A gentle cough, accompanied with the resigned laying of a black mittened hand upon her chest, suggested a genteel prelude to ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was something in this state of preparation at once solemn and exciting. That we should obtain possession of a place so important as Baltimore without fighting was not to be expected; and, therefore, this arming and this bustle seemed in fact to be the prelude to a battle. But no man of the smallest reflection can look forward to the chance of a sudden and violent death without experiencing sensations very different from those which he experiences under any other circumstances. When the battle has fairly begun, I may say with truth ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... however, were but the prelude to a harsher sound which interrupted and annihilated them: the Court-house bell clanging out twelve. "All right," said Joe. "It's noon and I'm 'across Main ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... of the renovated Aula of the University served as a prelude to the festivities of the week. On this occasion a splendid flag, embroidered by order of the wives of the faculty of the Academy, an equally costly cover for the scepter, and a silver inkstand were added to the treasures of the University. Conspicuous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... present time a very marked analogy in many respects to the Caribbean Sea,—an analogy which will be still closer if a Panama canal-route ever be completed. A study of the strategic conditions of the Mediterranean, which have received ample illustration, will be an excellent prelude to a similar study of the Caribbean, which has comparatively ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... without a declaration of war. She will find the empire ready. Here at home and in the far-off dominions the sure instinct of our peoples teaches them that the ruin of France or of the Low Countries would be the prelude to our own. We can no more tolerate a German hegemony in Europe than we can tolerate the hegemony of any other power. As our fathers fought Spain and France in the days of their greatest strength to defeat their pretense to Continental supremacy, and their menace to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... externals of deep humility; although, very probably, they were at the moment calculating in their minds the profits on the last adventure from Kingston. One custom particularly struck me as being very beautiful. As the night shuts in, after a noisy prelude on all the old pots in the different steeples throughout the city, there is a dead pause; presently the great bell of the cathedral tolls slowly, once or twice, at which every person stops from his employment, whatever that may be, or wherever he may be, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and harmonious embodiment. Of this procession we have still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone, from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of men and maidens bearing sacrificial urns, by the garlanded sheep and oxen destined for sacrifice, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... The prelude to a beast-fight was frequently rather a "hunt," amounting to a demonstration of skill in dealing with wild animals which could hardly be said to fight, but which were difficult to capture or kill. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... ever filled to brimming with what Christian has called The Spirit of the Nation, opened with a general attack upon the Church of Rome, and narrowed to a tale of "a friend of mine and Mr. Cotton's. A clergyman. A man of private means." After this stimulating prelude, the tale ceased for a moment, while Mrs. Cotton blinked her small black eyes at her hostess, several times, as was her practice. "Oh, a very wealthy man!" she continued, imposingly, "and he bought a lovely ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... heard the prelude soft; And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide, From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, 30 The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide: The level chambers, ready with their pride, Were glowing to receive a thousand guests: The carved angels, ever eager-eyed, Star'd, where ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... for the latter. Raising his eyes to the closed blinds, behind which he knew the witch was hiding, he began the accompaniment. The soft thrum-thrum, vibrating through the melody, found an echo in the whirring wings of all that ephemeral insect life which is abroad on such a night. The prelude was almost at an end when he saw the blinds begin to separate. Champney continued to gaze steadily upwards. A thin bare arm was thrust forth; the blinds opened wide; in the dark window space he saw Aileen, listening intently and gazing ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... from Outpost Hill to the sea, including in his fire area the whole of the trenches we had taken from him from Umbrella Hill to Sheikh Hasan. Many observers of this bombardment by all the Turks' guns of heavy, medium, and small calibre declared it was the prelude not of an attack but of a retirement, and that the Turks were loosing off a lot of the ammunition they knew they could not carry away. They were probably right, though the enemy made no sign of ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... a manner somewhat similar (though better executed) to what I have imagined. But too often different is rational conjecture from melancholy fact. This exordium, as contrary to all the rules of rhetoric as to those more essential rules of policy which our situation would dictate, is intended as a prelude to a deadening and disheartening proposition; as if all that a minister had to fear in a war of his own conducting was, that the people should pursue it with too ardent a zeal. Such a tone as I guessed the minister would have taken, I am very sure, is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the United States can know: we honor your friendship, we rely on your counsel, and we depend on your help. Division among free nations is a primary goal of freedom's enemies. The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is a prelude to our enemies' defeat. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... waiting for love's summons. The sound of the wind in the forest swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent. The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses, the harder and rougher grew the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... satisfaction to the country.' Long afterwards Lord John Russell declared that the measure when thus first placed before the House of Commons awoke feelings of astonishment mingled with joy or with consternation according to the temper of the hearers. 'Some, perhaps many, thought that the measure was a prelude to civil war, which, in point of fact, it averted. But incredulity was the prevailing feeling, both among the moderate Whigs and the great mass of the Tories. The Radicals alone were delighted and triumphant. Joseph Hume, whom I met in the streets a day or two afterwards, assured me of his ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... seasons and the propitiation of the [Greek: gamelioi theoi]. Secondly, on account of the great expiatory celebration of the Lemuria, when women abstained from the bath and the careful cosmetic decoration of their persons so necessary as a prelude to marriage rites. Thirdly, as some say, because May was the month of old men, Majus a Majoribus, and therefore June, being thought to be the month of the young, Junius a Junioribus, was to be preferred. The Romans, however, held other seasons and days unpropitious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... this engine, returned at once to shore. They might not come on board; neither might we land, or not without danger of offence; the king giving pratique in person. An interval followed, during which dinner was delayed for the great man—the prelude of the ladder, giving us some notion of his weighty body and sensible, ingenious character, had highly whetted our curiosity; and it was with something like excitement that we saw the beach and terrace suddenly blacken with attendant vassals, the king and party embark, the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... taking the successive sections of the song, and a Chorus of Women, singing the refrain. The metre is Antique Rhythm (above, page 242): the successive strophes augment with the growing fulness of the theme. The first strophe (after the prelude) simply states the fact of the deliverance; the second pictures it in detail, the third meditates on the consequences to ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... my efforts here I am more anxious than ever about the future," he wrote to his publisher on the 27th of January, 1899; "two more of my books are about to disappear, a prelude to total shipwreck...I ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... come in response to the usual card of invitation, which—as you know—we have come to consider as a sure prelude to a good story; and now, after telling us the short incident of the Three Straw Platters, he had lapsed into a contented silence, and the night not half ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... "Lollardry"[1] has a history of its own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy into their ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... found the pulse in Leithgow's wrist, and another bent over him in such fashion that the prisoners could not see what he was doing. Ku Sui too bent over, something in his hands. The prelude ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... done in the attempted evangelization of Mongolia, friends left in Britain behind me praying for me, comfort and peace here in the prosecution of my present studies, the idea that what I do is for eternity, and that this life is but the short prelude to an eternal state, the thought that after death there shall break on my view a thousand truths that now I long in vain to know—these thoughts and many others make my present life happy, and in a manner careless as to what should come. In time may I be able to do my part as I ought, and ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... 1775, though favourable to America, were but a prelude to the real struggle to come. For the campaign of 1776 both sides made extensive preparations. To the home government the purely military problem, although assuming larger dimensions and more difficulties, still seemed to admit of a simple solution, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they are often played at pianoforte recitals by Paderewski and other virtuosi. In hearing one of these masterpieces no one can remain unmoved or can fail to reverence the constructive genius which fashioned such cathedrals in tone. For orchestra we have the Prelude to Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, and the beginning of the Prelude to the third act of Wagner's Mastersingers. There are striking fugal passages in Beethoven's Symphonies, e.g., the first movement of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... sympathies I knew were broad as the lap of nature, I at last went with my desire and perplexities. A sketch of my country's condition was the inevitable prelude. I gave it without once alluding to the presence of Man. She listened quietly and attentively. Her own land lay like a charming picture before her. I spoke of its peaceful happiness, its perfected refinement, its universal ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... After they had been talking a few moments, the people were greatly surprised to see Sir Charles stand motionless, and his bride cry and faint away in the stranger's arms. This seeming grief, however, was only a prelude to a flood of joy, which immediately succeeded; for you must know that this gentleman so richly dressed was little Tommy Meanwell, Mrs. Margery's brother, who was just come from sea, where he had made a large ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... spoke fears; The ardent flame which she'd so long concealed; Burst forth in sighs, and all its warmth revealed; While such emotion Hispal's eyes expressed, That more than words his anxious wish confessed. These tender scenes were followed by a kiss, The prelude sweet of soft enchanting bliss; But whether taken, or by choice bestowed, Alike 'twas clear, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... concentrate everything on the defence of the Reserve Line, which must be held at all costs. Some of the N.C.O.'s and men grumbled a little at what they called giving up the front line, more especially as patrols reported that the enemy was busy strengthening his wire, which did not seem the prelude to an attack. Finally, by 2-0 a.m. on the 25th all was ready. The Staff at Corps Headquarters, ten miles back, slept in their boots, all support and reserve Battalions moved to "battle" positions and stood to, we in ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... dress, or not having yet quite recovered an unlucky extra tumbler of exciting fluids, and the green curtain has therefore unduly delayed its ascent, you perceive that the thorough-bass in the orchestra charitably devotes himself to a prelude of astonishing prolixity, calling in "Lodoiska" or "Der Freischutz" to beguile the time, and allow the procrastinating histrio leisure sufficient to draw on his flesh-colored pantaloons and give himself the proper complexion for a Coriolanus ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... epicure in beauty. He insisted on our closing our eyes till we came to just the spot where the view was most perfect, and then he drew in his horses, gave the word, and we looked on a valley as lovely as a dream. I am glad that we saw it as we did, after a long prelude of shaded roads and sentinel trees. Nowadays you rush to it madly by train and motor. Then it was a dear secret hidden away in the ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Mr. Gough's famous story of the orator who, with a great flourish of rhetoric as prelude, announced to his audience the startling fact that there was a "gre—at difference in people?" On the strength of this original statement, it has been supposed that there were a variety of tastes to be suited in selecting for the readers of "Gypsy Breynton" the most entertaining ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... seeking for and finding it! A second day this was repeated; but his manifest disturbance of mind, and his long pondering with the bonnet in hand, as if almost alarmed, seemed to touch another chord in her heart—that chord of pity which is so often the prelude of love, that finer pity that grieves to wound anything nobler or tenderer than ourselves. Next day, when he came to his accustomed place of prayer, a little card was pinned against the tree just where he knelt, and on it these words: "She who stole away your bonnet ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... summoned to attend my uncle in his private room, which lay in a corner turret of the old building; and thither I accordingly went, wondering all the way what this unusual measure might prelude. When I entered the room, he did not rise in his usual courteous way to greet me, but simply pointed to a chair opposite to his own. This boded nothing agreeable. I sat down, however, silently waiting until he ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... slipped from his grasp and fell into the water. The father plunged overboard and seized him, and the sharks at once made to the pair. The bare-legged young buccaneer dropped the fruit-basket and went over the rail like a flash. As the first shark turned on its back, the invariable prelude to biting, the Cuban rose, and with a long, keen knife fairly disemboweled it. The other was not to be disposed of so easily though. The purser and his child had been pulled on deck, and the combatants had a fair field. The Cuban ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various |
