The stormy music of the drum. [ Campbell ]

A hare is not caught with a drum. [ La Fontaine ]

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on Life's parade shall meet
The brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread.
And Glory guards, with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead. [ Theodore O'Hara ]

Their flag was furled, and mute their drum. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried:
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
O'er the grave where our hero we buried. [ Rev. C. Wolfe ]

The noisy drum hath nothing in it, but mere air. [ Proverb ]

The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness. [ Carlyle ]

Vulgar habit people have nowadays of asking one, after one has given them an idea, whether one is serious or not. Nothing is serious except passion. The intellect is an instrument on which one plays, that is all. The only serious form of intellect is the British intellect. And on the British form of intellect the illiterates play the drum. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]