These to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung.
-- John Milton, Paradise Lost
When they start on one of their polarised descants, whether on state education, water rates, crime, the BBC or whatever, they sound like a bumble bee and a wasp fighting in a jam jar.
-- Gillian Reynolds, "The biggest things to hit radio", Daily Telegraph, May 14, 1999
Mr. Ackroyd's descant on "Great Expectations" is the work of a master.
-- Alison Lurie, "Hanging Out With Hogarth", New York Times, October 11, 1992
In a custom associated with Athenian gatherings but almost certainly followed elsewhere as well, a myrtle branch was passed around the room, and each of the assembled would descant as the wine flowed.
-- David Barber, "Children of Orpheus", The Atlantic, June 10, 1998
The police amusingly descant on these jottings: "I can't believe he'd ever write a sentence like 'I shall be compelled to take steps to silence you!'"
-- Christopher Buckley, "The Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea", New York Times, November 16, 1997
