drum-taps

On fine nights when the cold and the drum-taps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak.

The Silver Chair Lewis, C. S. 1953

When we hear a haphazard succession of drum-taps or the irregular click-click of the typewriter, most of us soon begin to feel a certain orderly arrangement, a rhythmical _swing_ in the repeated sounds, a grouping according to a sort of unit which recurs with nearly equal intervals.

The Principles of English Versification Paull Franklin Baum

But if there is the added complication of drum-taps of unequal force, the element of comparative stress must be reckoned with.

The Principles of English Versification Paull Franklin Baum

And if, finally, the drum-taps are not in the same key (say, on kettledrums differently tuned), then the further element of comparative pitch must be considered as a possible point of emphasis.

The Principles of English Versification Paull Franklin Baum

We heard their drum-taps fading and their trumpet fanfares dying

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, April 30, 1919 Various

In the simplest kind of temporal rhythm, therefore, where the beats are, say, drum-taps of equal force, the primary element is time.

The Principles of English Versification Paull Franklin Baum

Almost before the echoes of the drum-taps died among the dancing shadows overhead a voice cried from the roof in Armenian, and Kagig rose to his feet.

The Eye of Zeitoon Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 1920

One of the Turk's seven sons produced a saz toward the end -- a little Turkish drum, and accompanied with swift, staccato stabs of sound that spurred her like the goads of overtaking time toward the peak of full expression -- faster and faster -- wilder and wilder -- freer and freer of all limits, until suddenly she left the thing unfinished, and the drum-taps died away alone.

The Eye of Zeitoon Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 1920

By the time the drum-taps and horns announced Ngalyema's arrival, the camp seemed abandoned except by myself and a few small boys.

An African Adventure Isaac Frederick Marcosson 1918

The curiously distinctive slow drum-taps of an invisible Williamson sapsucker, a true Sierran, handsomest of the handsome, were always to be counted upon; swallows and swifts went skimming over the grass; robins and snowbirds flitted about; but if deer ever came this way, it was not down for me to find them.

On Foot in the Yosemite 1910