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Pageant   /pˈædʒənt/   Listen
Pageant

noun
1.
An elaborate representation of scenes from history etc; usually involves a parade with rich costumes.  Synonym: pageantry.
2.
A rich and spectacular ceremony.  Synonym: pageantry.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pageant" Quotes from Famous Books



... Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say "Behold ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... are included within the continent, but the want of satisfactory watersheds renders it peculiarly liable to long droughts and sudden floods. The absence of those broad, outward signs of the changing seasons which mark the pageant of the year in the old world is probably a greater disadvantage than we are apt to suspect. Here, too, have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose. There is ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... as if formed of frosted glass. The masts had a good rake, and with a seaman's eye I took notice of the furniture, observing the shrouds, stays, backstays, braces to be perfect. Nay, as though the spirit artist of this fragile glittering pageant had resolved to omit no detail to complete the illusion, there stood a vane at the masthead, shining like a tongue of ice against the soft blue of the sky. Come, thought I, recovering from my wonder, there is more in this than it ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... in the varnishing days, Turner being the first in the morning and the last to leave; his certainty in the command over his colour, and the dexterity in his handling, seemed to convert in a few hours 'an unsubstantial pageant' into a finished landscape. These ad captandum effects, however, are not what his fame will depend on for perpetuity; his finest pictures are the production of great study in their composition, careful and repeated painting ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... the pageant of the setting sun Should yield the tired eyes of man delight, No sweet beguiling power had stars at night To soothe his fainting heart when day is done, Nor any secret voice of benison Might nature own, were not each sound and sight The sign and symbol of ...
— Songs of Two • Arthur Sherburne Hardy

... breath the tyranny of Wentworth. Of old time it was well and nobly said, by one of our kings, that an Englishman ought to be as free as his thoughts. Our prince reversed the maxim; he strove to make our thoughts as much slaves as ourselves. To sneer at a Romish pageant, to miscall a lord's crest, were crimes for which there was no mercy. These were all the fruits which we gathered from those excellent laws of the former Parliament, from these solemn promises of the king. Were we to be deceived again? Were we again to give ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... silence and in gloom, The dreary pageant laboured, Till it reach'd the house of doom: Then first a woman's voice was heard In jeer and laughter loud, And an angry cry and a hiss arose From the heart of the tossing crowd: Then, as the Graeme looked upwards, He met the ugly smile ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... come, which is the whole of knowledge. And we have learned of starry systems, of the building of worlds, of the pageant of history and the march of mind. Out of all these things has come a new duty, which is not peace, but battle—which is not patience, but will—which is not death, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... left in pledge for loan my mother lent. Here by a ribbon hangs a little key! I have a mind to open it and see! Heavens! only look! what have we here! In all my days ne'er saw I such a sight! Jewels! which any noble dame might wear, For some high pageant richly dight This chain—how would it look on me! These splendid gems, whose ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Scotland's power, Summoned to spend the parting hour; For he had charged that his array Should southward march by break of day. Well loved that splendid monarch aye The banquet and the song, By day the tourney, and by night The merry dance, traced fast and light, The maskers quaint, the pageant bright, The revel loud and long. This feast outshone his banquets past: It was his blithest—and his last. The dazzling lamps, from gallery gay, Cast on the Court a dancing ray; Here to the harp did minstrels sing; There ladies touched ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... the coming splendor. Along the far blue rim of the ocean a narrow saffron band was seen, which soon became a broader belt, blazing like molten gold. The western horizon flushed like a rose-colored sea in which floated clouds of crimson. How grand this morning pageant and how quickly the king of day was ushered in! The chafing ocean wore on its bosom a tender turquoise bloom decked with millions of flashing jewels. Later it resembled a sapphire sky coruscating with tremulous stars. As we felt the soft south breeze, which rustled the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... Braziers propose soon to pass An Address and to bear it themselves all in brass; A superfluous pageant, for by the Lord Harry! They'll find, where they're going, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... were several 'stations' at convenient intervals. In the latter case each play might remain all day at a particular station and be continuously repeated as the crowd moved slowly by; but more often it was the, spectators who remained, and the plays, mounted on movable stages, the 'pageant'-wagons, were drawn in turn by the guild-apprentices from one station to another. When the audience was stationary, the common people stood in the square on all sides of the stage, while persons of higher rank or greater means were seated on temporary wooden scaffolds or looked down from the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... of sacred lays The spheres began to move, And sung the great Creator's praise To all the blest above; So when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on highs The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... from Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte, and from Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette. The height of the great occasion was reached somewhat after midnight when the quadrille d'honneur was announced. The great King sat upon a raised dais, or throne, the better to view the gorgeous pageant. A mighty fanfare of trumpets, which seemed to whirl the feelings for a moment into the forces beyond mortality, invited to the initial movements of the quadrille. It was as though an army with banners was about to launch its squadrons upon the ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... answered, "A great while indeed—two whole long days. And those thou'st spent merrymaking in the King's water pageant. Two days—a great while, a ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... lunching on the platform of the great western keep, while a historic pageant organized in their honor was winding through the steep mediæval streets—a cavalcade of archers, men at arms, and many-colored troubadours, who, after effecting a triumphal entrance to the town over ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... trump, and conch, and piercing fife, Woke Echo from her bed! The solemn woods with sounds were rife As on the pageant sped. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... clumsiness, mixed in a way that would be unaccountable, did we not consider that, in all the arts, the taste is a faculty which is slowly formed, even in the most highly gifted minds." We suspect that the pageant saved King Arthur; the scenic illusions by which contending armies were brought upon an extended plain, together with the numerous transformations, continually commanded that applause which the music ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... that I had often before found myself in a similar state of nature, and in far more prominent situations. I had repeatedly found myself doing the block, or stalking down the aisle of a crowded church, mid nodings on, and had wakened up to find the unsubstantial pageant faded, and my own conspicuousness exchanged for a happier obscurity. So, throughout the trying incidents of the evening I have recalled, the hope of waking up had never been entirely absent from my mind; and now, as I lay drowsing, with Pup beside ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... I never saw on the waves, since the day I first blew. You were not there, Notus? S. Pageant, Zephyr? ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... began a few years after, upon a very different subject. There is something, it must be owned, not very sentimental in this conversion of the poetry of affection to other and less sacred uses—as if, like the ornaments of a passing pageant, it might be broken up after the show was over, and applied to more useful purposes. That the young poet should be guilty of such sacrilege to love, and thus steal back his golden offerings from the altar, to melt them ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... The pageant was over, for such a trial was little more. As the procession formed to lead back the "condemned traitor" to the Tower, the commissioners once more adjured him to have pity on himself, and offered to reopen the court if he would reconsider ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... unfailing resource of the discontented soldier, audible damning of those in the saddles of authority. But never for more than a moment at a time did any one remove his eyes from that fascinating and portentous pageant. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... carnival. The guns were shotted, and we could distinctly see the splash of the marble balls as they dropped into the water. To-day the Sultan visits one of the principal mosques in state; and, though latterly the pageant has lost much of the oriental splendour that once distinguished it, yet, from the number of fine horses, and the richness of their caparisons, which are covered with gold, diamonds, and precious stones; and the splendid dresses of the officers of state and their attendants, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... Wakened from a long, long fantasy, desolate and cold to the heart in an alien air, she sought for poppy and mandragora, and in some sort finding them dreamed again, though not for herself, not as before. It can hardly be said that she was unhappy. She walked in a pageant of strange miseries, and the pomp of woe was hers to portray. Those changelings from some fateful land, those passionate, pale women, the milestones of whose pilgrimage spelled love, ruin, despair, and death, they were ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... was called, was led by the general. The suburbs were thronged with a countless multitude of the natives, who had flocked from the city and the surrounding country to witness the showy, and, to them, startling pageant. All looked with eager curiosity on the strangers, the fame of whose terrible exploits had spread to the remotest parts of the empire. They gazed with astonishment on their dazzling arms and fair complexions, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... Lucifer," and ending with "Doomsday." In 1834, the Abbotsford Club published some others from the Digby MS., in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1825, Mr. Sharp, of Coventry, published a dissertation on the Mysteries once performed there, and printed the Pageant of the Sheremen and Taylor's Company; and in 1836 the Abbotsford Club printed the Pageant played by the Weavers of that city. In 1836, the Surtees Society published the series known as The Towneley Mysteries, consisting of thirty-two dramas; in 1838, Dr. Marriott published in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Sentronell? s'hart heele nod[119] presently: and he do not sleepe sitting upon the poynt of a Spanish needle, Dicke Bowyer's a very shittle-cocke. Nod! zounds, he is one of the nine sleepers, a very Dormouse: & I had a pageant to present of the seven deadly Sinnes[120], he should play Slouth; and he did not sleepe when he should speake his part I am ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... unearthly beauty seemed to transform his emaciated features. She would have spoken to him; but he made a gesture as though for silence, and again that awful sense of separation seemed to pass between them. Mr. Carlyon put down his book, and looked too at the wondrous pageant of the sea and sky. "The bridegroom has run his race," murmured David in a strange voice. "What regal robes of gold and crimson! Father, this is the best ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... regarded as a carouse, but the two are quite separate, or, rather, there are two distinct words carousal. One of them is from Fr. carrousel, a word of Italian origin, meaning a pageant or carnival with chariot races and tilting. This word, obsolete in this sense, is sometimes spelt el and accented on ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... care. She was having a wonderful time—a new kind of wonderful time. No longer gazing, big-eyed like little Cinderella at a pageant some fairy godmother's whim had admitted her to, but consciously gazed upon; she was the show to-night, and she knew it. Her low, finely modulated voice so rich in humor, so varied in color, had ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... corn and lucerne, whose wonderful green is piqued with little flowers, such as may be seen in our climate. Hundreds of little birds sing to us distractedly of the joy of life; the sun shines radiantly, magnificently; the impetuous corn is already in the ear; it might be some gay pageant of our days of May. One forgets that it is February, that we are still in the winter—the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... trident and crown, Amphitrite by his side, and their son at their feet, appeared in a car drawn by eight sea-horses, and driven by a sea god: the train followed in the persons of the lawyers, barbers, and painters. The whole pageant was well dressed, and going in procession, fully as picturesque as any antique triumphal or religious ceremony; the fine forms of some of the actors struck me exceedingly. I never saw marble more beautiful than some of the backs ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... of the present chapter,[186] that Richard Doyle's first work was The Eglinton Tournament, or the Days of Chivalry Revived, which was published when he was only fifteen years old. Three years later he produced A Grand Historical, Allegorical, and Classical Procession, a humorous pageant which the same authority tells us combined "a curious medley of men and women who played a prominent part on the world's stage, bringing out into good-humoured relief the characteristic peculiarities of each." Apart from his talent, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... connected with them. Religions are obliged to hold fast to the former, whatever be the peculiar spirit of the age; but they should take good care not to bind themselves in the same manner to the latter at a time when everything is in transition, and when the mind, accustomed to the moving pageant of human affairs, reluctantly endures the attempt to fix it to any given point. The fixity of external and secondary things can only afford a chance of duration when civil society is itself fixed; under any other circumstances I hold it ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... that my companions had retired to rest. I gave Lucy in charge to the Countess's attendant, and then sought repose from my various struggles and impatient regrets. For a few moments the events of the day floated in disastrous pageant through my brain, till sleep bathed it in forgetfulness; when morning dawned and I awoke, it seemed as if my slumber had ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... he that convinces you!" says Florian. And about them, who were young in the world's recaptured youth, spring triumphed with an ageless rural pageant, and birds cried to their mates. He noted the red brevity of her lips ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... overlooking miles of valley, My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline, Day by day did I look in my memory, As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe, And I saw the figures of the past, As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, Move through the incredible sphere of time. And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant And throw himself over a deathless destiny, Master of great armies, head of the republic, Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song The epic ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... than another took its place, and again all halted, and then again all marched onward. Every window as the cortege passed along was thrown open, and figures bent forward ever and anon, enacting their wonted part in the pageant. And the pageant, be it remembered, was, after all, only one of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... the stories of Mr. W. W. JACOBS, apart from their mere hilarity, is their triumphant vindication of the right to jest. They spread themselves before me like a pageant representing the graceful submission of the easy dupe. They tempt me to filch away chairs from beneath stout and elderly gentlemen who are about to sit down. Take the case of Sergeant-Major Farrer in Night Watches (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). He was afraid of nothing on earth, or off ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... the old, old Deity of our race, and surrounded with all the pomp of war; whilst at intervals, peals of Christian bells and the booming of near and distant guns added to the solemnity of this water pageant. After the filling of the golden cup, which, of course, represents the earth and its fulness, and, at this season, the now expected increase, the High Priest placed a golden crucifix on the virgin water and blessed its return from ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... been dried, and their wounds from sun and storm healed, all go together to sup with the Queen in white — on whose hand, as they pass by the arbour, the Nightingale perches, while the Goldfinch flies to the Lady of the Flower. The pageant gone, the gentlewoman quits the arbour, and meets a lady in white, who, at her request, unfolds the hidden meaning of all that she has seen; "which," says Speght quaintly, "is this: They which honour the Flower, a thing fading with every blast, are such as look after beauty and worldly pleasure. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... population of France. On the 5th of November, however, the unresisting Pope left Rome, and, having been received throughout his progress with every mark of respect and veneration, arrived in Paris to bear his part in the great pageant. On the 2nd of December Buonaparte and Josephine appeared, amidst all that was splendid and illustrious in their capital, and were crowned in Notre-Dame. The Pope blessed them and consecrated the diadems; but these were not placed on their heads ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... thus set up against the authority of his masters. "On a former occasion," as the Directors tell him, "and to serve a very different purpose, he had not scrupled to declare it as visible as the sun that the Nabob was a mere pageant, without even the shadow of authority." But on this occasion he became more substantial. Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell yielded to his representation that a deputy was not necessary, and accordingly Mahomed Reza Khan was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of natural interest except the river which it studiously ignored — but doing what London, Paris, or New York would have shrunk from attempting. This new social conglomerate, with no tie but its steam-power and not much of that, threw away thirty or forty million dollars on a pageant as ephemeral as a stage flat. The world had never witnessed so marvellous a phantasm by night Arabia's crimson sands had never returned a glow half so astonishing, as one wandered among long lines of white palaces, exquisitely lighted by thousands on thousands ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... fond, panting heart! for oh! to those Who live in expectation of the bliss, Time slowly creeps, and ev'ry tardy minute Seems mocking of their wishes. Say, Cleone, For you beheld the triumph, 'midst his pomp, Did he not seem to curse the empty show, The pageant greatness, enemy to love, Which held him from Evanthe? haste, to tell me, And feed my gready ear with the fond tale— Yet, hold—for I shall weary you with questions, And ne'er be satisfied—Beware, Cleone, And guard your heart from ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... he bade her to his secret bower Be borne a loveless victim, and she tore Her locks in agony, and her words of flame And mightier looks availed not, then he bore Again his load of slavery, and became A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... Merv, never venturing upon a stand, never making an appeal to the loyalty which was amongst the best qualities of the Persians, and which would have caused them to fight with desperation in defence of a present king. Carrying with him in all his wanderings the miserable pageant of an Oriental court, he suffered his movements to be hampered and his resources crippled by a throng of 4000 useless retainers, whom he could not bring himself to dismiss. Instead of donning the armor which befitted one who was struggling for his crown, he wore to the last the silken ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... very kindly chance That gives the apprehension clear To feel the pageant, far or near, That moves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... that the Renaissance was a period in the history of modern Europe comparable to youth in the life of the individual. It had all youth's love of finery and of play. The more people were imbued with the new spirit, the more they loved pageants. The pageant was an outlet for many of the dominant passions of the time, for there a man could display all the finery he pleased, satisfy his love of antiquity by masquerading as Caesar or Hannibal, his love of knowledge by finding out how ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... among ourselves. The Union has been prolonged this far by miracles." A personal consideration sharpened his apprehension. He saw old age at hand and was determined "not to hazard the disgrace of continuing in office a mere inefficient pageant," but at the same time he desired some guarantee of the character of the person who was to succeed him. At first he thought of remaining until after the election of 1832; but Jackson's reelection made him relinquish altogether the idea ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... open-air theatre has been erected since classic days.[118] In England, likewise, there has been a great extension of popular interest in dramatic performances, and the newly instituted Pageants, carried out and taken part in by the population of the region commemorated in the Pageant, are festivals of the same character. In England, however, at the present time, the real popular orgiastic festivals are the Bank holidays, with which may be associated the more occasional celebrations, "Maffekings," etc., often called out by comparatively insignificant national events but still ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... like a map; bid earth's dead multitudes revive; and of all the pageant splendors that ever glittered to the sun, when looked his burning eye on a sight like this? Of all the myriads that have come and gone, what cherished minion ever ruled an hour like this? Many have struck the redeeming ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... of itself. It would be moral in its presentation of the most ignobly splendid vices that have swayed the world; of the pride and defiance which rise like a strangling serpent, coiling about the momentary weakness of good; of that pageant in which the pagan gods came back, drunk and debauched with their long exile under the earth, and the garden-god assumed the throne of the Holy of Holies. Alexander, Caesar, Lucrezia, the threefold divinity, might be shown as a painter has shown one of them on the wall of one ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... annual pageant of autumn was being unfolded day by day in all its accustomed splendor, and the feast and riot of color, the almost unimaginable glory, was the common property of the whole countryside, rich and poor, to be shared alike if perchance all eyes were equally alive to ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... splendor and calmness beyond any we saw at the West. The twilight that succeeded was equally beautiful; soft, pathetic, but just so calm. When afterwards I learned this was the evening of Allston's death, it seemed to me as if this glorious pageant was not without connection with that event; at least, it inspired similar emotions,—a heavenly gate closing a path adorned with shows well ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Sometimes they assume a shadow of their ancient pomp, and glide in state about the glassy sea; while the crew of some tall Indiaman, that lies becalmed with flapping sails, hear with astonishment the mellow note of the Triton's shell swelling upon the ear, as the invisible pageant sweeps by. Sometimes the quondam monarch of the ocean is permitted to make himself visible to mortal eyes, visiting the ships that cross the line, to exact a tribute from new-comers; the only remnant of his ancient rule, and that, alas! ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... This long, long pageant winds on, meandering through the pueblo to the sound of drums, of flutes, and of monotonous chants; the white satyrs go ahead, then follow the blue ones, then come in single file the men, vigorously stamping, and behind each a woman, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... difficulty: and to couer his craft the more, one of his fellowes came downe with him, and in such places where he seemed vnable to passe, he tooke him on his shoulders, set him by the water side, and departed from him, leauing him (as it should seeme) all alone, who playing his counterfeit pageant very well, thought thereby to prouoke some of vs to come on shore, not fearing, but that one of vs might make our party good with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... a beautiful day in the latter end of harvest, the King mounted his horse; and, indifferent that he was looked upon rather as a part of the pageant of a victor, than in the light of an independent Sovereign surrounded by his guards and his chivalry, King Louis sallied from under the Gothic gateway of Peronne, to join the Burgundian army, which commenced at the same time ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... were gorgeously decorated. There were splendid state-apartments, cabins, chapels, and pulpits in each, and they were amply provided with awnings, cushions, streamers, standards, gilded saints, and bands of music. To take part in an ostentatious pageant, nothing could be better devised. To fulfil the great objects of a war-vessel—to sail and to fight—they were the worst machines ever launched upon the ocean. The four galleys were similar to the galeasses ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... o'clock the grand pageant was fully displayed. As far as the eye could reach the brilliant procession filled the streets, presenting a glittering, undulating line of infantry, artillery, firemen, laddermen, axemen, zouaves, cadets, grangers, masons, templars, highlanders, citizens, &c, with gleaming ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... himself has told you, at your bar, that they were in his hands,—that he was the person who not only named this man, but that he had the sole management of the revenues; and he was, of course, answerable for them all that time. The nominal title of Zemindar was still left to the miserable pageant who held it; but even the very name soon fell entirely out of use. It is in evidence before your Lordships that his name is not even so much as mentioned in the proceedings of the government; and that the person who ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... road; louder and louder swell those short abrupt trumpet-notes as it draws near, till the whole sad array, in its affecting beauty, is presented to the eye. The life in death that pervades the melancholy ceremonial!—"Our brother is not dead, but sleepeth," seems written on the impressive pageant; and we almost expect, while we gaze, to see the deep slumber chased from the closed eyelids, and the recumbent form start up again to claim the warlike weapons with which it was wont to be girt, and that now lie, as if awaiting their master's grasp, in unavailing display on the funereal pall. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... and the little procession that moved across to Doyers street—dainty slippers on blackened cobblestones, light laughter tinkling under the thunder of the "L," human brightness brushing past the human shadows from the midnight dens —made contrasts picturesque as a pageant in ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... are standing on a street corner, watching a procession pass. You see the pageant as a sequence of objects and individuals appearing into view near by and suddenly, and disappearing in the same manner. This would represent our ordinary waking consciousness of what goes on in the world round about. Now imagine that you walk up ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... the sacred fish of the Philistines were driven back to the sea from which their worship came. Those who worshipped on this hill had come out of bondage in Egypt and went into bondage in Babylon; small as was their country, there passed before them almost the whole pageant of the old pagan world. All its strange shapes and strong almost cruel colours remain in the records of their prophets; whose lightest phrase seems heavier than the pyramids of Egypt; and whose very words are like ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... with its cogent adaptation and sequence of parts, is cut up into theatre-scenery: its "members" are members no longer, but scraps to be stuck about at will. The gods and heroes of the ancient world have become the pageant of a holiday; even the sacred legends of the Church receive only an outward respect, and at last not even that. Claude wants a foreground-figure and puts in AEneas, Diana, or Moses, he cares little which, and he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... ways provided, the foredone Heart-weary player in this pageant world Drops out by, letting the main masque defile By ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... the days of heeding the display, except for his sake; his nephew rejecting him; you indignant and miserable. Oh, Clara! I never saw more plainly money given for that which is not bread, and labour for that which satisfieth not. Empty and hollow as the pageant was, I could better bear to take my part in it, so far as truth would let me, than tell that poor man that the last of his brother's children rejects him and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... there any pageantry or any of the panoply of war. It was all too grim, too ghastly, too sordid for that. And yet there was a pageantry of which Tennyson never dreamed. The boom of guns, the weird light of the star shells, the sulphurous atmosphere, the struggle of millions, formed a pageant so Homeric, and on such an awful scale, that ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... It is worthy of remark that, though the Dholpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Timur, who now sits upon the throne of Delhi;[12] yet, on his seal of office he declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial 'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... figure of bronze; a glimpse of haughty, set features visible between cap and chin-strap. Outwardly immovable, indifferent; but within!—ah! within, beyond a doubt, a swelling pride in himself, in his men, in the noble animals which bore them; in the consciousness that every day the pageant attracted the same meed of admiration; pride in the consciousness that he represented his King, his Empire, the power of the sword! Cornelia, a stranger and a Republican, had thrilled at the sight of the gallant Lancers, and—she had visited the wilds of California ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... that Roland demitted. On Thursday comes Lepelletier St. Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pantheon of Great Men. Notable as the wild pageant of a winter day. The Body is borne aloft, half-bare; the winding sheet disclosing the death-wound: sabre and bloody clothes parade themselves; a 'lugubrious music' wailing harsh naeniae. Oak-crowns shower down from windows; President Vergniaud walks there, with Convention, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... appeal. A whole world lay between the two parts. All that each stood for was diametrically opposed to the other. One was modern as the telephone, true, sound, and revealing. The other false from beginning to end, belonging to a world that never existed, a brilliant, flashing pageant, a struggle of beasts in robes of gold and velvet—assassins dancing in jewelled garters. Every scene, every motion was worn with use on the stage, and yet her own romance, her happiness, seemed to depend upon her capitulation as ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... servant and nephew. The German confederacy having dared to countenance its rebellion, shall be punished by having to request Austria to send an army against it." So ordered the Czar, and so it was done. And after it was done, the Czar ordered the withdrawal of the pageant of a Constitution, which in the hour of need the Emperor of Austria had promised to his empire. It was withdrawn. When thus every popular movement was crushed, every shadow of freedom withdrawn, the scaffolds of Hungary and ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... any one of these workers pass his daily hours by a wide window looking on a busy street. The power of the animating life blinds sight and hearing alike, and the great traffic of the city goes by like nothing but a passing pageant. But a man whose mind is empty, whose day is objectless, sitting at that same window, notes the passers-by and remembers the faces that chance to please or interest him. So it is with the mind in its relation ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... a picturesque if an aimless pageant, the smart frocks sweeping the smooth sward, the pretty parasols with the prettier faces underneath, the well-set-up and well-dressed men, with the old gray manor rising upon an eminence in the background, and a dazzling splash of scarlet and of brass somewhere under the trees. The band was playing ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... our duchesses were green-grocers' wives the day before yesterday, and our green-grocers' wives subscribe to the magazines. It's all mixed up, and there are no high lights anywhere. You move before us in a sort of panoramic pageant," Elfrida went on, determined to redeem her point, "with your Queen and Empress of India—she ought to be riding on an elephant, oughtn't she?—in front, and all your princes and nobles with their swords drawn to protect her. Then your Upper Classes and ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... How my brain aches beneath thee! and my temples Throb feverish under thy dishonest weight. Could I not turn thee to a diadem? Could I not shatter the Briarean sceptre Which in this hundred-handed Senate rules, Making the people nothing, and the Prince 270 A pageant? In my life I have achieved Tasks not less difficult—achieved for them, Who thus repay me! Can I not requite them? Oh for one year! Oh! but for even a day Of my full youth, while yet my body served My soul as serves the generous steed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... hand was raised, not a drop of blood was shed, in defence of this pageant raised by the ambition of Dudley. Deserted by his partisans, his soldiers and himself, the guilty wretch sought, as a last feeble resource, to make a merit of being the first man to throw up his cap in the market-place of Cambridge, and cry "God save ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... world. Ever and anon they sweep over the earth, and blow themselves out soon, and then there is quiet for a season, and the atmosphere of Truth seems more serene. Why would you preach to the wind? Why reason with thunder-showers? Better sit quiet, and see them pass over like a pageant, cloudy, superb, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... in 1840 when Tennyson was returning from Coventry to London, after his visit to Warwickshire in that year. The Godiva pageant takes place in that town at the great fair on Friday in Trinity week. Earl Leofric was the Lord of Coventry in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and he and his wife Godiva founded a magnificent Benedictine monastery at Coventry. The first writer who ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... justice or necessity of those executions; but the story of the so-called martyrdoms convulsed the Catholic world. The pope shook upon his throne; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stood still; diplomatists who had lived so long in lies that the whole life of man seemed but a stage pageant, a thing of show and tinsel, stood aghast at the revelation of English sincerity, and a shudder of great awe ran through Europe. The fury of party leaves little room for generous emotion, and no pity was felt for these men by the English Protestants. The Protestants ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... in Paris for those engaged in the theatrical profession to hold annually an Artists' Ball in aid of the charities supported by them. This year the ball was to be held at the Grand Hotel. It was always a brilliant and picturesque pageant. The companies playing in the theatres entered the magnificent ballroom dressed in their theatrical costumes, while others appeared in fancy dresses. Remembering the fame for good taste, smartness and chic of Frenchwomen, the beauty of such a gathering is not surprising. The ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... pay, may be gathered from the fact that a masque sometimes cost as much as two thousand pounds in the mechanical getting-up, a sum far more formidable in the days of exclusively hard money than in these of paper currency. Scott has described, for the benefit of the general reader, one such pageant among the "princely pleasures of Kenilworth"; while Milton, in his "Masque performed at Ludlow Castle," presents the libretto of another, of the simpler and less expensive sort. During the reign of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... many knights he smiteth down with his sword, and of how many knights he rashed off their helms and their shields; and so he beat them all of Orkney afore him. How now, said Sir Launcelot unto King Arthur, I told you that this day there would a knight play his pageant. Yonder rideth a knight ye may see he doth knightly, for he hath strength and wind. So God me help, said Arthur to Launcelot, ye say sooth, for I saw never a better knight, for he passeth far Sir Palomides. Sir, wit ye well, said Launcelot, it must be ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... pessimist or misanthropist, or did he speak out of the bitterness of his soul? It stands to reason that Byron knew that his sorrow and his despair would excite public interest, and that he was not ashamed to exhibit "the pageant of a bleeding heart." But it does not follow that he was a hypocrite. His quarrel with mankind, his anger against fate, were perfectly genuine. His outcry is, in fact, the anguish of a baffled will. Byron ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... reflected how little satisfactory were all these pursuits compared to the tranquillity of home, but then, even as he sat by the bedside, and with her hand in his, pondered on the past and future—a pageant as it were, robed in cloth of gold and purple, and laurel-crowned, swept by him; and the glory of being preeminent among his fellow-men flashed upon his soul. If he should fail—. A cold damp settled on his brow at the thought, for in that event all his time had been thrown away, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... satisfy the natural ambition of such an intellect—seemed, for more than fifty years, to have wholly withdrawn himself from the only field of his permanent distinction. The world heard enough of his gorgeous palace at Cintra (described in Childe Harold), afterwards of the unsubstantial pageant of his splendour at Fonthill, and latterly of his architectural caprices at Bath. But his literary name seemed to have belonged to another age; and, perhaps, in this point of view, it may not have been unnatural for Lord Byron, when comparing Vathek with other Eastern tales, to think ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... her hands two milk-white doves, Happy in her lap to lie, Softly murmur of their loves, Envied by the passers-by; One by one their flight they take, Bought and cherished for her sake, Leaving so reluctantly; Till the shadows close approach, Fades the pageant, foot and coach, And the giants in the cloche ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... were ready, something would happen, something they were preparing at their leisure, something so exquisite that all who saw it would dance and sing for gladness. They also believed in a Wonderful Stranger who was coming into their slow, steady lives. They fell to dreaming of the surprising pageant they would blazon forth upon the world a little later. And while they dreamed, the wind of night passed moaning through their leafless branches, and Time flew noiselessly above the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... buttons, styles for writing, pins, needles, combs, and pottery. By such pitiful trifles that have survived the pride and strength of all their owners, you may be fitly introduced to the next chapter in the pageant of historic Rouen, the tale ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... running riot in her conquered brain; And there, with doors thrown wide, a motley group Held carnival; went freely out and in, Meeting and jostling. But withal it seemed As some confused tragedy went on; Till suddenly the light sank, and the pageant Was lost in darkness; the chambers of her brain Lay desolate and silent. I can gather So much, and little more:—This Julian Is one of some distinction; probably rich, And titled Count. He had a love-affair, In good-boy, layman ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... your Royal state, Captains, and chiefs, and councillors, Before the lofty palace doors Are open set,— Hush ere you pass the shining gate: Hush! ere the heaving curtain draws, And let the Royal pageant pause A moment yet. ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... then getting out, or putting in, horses and wagon for the night. A procession, with banners and music, was moving slowly by the tavern, and the quaint costumes in which the men were dressed suggested days long past, when far other scenes were going forward in this locality. It was almost like a pageant marching out of antiquity for our delectation. Our master of ceremonies revelled that day in repeopling the queer old streets down into which we were looking from our charming elevation. His delightful fancy seemed especially alert on ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... ceremonial a great pageant was prepared, the fore part of which was made in the resemblance of a great devil, on which were placed three chairs of state; that in the middle for the king, being elevated about two feet above ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... a murmur of, blessing, The few that on either shore Were setting up signals of warning, Where many had perished before. But now, as the sunlight came creeping Through the half-opened lids of the morn, Fast faded that wonderful pageant, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... of Godly and Spiritual Songs, Edinburgh, 1621, printed from an old copy, are the following lines, seemingly referring to some such pageant: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... once a splendid castle. Home of joy and weapons bright, Where there swept in stately pageant Lady, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke



Words linked to "Pageant" :   ceremony, observance, representation, ceremonial, ceremonial occasion



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