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The adventures of the day were over; the azure of the sky had changed to a dead grey; the moon was appearing just over the trees; the water of the Gombe was like a silver belt; hoarse frogs bellowed their notes loudly by the margin of the creek; the fish-eagles uttered their dirge-like cries as they were perched high on the tallest tree; elands snorted their warning to the herds in the forest; stealthy forms of the carnivora stole through the dark woods outside of our camp.
Let whatever be the theme and whoever the performers, as the song proceeds, and the feelings of all become wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by the recital of the great deeds done in battle, or gallant sacrifices dared in love, the voices of one or more of the listeners will be sure to break into the strain; the whole audience will join in the cheerful chirrup of hai-hai-cha! or the dirge-like wail of wai-wai-wai! and at the finale some deli-kan, inspired perhaps by the sight of maiden faces cautiously peering in at door or window, will scarcely be able to refrain from firing his pistol up the chimney, or even through the ceiling.
She paused for a moment just ahead of him to give some money to a poor woman who, doubled up on the pavement in a black shawl, was grinding out from a wheezy little organ a thin, dirge-like strain. "Good evening. I hope you feel better to-day," Keith heard her say in a kind tone, though he lost all of the other's reply except the "God bless you."
The weltering of the waves upon the outside of the thin plank against which my head was pressed, made a dismal kind of music, and suggested vividly how frail was the only barrier that separated us from the wide, dark waste of waters, below and around. The heavy, dirge-like swell of the ocean, though soothing, in the regularity and monotony of its sluggish motion, sounded inexpressibly mournful.
No discordant sound fell upon the ear. All was beauty, harmony, and joy. The landscape resembled our imaginings of the world before the fall, when it came fresh from its Maker's hands, and all the morning stars hailed its birth. But again clouds, like marshalling armies, hurried through and darkened the sky. The tempest rose with its dirge-like wailing.
Through the back bow-window of the Phoenix, there pealed forth faint in the distance and rain a solemn royal ditty, piped by the tuneful Aldermen of Skinner's Alley, and neither unmusical nor somehow uncongenial with the darkness, and the melancholy object of the doctor's walk, the chant being rather monastic, wild, and dirge-like.
We are so accustomed to regrets, to confessions that this and that are, alas! unfinished; to those sad recitals which so often conclude with the dirge-like refrain, "it might have been," that death stands forth in a new light when it is viewed as the end of a completed journey, and the conclusion of a finished task. This is exactly the aspect of it to which our Lord refers. His work was done.
As they came to a close, I heard a howl from the watch-dog in the yard, a dismal, lugubrious howl. Other dogs in the distant village caught up the sound, and bayed in a dirge-like chorus; and the howling went on louder and louder.
During these days of serenity a ballad suggested by thoughts of her and his life with her in the lovely Valley of the Many-Colored Grass took form in his mind. It was no dirge-like song of the "dank tarn of Auber," but a song of a fair "kingdom by the sea" and in contrast to the sombre "Ulalume" he gave to the maiden in the new poem the pleasant sounding name of "Annabel Lee."
Malay music, though plaintive and less excruciating than Chinese and Japanese, is very monotonous and dirge-like, and not pleasing to a European ear. The pentatonic scale is employed. The violin stands first among musical instruments in their estimation.
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