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heartsong

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From heart +‎ song.

Noun

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heartsong (plural heartsongs)

  1. (obsolete) A heartwarming song or poem.
    • 1895, Johnson Brigham, Midland Monthly Magazine - Volume 4, page 572:
      How the crest-hunting rich and the wealth-seeking wearers of inherited honors and the popularity-seeking and place-hunting politicians whom their promoters half satirically style “great” dwindle when compared with this man, who with a few simple little heartsongs had won the love of children, had found a place in the hearts of those who mourn and hand entered the home and made it the happier and better for his presence!
    • 1896, Self Culture - Volume 3, page 524:
      Many of his lyrics are heartsongs that will chord with human life as long as it has sorrows and aspirations.
    • 1917, The Educator-journal - Volume 18, page 229:
      “Home, Sweet Home” has been sung by the world's Greatest Artists for the Viotrola; after the class has heard the story of "the Homeless Bard of Home” it may sing this famous heartsong with the band accompaniment on Victor Record 18145.
  2. A song or message that is deeply heartfelt.
    • 1883, University of Michigan Student Religious Association, Bulletin, page 191:
      With hymning we will praise Thee, Our heartsong we lift up to Thee, Thou glorious evermore;
    • 1893, Elizabeth Susan MacLeod, Carols of Canada, Etc., Etc, page 31:
      So we, when our Great High Priest shall come, Begirt of power, enrobed of state, And the peoples of ten thousand isles With eager joy His advent wait, Shall hail, with a heartsong of rapture, His step on our sin-furrowed strand ; Shall march, with the grand triumphal throng, In the glow of a God-lit land.
    • 1920, The Railroad Trainman - Volume 37, page 215:
      Over life's long trail a-winding, We wend our onward way, Sometimes with spirits broken, Sometimes with heartsongs gay.
  3. The expression of a person's inner essence, underlying identity, and reason for existence.
    • 1863, Sartor Resartus (1831).: Lectures on Heroes (1840)., page 259:
      All cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable heartsong like this : one feels as if it might survive, still of importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognisable combinations, and had ceased individually to be.
    • 2005, Roger Calverley, The Primal Runes: Archetypes of Invocation and Empowerment, →ISBN:
      The words he speaks carry a familiar message. He lifts me up to sing my infinite heartsong. He is a musical tone that rings out to embrace the morning sky.
    • 2010, Erjan J. Slavin, The Tale of the Mirror (& The Wishing Tree Poetry), →ISBN, page 72:
      To be sung to in this way by the entire faery kingdom, each member of it born from the heartsong of a camper, was truly a delight that not many, I believe, have known.