Festal

So to the palace she escorts her guest, / and calls for festal honours in the shrine.

So spake the Queen, and on the festal board / the prime libation to the gods outpoured, / then lightly to her lips the goblet pressed, / and gave to Bitias. Challenged by the word, / he dived into the brimming gold with zest, / and quaffed the foaming bowl, and after him, the rest.

The little mermaid dressed in silk and gold stood holding the bride's train, but her ears were deaf to the festal strains, her eyes saw nothing of the sacred ceremony. She was thinking of her coming death and of all that she had lost in this world.

Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.

But it must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature, to two healthy girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air, was a table, set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies, while little golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it what Anne would have termed "a festal air."

His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks and poison ivy, and it looked real festal and bowery.

They were, at any rate in their inception, genuinely religious or genuinely social and festal; and from either point of view they were far better than the secrecy of private indulgence which characterizes our modern world in these matters.

Amidst this fetor the Burmese masses live their festal and contemplative existences.

Athanasius of Alexandria’s thirty-ninth Festal Letter remains one of the most significant documents in the history of the Christian Bible. Athanasius wrote the letter, which contains the first extant list of precisely the twenty-seven books of the current New Testament canon, in 367 C.E., during the final decade of his life.