"Parnassus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... command of his father, Deucalion built a ship, in which he and his wife took refuge during the deluge, which lasted for nine days. When the waters abated the ship rested on Mount Othrys in Thessaly, or according to some on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and his wife now consulted the oracle of Themis as to how the human race might be restored. The answer was, that they were to cover their heads, and throw the bones of their mother behind them. For some time they were perplexed as to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... in yonder ruins, with its horns and goatish limbs; and the harmless faun has been made the figuration of the most implacable of fiends. But why, O wanderer of the South, lingerest thou in these foreign dells? Why returnest thou not to the bi-forked hill-top of old Parnassus, or the wastes around the yellow ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... poetry, poetics, poesy, Muse, Calliope, tuneful Nine, Parnassus, Helicon^, Pierides, Pierian spring. versification, rhyming, making verses; prosody, orthometry^. poem; epic, epic poem; epopee^, epopoea, ode, epode^, idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, bucolic, dithyramb, anacreontic^, sonnet, roundelay, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 27: In the middle.—Ver. 168. Delphi, situated on a ridge of Parnassus, was styled the navel of the world, as it was supposed to be situate in the middle of the earth. The story was, that Jupiter, having let go two eagles, or pigeons, at the opposite extremities of the earth, with the view of ascertaining the central ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... to [277][Greek: titthe], and [Greek: titthos], in Greek. They were so denominated from their resemblance to a woman's breast; and were particularly sacred to Orus and Osiris, the Deities of light, who by the Grecians were represented under the title of Apollo. Hence the summit of Parnassus was [278]named Tithorea, from Tith-Or: and hard by was a city, mentioned by Pausanias, of the same name; which was alike sacred to Orus and Apollo. The same author takes notice of a hill, near Epidaurus, called [279][Greek: Tittheion ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... random in the woods. He ate irregularly, of such things as he could put his hands upon; and sleep fled from him like a mistress spurned. When, after a couple of months, he had finished the task, there was an incessant throbbing in his forehead, and—alas for the sudden tumble from the heights of Parnassus!—he had lost almost entirely ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... turned over to the government of his theory of Liberty and Suffrage, it would go to ruin more rapidly than Frederick's province. Under his teachings the women of England might soon marshal their amazonian legions, and storm not only Parnassus but the ballot-box, the bench, and the forum. That this should occur in a country where a woman nominally rules, and certainly reigns, is not so surprising, but I dread the contagion of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... cynicism, is the invasion of the literary field by the godless rabble, the rabble who take no stock of the preserves of art, and go picnicking and rollicking and scattering their beer-bottles and their orange-peel in the very glades of the immortals. It is in fact the invasion of Parnassus by a horde of most unmitigated proletarians. But these sweet scamps are led by a real lord, a lord who, like most lords, is ready to out-philistine the philistines ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Monk or Bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou; Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... human piety spurned. Often the Deities' Sire, in fulgent temple a-dwelling, Whenas in festal days received he his annual worship, Looked upon hundreds of bulls felled prone on pavement before him. Full oft Liber who roamed from topmost peak of Parnassus 390 Hunted his howling host, his Thyiads with tresses dishevelled. * * * * Then with contending troops from all their city outflocking Gladly the Delphians hailed their God with smoking of altars. Often in death-full war and bravest of battle, or Mavors Or rapid ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... summer meadows. Fireweed flames about them against the gray boulders; streams are open, go smoothly about the glacier slips and make deep bluish pools for trout. Pines raise statelier shafts and give themselves room to grow,—gentians, shinleaf, and little grass of Parnassus in their golden checkered shadows; the meadow is white with violets and all outdoors keeps the clock. For example, when the ripples at the ford of the creek raise a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... bold and active officer, whom on his way to Sylla with forces from Thessaly, the barbarians awaited in the straits. For these reasons Sylla drew off into Boeotia. Hortensius, meantime, was conducted by Caphis, our countryman, another way unknown to the barbarians, by Parnassus, just under Tithora, which was then not so large a town as it is now, but a mere fort, surrounded by steep precipices, whither the Phocians also, in old time, when flying from the invasion of Xerxes, carried themselves and their goods and were saved. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... this period, how ashamed I am of their author-ship. The monthly and Analytical Reviews did me the kindness of just tolerating them, and of warning me not to commit any future trespass upon the premises of Parnassus. I struck off 500 copies, and was glad to get rid of half of them as waste paper; the remaining half has been partly destroyed by my own hands, and has partly mouldered away in oblivion amidst the dust of Booksellers' shelves. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... watch-chain which adorned his satin waistcoat. On a bench in a raised part of the hall I could descry Ikonin (evidently he had contrived to enter the University somehow!), and hear him fussily proclaiming, in all the glory of blue piped trousers which completely hid his boots, that he was now seated on Parnassus. Ilinka—who had surprised me by giving me a bow not only cold, but supercilious, as though to remind me that here we were all equals—was just in front of me, with his legs resting in free and easy style on another bench (a hit, somehow I thought, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... that bitter experience, which, since then, so many have made after them—that whoever seeks a home in the realm of intellect runs the risk of losing the solid ground on which the fruits for maintaining human life grow. The eye directed towards the Parnassus is not the most apt to spy out the small tortuous paths of daily gain. To get quick returns of interest, even though it be small, from the capital of knowledge and learning, has always been, and still is, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... bagpipe; but the spot was sacred from the old times: even its name reminded of this, for it was called Delphi! The dark solemn mountains were all covered with snow; the highest, which gleamed the longest in the red light of evening, was Parnassus; the brook which rolled from it near our house was once sacred also. Now the ass sullies it with its feet, but the stream rolls on and on, and becomes clear again. How I can remember every spot in the deep holy solitude! In the midst of the hut a fire was kindled, and when the hot ashes ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Easton—the lady of the Vase. Horace Walpole gives an amusing description of the flummery which was indulged in every week at Bath Easton under her presidency. "You must know, that near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, which has now been christened Helicon. Ten years ago there lived a Madam (Briggs], an old rough humourist, who passed for a wit; her daughter, who passed ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... N. poetry, poetics, poesy, Muse, Calliope, tuneful Nine, Parnassus, Helicon[obs3], Pierides, Pierian spring. versification, rhyming, making verses; prosody, orthometry[obs3]. poem; epic, epic poem; epopee[obs3], epopoea, ode, epode[obs3], idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Anagallis Pallida (pale-coloured pimpernel), Pedicularitis Sylvatica (dwarf red rattle), Pinguicola Vulgaris (common butter-wort), Viola Flavicornis, also called V. Ericetorum (yellow-horned violet). {31} The Cichorium (succory) and Parnassia Palustris (grass of Parnassus) are found in the neighbourhood. The Myrica (“Gale” or bog-myrtle) is very abundant, and a useful preventive against the moth if placed in wardrobes or drawers. Like the Osmunda, the Pinguicola (butterwort), appears ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... complained by a critic of Emerson's "Parnassus" that only two of Wasson's poems were to be found in that collection; and Alcott, who had a keen scent for superior literature, once turned a visitor out of his study for denying the superiority of Wasson's poetry. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... other American poet.' Willis also tells us, as proof of the General's popularity with those shrewd dollar-loving men, the publishers, that 'he can, at any time, obtain fifty dollars for a song unread, when the whole remainder of the American Parnassus could not sell one to the same buyer for a single shilling!' He is the best-known poet of the ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... perturbing theme. It seems to combine the enduring lustre of a precious metal with the tenuity of gold-leaf. Even the most vivid emotions of grief and love, as well as the horrors of war, were banished from the Japanese Parnassus, where the Muse of Tragedy warbles, and the lyric Muse utters nothing but ditties of exquisite and melting sweetness, which soothe the ear, but never stir the heart: while their meaning is often so obscure as even to ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... thousands of unprintable pages. It is infinitely preferable that those who have so far given evidence of nothing better than a fatal fluency in insipid imitation of true lyric poets should fall down a precipice in the attempt to scale the very pinnacles of Parnassus. There is something heroic about the most unmitigated disaster at such ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... this last labour aid, And make me such a vessel of thy worth, As thy own laurel claims of me belov'd. Thus far hath one of steep Parnassus' brows Suffic'd me; henceforth there is need of both For my remaining enterprise Do thou Enter into my bosom, and there breathe So, as when Marsyas by thy hand was dragg'd Forth from his limbs unsheath'd. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his case by noting an essential distinction between 'Shakspere,' the actor, and 'Shakespeare,' the playwright. The name, referring to the man who was both actor and author, is spelled both 'Shakspeare' and 'Shakespeare' in the 'Returne from Parnassus' (1602).* The 'school of critics' which divides the substance of Shakespeare on the strength of the spelling of a proper name, in the casual times of great Elizabeth, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... stanzas. So that there will be near three thin Albemarle, or two thick volumes of all sorts of my Muses. I mean to plunge thick, too, into the contest upon Pope, and to lay about me like a dragon till I make manure of * * * for the top of Parnassus. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... her useful rules indites, When to repress and when indulge our flights. High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed, [94] And pointed out those arduous paths they trod; Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize, And urged the rest by equal steps to rise. [97] Just precepts thus from great examples given, She drew from them what they derived from Heaven. ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... Francos: Most noble Caesar, thou at wisdom's fount Hast drunk until the fountain hath run dry. I ready stand to follow each command Ignoring every judgment of mine own. Caesar: When I before the gods did minister, I learned that strategy cured many ills; And when Parnassus high I made my throne, I found it well to wield an iron hand. And now to work our pleasure in these Isles, 'Twere best to blend these methods in our scheme, Whilst thou with honeyed tongue shall words employ The callow forum shall my will obey. But silence! put a padlock on thy tongue; A word unspoken ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... for plot, language, and character—and that is his own. There can be no progress—not merely meaning, by progress, improvement, but, positively, no change. He blocks up every access to the dramatic Parnassus—he has acquired an entire monopoly of the heroines in Collins' Ode—and woe to the intruder into the sacred precincts of his zenana. Well, he was a tremendous Turk, that old swan of Avon—there is no denying the fact; but what I complain of is, that no other Leda should be looked at for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... folk who have seen us both have marked the likeness." So she knelt down to wash his feet, but Odysseus turned himself as much as he could from the fire, for he feared that she might see the mark of the wound which the boar's tusk had made long ago when he went to Parnassus. But he strove in vain. For presently she saw the scar, and she let go his feet, and the water was spilt upon the ground, as she cried out, "It is Odysseus, and I knew him not until I saw the print of the deadly wound which Autolykus healed by ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words [3]. Lute, harp, and lyre, Muse, Muses, and inspirations, Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hippocrene were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of DOGS was convened on the Plain, The PRESIDENT SHEEP DOG thus rose to explain.— "This meeting I call, to complain of misusage From the poets, who now a days have a strange usage Of leading up Insects and Birds to Parnassus, While, without rhyme or reason, unnotic'd they pass us.— Declare then those talents by which we may claim Some pretensions, I hope, to poetical fame.— I boast of whole legions, my voice who obey; Without me the Sheep, e'en the Shepherd, might stray— ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... was ended, all three broke out into a dance, wild, insensate, furious, delirious, paroxysmatical. No Orphic festivals on Mount Cithaeron ever raged more wildly. No Bacchic revels on Mount Parnassus were ever more corybantic. Diana, demented by the maddening example, joined in the orgie, howling and barking frantically in her turn, and wildly jumping as high as the ceiling of the Projectile. Then came new accessions to the infernal din. Wings suddenly began to flutter, cocks to crow, hens ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... whom you barbarously designate young women," returned Coleman, "are popularly supposed to have resided on Mount Parnassus, which acclivity I have always imagined of a triangular or sugar-loaf form, with Apollo seated on the apex or extreme point, his attention divided between preserving his equilibrium and keeping up his playing, which latter necessity he provided for by executing difficult ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the proudest triumphs and the greenest laurels. If we may believe the Longinuses and Aristotles of our newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to render a place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of attainment or its seclusion. The highest peak of our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen, by far the most thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which must make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical temperament, if love of solitude be, as immemorial tradition ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the set of tapestries had entirely left the old method of pious interpretation and of mediaeval allegory and revelled in pictured tales of the Scriptures and of the gods and heroes of mystical Parnassus and of bellicose Greece, not forgetting those dainty exquisite impossibilities called grotesques. It was about the time of the death of Cosimo I (1574), the founder of the Medicean factory, that a new and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... languished on the lower slopes Of sweet Parnassus in the thrice-dead years, Chanting in fathoms of the fathomless To kindred ears. (Certainly not! No ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... possible—more glibly than of his friendship with the Duke. Call him a snob if you like, but not the worst kind of snob; a hanger-on, but to the skirts of Art, not Society; a climber, but in the neighbourhood of Parnassus, not Hay Hill. ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... he is most remarkable for is his uniform good sense. To Chatterton, with whom this zealous friend and biographer has mentioned him, he is not to be compared. Chatterton has the force of a young poetical Titan, who threatens to take Parnassus by storm. White is a boy differing from others more in aptitude to follow than in ability to lead. The one is complete in every limb, active, self-confident, and restless from his own energy. The other, gentle, docile, and animated rather than vigorous. He began, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... burnished knuckles, And you'll elicit scornful chuckles From Muse and from Mechanic! Selections from the terms of trade Would put, I'm very much afraid, Parnassus in a panic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! She was the very daisy, primrose, tuberose, sweet-brier, furze-blossom, gilliflower, wallflower, cauliflower, aurica and rosemary! In short, she was the bouquet of Parnassus! Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured; several fainted before the curtain drew up! but when she came to the scene of parting with her wedding-ring, all! what a sight was there! The fiddlers in the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... whether it chattered gently over stony shallows or leaped full-throated into deep pools, swimming with foam— were to me the never-ending joys of a "land of pure delight." Should I find a ripe wild strawberry in a patch under a particular rock I knew by heart?—or the first Grass of Parnassus, or the big auricula, or streaming cotton-plant, amid a stretch of wet moss ahead? I might quite safely explore these enchanted spots under male eyes, since they took no account, mercifully, of a child's boots and stockings—male tongues, besides, being safely busy with ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him, Davie, that here's Mr William, wha has learned to speel Parnassus by a step-ladder, has come to hear the sang he made about ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... are obviously details which tellers of the story have added as it passed down to later generations. When it was carried still farther afield, into the area of the Eastern Mediterranean, it was again adapted to local conditions. Thus Apollodorus makes Deucalion land upon Parnassus,(1) and the pseudo-Lucian relates how he founded the temple of Derketo at Hierapolis in Syria beside the hole in the earth which swallowed up the Flood.(2) To the Sumerians who first told the story, the great Flood appeared to have destroyed mankind, for Southern Babylonia ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... it there, that scar? It had been made long ago when a boar's tusk had ripped up the flesh of his foot. Odysseus was then a youth, and he had gone to the mountain Parnassus to visit ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... scholars have bent with that insight into the poet's meaning which is closely akin to the mens divinior of the poet himself; unless they would flood the world with grammatical falsities and inexplicable anomalies that would turn the very fountain of Parnassus into a deluge of poisonous mud. But find the passage in the fifth book, to which Poliziano ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... protecting dance of Curetes. Through the envious artifices of Heré, the Titans eluded the vigilance of his guardians and tore him to pieces; but Pallas restored the still palpitating heart to his father, who commanded Apollo to bury the dismembered remains upon Parnassus. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... they made the greatest appearance in the field, and cried the loudest, the best of it is they are but a sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought over in herds, but not naturalised: who have not lands of two pounds per annum in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll. Their authors are of the same level, fit to represent them on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden; yet these are they who have the most admirers. But it often happens, to their mortification, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... living in an age of division of labor and specialism; and those who, like Robert Franz and Richard Wagner, devote themselves to a single branch of music have a better chance of reaching the summit of Parnassus than those who dissipate their energies in too many directions. Chopin was the pianoforte genius par excellence, and in his field he stands above the greatest of the German composers, whatever their names. Mendelssohn once wrote to his mother that Chopin ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... pass of Thermopylae, between the sea and a lofty range of mountains. The district along the coast was inhabited by the EASTERN LOCRIANS, while to their west were DORIS and PHOCIS, the greater part of the latter being occupied by Mount Parnassus, the abode of the Muses, upon the slopes of which lay the town of Delphi with its celebrated oracle of Apollo. South of Phocis is Boeotia, which is a large hollow basin, enclosed on every side by mountains, which prevent the waters ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... the branching wood, Jove's Aesculus, and oaks, oracular Deemed by the Greeks of old. With some sprouts forth A forest of dense suckers from the root, As elms and cherries; so, too, a pigmy plant, Beneath its mother's mighty shade upshoots The bay-tree of Parnassus. Such the modes Nature imparted first; hence all the race Of forest-trees and shrubs and sacred groves Springs into verdure. Other means there are, Which use by method for itself acquired. One, sliving suckers from the tender frame Of the tree-mother, plants them in the trench; One buries the ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... the Laureate's post to fill? Ay! if Parnassus were but Primrose Hill. The Penny Vote puts lion below monkey. 'Tis "Tuppence more, Gents, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... sensations which few ladies can easily believe they excite. Airs and graces I can bear as well as another; but airs without graces no man thinks himself bound to bear, and learned airs least of all. Ladies of high rank in the court of Parnassus are apt, sometimes, to claim precedency out of their own dominions, which creates much confusion, and generally ends in their being affronted. That knowledge of the world which keeps people in their proper places they will never learn from ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... if there were no such things in existence as mathematicians, historians, politicians, and political economists, who have built into the upper air of intelligence a pyramid, from the summit of which they see the modern Parnassus far beneath them, and knowing how small a place it occupies in the comprehensiveness of their prospect, smile at the little ambition and the circumscribed perceptions with which the drivelers and mountebanks upon it are contending for the poetical ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Florence, Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the Greeks for mountain ruggedness, their placing the shrine of Apollo under the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnassus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that they themselves attributed the best part of their intellectual inspiration to the power of the hills. Nor would it be difficult to show that every great writer of either of those nations, however little ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... plants, and may hold discourse worthily with the Muses, for they are his aura or comforter, his anchor or support, and his harbour, to which he retires in times of labour, of agitation, and storm. Hence he cries: "O mountain of Parnassus, where I abide! Muses, with whom I converse! Fountain of Helicon, where I am nourished. Mountain, that affordest me a quiet dwelling-place! Muses, that inspire me with profound doctrines. Fountain, that cleanses me! Mountain, on whose ascent my heart uprises! Muses, that ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... pinnacles of Parnassus she pours her jubilant songs of hope, faith, love into men's ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the Chevalier Dumesnil made some for Mademoiselle de Launay, who made them in return for him, so that the Bastille was a true Parnassus. There was only Richelieu who dishonored ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the inspiration of Cupid, Apollo had no share in its charm. On my part, it would probably have been an act of the truest friendship, to have bid him burn his tablets, forswear poetry for ever, and regard himself as forbidden the temptations of the maids of Parnassus. But I should have broken his heart. I took the simpler but more effectual cure—I bade him find out this idol, and marry her. Before I forget him and his sorrows, let me mention, that he took my advice, and that, on my return to the Continent some years after, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... mediocrities described by Balbi. Yet he had not strength to live outside its pale. It was the pathos of his situation that he persisted in idealizing this paradise, and expected to find in it a paradise of exceptional natures. This it could not be. No one turns Circe's pigsty into a Parnassus. If Tasso had possessed force of character enough to rend the trammels of convention and to live his own life in a self-constructed sphere, he might still have been unfortunate. Nature condemned him to suffering. But from the study of his history ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... love, Were the living! Just to cease from strife, love, And from grieving; Let the swift world pass us, You and me, Stilled from all aspiring,— Sinai nor Parnassus Longer worth desiring, ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... plant in her hand]. This is the grass of Parnassus. It makes a good hair-ointment.—Pretty is the young ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... quoted, indeed, the bad English adds nothing to the effect. In 1848 Lowell wrote A Fable for Critics, something after the style of Sir John Suckling's Session of the Poets; a piece of rollicking doggerel in which he surveyed the American Parnassus, scattering about headlong fun, sharp satire, and sound criticism in equal proportion. Never an industrious workman, like Longfellow, at the poetic craft, but preferring to wait for the mood to seize him, he allowed eighteen years to go by, from 1850 to 1868, before publishing ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... light and airy and healthy by altering the position of the windows and stairs, and by throwing open new doors and shutting up old ones. So some towns have been altered for the better, as my native place,[609] which did lie to the west and received the rays of the setting sun from Parnassus, was they say turned to the east by Chaeron. And Empedocles the naturalist is supposed to have driven away the pestilence from that district, by having closed up a mountain gorge that was prejudicial to health by admitting the south wind to the plains. Similarly, as there are certain diseases ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the shepherd sang his way along, until he came unto a mountain: And I know not surely whether the mountain was called Parnassus, But he climbed it out of sight, and still I heard the voice of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... libraries in cells redolent of aromatics—there flourishing greenhouses of all sorts of volumes: there academic meads trembling with the earthquake of Athenian peripatetics pacing up and down: there the promontories of Parnassus and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... ragguagli di Parnasso: or, Advertisements from Parnassus; in two centuries ... put into English by ... Henry Earl of Monmouth. London, for Humphrey Moseley, and Thomas Heath, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... and John of Meung, to the fabliaux writers and the cyclists of Renart, in justification of her claims. She shut them up; she forgot them; she sneered at them whenever they were remembered; and she appointed as her attorneys in the court of Parnassus Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... personal and professional study of the kind in print); "Strauss and Nietzsche;" "The Greater Chopin," an inquiry into what Chopin was and was not, that has no superior; "A Liszt Etude;" "The Royal Road to Parnassus," a fluent survey of modern primitive works; and last, "A Note ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... sonnet on some uncompromising pieces of realism by Mr. Rothenstein, Mr. John, or Mr. Orpen? Theirs is an art which speaks for itself. But Sir Edward Burne- Jones seems to have dazzled the undergrowth of Parnassus no less than the higher slopes. In a long and serious epic called 'The Pageant of Life,' dealing with ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... is not a 'society' man!" said Sir Morton, with a chuckle—"He lives on the heights of Parnassus—and looks down with scorn on the browsing sheep in the valleys below! He ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... hopeless love might inspire him to the greater work the world expected of him; she had read of the flowering of genius in the strong soil of misery. But he had suffered enough already, poor devil! The result of loving for the last time, with no hope of possession, might fling him from Parnassus into the Inferno, where he would roast in unproductive torment for the rest of his mortal span. Even that might not be for long. He looked frail enough beside these fresh young English sportsmen, or even the high-coloured planters, ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... was communicating the passions of his heart to those who would listen, and amid great interest he went from house to house a-singing.... Eric Mackay is one of those wise men who have no immature volumes to haunt them. He first asked right of way on the road to Parnassus with a bundle of melodies which have never lost their appeal. While youth seeks the pink cheek, these Love Letters will command the homage of lovers. Your Petrarchs are not as common as sparrows.... These outpourings from ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... Description of the Morning A Description of a City Shower On the Little House A Town Eclogue A Conference To Lord Harley on his Marriage Phyllis Horace, Book IV, Ode ix To Mr. Delany An Elegy To Mrs. Houghton Verses written on a Window On another Window Apollo to the Dean News from Parnassus Apollo's Edict The Description of an Irish Feast The Progress of Beauty The Progress of Marriage The Progress of Poetry The South Sea Project Fabula Canis et Umbrae A Prologue Epilogue Prologue Epilogue Answer to Prologue and Epilogue On Gaulstown House ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... flashed forth the summons from Parnassus' snowy peak, "Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!" Now like a sullen bull he roves Through forest brakes and upland groves, And vainly seeks to fly The doom that ever nigh Flits ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... same time, a work audacious in every way, even from a literary point of view. Boccaccio knows it, and justifies his doings. To those who reproach him with having busied himself with "trifles," neglecting "the Muses of Parnassus," he replies: Who knows whether I have neglected them so very much? "Perhaps, while I wrote those tales of such humble mien, they may have come sometimes and seated themselves at my side."[533] They bestowed the same favour ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... ears; no word of ours But the woods echo it. What groves or lawns Held you, ye Dryad-maidens, when for love- Love all unworthy of a loss so dear- Gallus lay dying? for neither did the slopes Of Pindus or Parnassus stay you then, No, nor Aonian Aganippe. Him Even the laurels and the tamarisks wept; For him, outstretched beneath a lonely rock, Wept pine-clad Maenalus, and the flinty crags Of cold Lycaeus. The sheep too stood around- Of us they feel no shame, poet divine; Nor ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... secret of it either. The chaste daughters of Apollo willingly left the slopes of Helicon and Parnassus at his call. Lady Helena paid him sincere compliments on his mythological visitants, and so did the Major, though ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the spring of Tilphusa, Copais lay bright in the moon, Helicon glass'd in the lake Its firs, and afar rose the peaks Of Parnassus, snowily clear; Thebes was behind him in flames, And the clang of arms in his ear, When his awe-struck captors led The Theban seer to the spring. Tiresias drank and died. Nor did reviving Thebes ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... on her way through the path-fields to the cowshed; she was gathering, in the fading light of an October evening, the belated stars of the grass of Parnassus, and strapped to her shoulders was the "budget," shaped to the contour of the back, and into which the milk was poured from the pails. It was a heavy load for a girl of twelve, but she was used to it, and did not grumble. Her father was dead, all the day-tale ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... have risen to positions of greater dignity, if only his pen had been a little less active and his satire less severe. He wrote a book entitled Ragguagli di Parnasso (1612), which was most successful. In this work he represents Apollo as judge of Parnassus, who cites before him kings, authors, warriors, statesmen, and other mighty personages, minutely examines their faults and crimes, and passes judgment upon them. Inasmuch as these people whom Apollo ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... requisite number of dinners, the devouring of which qualify a young gentleman to address an enlightened British jury, we have no authority for deciding. He was certainly not the first, nor the last, young Templar who has quitted special pleading on a crusade to the heights of Parnassus, and he began early to try the nib of his pen and the colour of his ink in a novel. Eheu! how many a novel has issued from the dull, dirty chambers of that same Temple! The waters of the Thames just there seem to have been augmented by a mingled flow of sewage and Helicon, though the former ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... noxious, and less susceptible of the beneficial results of alcohol. His mind is easier to cloud, and there is a deeper responsibility in clouding it.... Equally when we descend into the lower regions of Parnassus, the abodes of talent and cleverness, and the supply of periodical literary requirements, we find the due care of the body absolutely essential to the continued usefulness of the intellect. The first thing to which one entering the profession of literature ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... every avenue of escape was closed, and before I left the room each separate and distinct ancestor had turned me over his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... the morning and to sweep the temple with boughs of bay, and to sprinkle it with water from the fountain of Castalia. Also he was wont to keep the birds from the temple—for they would come from the woods of Parnassus hard by, eagles, and swans, and others—lest they should settle on the pinnacles or defile the altar with their prey. And for this end he carried arrows and a bow, slaying the birds if need was, but rather seeking to frighten them away, for he knew that some carried ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... must be very singular in their opinion; they must be like the officer in a play who was called captain, lieutenant, and company. The world will easily conclude whether such unattended generals can ever be capable of making a revolution in Parnassus. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... delight; down in the marsh into which the brook ran across the sloping field she saw a mass of bright dark-blue. These were gentian-flowers, opening blue and green blossoms to the sunshine, and in front of them the meadow itself was white with a sprinkling of grass of Parnassus. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... treasure that the world contains,— Of falling on thy neck, and folding thee Within my longing arms, which have till now Met the embraces of the empty wind. Do not repulse me,—the eternal spring, Whose crystal waters from Parnassus flow, Bounds not more gaily on from rock to rock, Down to the golden vale, than from my heart The waters of affection freely gush, And round me form a circling sea of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... former days have graced the brow Of some, who lived and loved, and sang and died; Leaves that were gathered on the pleasant side Of old Parnassus from Apollo's bough; With palpitating hand I take thee now, Since worthier minstrel there is none beside, And with a thrill of song half deified, I bind them proudly on my locks of snow. There shall ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... echoes languish, Mute, but to the voice of anguish! Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breath'd around; Every shade and hallow'd fountain 75 Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour, Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 80 When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O Albion! next thy ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... packed up barbiton and phorminx, mask and cothurn, took the first ship bound to Europe, and quietly sailed away. Their stay was short, but they left their mark. To this day Phoebes are numerous in Connecticut, and nine women to one man has become the customary proportion of the sexes. As Greece had Parnassus, Helicon, and Pindus, Connecticut had New Haven, Hartford, and Litchfield Hill,—halting-places of the illustrious travellers. There they scattered the seeds of poetry,—seeds which fell upon stony places, but, warmed by the genial influence of the Sun-God, sprang up and brought forth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... was so much honoured with your order for my copies, and incomparably more by the handsome compliments you are pleased to pay my poetic abilities. I am fully persuaded that there is not any class of mankind so feelingly alive to the titillations of applause as the sons of Parnassus; nor is it easy to conceive how the heart of the poor bard dances with rapture, when those, whose character in life gives them a right to be polite judges, honour him with their approbation. Had you been thoroughly acquainted with me, Madam, you could not have touched my darling heart-chord ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... "I have not answered W. Scott's last letter, but I will. I regret to hear from others that he has lately been unfortunate in pecuniary involvements. He is undoubtedly the Monarch of Parnassus, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... that debt is paid." Some of the people have singular tastes now and then; as for example there is a hill behind East Haddam that used to be called "Stagger-all-hill," but inquiring the other day, I was told its name was now "Mount Parnassus." ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... stood there as the quintessence, the embodiment, of a whole generation. So might the young Odysseus have looked when he left his mother on his first journey to hunt the boar with his kinsfolk on Mount Parnassus. And with such an air had hundreds of thousands of English boys gone out on a deadlier venture since the great war began, with a like intensity of will, a ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chaparral. Under the wind one caught at times the slow deep chuckle of the water. Greenhow should have been warned by that. In just such tones the ancient Greeks had heard the great god Pan laughing in the woods under Parnassus,—which was Greek ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... obligation, in the name of God, to be faithful soldiers of our country. It was not quite so comprehensive as the beautiful knightly pledge administered by King Arthur to his comrades, and transmitted to our time by Major-General Tennyson of the Parnassus Division. We did not swear, as they did of yore, to be true lovers as well as loyal soldiers. Ca va sans dire in 1861,—particularly when you were engaged to your Amanda the evening before you started, as was the case with many a stalwart brave and many a mighty man of a corporal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... The Court patronised the actors who performed Masques in palaces and great houses. The wealth and splendid attire of the actors, their acquisition of land and of coats of arms infuriated the sweated playwrights. Envy of the actors appears in the Cambridge "Parnassus" plays of c. 1600-2. In the mouth of Will Kempe, who acted Dogberry in Shakespeare's company, and was in favour, says Heywood, with Queen Elizabeth, the Cambridge authors put this brag: "For Londoners, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... exceedingly jovial, delighting with his sallies, his witty naivetes, and his arch simplicity. These meetings, which no doubt had a great influence upon French literature, La Fontaine, in one of his prefaces, thus describes:—"Four friends, whose acquaintance had begun at the foot of Parnassus, held a sort of society, which I should call an Academy, if their number had been sufficiently great, and if they had had as much regard for the Muses as for pleasure. The first thing which they did was to banish from among them ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... something to say about all; and yet I felt that no light had been thrown upon anything. A lady of high rank gave me her views upon the writing of English prose, with the air of one speaking condescendingly from Olympus, which, as we know, was above even Parnassus. In the middle I caught the eye of the great man, who was opposite me; he gave me a mournful smile, and I read his thoughts. When the ladies had withdrawn, my host, with a determined air as of a man above ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... writer famous in Italy for his fine criticism and bold satire. Cardinals Borghese and Cajetan were his patrons. His Ragguagli di Parnasso and la Secretaria di Parnasso, in which Apollo heard the complaints of the world, and dispensed justice in his court on Parnassus, were received with delight. Afterwards, in his Pietra di Parangone, he satirized the Court of Spain, and, fearing consequences, retired to Venice, where in 1613 he was attacked in his bed by four ruffians, who beat him to death with sand-bags. Boccalini's Ragguagli di Parnasso ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... "Mother Goose's Melodies" has the dignity of being already an undoubted classic among the most incipient cultivators of literature in the United States. It is a compilation taken mostly from "Gammer Gurton's Garland" or the "Nursery Parnassus," an English child's book about a century old, of which various editions have been published in London, Glasgow, and other places. It is stated in one of its late prefaces that it was originally issued at Stockton in a small twopenny ...
— Chenodia - The Classic Mother Goose • Jacob Bigelow
... secretary of the council, having performed his task in reading the several orders as you have seen, upon the receipt of a packet from his correspondent Boccalini, secretary of Parnassus, in reading one of the letters, burst forth into such a violent passion of weeping and downright howling, that the legislators, being startled with the apprehension of some horrid news, one of them had no sooner snatched the letter out of his hand, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... visions. He told his story well and with detail, combining the recollections of the scholar with the impressions of an artist. The pediment of the Parthenon, the oleanders of the Ilissus, the stream "that runs in rain-time," the naked peak of Parnassus, the green slopes of Helicon, the blue gulf of Argus, the pine forest beside Alpheus, where the ancients worshipped "Death the Gentle"—all of them passed in recount upon his ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... necessary to repeat that in order to judge poetry it is, before all things, necessary to enjoy it. We may all desire that historical and philological science should push her dominion into every recess of human action and human speech, but we must utter some protest when the very heights of Parnassus are invaded by a spirit which surely is not science, but her unmeaning shadow; a spirit which would degrade every masterpiece of human genius into the mere pabulum of hungry professors, and which values a poet's text ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... echoes languish, Mute, but to the voice of anguish! Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breathed around; Every shade and hallow'd fountain Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O Albion! next, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the reign of Charles I. but of whose birth and life we can recover no particulars. He was highly esteemed by some wits in that reign, as appears from a Poem called Steps to Parnassus, which pays him the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... volume of the merry Anstruther rhymers is entitled "Bouts-Rimes, or Poetical Pastimes of a few Hobblers round the base of Parnassus;" it is dedicated "To the Lovers of Rhyme, Fun, and Good-Fellowship ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Dawn. And round the burning sacrifice they set up a broad dancing-ring, singing, "All hail, fair god of healing, Phoebus, all hail," and with them Oeagrus' goodly son began a clear lay on his Bistonian lyre; how once beneath the rocky ridge of Parnassus he slew with his bow the monster Delphyne, he, still young and beardless, still rejoicing in his long tresses. Mayst thou be gracious! Ever, O king, be thy locks unshorn, ever unravaged; for so is it right. And none but Leto, daughter of Coeus, strokes them with her dear hands. And often the ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the midst of the battle the youthful god came down through the roof of the temple, and the White Maidens left their own altars to aid him in driving back the barbarous foe. A great tempest arose, and rocks fell from Parnassus on the heads of the Gauls, and it seemed as if all the powers of heaven and earth had united to sustain the Greeks against their enemies. It is also written that the spectres of Greek heroes who had long been dead were seen in the midst of the battle dealing death upon the Gauls. But above ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... patronising manner in which Arthurine introduced her to Mr. Foxholm, a heavily-bearded man, whose eyes she did not at all like, and who began by telling her that he felt as if he had crossed the Rubicon, and entering an Arcadia, had found a Parnassus. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exquisite Comus in this no less exquisite pastoral Drama! and the imitation is so beautiful, that the perception of the plagiarism rather increases than diminishes the pleasure with which we read either deathless work. Republican although he were, the great poet sits a throned king upon Parnassus, privileged to cull flowers where he listeth in right of his immortal ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... married to the Prince of Orange, and Handel was commissioned to write a wedding anthem. He also provided a secular entertainment in the shape of Parnaso in festa, described as a serenata. It was not unlike a masque; Apollo and the Muses appeared in costume on Mount Parnassus, but apparently there was no acting. The music was adapted from Athaliah, which, so far, had only been heard at Oxford. Oratorio was also attempted by Handel's rival; Mrs. Pendarves heard a work ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... As Hannay says, "He was a dignified classic figure supposed to be the model of fine taste",[15] His word was law in the realm of criticism, and for many years he was known, not alone in France, but throughout a large portion of Europe, as "The Lawgiver of Parnassus". Prof. Dowden, referring to ...
— English Satires • Various
... the banquet only by entering with new triumphs of Art. Last came a climax-pie, —contents unknown. And when that dish, fit to set before a king, was opened, the poem of our supper was complete. J. B. sailed to the Parnassus where Ude and Vattel feast, forever cooking immortal banquets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... in his "Epistle to Reynolds," which Jonson must have seen, had compared him to Seneca and Plautus,[*] and Jonson seems to burlesque the compliment by comparing Drayton himself to every poet whom he had ever imitated, until his single person seems an epitome of all Parnassus. The poem and its companions had another edition in 1631, since which time it has been included in every edition of Drayton's works, but has never till now been published by itself. Even here it is graced with a satellite, the splendid ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... Sunday, or when trout are not rising. But she was no comfort to me now. Smiling she gazed on my discomfiture. The lovely lines of the hills, curving about the loch, and with their deepest dip just opposite where I sat, were all of a golden autumn brown, except in the violet distance. The grass of Parnassus grew thick and white around me, with its moonlight tint of green in the veins. On a hillside by a brook the countryfolk were winning their hay, and their voices reached me softly from far off. On the loch the marsh-fowl flashed and dipped, the ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... of argument is worked out with wonderful subtlety of thought and beauty of poetical expression by Calderon, in one of the finest of his Autos Sacramentales, "The Sacred Parnassus". Autos Sacramentales, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... about Dryden as a critic we may conclude that the unsystematic character of his own scholarly work may have been a matter of principle as well as inclination. "Dryden," he wrote, "forebore, from prudence, indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to erect himself into a legislator."[490] The words remind us of comments made upon Scott's own work, as for example by Professor Masson, who spoke of "the shrewdness and sagacity of some of his critical prefaces to his novels, where he discusses ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball |
