"Lyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hazel eyes shot a shy-bold glance straight into his; it was as if those slim, taper fingers of hers had twanged the strings of the lyre of his nerves. "You despise all this sort of trumpery, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... they have long since bade their adieu to poetry; you know poets are very wayward," he added, with a sly smile. "You have a happy privilege, my dear sir: when our age turns prosy, you have but to take your lyre, in the sweet country of the south, and resuscitate the glory of the Troubadours. They tell me, that in one of your recent journeys you evoked enthusiastic applause, and entered many towns carpeted with flowers. Ah, mon Dieu, we can never ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... devise histoires and convenient raisons to florisshe the buildings and banquet house withal" (Rolls Calendars of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., III. pt. 1.). No doubt it was also thought that this would be an excellent opportunity for the eulogist of the Defender of the Faith to again take up the lyre to sing the glories of his royal master, but no effort of his muse on the subject of this great chivalric pageant has descended to us if any ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... Adieu ma Lyre, adieu fillettes, Jadis mes douces amourettes, Adieu, je sens venir ma fin, Nul passetemps de ma jeunesse Ne m'accompagne en la vieillesse, Que le feu, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... of Crabbe, as it seems to me, is best indicated by reference to one of the truest of all dicta on poetry, the famous maxim of Joubert—that the lyre is a winged instrument and must transport. There is no wing in Crabbe, there is no transport, because, as I hold (and this is where I go beyond Hazlitt), there is no music. In all poetry, the very highest as well as the very lowest that is still poetry, there is something which transports, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... is that of the poet Khusru, his contemporary and friend, who moved about where he pleased through the palace of the Emperor Tughlak Shah the First, five hundred years ago, and sang extempore to his lyre while the greatest and the fairest watched his lips to catch the expressions as they came warm from his soul. His popular songs are still the most popular; and he is one of the favoured few who live through ages in the every-day ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a happy suggestion of the voice of the mother singing in paradise as the daughter sang below. Honour to the poet who, while so many singers of our time vex us with entanglements metaphysical and exasperating, had thought always for the simplest hearts and attuned his lyre ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... supposed to preside over Nature. The Ode therefore in its first formation was a song in honour of these Powers[9], either sung at solemn festivals or after the days of Amphion who was the inventor of the Lyre, accompanied with the musick of that ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... Provincial in Ghent, a commission to design and embroider six large allegorical panels. One of them represented 'Wisdom' in the habiliments of Minerva, modernized, holding an olive branch. The five others were 'Justice,' holding a thistle, symbolizing law; 'Eloquence,' crowned with roses and holding a lyre; 'Strength,' bending an oak branch; 'Truth,' crushing a serpent and bearing a mirror and some lilies; and 'Prudence,' with the horn of plenty and some holly. These six panels are remarkable for the beautiful decorative feeling that suffuses their composition. The tricks of workmanship are varied, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the heroes, too, they sent forth from their lips a lily-like voice. And they were already about to cast from the ship the hawsers to the shore, had not Thracian Orpheus, son of Oeagrus, stringing in his hands his Bistonian lyre, rung forth the hasty snatch of a rippling melody so that their ears might be filled with the sound of his twanging; and the lyre overcame the maidens' voice. And the west wind and the sounding wave rushing astern bore the ship on; ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... or brave, In the keen air beyond the grave? Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh O'er him who learns the truth by half! Beware; for God will not endure For men to make their hope more pure Than His good promise, or require Another than the five-string'd lyre Which He has vow'd again to the hands Devout of him who understands To tune it justly here! Beware The Powers of Darkness and the Air, Which lure to empty heights man's hope, Bepraising heaven's ethereal cope, But covering with their ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... Not in the lyre of Orpheus, Not in the songs of Musaeus, Lurked the unfathomed bewitchment Wrought by the wind in the grasses, 10 Held by the rote of ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... it source on spiritual planes; in the heart and on the lyre of blind Maeonides; and worked downward and outward, till it had wrought on this plane a stable firmness in Sparta, an alertness in Athens. It contacted then the crest of the Persian wave, and received from the impact huge accession ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... music has long been known. For ages warriors have been led to battle to the sounds of martial strains. David charmed away Saul's evil spirit with his harp. Horace in his 32d Ode Book 1, concludes his address to the lyre:— ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... lullaby! Child, I see thee! Child, I've found thee! Midst the quiet all around thee! Child, I see thee! Child, I spy thee! And thy mother sweet is nigh thee. Child, I know thee! Child no more, But a poet ever-more! See, see, the lyre, the lyre! In a flame of fire Upon the little cradle's top Flaring, flaring, flaring, Past the eyesight's bearing. Wake it from its sleep, And see if it can keep Its eyes upon the blaze— Amaze, amaze! It stares, it stares, it stares, It dares what none dares! It lifts its little hand into ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... reading only increased while in this town by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces that are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Fergusson's Scottish Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the hell-hounds that prowl in the kennel of justice; but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone. For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage bed. Her soldier, closing with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... house, for there hangs the sign—"At the Red Crab." Beside this there is a marble tablet fastened above the doorway, which says that Franz Schubert was born in this house. At the right of his name is placed a lyre crowned with a star, and at the left a laurel wreath within which is placed the date, January ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Minerva; "she doesn't count for much here. Of course, you know the gentleman opposite with the lyre—my brother, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... lyre with other strings, Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased by praise of meaner things, That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, I may record thy worth with honour due, In ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... wan, Yet art thou born of an immortal sire, The child of Nemesis and of the Swan; Thy veins should run with ichor and with fire. Yet this is thy delight and thy desire, To love a mortal lord, a mortal child, To live, unpraised of lute, unhymn'd of lyre, As any woman pure ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... me not perish. On the day of Tammuz, play for me on the flute of lapis lazuli, together with the lyre[1187] of pearl play for me. Together let the professional dirge singers, male and female, play for me, That the dead may arise and inhale the incense ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latian muse; Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light, And with a Roman's ardour think and write. He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire, And, like a master, wak'd the soothing lyre: Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim, While Sky's wild rocks resound his Thralia's name[188]. Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands, To bloom a while, factitious heat demands: Though glowing Maro a faint warmth supplies, The sickly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... now, and its loosened strings will wait long for a hand to tune and draw from them such soul-moving cadences as we have been wont to hear. In purer air she sweeps a nobler lyre; and methinks her song may well be, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors, and their works do ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... of song even unto the mute, he owes all his power and all his fame. It is the gift of Heaven that he is pointed out by the finger of the passer-by as the minstrel of the Roman lyre, that he breathes the divine fire and pleases men. But he is as perfectly appreciative of the fact that poets are born and also made, and condemns the folly of depending upon inspiration unsupported by effort. He calls himself the bee ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... laughter of the beloved. For the old gods are not dead. Though they be forgotten and the voice of Jesus full of sorrowful promises has beguiled the world, still every morning is Aphrodite new born in the spume of the sea, and in many an isle forsaken you may catch the notes of Apollo's lyre, while Dionysus, in the mysterious heat of midday when the husbandman is sleeping, still steals among the grapes, and Demeter even yet in the sunset seeks Persephone among the sheaves of corn. If Jesus wanders in ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... bard on battle-field, in sounding verse, Proclaim to distant time the warrior-deed That makes a hero, whose triumphal hearse Rolls graveward o'er a thousand hearts that bleed In widowed agony. Let golden lyre Of regal Court engaged in worldly strife Clothe princely foibles with poetic fire, And crown with fame a king's ignoble life. Let chroniclers of Camp and Court proclaim A Warrior's greatness, and a Monarch's fame. Be mine with verse the tomb of one ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings— The trembling living wire Of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... canvas limned it for all time in forms of unuttered and unutterable loveliness. They shaped into glowing life the phantoms of grace that were always flitting before their enchanted eyes, and poured into inanimate marble their rapt and passionate souls. They struck the lyre to wild and stirring songs whose tremulous echoes still linger along the corridors of Time. Some sought the icebound North, and grappled with dangers by field and flood. They hunted the wild dragon to his mountain-fastnesses, and fought him at bay, and never quailed. Death, in its most fearful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... are not formed only to echo the voice of Europe, but from them shall yet sound a lyre which shall be the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... liberty, fresh as in youth It first kindles the bard and gives life to his lyre, Yet mellowed even now by that mildness of truth Which tempers, but chills not, the ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... cry, and reappeared with their prey in their beaks. On the shores and on the islets, strutted wild ducks, pelicans, water-hens, red-beaks, philedons, furnished with a tongue like a brush, and one or two specimens of the splendid menura, the tail of which expands gracefully like a lyre. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... dine somewhere first and have supper afterwards. The whole gamut of merriment. Toute la lyre. And you shall have," I added, "some of your favourite ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the Aonian Quire, Nothing oblig'd to any Poet's lyre ... The Muses had no Matter from thy Bay, To make thee famous till great William's Day.... To Orange only and Batavia's Seed Remain'd this glory, as of old decreed, To make thy Name immortal, and thy Shore More famous ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... countries and subcontinents like men born under stars What star was South Africa herself born under? Not the Lyre surely, her poetry is comparatively so negligible. Not the Plough, nor yet Aquarius, for she is not blest with overmuch irrigation, nor brilliant at agriculture. Neither was it the Northern Star surely; ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... as you love it, my friend, with intelligence, discrimination, and delicacy, but in a dull, woodeny way, as the "gouty oaks" loved it, when they felt in their fibrous frames the stir of Amphion's lyre, and "floundered into hornpipes"; as the gray, stupid rocks loved it, when they came rolling heavily to his feet to listen; in a great, coarse, clumsy, ichthyosaurian way, as the rivers loved sad Orpheus's wailing tones, stopping in their mighty courses, and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Fiends carry her away. After this the comic part is resumed. Interlude III.—Orpheus again rejects Rhodope's solicitations. Departs. The scene draws, and discovers Orpheus slain. Several Baccants enter in a triumphant manner. They bring in the lyre and chaplet of Orpheus. Rhodope stabs herself. The piece concludes with the remainder of ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... To me the artist's meed, the ivy wreath Is very heaven: me the sweet cool of woods, Where Satyrs frolic with the Nymphs, secludes From rabble rout, so but Euterpe's breath Fail not the flute, nor Polyhymnia fly Averse from stringing new the Lesbian lyre. O, write my name among that minstrel choir, And my proud head shall strike upon ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Melchior, standing by his side, violin in hand. He had to abandon that, not on account of the cost—Melchior did not stop at any expense—but because there was not time enough. He fell back on an allegorical design representing a cradle, a trumpet, a drum, a wooden horse, grouped round a lyre which put forth rays like the sun. The title-page bore, together with a long dedication, in which the name of the Prince stood out in enormous letters, a notice to the effect that "Herr Jean-Christophe Krafft was six ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... gentleman is the son of Mr. John H. Ball, the well-known contractor, who removed old Rochester Bridge; he is also a brother-in-law of the late gifted tenor, Mr. Joseph Maas, to whom a handsome memorial tablet, consisting of a marble medallion of the deceased, over which is a lyre with one of the strings broken, has since been erected on the east wall of the south transept of Rochester Cathedral. By Mr. Ball's considerate courtesy and that of his daughters, we are allowed to see many interesting ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... his pulse and appetite failed; his spirits sunk into a uniform gloom. In April 1796 he wrote—"I fear it will be some time before I tune my lyre again. By Babel's streams I have sat and wept. I have only known existence by the pressure of sickness and counted time by the repercussions of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open them without hope. I look on the vernal day ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... or oratorio in which recitative was used." The characters were Time, Human Life, the World, Pleasure, the Intellect, the Soul, the Body, and two youths who were to recite the prologue. The orchestra was composed of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a large or double guitar, and two flutes. The composer has left some curious instructions for the performance of his work; ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... the magic of a voice,— Its spirit haunt him in romantic hours? Who hath not heard from Melody's own lips Sounds that become a music to his mind?— Music is heaven! and in the festive dome, When throbs the lyre, as if instinct with life, And some sweet mouth is full of song,—how soon A rapture flows from eye to eye, from heart To heart—while floating from the past, the forms We love are recreated, and the smile That lights the cheek is mirror'd on the heart! So beautiful the influence of sound, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... of isms tied together with rhyme; He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders; The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Even as he wandered, lyre in hand, a train of Lesbians and pederasts at his heels, through those halls which had risen on the ruins, and which inexhaustible Greece had furnished with a fresh crop of white immortals, the world rebelled. Afar on the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... proper, you know — Achilles stays be- hind a screen until she wants to illustrate a point, and then he comes out with a lyre or a lute or something, and just stands there and LOOKS Greek. And then he goes back behind the screen and changes into the ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... the strains seemed to have sighed an eternal farewell to its loved haunts in the past, when, suddenly arousing from a long slumber, it threw the mantle of inspiration, at the close of last century, over several sons of song, worthy to bear the lyre of their minstrel sires. Of these, unquestionably the most remarkable was James Hogg, commonly designated "The Ettrick Shepherd." This distinguished individual was born in the bosom of the romantic vale of Ettrick, in Selkirkshire,—one of the most mountainous and picturesque districts ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... in its sparkling depths. But the poet, even German, is yet unborn, who, moved by sweet memories of the nectar of his fatherland, shall chant in rhyme the virtues of his national drink. Yet though its merit has inspired neither of the sister graces, poetry and song, to strike the lyre in its honor, it has had, none the less, an important mission to perform. To its plebeian sister beer, as a healthful beverage, wine must yield the palm. As a common drink, suited to human nature's daily need, it has never been surpassed. If it has nerved no hand to deeds of daring, or struck the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... which the boys understood to be a superior breed), then leopards, then pumas and panthers; then bears, then jackals and hyenas; then bears and wolves; then kangaroos, musk-oxen, deer, and such harmless cattle; and then ostriches, emus, lyre-birds, birds-of-Paradise and all the rest. From time to time the boys ran back from the elephants and camels to get what good they could out of the scenes in which these hidden wonders were dramatized ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Kiowa brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter, and food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs fanned him mildly; mocking-birds at morn and eve competed with but scarce equalled the sweet melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness seemed to fill all his world. While old man Ellison was pottering among his flocks of sheep on his mile-an-hour pony, and while the Kiowa took his siesta in the burning sunshine at the end of the kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot thinking ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... Apollo or Helios, the sun-god, according to corrected mythology, and from him received the phorminx or lyre of seven strings, i.e.—according to occult phraseology—the sevenfold mystery of the Initiation. Now Indra is the ruler of the bright firmament, the disperser of clouds, "the restorer of the sun to ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... however, when praised; and never, except in rare moments, especially of eclipse, has he a strong faith in the truth that is in him. Therefore crush him, saith the Philistine, as we crush the vine; strike him, as one strikes the lyre. When young, he imagines the world to be filled with one ambition; later on, he finds that so indeed it is—but the name thereof is not Poesy. Strange! sighs he. And if, when he is seventeen, he writes a fluent song, and his fellow-clerk admire it, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... airs A golden-headed harvest fairly rears His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath, Which there reciprocally laboreth. In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire, Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre; Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats In cream of morning Helicon; and then Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, To woo them from their beds, still ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... at least withholding his gift (allowed, with magnificent but unconscious irony, to be 'divine') from that general contribution to the public wisdom in which journalists make so brave a show. He may, if he have the singular luck to be a Laureate, be allowed to strike his lyre and sing of an accouchement; this being about the only event on which politicians and journalists have not yet claimed the monopoly of offering practical advice. But farther he may hardly go: and all because a silly assertion has been repeated until second-rate ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... keen black eyes that shone like dusky rubies; they were agile at the chase, could capture a lion or trap the wild beasts that are so useful in gladiatorial games. There were Greeks here, pale of face and gentle of manner who could strike the chords of a lyre and sing to its accompaniment, and there were swarthy Spaniards who fashioned breast-plates of steel and fine chain mail to resist the assassin's dagger: there were Gauls with long lithe limbs and brown hair tied in a knot high above the forehead, and Allemanni from the Rhine with two-coloured ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Ago, And you there in the tree; With that nut between your paws, Half-way to your twittering jaws, Jaunty with your striped coat, Puffing out your furry throat, Eyes like some big polished seed, Plumed tail curved like half a lyre . . . ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... the other, he is evidently the next to Achilles; and it seems almost certain that whoever wrote the Odyssey was working from some other legend of the war. There were a thousand versions of it. The tale of Ilium was set to every lyre in Greece, and the relative position of the heroes was doubtless changed according to the sympathies or the patriotism of the singer. The character of Ulysses is much stronger in the Odyssey; and even when the same qualities are attributed to him—his soft-flowing tongue, his cunning, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... sense so well known, that I must satisfy myself by mentioning only a few particulars connected with recent discoveries. First, as to symbolic images allowed in churches and cemeteries. Of Orpheus playing on the lyre, while watching his flock, as a substitute for the Good Shepherd, there have been found in the catacombs four paintings, two reliefs on sarcophagi, one engraving on a gem. Here is the latest representation discovered, from ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Thou, to whom, in ancient time, The lyre of Hebrew bards was strung, Whom kings adored in song sublime, And prophets praised ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... the beautiful gliding form, The tread that would scarcely crush a worm, And the soothing song by the winter fire Soft as the dying throb of the lyre." ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... toiled, and in their country's cause Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, Receive proud recompense. We give in charge Their names to the sweet lyre. The Historic Muse, Proud of the treasure, marches with it down To latest times; and Sculpture, in her turn, Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass To guard them and immortalize her trust. But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid, To those who, posted at ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... along the forest glade by the margent of the stream, her basket filled and over-flowing with flowers. The sentient stream sang loud and gay to greet her approaching, with fluent liquid fingers striking more joyously the chords of his stony lyre. Light beyond the sun was shed through the glen before her. Birds, the brightest of plumage and sweetest of note of all the birds of Banba, [Footnote: One of Ireland's ancient names.] filled the air with their songs, flying behind ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... across the strait a trophy stood, and round that trophy, forty years before, Sophocles the author of Antigone, then sixteen years of age, the loveliest and most cultivated lad in Athens, undraped like a faun, with lyre in hand, was leading the Chorus of Athenian youths, and singing to Athene, the tutelary goddess, a hymn of triumph for a glorious victory,—the very symbol of Greece and Athens, springing up into a joyous second youth after invasion and desolation, as the ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... him and called Connus [Greek: gerontodidaskalon]. Cf. also Fam. 9, 22, 3 Socraten fidibus docuit nobilissimus fidicen; is Connus vocitatus est; Val. Max. 8, 7, 8. — IN FIDIBUS: 'in the case of the lyre'. Tuecking quotes Quintilian 9, 2, 5 quod in fidibus fieri vidimus. The Greek word cithara is not used by Cicero and does not become common in Latin prose till long after Cicero's time, though he several times uses the words citharoedus, citharista, when referring to Greek ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... celestial fire Fingers the sunken spire; Crocket by crocket slowly creepeth down; Brushes the maze of wire, Dewy, electric lyre, And with a silent hymn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... before others there might be a performance of scenes from a comedy. At times vocal and instrumental music was discoursed by the domestic minstrels; or persons, generally women, were hired to play upon the harp, lyre, or double flageolet. Such performances would also be carried on during the carousal which often followed deep into the night, and to these may be added posture-dances by girls from Cadiz, juggling and acrobatic feats, and other forms of "variety" entertainment. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... and oft have I felt his abtrusest thoughts steal rhythmically on my soul, when chanted forth by him! Nay, how often have I fancied I heard rise up in answer to his gentle touch, an interpreting music of my own, as from the passive strings of some wind-smitten lyre! ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the walls exhaled a mouldy smell; and they remained there chatting freely about all sorts of topics—anything that happened to arise—in a spirit of hilarity. Sometimes the rays of the sun, passing through the Venetian blind, extended from the ceiling down to the flagstones like the strings of a lyre. Particles of dust whirled amid these luminous bars. She amused herself by dividing them with her hand. Frederick gently caught hold of her; and he gazed on the twinings of her veins, the grain of her skin, and the form of her fingers. Each of those fingers of hers was for him more than a thing—almost ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the convict. "You can get the beautiful lyre bird, with its wonderful curved tail. I can show you the bower birds' nests, with their decorations. Then there is that beautiful purply black kind of crow—the rifle bird they call it. As to the parrots and ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... me thy lyre, even as the forest is; What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone. Sweet, though in sadness, be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! be thou me, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... that in a few days' time, when you have compared him with men whom you will meet, men of real ability, men who have distinguished themselves in good earnest; suppose that you should discover, dear and fair siren, that it is no lyre-bearer that you have borne into port on your dazzling shoulders, but a little ape, with no manners and no capacity; a presumptuous fool who may be a wit in L'Houmeau, but turns out a very ordinary specimen of a young man in Paris? And, after all, volumes of ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... ships of Troy, the beat [Strophe 1. Of oars that shimmered Innumerable, and dancing feet Of Nereids glimmered; And dolphins, drunken with the lyre, Across the dark blue prows, like fire, Did bound and quiver, To cleave the way for Thetis' son, Fleet-in-the-wind Achilles, on To war, to war, till Troy be won Beside ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... passions. The picture which he draws of Achilles,[1] receiving the subsequent deputation from the Greeks, illustrates our subject exactly. It was in vain for the hero to attempt to sooth his mind with the melodies of the lyre; his blood kindled only at the music of war; it was idle for him to seek sufficient pleasure in celebrating the renown of heroes; this was but a vain effort to quell the burning passion for surpassing them in glory. He listens to the deputation, not tranquilly, but peevishly. He charges them ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... in motion, and the whole body dancing. Another of a boy with head bent forward, and the whole body in the attitude of listening. Then there is a fine group of statuary representing the mighty Hercules holding a stag bent over his knee; another of the beautiful Apollo with his lyre in his hand leaning against a pillar. There are figures of huntsmen in full chase, and of fishermen sitting patiently and quietly "waiting for a bite." A very celebrated curiosity is the large urn or vase of blue glass, with figures carved ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... on his midnight watch, Fixing his gaze upon the tranquil moon, Felt his heart soften as the thoughts of home Rush'd on his faithful memory;—then it was In language meet, and in appropriate strains— Strains which thy lyre had taught him—he pour'd forth The feelings of his soul, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... recall the honors which have been bestowed on the testudinates from all antiquity. It was the sun-dried and sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury, as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world. Under the testudo the Roman legions swarmed into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... as well as the first singers, for music is an essential ingredient in every Irish feast. The Dean was pleased with many of the Irish airs, but was peculiarly struck with the Feast of O'Rourke, which was played by Jeremy Dignum, the Irish Timotheus, who swept the lyre with flying fingers, when he was told that in the judgment of the Dean, he carried off the spolia opima from all the rest of the musical circle. The words of the air were afterwards sung by a ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... His calmness under the most trying circumstances, and his uniform sweetness of manner, were almost poetical. They manifested 'the most sustained tenderness of soul that ever caressed the chords of a lyre.' In council he was temperate and patient, and his words fell softly and evenly as snow-flakes, like the sentences that fell from the lips ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... by Homer when he "smote his bloomin' lyre," as cited by Mr. Kipling, who went "an' took what he'd admire," I have gleaned the vast volume of Whistler literature and helped myself in making this compilation. Some few of the anecdotes are first-hand. Others were garnered by Mr. Ford in the original version of The Gentle Art ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... by the late Mme. Sechard; the walls were adorned with a wainscot, fearful to behold, painted the color of powder blue. The panels were decorated with wall-paper —Oriental scenes in sepia tint—and for all furniture, half-a-dozen chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather cushions were ranged round the room. The two clumsy arched windows that gave upon the Place du Murier were curtainless; there was neither clock nor candle sconce nor mirror above the mantel-shelf, for Mme. Sechard ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Mansion call the fleeting Breath? Can Honour's Voice provoke the silent Dust, Or Flatt'ry sooth the dull cold Ear of Death! Perhaps in this neglected Spot is laid Some Heart once pregnant with celestial Fire, Hands that the Reins of Empire might have sway'd, Or wak'd to Extacy the living Lyre. But Knowledge to their Eyes her ample Page Rich with the Spoils of Time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble Rage, And froze the genial Current of the Soul. Full many a Gem of purest Ray serene, The dark unfathom'd ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... friend: Be just; be true. Revere the Household Hearth; This knowing, that beside it dwells a God: Revere the Priest, the King, the Bard, the Maid, The Mother of the heroic race—five strings Sounding God's Lyre. Drive out with lance for goad That idiot God by Rome called Terminus, Who standing sleeps, and holds his reign o'er fools. The earth is God's, not Man's: that Man from Him Holds it whose valour earns it. Time shall come, It ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... where Egypt's realms are nam'd, What monster-gods her frantic sons have fram'd? Here Ibis gorg'd with well-grown serpents, there The Crocodile commands religious fear: Where Memnon's statue magic strings inspire With vocal sounds, that emulate the lyre; And Thebes, such, Fate, are thy disastrous turns! Now prostrate o'er her pompous ruins mourns; A monkey-god, prodigious to be told! Strikes the beholder's eye with burnish'd gold: To godship here blue Triton's scaly herd, The river-progeny is there preferr'd: Through towns Diana's power neglected ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... renovation. The phenomena of the universe are explained by Heraclitus as "the concurrence of opposite tendencies and efforts in the motions of this ever-living fire, out of which results the most beautiful harmony. This harmony of the world is one of conflicting impulses, like the lyre and the bow. The strife between opposite tendencies is the parent of all things. All life is change, and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... my eyes drank in with intoxication the symmetry and immortal loveliness of her infinitely blessed form; Hellenic calm swept through my soul, while above my head Phoebus Apollo poured forth, like heavenly blessings, the sweetest tones of his lyre. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... appeared, Blest leech! to Phoebus'-self endeared Beyond all men below; On whom the fond, indulgent God His augury had fain bestowed, His lyre-his sounding bow! But he, the further to prolong A fellow creature's span, The humbler art of Medicine chose, The knowledge of each plant that grows, Plying a craft not known ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... were more pertinent for making men ashamed of their discords than the concord of strings on a lyre. ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... your ardent lyre, Pour forth your amorous ditty, But first profound, in duly bound, Applaud the new Committee; Their scenic art from Thespis' cart All jaded nags discarding, To London drove this queen of love, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... Anacreon, the first without, the second with implied, but not expressed credit. The odes are the most familiar of Anacreon's odes, however, and no one could think of moral obliquity in connection with Boito's use of them. They are the address to the lyre which the poet wishes to attune to heroic measures, but which answers only in accents of love; and the tale of how the poet took Eros, shivering, out of the cold night and received a heart wound in return. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and louder the more the Owl entreated. When she saw that she could get no redress and that her words were despised, the Owl attacked the chatterer by a stratagem. "Since I cannot sleep," she said, "on account of your song which, believe me, is sweet as the lyre of Apollo, I shall indulge myself in drinking some nectar which Pallas lately gave me. If you do not dislike it, come to me and we will drink it together." The Grasshopper, who was thirsty, and pleased with the praise of her voice, eagerly flew up. The Owl came forth from her ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... He once remarked to a friend that "were he to paint a picture of Fame, crowning a distinguished undergraduate after the Senate house examination, he would represent her as concealing a Death's head under a mask of Beauty" ('Life of H. K. W.', by Southey, i. 45). By "the soaring lyre, which else had sounded an immortal lay," Byron, perhaps, refers to the unfinished 'Christiad,' which, says Southey, "Henry ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Philosophy Class, not being proficient in mathematic lore, I derived less advantage than had otherwise been the case with me. Yet I did not sit wholly in the shade, notwithstanding that the light which shone upon me did not come from that which Campbell says yielded 'the lyre of Heaven another string.' A man almost always finds some excuse for deficiency; and I have one involving a philosophy which I think few will be disposed to do otherwise than acquiesce in—namely, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my fingers touched the lyre, In satire fierce, in pleasure gay, Shall not my Thralia's smiles inspire, Shall Sam refuse ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien Gospels, in what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... of the size of life. That on the left represents Neptune and Apollo presiding at the building of Troy; the former, armed with his trident, is seated; the latter, crowned with laurel, is on foot, and leans with his right arm on a lyre. On the wall opposite to this is a picture of Vulcan presenting the arms of Achilles to Thetis. The celebrated shield is supported by Vulcan on the anvil, and displayed to Thetis, who is seated, whilst a winged female figure standing at her side points ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... bard thro' hell's profound domain: By whom unequal Camoeens, borne along A torrent-stream, majestic, wild, and strong, Sung India's clime disclosed, and fiery showers Bursting on Calicut's perfidious towers: By whom soft Maro caught Maeonian fire, And plaintive Ossian tuned his Celtic lyre:— If still 'tis thine o'er Morven's heaths to rove, Tago's green banks, or Meles' hallow'd grove, Assist me thence—command my growing song To roll with nobler energy along! Before me Life's extended ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... of Beeyah-byyah-bunniga-nelliga-jong, It isn't envy, the green and yellow, That makes me take up my lyre, old fellow, And burst with a fierce cacophonous bellow Across the path of your song. I want to propose another name, Unknown to you and unknown to fame; It is like the sound of a hand-sawn log Or the hostile hark ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... but mellow— Callow pedant! I began To instruct the little fellow In the mysteries known to man; Sung the noble cithern's praise, And the flute of dear old Pan, And the lyre that Hermes plays. ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... enunciated in this definition and commendation of 'that class of composition in which there lies beneath the transparent upper current of meaning an under or suggestive one'? To this 'mystic or secondary impression' he attributes 'the vast force of an accompaniment in music.... With each note of the lyre is heard a ghostly, and not always a distinct, but an august soul-exalting echo.' Has anything that has been said since on that conception of poetry without which no writer of verse would, I suppose, venture to write verse, been said ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... nuptials from the bright abode Yourselves were present; when this minstrel god (Well pleased to share the feast) amid the quire Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre ("Homer's Il." xxiv.) ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... shall march prospering,—not thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's triumph and ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... wicked king come runnin in to kidnap the baby and she sed, no I mean he sed because she was a king, That is my child! and the subjeck sed, It is not! and the king sed, It is too! and the sujeck sez as cool as a cucumber, Your majesty you are a lyre! and then they had the darndest fite over that baby you ever saw. Fust the king hit the subjeck bingo in the eye then the subjeck he pincht the babys tail, you no Snookies, and bimeby Mother come runnin in ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... as his own performance became the law for the next generation. The style in which a woman is called a nymph—and women generally are "the fair"—in which shepherds are conscious swains, and a poet invokes the muses and strikes a lyre, and breathes on a reed, and a nightingale singing becomes Philomel "pouring her throat," represents a fashion as worn out as hoops and wigs. By the time of Wordsworth it was a mere survival—a dead form remaining after ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... and by Nature's God, we produced the lyre of David; we gave you Isaiah and Ezekiel; they are our Olynthians, our Philippics. Favoured by Nature we still remain: but in exact proportion as we have been favoured by Nature we have been persecuted by Man. After ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... flows, sparkling, free; And all, my love, to pleasure thee. There sound enchanting symphonies; The clear high notes of flutes arise; A singing girl and artful boy Are chanting for thee strains of joy; He touches with his quill the wire, She tunes her note unto the lyre: The servants carry to and fro Dishes and cups of ruddy glow; But these delights, I will confess, Than pleasant converse charm me less; Nor is the feast so sweet to me As ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Thebes, was meant for the heliacal rising of the dog-star. In the second and in the sixth year we find on the coins the remarkable word aion, the age or period, and an ibis with a glory of rays round its head, meant for the bird phoenix. In the seventh year we see Orpheus playing on his lyre while all the animals of the forest are listening, thus pointing out the return of the golden age. In the eighth year we have the head of Serapis circled by the seven planets, and the whole within the twelve signs of the zodiac; and on another ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... 1684 us he cou{n}tes hy{m} a kow, at wat[gh] a ky{n}g ryche, Quyle seuen sye[gh] were ou{er}-seyed som{er}es I trawe. [Sidenote: His thighs grew thick.] By at, mony ik thy[gh]e ry[gh]t vmbe his lyre, at alle wat[gh] dubbed & dy[gh]t i{n} e dew of heuen; 1688 [Sidenote: His hair became matted and thick, from the shoulders to the toes.] Faxe fylt{er}ed, & felt flosed hy{m} vmbe, at schad fro his schulderes to his schyre wykes, & twenty-folde twyna{n}de ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... discovers Tmolus seated on a throne of turf, on his right hand Apollo with his lyre, attended by the Muses; on the left, Pan, ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... muses, my spirit inspire, Breathe softly and sweetly, sweep gently my lyre; There's gloom in my harp-string's low murmuring tone, Speak kindly, speak ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... she heard once was unfailingly accurate; her rendition of anything she knew was more than perfect, since to perfection of rendition she added sympathetic interpretation. She was already reputed the best female performer on the lyre, the most popular instrument in ancient times. The lyre had an effect something between that of a guitar and a harp, with some of the characteristics of the modern banjo, zither ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... O ye children of gladness, come! Where the violets lie may now be your home. Ye of the rose-cheek and dew-bright eye, And the bounding footstep, to meet me fly, With the lyre, and the wreath, and the joyous lay, Come forth to the sunshine,—I may ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... On the far side of all Tyber yonder.' In this scene, where the two Pyrgi are examined, there are some more allusions to Julius Caesar. Even the boy, whose instrument Brutus takes away when he is asleep, is not wanting. In The Poetaster it is a drum, instead of a lyre (the drum in All's Well that Ends Well). And are the following words of the same scene no satire upon act i. sc. 3 of Julius Caesar, where Casca and Cicero ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... her intellectual development. The poet is, of course, the central figure in the picture. The Ionic bard sits upon the prow of a ship that is just approaching the Grecian shore. His right arm is raised in the excitement of poetic inspiration; a lyre rests upon his left. Behind him, partly veiled, lost in profound revery, sits a female form, in whose lofty, intellectual features we recognise the impersonation of the traditional source of all early ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... age of twenty-two, when a few sounds from the lyre of Malherbe, heard by accident, awoke in him the muse ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... lyre and brought a new kind of music into the world. He soon tired of his lyre and went back to ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... art. Yea, let us make, art for Art's sake. And sing no more unto the hearts of men, But for the critic's pen. With songs that are but words, sweet sounding words, Like joyous jargon of the birds. Tune now thy lyre, O Poet, and sing ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... I found out nothing the next morning, and I left with a paternal benediction from Malbrouck, and a smile from his wife that sent my blood tingling as it hadn't tingled since a certain season in London, which began with my tuneful lyre sounding hopeful numbers and ended with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The feast, the cheerful guest, the flow'ry wreath, {350} And song that used to echo through my house: For never will I touch the lyre again, Nor to the Libyan flute's sweet measures raise My voice: with thee all my delights are dead. Thy beauteous figure, by the artist's hand Skillfully wrought, shall in my bed be laid; By that reclining, I will clasp it to me, And call it by thy name, and think I hold My ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... grand pianoforte both externally and in the instrument. The harpsichord boxed up front gave way to the cylinder front, invented by Henry Pape, a clever German pianoforte-maker who bad settled in Paris. Who put the pedals upon the familiar lyre I have not been able to learn. It would be in the Empire time, when a classical taste was predominant. But the greatest change was from a wooden resisting structure to one in which iron should play an important part. The invention belongs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... represented entirely without clothing, otherwise the blacks would simply have been puzzled. Now to describe the portrait as much in detail as I dare. The crown was composed of rare feathers such as only a redoubtable and cunning hunter could obtain; and it included feathers of the lyre-bird and emu. The sceptre was a stupendous gnarled waddy or club, such as could be used with fearful execution amongst one's enemies. The nose was very large, because this among the blacks indicates great endurance; whilst ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... rose. His hair shook drops of light from its curls; his robes were like the edge of the sunset cloud; in his hands he held a golden lyre. And when he touched the strings of the lyre, such music stole upon the air as never god nor mortal heard before. The wild creatures of the wood crouched still as stone; the trees kept every leaf from rustling; earth and air were silent as a dream. To ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... my later cadence singing, The souls to whom my earlier lays I sang; Dispersed the throng, their severed flight now winging; Mute are the voices that responsive rang. For stranger crowds the Orphean lyre now stringing, E'en their applause is to my heart a pang; Of old who listened to my song, glad hearted, If yet they live, now wander ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... veritable fervour. There was not one of the more familiar stars that did not stand out brightly, even the minor ones which you do not ordinarily see oftener than, maybe, once or twice a year—as, for instance, Vega's smaller companions in the constellation of the Lyre, or the minor points in ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... lyre, My fingers strike etherial fire, And give to sounds of piercing woe, Extatic rapture's fervent glow. Oft sooth the maniac's throbbing vein, And grace her simple, wilder'd strain; The tribe of Pain in fetters keep, Lull wounded Memory to sleep, And, in the mind of gloomy Care, ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... snowy stone—in these there flashes on the inner eye a vision beautiful and terrible, of a force, an energy, a soul, an idea, one and yet million-fold, rushing through all created things, like the wind across a lyre, thrilling the strings into celestial harmony—one life-blood through the million veins of the universe, from one great unseen heart, whose thunderous pulses the mind hears far away, beating for ever ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... thee this that I have taken The tuneless lyre I thought to use no more, Yet once at thy returning may it waken, Then sleep forever, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... bark; and {then}, embracing the branches as though limbs in his arms, he gives kisses to the wood, {and} yet the wood shrinks from his kisses. To her the God said: "But since thou canst not be my wife, at least thou shalt be my tree; my hair, my lyre,[85] my quiver shall always have thee, oh laurel! Thou shalt be presented to the Latian chieftains, when the joyous voice of the soldiers shall sing the song of triumph,[86] and the long procession shall resort to the Capitol. Thou, the same, shalt stand as a most ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... should see our Leandro in his true position and vocation. Give me a sheet of paper, and I will show you a new presentation of Apollo and the Muses. They are all presenting him with pasticcerie and bonbons. He has one hand on the lyre, and the other on his stomach, for the homage of the goddesses has made him somewhat sick; his eyes, you observe, are cast heavenwards, partly by reason of poetic inspiration, and partly ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... attention divided between preserving his equilibrium and keeping up his playing, which latter necessity he provided for by executing difficult passages on a golden (or, more probably, silver-gilt) lyre." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... is come and gone. And by a very little, her words weighed down my scale of judgment against Harmachis, and I went to Antony. Thus it is through the jealous spleen of yonder fair Charmion and the passion of a man on which I played as on a lyre, that all these things have come to pass. For this cause Octavian sits a King in Alexandria; for this cause Antony is discrowned and dead; and for this cause I, too, must die to-night! Ah! Charmion! Charmion! thou ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre, or any pleasant instrument of music; for truly he has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged, not in the Ionian, or in the Phrygian mode, nor yet in the Lydian, but in the true Hellenic mode, which is the Dorian, and no other. Such ...
— Laches • Plato
... splendor of the Tropics burns through July and August. Sitting upon the earth, do we not glide by all the constellations, all the awful stars? Does not the flash of Orion's scimeter dazzle as we pass? Do we not hear, as we gaze in hushed midnights, the music of the Lyre; are we not throned with Cassiopea; do we not play with the tangles of Berenice's hair, as we ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... hideous hall with such a music. He had read, of old, of the improvisatrice of Italy, and this was a chastened, modern, American version of the type, a New England Corinna, with a mission instead of a lyre. The most graceful part of her was her earnestness, the way her delightful eyes, wandering over the "fashionable audience" (before which she was so perfectly unabashed), as if she wished to resolve ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... responsible for the lighting of the many lamps and candles which adorn an Eastern church. These good people assemble together on Christmas Day, after the liturgy is over, and form what is called 'a musical company'; one man is secured to play the lyre, another the harp, another the cymbals, and another leads the singing—if the monotonous chanting in which they indulge can be dignified by the title of singing. The candle-lighter, armed with a brass tray, is the recognised leader of this musical company, and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... before his face. His body is fair from head to foot, his limbs shine bright, his tongue gives oracles, and he is equally eloquent in prose or verse, propose which you will. What of his robes so fine in texture, so soft to the touch, aglow with purple? What of his lyre that flashes gold, gleams white with ivory, and shimmers with rainbow gems? What of his song, so cunning and so sweet? Nay, all these allurements suit with naught save luxury. To virtue they bring shame alone!' And then he proceeded to display ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... there came to Argos a scarred soldier seeking alms. Not deigning to beg, he played upon a lyre; but the handling of arms had robbed him of his youthful power, and he stood by the portico hour after hour, and no one dropped him a lepton. Weary, hungry and thirsty, he leaned in despair against a pillar. A youth came to him and asked, 'Why not ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Temple seems to have learned all that he knew about the ancients. He puts the story of Orpheus between the Olympic games and the battle of Arbela; as if we had exactly the same reasons for believing that Orpheus led beasts with his lyre, which we have for believing that there were races at Pisa, or that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... importance. Invariably she is firm and steady in all her pursuits and aims. There is required a combination of forces and extreme opposition to drive her from her position; she takes her stand, not to be moved by the sound of Apollo's lyre or the curved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one female figure in the act of entering a half-open door: she is represented with pencils and a palette of colours in her hand, similar to those which artists now use: another very graceful female holds a lyre of peculiar construction. These, I presume, were two of the muses: the rest remained hidden. There were two small pannels occupied by sea-pieces, with gallies; and two charming landscapes, so well coloured, and drawn with such knowledge of perspective and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... two slender branches that did grow, And from it rising spring and flourish high: Their tops were twined together fast, and, lo, Their shadow crossed the path as he went by— The shadow of a wild rose and a brier, And it was shaped in semblance like a lyre. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... thou, Muse? Unmeet For jocund lyre are themes like these. Shalt thou the talk of Gods repeat, Debasing by thy strains effete Such ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... there existed a celebrated Bohemian, who lived from hand to mouth round the fertile country of Ionia, eating the bread of charity, and halting in the evening to tune beside some hospitable hearth the harmonious lyre that had sung the loves of Helen and the fall of Troy. Descending the steps of time modern Bohemia finds ancestors at every artistic and literary epoch. In the Middle Ages it perpetuates the Homeric tradition with its minstrels and ballad makers, the children of the gay science, all ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... the stately stride—Apollo, smiting his lyre with a majesty hardly supported by the seven small notes he could get out of it. The gossips said he loved Daphne, and madly withal, but she took to a tree.—No, let the gods pass as they will. It is with men ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... declaring that 'only in bowing down before the Higher does man feel himself exalted,' touched solemn organ notes, that awoke a response from dim religious depths, never reached by the stormy wailings of the Byronic lyre. The political side of the reverential sentiment is equally conciliated, and the prime business of individuals and communities pronounced to be the search after worthy objects of this divine quality of reverence. While kings' cloaks and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... soul, a touchstone for the strength and gentleness of his spirit. Jonson, whose splendid scorn took to itself lyric wings in the two great Odes to Himself, sang high and aloof for a while, then the frenzy caught him, and he flung away his lyre to gird himself for deeds of mischief among nameless and noteless antagonists. Even Chapman, who, in The Tears of Peace, compares "men's refuse ears" to those gates in ancient cities which were opened only when the bodies of executed malefactors ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... State. The purpose was to secure strong, beautiful, and supple bodies, inured to hardship, as a preparation for the life of the soldier. The only intellectual education was music, which consisted in playing the lyre as an accompaniment to the dance. Reading and writing were despised as being ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... have watched the sun aspire From that same Olivet, when back on thee Flushed upwards after some night-agony Thy proper Godhead, with a purer fire Purpling thy Infinite, and in strong desire Thou sattest in the dawn that was to be Uplifted on our dark perplexity. Yea in thee lay thy soul, a living lyre, And each wild beauty smote it, though the sound Rung to the night-winds oft and desert air; Beneath thine eyes the lily paled more fair, And each still shadow slanting on the ground Lay sweetly on thee as commissioned ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Caelia sleeps, And gentle gales play gently with the leaves; Learn of the neighbour brooks, whose silent deeps Would teach him fear, that her soft sleep bereaves Mine oaten reed, devoted to her praise, (A theme that would befit the Delphian lyre) Give way, that I in silence may admire. Is not her sleep like that of innocents, Sweet as herself; and is she not more fair, Almost in death, than are the ornaments Of fruitful trees, which newly budding are? She is, and tell it, Truth, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... understand, the well-edited 'Select Beauties' of an immeasurable waste imbroglio of Heroic Ballads in their respective centuries and countries. Think what strumming of the seven-stringed heroic lyre, torturing of the less heroic fiddle-catgut, in Hellenic Kings' Courts, and English wayside Public Houses; and beating of the studious Poetic brain, and gasping here too in the semi-articulate windpipe of Poetic ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Altheetor; still unguarded strays One hand o'er his fallen lyre; but all his soul Is lost—given up. He fain would turn to gaze, But cannot turn, so twined. Now all that stole Through every vein, and thrilled each separate nerve, Himself could not have told—all wound and clasped In her white arms and hair. Ah! can they serve To save him? "What a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... carried away. Each stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva's aegis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, and did not fail to beset Ambrose. The more lively looked at his Lincoln-green and shouted verses of ballads at him, fluttering broad ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... above is surmounted by the bust of Johann Sebastian Bach. Behind this rises the lofty central division, containing pipes, and crowning it is a beautiful sitting statue of Saint Cecilia, holding her lyre. On each side of her a griffin sits as guardian. This centre is connected by harp-shaped compartments, filled with pipes, to the two great round towers, one on each side, and each of them containing three colossal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... against him, and his own son rose in rebellion. Germany remained faithful to her Emperor, and the Emperor was successful against his son. But he soon died in disappointment and despair. With him the star of the Swabian dynasty had set, and the sweet sounds of the Swabian lyre died away with the last breath of Corradino, the last of the Hohenstaufen, on the scaffold at Naples, in 1268. Germany was breaking down under heavy burdens. It was visited by the papal interdict, by famine, by pestilence. Sometimes there was no Emperor, sometimes ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... strongly to any unnecessary waste of his brain-tissues. Besides, the best poets borrowed. Virgil did it. Tennyson did it. Even Homer—we have it on the authority of Mr Kipling—when he smote his blooming lyre went and stole what he thought he might require. Why should Pringle of the School House refuse to follow in such ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... quarter, and to the theatre of that name. Were admitted on the payment of two reals each, and seated ourselves, patiently awaiting the withdrawing of a curtain, upon which was delineated an uncouth figure and accompaniment, supposed to represent the "divine Apollo" and his lyre. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... of the present age, and knew that those generous men for whom, in better days, these things were written, had abandoned (ahi dolore) the liberal arts into vulgar hands, I threw aside the delicate lyre which armed my flank, and attuned another more befitting the ears of moderns." It seems strange that he should have thus regretted what to us seems a noble and original opportunity of double creation—poem and language. What Dante thus bewailed ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... dance and song, and lute and lyre, Pure his wing and strong his chain, And doubly bright his fairy fire. Twine ye in an airy round, Brush the dew and print the lea; Skip and gambol, hop and bound, Round the wild ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... al day till the setting of the sun; nor was their soul aught stinted of the fair banquet, nor of the beauteous lyre that Apollo held, and the Muses ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... then goes to those of Orpheus; but with a bad omen, as Eurydice dies soon after, and cannot be brought to life. In his sorrow, Orpheus repairs to the solitudes of the mountains, where the trees flock around him at the sound of his lyre; and, among others, the pine, into which Atys has been changed; and the cypress, produced from the transformation of Cyparissus. Orpheus sings of the rape of Ganymede; of the change of Hyacinthus, who was beloved and slain by Apollo, into a flower; of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... would sing, Timotheus the charmer, 'Tis said the famous lyre would bring All listeners into armor: It woke in Alexander rage For war, and nought would slake it, Unless he could the world engage, And his by conquest make it. Timotheus Of Miletus Could strongly sing To rouse the King Of Macedon, Heroic one, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from his shrewd bite, Live there and prosper. Those Ausonia claims, Levantine regions these; the Azores send Their jessamine; her jessamine remote Caffraria: foreigners from many lands, They form one social shade, as if convened By magic summons of the Orphean lyre. Yet such arrangement, rarely brought to pass But by a master's hand, disposing well The gay diversities of leaf and flower, Must lend its aid to illustrate all their charms, And dress the regular yet various scene. Plant behind plant aspiring, in the van The dwarfish, in ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... opened her eyes she beheld in front of her a table covered with dishes of every kind, and with wines of purple and amber hues. As before, she could see no one, though she heard the sound of voices, and when she had finished, and lay back on her cushions, unseen fingers struck a lyre, and sang the songs ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... did belie his mother's fame, that so He might be called young Ammon. In this court Caesar was crown'd, accurst liberticide; And he who murdered Tully, that cold villain, Octavius, tho' the courtly minion's lyre Hath hymn'd his praise, tho' Maro sung to him, And when Death levelled to original clay The royal carcase, FLATTERY, fawning low, Fell at his feet, and worshipped the new God. Titus [3] was here, the Conqueror of the Jews, He the Delight ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... fountains of tears in her eyes, for use on the most public occasions; she likes gloomy apartments, looking upon the sea, mountains, or black forests, and leading into endless corridors; she has an AEolian lyre ever at her casement, writes verses and weeps by moonlight, for—effect, or— nothing; and is enamoured with a being, who, in the common course of nature, could not exist; he possessing, amongst other fine qualities, that of omnipresence in an impious degree. Should the heroine reside in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... fair, gentle Maid, whom Mnesis, happy Nymph, first on the Banks of Hebrus didst produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charm'd, and who, on that fair Hill which overlooks the proud Metropolis of Britain, sat, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the Heroic Lyre; fill my ravished Fancy with the Hopes of charming Ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender Maid, whose Grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious Name of Sophia, she reads the real Worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall, from her sympathetic Breast, send ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... little flight of stairs. She entered the realm of Euterpe; Euterpe with her back hair frizzed; Euterpe with her flowing white robe replaced by soiled white boots that failed to touch the hem of an empire-waisted blue serge; Euterpe abandoning her lyre for jazz. She sat at the piano, a red-haired young lady whose familiarity with the piano had bred contempt. Nothing else could have accounted for her treatment of it. Her fingers, tipped with sharp-pointed grey and ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... be greater than I! For what hast thou bartered to me the golden rod of thy wealth and thy dominion over the flocks and the herds? For seven chords strung on a shell—for a melody not even thine own! For a lyre outshone by my syrinx hast thou sold all thine empire to me. Will human ears give heed to thy song now thy sceptre has passed to my hands? Immortal music only is left thee, and the vision foreseeing the future. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida |
