systole and diastole

He has a feeling for the systole and diastole, the contraction and release, of a body’s mechanisms.

The notion may seem fantastic, but, in view of certain recent investigations of psychology into the relation between our pulse and our sense of rhythm, I have wondered whether the lack of any regular systole and diastole in Browning's verse may not rest on a physical basis.

He fails to create an ideal world in which both tragedy and comedy are necessary to the spiritual order, as are the systole and diastole of the heart to an organised being.

The great heart of Nature itself beats with a regular systole and diastole.

It is the very presence of its past that seems to determine the shape of Italian modernism: a systole and diastole between innovation and tradition.