United States or Equatorial Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


He kept repeating his customary orisons in a low voice, and he was heard murmuring these broken words: "Fair Sir God, have mercy on this people that bideth here, and bring them back to their own land! Let them not fall into the hands of their enemies, and let them not be constrained to deny Thy name!"

For the fifth time to-day that cry is sounding a warning to the faithful that the hour for evening devotions has come. See! yonder Moor has heard it too, and is already spreading his felt on the ground for the performance of his nightly orisons. Standing Mekka-wards, and bowing to the ground, he goes through the set forms used throughout the Mohammedan world.

Whatever be its creed, whatever be its sect, from whatever segment of the globe its orisons arise, Virtue is God's empire, and from His throne of thrones He will defend it. Though cast into the distant earth, and struggling on the dim arena of a human heart, all things above are spectators of its conflict or enlisted in its cause.

It was a mission of piety a pilgrim cavalcade to a convent at the foot of a neighboring mountain to return thanks to the blessed Virgin, for having sustained her through this fearful ordeal. The orisons performed, the duchess and her ladies returned, ambling gently along the border of a forest. It was about that mellow hour of twilight when night and day are mingled and all objects are indistinct.

And these orisons were going to mingle with those of the mothers who were praying for the youth trying to check the onslaught of the barbarians with the petitions of these earnest men, rigid in their tragic grief! . . . He had to make a great effort not to protest aloud, and he left the church. His sister-in-law had no right to kneel there among those people.

There was a strange pain at his heart, and the pain of intense and fruitless calculation in his brain; and, as the Mahometan prays towards Mecca, and the Jew towards Jerusalem, so Captain Lake's morning orisons, whatsoever they were, were offered at the window of his bed-room toward London, from whence he looked for his salvation, or it might be the other thing with a dreadful yearning.

In attendance upon the two was a dapper little silk-hatted man, with rogue so plainly written in his devotional countenance that I was not surprised to be told that he was a species of spiritual valet de place, whose occupation it was to attend pilgrims on their tour to the Seven Churches at which these devotees pray in Rome, and there to direct their orisons and join in them.

Leave me to myself to-night; For I have need of many orisons. Juliet plays most of her pranks under the appearance of religion: perhaps Shakespeare meant to punish her hypocrisy. ACT V. SCENE i. My bosom's Lord sits lightly on this throne, &c. These three lines are very gay and pleasing. But why does Shakespeare give Romeo this involuntary cheerfulness just before the extremity of unhappiness?

He was obviously prattling on in order to hide his nervous bashfulness. He ensconced himself behind his own finely constructed bulwark, drew a breviary from his pocket and having found a narrow ledge on one of the chairs, on which he could sit, without much danger of bringing the elaborate screen onto the top of his head, he soon became absorbed in his orisons.

And now steals forth on fairy foot the gentle Señora, in trim basquiña, with restless fan in hand, and dark eye flashing from beneath the gracefully folded mantilla; she seeks some well-frequented church to offer up her morning orisons; but the nicely adjusted dress, the dainty shoe and cobweb stocking, the raven tresses exquisitely braided, the fresh-plucked rose, gleaming among them like a gem, show that earth divides with Heaven the empire of her thoughts.