"Swan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Grail's knights. The Knight of the Swan was one of them. They live here in the temple, except when they are sent away on some journey, to help some one who is in trouble, to do some act of justice, to fight for the right, or to punish the wrong. And whether they stay here or go as far away as they ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... here as the bird. Therefore the Algonkins say that birds always make the winds, that they create the water spouts, and that the clouds are the spreading and agitation of their wings;[103-1] the Navajos, that at each cardinal point stands a white swan, who is the spirit of the blasts which blow from its dwelling; and the Dakotas, that in the west is the house of the Wakinyan, the Flyers, the breezes that send the storms. So, also, they frequently explain the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... friends, and he thought that in this way you could find for him a certain 'secret immortality' which would make the soil of France comfier for him to sleep in. And then he said, 'If I'm too poetic—like a swan—don't report me too accurately.' He seemed to go to sleep for some time after that, and every now and then he laughed very faintly in his sleep. I had to leave him for a bit, and when I came back he was still asleep. The only ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... two swans of goodly hue Come softly swimming down along the lee; Two fairer birds I yet did never see; The snow which doth the top of Pindus strow, Did never whiter show, Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be For love of Leda, whiter did appear; Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he, Yet not so white as these, nor nothing near; So purely white they were, That even the gentle stream, the which ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... themselves as delicately as ladies; and even the food is scented, that the mouth may exhale fragrance. The galleries and halls of the houses are painted full of the loves of Mars and Venus, Leda and the Swan, Jove and Danae, while the devout solace themselves with such sacred subjects as Susannah and the Elders. The flower of chastity seems withered in Mantua. No longer in Lydia nor in Cyprus, but in Mantua, is fixed ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... "I swan," he said. "Ef that ain't jest the thing I have been awantin' for the past twenty year. What'll ye sell me ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them, who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante. "Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... see first, like a sort of Primate of Hotels, the Railway Hotel at York. Then the inn at La Bruyre in the Landes, then the "Swan" at Petworth with its mild ale, then the "White Hart" of Storrington, then the rest of them, all the six or seven hundred of them, from the "Elephant" of Chateau Thierry to the "Feathers" of Ludlow—a ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the forest was you could have heard an acorn drop or a bird call from one end of it to the other. The exquisite silence was evidently waiting for the exquisite voice, that presently not so much broke as mingled with it, like a swan swimming through a lake. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... corrected Poole gravely, and looking as solemn as he could. Then reading his companion's horror in his face, he continued cheerily, "Nonsense, old chap! You couldn't have killed anybody with those cartridges of swan-shot unless ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away; Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... itself to action and strained those giant nerves which brought us victory. The struggle was past, and as the smoke of battle cleared from the surface of the world, the flag of England waved in triumph on the ocean, her fleets sat swan-like on the waves, her standard floated on the strongholds of the universe, and far and wide stretched the vast ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Hotel Swan at 8:45 A.M. with a bus load and 8 cars the tour proceeded to Dr. Truman W. Jones' grove of 800 trees, 4 and 6 years old, 6 miles west of Coatesville on the Lincoln Highway. Dr. Jones has continually farmed his land which has helped ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... start him with fussin' about HIS health, so she swung over on a new tack and tried her own. She said so much smoke in the house was drivin' her into consumption, and she worked up a cough that was a reg'lar graveyard quickstep. I heard her practicin' it once, and, I swan, there was harps and ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... now going to give the public an account of was the son of very honest people who kept a public-house in Clare Market. They were careful in sending him to school, and having taught him there to read and write etc., sufficiently to qualify him for business, then put him apprentice to the Swan Tavern near the Tower. There he served his time carefully and with a good character, nor did his parents omit in instructing him in the grounds of the Christian religion, of which having a tolerable understanding he attained a just knowledge, and preserved a tolerable remembrance unto ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... mid in the grove before He heard a sound that strange, sweet, pleasing was; There rolled a crystal brook with gentle roar, There sighed the winds as through the leaves they pass, There did the nightingale her wrongs deplore, There sung the swan, and singing died, alas! There lute, harp, cittern, human voice he heard, And all these sounds ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... COLLECTION OF CERTAIN NUMBER OF SIMPLE IDEAS, CONSIDERED AS UNITED IN ONE THING. These ideas of substances, though they are commonly simple apprehensions, and the names of them simple terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. Thus the idea which an Englishman signifies by the name swan, is white colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all these of a certain size, with a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain kind of noise, and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of birds, some other properties: which all terminate ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... days, Sir Harry used to laugh over the story, adding, "Sure enough, they were very green; but as hard as swan-shot." ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... somewhat poorly attended on this fine autumn evening, when the hunter's moon hung like a big golden shield above the river, glorifying the dipping willows, the narrow eyots, haunts of swan and cygnet, and the distant woodlands of Surrey. It was a night which tempted the free to wander in the cool shadowy river-side paths, rather than to worship in the warm ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... arrangements for founding the museum—humbly to begin with, but hoping for speedy increase. He engaged as curator, at a salary of L40 a year and free lodging on the premises, his former pupil at the Working Men's College, Henry Swan, who had done occasional work for him in drawing and engraving. Swan was a Quaker, and a remarkable man in his way; enthusiastic in his new vocation, and interested in the social questions which were being discussed ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Trumpeter Swan, Cygnus buccinator. They were especially found in Sagard's time about Lake Nipissing. "Mais pour des Cignes, qu'ils appellent Horhev, il y en a principalement vers les Epicerinys." Vide Le Grand Voyage av Pays des Hurons par ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... he knew, as I did, that our big awkward Jill would develop into a splendid woman; that one of these days Jocelyn Garston would be far more admired than her sister; that the ugly duckling would soon change into a swan. There were times even now when Jill looked positively handsome, if only her short black locks would grow, and if she would ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thy crystal waters in his bark canoe—the giant moose lave his flanks in thy cooling flood—and the stately wapiti bound gracefully along thy banks. I have listened to the music of thy shores—the call of the cacawee, the laugh of the wa-wa goose, and the trumpet-note of the great northern swan. Yes, mighty river! Even in that far northern land, thy wilderness ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the vale with the chatter of their business and love quarrels. In turn they drew after them strangers no one here had ever known before; the like of which Hyacinth, who knew his bestiary, had never seen even in a picture. The wild-cat, the wild-swan—the boy peeped on these wonders as they floated over the vale, or [158] glided with unwonted confidence over its turf, under the moonlight, or that frequent continuous aurora which was not the dawn. ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, occupied by the Prince's Servants; and the Fortune, in Golden Lane, and the Red Bull in St. John Street, Clerkenwell—establishments for the lower class, "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people." Earlier Elizabethan theatres, the Swan, the Rose, and the Hope, seem to have closed their career some time in the reign ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... she was employed, learnt that she had been arrested (you see, the red stitches on her handkerchief, which everyone had supposed were laundry marks, turned out to be plans of Hampton Court Maze and the most direct route to Swan and Selfinsons), and, seizing the rifle, he rushed from the house (it was the night the Russians passed through ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... sound becomes a song, All is right and nothing's wrong! From to-day and ever after Let your tears be tears of laughter - Every sigh that finds a vent Be a sigh of sweet content! When you marry merry maiden, Then the air with love is laden; Every flower is a rose, Every goose becomes a swan, Every kind of trouble goes Where the last year's snows have gone; Sunlight takes the place of shade When you marry ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the struggles and hardships that made him so. It reminds me of the fabled song of the swan, brother. He told his beautiful tale, and died. Ah! Poor Wilson, he ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... to watch the wild swan drift above, Balanced on wings that could not choose between The wooing sky, blue as the eye of love, And my own ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... his own shyness, and tucked her beside him. They drove into Nottingham and put up at the "Black Swan". So far all right. Then he wanted to leave her at the inn. But he saw her face, and knew it was impossible. So he mustered his courage, and set off with her, holding ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Late last night a masked man woke up Jim Snell. You know, he sleeps in a room at the back of the printing office. Well, this fellow made him dress, set up this bill, and run off five hundred copies while he stood over him. I'll swan I ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... be experienced at a season little favourable to the charms of a northern seat. Mr. Sidney Wilton was the proprietor of the most beautiful and the most celebrated villa in England; only twenty miles from town, seated on a wooded crest of the swan-crowned Thames, with gardens of delight, and woods full of pheasants, and a terrace that would have become a court, glancing over a wide expanse of bower and glade, studded with bright halls and delicate steeples, and the smoke of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... than lambs and whiter than the curds, O Galatea, swan-nymph of the sea! Vain is my longing, worthless are my words; Why do you come in night's sweet dreams to me, And when I wake, swift leave me, as in fear The lambkin hastens when ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... tournament: the knight was known and named from the device used as his crest. Thus the heralds, in introducing him to the judges of the field, or to the lady that bestowed the prizes, called him the Knight of the Swan, the Knight of the Lion, &c., without mentioning any other title. And knights whose fame for gallantry and prowess was firmly established, had their crests painted over their coats of arms. In two or three generations the bearer of the arms established his right to a new crest, ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... a lame duckling might grow up into a wonderful swan, and munched his apple ruminatively. Neither happened to think of a certain incident, much discussed, in which that edible figured prominently. And he did not ask ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... servant at the Swan and Hoop stables—a man of so remarkably fine a common-sense, and native respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanor used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys. John was the only one resembling him in person ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... out a swan, you remember. I've always been fond of the boy because he's so genuine and original. Crude as a green apple now, but sound at the core, and only needs time to ripen. I'm sure he'll turn out a capital specimen ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... would be unseen. Some of us at once started for a large lagoon that we had passed in the morning, and creeping up through the long grass, found its surface quite covered with water-fowl of every description, from the black swan to the beautiful pigmy goose. A volley, fired at a concerted signal, strewed the surface of the lake with the dead and wounded, and we were compelled to stand idly on the bank until the wind wafted the game ashore, for at the report of the guns two or three ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... know of the Elizabethan theatre is based on information concerning the Globe, Fortune and Swan Theatres. From this a certain clear conception—not agreed upon, however, in all points by critics—may be deduced with regard to the earlier ones. They were round or hexagonal in shape. The stage was placed with its back to the wall and projected well into the centre. The spectators were gathered ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... between the years 1824 and 1835, in the state of North Carolina, mostly in the vicinity of Wilmington; and four out of the eleven on the estate of Mr. John Swan, five or six miles from that place. There were on his plantation about seventy slaves, male and female: some were married, and others lived together as man and wife, without even a mock ceremony. With their owners generally, it is a matter of indifference; the marriage ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... comparison with the somewhat thick and clumsy designs made with the cubes. The fourth gift forms cover more space, approach nearer the surface, and the bricks slide gracefully from one position to another, and slip in and out of the different figures with a movement which seems like a swan's, compared with the goose-step of ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not hearing, "I should have liked perhaps to be called Ernest, yet I am forced to bear the vulgar name Ignat—why is that do you suppose? I should have liked to be called Prince de Monbart, yet I am only Lebyadkin, derived from a swan.* Why is that? I am a poet, madam, a poet in soul, and might be getting a thousand roubles at a time from a publisher, yet I am forced to live in a pig pail. Why? Why, madam? To my mind Russia is a freak of nature ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... die with the rest; and on Saturday, the {p.203} 23rd of March, he was sent to suffer at his native village. Monday being the feast of the Annunciation, the execution was postponed till Tuesday. The intervening time he was allowed to spend with his friends "in the parlour of the Swan Inn." His father prayed that he might continue to the end in the way that he had begun. His mother said, she was happy to bear a child who could find in his heart to lose his life for Christ's sake. "Mother," he answered, "for my little ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... melancholy Bard Might, idly musing, thus discourse to it:— "Daughter of Summer, who dost linger here. Decking the thistly turf, and arid hill, Unseen—let the majestic Dahlia Glitter, an Empress, in her blazonry Of beauty; let the stately Lily shine, As snow-white as the breast of the proud Swan, Sailing upon the blue lake silently, That lifts her tall neck higher, as she views The shadow in the stream! Such ladies bright May reign unrivall'd, in their proud parterres! Thou would'st not live with them; but if a voice, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... disappears; and generally, it seems, during her period of disappearance disaster falls on some treasured pearl of a saint of a knight. Enter Parsifal, "the pure fool"—Siegfried with all his bull-strength and energy shorn away. He carries a bow and arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides of Montsalvat. He is too stupid to understand that he has done any wrong—wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature. Gurnemanz explains in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... his sister put on their skates. Jessie had never had a skate upon her foot before. Carrie had learned to use them a little the previous winter. Hence, she glided off something like a swan, while Jessie hobbled and slipped, and tumbled for a long time in vain attempts to keep ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... Irish questions were those of a colonist and a member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself as little about the welfare of the remains of the old Celtic population, as an English farmer on the Swan River troubles himself about the New Hollanders, or a Dutch boor at the Cape about the Caffres. The years which he passed in Ireland, while the Cromwellian system was in full operation, he always described as "years of great satisfaction." Farming, gardening, county business, and studies rather ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Trial' is the title of a short and pleasingly-written story by Miss Annie S. Swan, who has so deservedly won for herself a high place in public esteem as ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the grass that's newly sprung, Or like a tale that's new begun, Or like the bird that's here to-day, Or like the pearled dew of May, Or like an hour, or like a span, Or like the singing of a swan,— E'en such is man; who lives by breath, Is here, now there, in life and death.— The grass withers, the tale is ended, The bird is flown, the dew's ascended. The hour is short, the span is long, The swan's near ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... to such a sight, it might appear somewhat dangerous. The fiery impatience of the horses—their pawing and champing, the tossing of their beautiful heads, and the swan-like curving of their glittering, sleek necks, until they were fairly formed into order—at which time they knew just as well as their owners that the play was going to begin. But it was perfectly delightful to observe the graceful manner in which each pair laid their small heads and ears together ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... upon her snow-white brow a ruby circlet, less fertile in rays of fire than her black eyes, still moist with tears from her hearty laugh. She even threw her slipper at a statue gilded like a shrine, twisting herself about from very ribaldry and allowed her bare foot, smaller than a swan's bill, to be seen. This evening she was in a good humour, otherwise she would have had the little shaven-crop put out by the window without more ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... brick, baronet," his parting speech had been, as he wrung that young man's hand; "you air, I swan! And your wife's another! Long may ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... ships Swan and Mercury, had entered the passage which they called the Straits of Nassau, but which are now known to all the world as the Waigats. They were informed by the Samoyedes of the coast that, after penetrating the narrow channel, they would find themselves in a broad and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... But yet the spirit and the majesty of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille. Nor has any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works, shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought. Racine is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... on the easy conditions of attending the procession in their smartest trim, and of banqueting at Hurstley afterwards. So, then, the town-band was ordered to be in attendance next morning by eleven at the Swan, a lot of old election colours were shaken from their dust and cobwebs, the bell-ringers engaged, vasty preparations of ale and beef made at Hurstley Hall—an ox to be roasted whole upon the terrace, and a plum-pudding already in the cauldron of two good yards in circumference—and all ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... above the middle height of women, both exquisitely formed, with figures delicate and slender, yet full withal, and voluptuously rounded, with the long taper hands, the small and shapely feet and ankles, the swan-like necks, and classic heads gracefully set on, which are held to denote, in all countries, the predominance of gentle blood; when seen at a distance, and judged by the person only, it would have been almost impossible to distinguish the elder from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... as the Princess. Princess Winsome is one of our names for Lloyd. And he says it is ridiculous for me to try to do things the way she does. He is always quoting Epictetus to me: 'Were I a nightingale I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.' He says that trying to copy her is what makes me just plain goose so much of ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Yankton agency, to have some young men offer, without any pay, to cut all the timber and do all the work on a building for the council-room for the Mission. The change came sooner under their limited instruction than I had expected, and almost immediately the chief, 'Swan,' offered to cut logs and build a house for a chapel-school at his camp, opposite Fort Randall. The chief, Mad Bull, offered the same for the other end of ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... Bruin, with his passion for sweet mast and luscious fruits, eying with envy the martin and the wild fowl as they sweep over his head to the teeming Southland, and wondering, as he huddles shivering into his snowy lair, why Nature should be so partial in her gifts. The call of the trumpeting swan, the bugler crane, and the Canada goose falls idly upon his ear. To their breezy challenge, "A new home,—who'll ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... his head down to the water. What did he see? He saw himself in the water. But he was not an ugly duck. He was a white swan. ...
— A Primary Reader - Old-time Stories, Fairy Tales and Myths Retold by Children • E. Louise Smythe
... virgin, of an agreeable name, of the graceful carriage of the swan, or of the young elephant, whose body is covered with light down, her hair fine, her teeth small, and her ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... village belles: "She is perfectly at home on the piano, where her executions have attained international celebrity." ... "She possesses a mine of repartee and the qualities which have long rendered illustive her noble family." ... "Her carriage and disposition are swan-like." ... "Her eyes can express pathetic pathos, but flash forth fiery independence when her country's name is traduced." ... "She has a molded arm, and her Juno-like form glides with a rhythmic move in the soft swell of a Strauss." ... "Her chestnut hair gives a rich recess to her ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... SWAN[33-] was also a dish of state, and in high fashion when the elegance of the feast was estimated by the magnitude of the articles of which it was composed; the number consumed at the Earl of Northumberland's table, A. D. 1512, amounted ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... doth the tongue water when we hear sour and sharp things spoken of? A. Because the imaginative virtue or power is of greater force than the power or faculty of tasting; and when we imagine a taste, we conceive the power of tasting as a swan; there is nothing felt by the taste, but by means of the ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Paul Burton played like that before, for as the music swelled and pealed through the place, his heart was singing its swan song. In a moment of manhood beyond his moral stature he had drawn back arms that were hungry for her—and he now knew, too late, that there was no one else who counted. But the organ was not so repressive, and as she listened she knew that the tragedy was not hers alone. While his fingers ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... bridge swayed to and fro under the passing feet, and made a fine war-picture. At daybreak we moved on, ascending the ridge, and by 10 a.m. the head of my column, long drawn out, reached the Benton road, and gave us command of the peninsula between the Yazoo and Big Black. I dispatched Colonel Swan, of the Fourth Iowa Cavalry, to Haines's Bluff, to capture that battery from the rear, and he afterward reported that he found it abandoned, its garrison having hastily retreated into Vicksburg, leaving their guns partially disabled, a magazine full of ammunition, and a hospital ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... you felt the wool of the beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt the bud o' the brier? Or the nard in the fire? Or ha' tasted the bag o' the bee? Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so sweet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... children of Lir, changed to swans by their step-mother until St Columba released them from enchantment. (See P. W. Joyce, Old Celtic Romances.) With this well-known romance is connected the wide-spread belief in Ireland of ill-fortune following the killing of a swan. Coal-seams, formerly extensively worked, and from an unknown [v.03 p.0282] period of antiquity, appear in the cliffs towards Fair Head, and the fisheries are important. The coast-scenery and the view from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... spose it 's time now I should give my thoughts upon the plan, Thet chipped the shell at Buffalo, o' settin' up ole Van. I used to vote fer Martin, but, I swan, I 'm clean disgusted,— He aint the man thet I can say is fittin' to be trusted; He aint half antislav'ry 'nough, nor I aint sure, ez some be, He 'd go in fer abolishin' the Deestrick o' Columby; An', now I come to recollect, it kin' o' makes me sick 'z A horse, to think o' wut ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... anticipate the condition and felicity of the next. If Alexander scorned to own less than Jupiter Ammon for his father, if many Roman Emperors extorted altars and sacrifices in their lifetime, if, even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an English nobleman[13] encouraged the belief of his descent from a swan, and was complimented in a dedication upon his feathered pedigree, a similar infatuation may be the less inexcusable in Kien-Long, a monarch, the length and happiness of whose reign, the unlimited obedience of whose incalculable number of subjects, and the health and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... pride; Come and determine,—will you take your place At the full Orb, or half the lunar Face? With the Black-Boy or Angel will ye dine? Will ye approve the Fountain or the Vine? Horses the white or black will ye prefer? The Silver-Swan or Swan opposed to her - Rare bird! whose form the raven-plumage decks, And graceful curve her three alluring necks? All these a decent entertainment give, And by their comforts comfortably live. Shall I pass by the Boar?—there are who cry, "Beware the Boar," and pass determined by: ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... of the stern, fierce-eyed man, sounded lovelier than the swan-song of De Rezke. She faltered, with her joyful heart leaping ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... imprisonment of His Highness the Prince of Panama for a bill owing to a licensed victualler in Ratcliff Highway. The magistrate to whom the victualler subsequently came to complain passed many pleasantries on the occasion. He asked whether His Highness did not drink like a swan with two necks; whether he had brought any Belles savages with him from Panama, and so forth; and the whole court, said the report, "was convulsed with laughter when Boniface produced a green and yellow riband with a large star of the order of the Castle and Falcon, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... color, cut after the fashion of a habit, with an incision in front, disclosing a stomacher of fine Spanish lace, set with rows of tiny brilliants. Her gauntlets quickly followed her jerkin, exposing tiny, swan white fingers, sparkling with jewels. And although herself unconscious of the cause, such was the perfection of her beauty, that I stood as if transfixed, gazing upon her in mute admiration, until my emotions melted into confusion. Nor was Nat Bradshaw unaffected by it, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... fain have given me coin, I said, my bonds did me from coin enjoin, I thanked and prayed him to put up his chink, And willingly I wished it drowned in drink. Away rode he, but like an honest man, I found at Hockley standing at the Swan, A formal tapster, with a jug and glass, Who did arrest me: I most willing was To try the action, and straight put in bail, My fees were paid before, with sixpence ale, To quit this kindness, I most willing am, The man ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... then when a sufferer wanted towels, and wanted 'em quick, he could get them without blocking the wheels of progress and industry. We may still be shooting Mohawk Indians and the American bison in the streets of Buffalo, New York; and we may still be saying: 'By Geehosaphat, I swan to calculate! —aanyway, I note that we still say that in all your leading comic papers; but when a man in my land goes a-toweling, he goes a-toweling —and that is all there is to it, positively! In our secret lodges it may happen that the worshipful master ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... when I came near my brother's door, which was in a place they called Swan Alley, I met three or four women with high-crowned hats on their heads; and, as I remembered afterwards, one, if not more, had some hats likewise in their hands; but as I did not see them come out at my brother's ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... my time," he would say, and pause to let this statement sink in; "yes, sir, I've traveled a lot, and I swan to man I never seen nowhere such a bunch of rapscallions as they is in this ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... any glas, And eke his face, as it had been anoint. He was a lord full fat and in good point His eye stepe, and rolling in his bed, That stemed as a forneis of led. His botes souple, his hors in gret estat, Now certainly he was a fayre prelat. He was not pale as a forpined gost. A fat swan loved he best of any rost. His palfrey was as broune as ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... ascended the throne, and that Elizabeth Barrett, Henry Taylor, William Barnes, and others were by this date of mature age. It is difficult to remind ourselves, who have lived in the radiance of that august figure, that some of the most beautiful of Tennyson's lyrics, such as "Mariana" and "The Dying Swan" are now separated from us by as long a period of years as divided them from Dr. Johnson and the author of "Night Thoughts." The reflection is of value only as warning us of the extraordinary length of the epoch we still call "Victorian." ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... ball in the first "epoch," for instance, was altogether excellently managed and true; and though many of the characters are overcharged, yet we have seen people like them in Chancery-lane, at Messrs. Swan and Edgar's, in country houses, and elsewhere. The suicide incident is, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... all round; Eleseus brightened up, and got on finely. They flirted and joked and laughed, and were excellent friends. "When you took my hand just now it was like a bit of swan's down—yours, I mean." ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... sort of triumph. He had performed a little miracle, and felt himself a little wonder-worker, to whom reverence was due. And as in a dream the woman sat, feeling what a joy it was to float and move like a swan in the high air, flying upon the wings of her own spirit. She was as a swan which never before could get its wings quite open, and so which never could get up into the open, where alone it can sing. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... world, throws down his gage—or rather nails it up, in the shape of a tin card, four by twelve inches, with his perfectly obscure name on it. Think of it! Just suppose you have a little back room, up stairs, with a table, two chairs, half a quire of paper, an inkstand, two steel pens, Swan's Treatise, and the twenty-ninth volume of Ohio Statutes. You would be very busy arranging all this array of things, and would whistle cheerfully till that was accomplished, and then you would grow sad, and sit down to wait ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... visit to Leamington Spa, I went by an indirect route to Lichfield, and put up at the Black Swan. Had I known where to find it, I would much rather have established myself at the inn formerly kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his ale in Farquhar's time. The Black Swan is an old-fashioned hotel, its street-front being ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... in the following order: two pounds of dried fish, four pounds of fresh deer meat, two rabbits or two ptarmigan, one pound of flour or meal mixed with two ounces of tallow. That reminds me of the way the old half-breed dog-drivers used to do. In such districts as Pelly and Swan River, where fish and other food for dogs was scarce, we had frequently to feed both men and dogs on rations of flour. Some of the half-breeds would leave their ration of flour with their family, and count on eating the dog's ration while ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Calvin Parks. "Take my hand, Rosy! so, thar she goes! Hope ye'll find yer ma right smart! Give her my respects and tell her,—wal, I swan!" ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... been for an occasional twinkle from the far-off window of some riparian villa, and the "whish" of a startled swan as it swerved aside to allow the boat to sweep by, we might easily have imagined ourselves traversing the bosom of one of those vast, solitary rivers of the wilderness across ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... AUGER HANDLE.—James Swan, Seymour, Conn.—The object of this invention is to provide a cheap, simple, and durable handle for augurs for boring in wood, one which shall require no fitting except to make the augur enter the socket, and which shall be of such size and shape that the shanks of ordinary ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... any very melancholy trials!" replied he: "hitherto your young life has glided along as peacefully as a swan ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Brahma, the king shone resplendent in their midst. And that evening, at once beautiful and terrible, those Brahmanas having lighted their (sacred) fires, began to chant the Vedas and hold mutual converse. And those foremost of Brahmanas, with swan-sweet voices spent the night, comforting that ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... stately-sailing swan Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale, And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet, Bears forward fierce, and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... across the harp. At the first ringing note of the music they felt the vessel stir. Orpheus thrummed away briskly and the galley slid at once into the sea, dipping her prow so deeply that the figurehead drank the wave with its marvelous lips, and rising again as buoyant as a swan. The rowers plied their fifty oars, the white foam boiled up before the prow, the water gurgled and bubbled in their wake, while Orpheus continued to play so lively a strain of music that the vessel seemed to dance over the billows by way of keeping time to it. Thus triumphantly did the Argo sail ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... "I swan, boys," said he, presently, "if that ain't the b'ar that run away from the circus las' fall! I heard tell he was ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... reveals character, how every situation springs from the foibles of human nature. Indeed in this one-act farce Feydeau, with about as much trouble as Zeus took in transforming his godship into the semblance of a swan, has given you a well-rounded picture of middle-class life in France with its external and internal implications.... And how he understands the buoyant French grue, unselfconscious and undismayed in any situation. I sometimes think that Occupe-toi ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the swan-necked prow Sustained me, and once more I scanned The unfenced flood, against my brow Arching ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... incandescent lamp consisting of a fine rod or stick of carbon rendered white-hot by the current, and to preserve the carbon from burning in the atmosphere, he enclosed it in a glass bulb, from which the air was exhausted by an air pump. Edison and Swan, in 1878, and subsequently, went a step further, and substituted a filament or fine thread of carbon for the rod. The new lamp united the advantages of wire in point of form with those of carbon as a material. The Edison filament was made by cutting thin slips of bamboo and charring them, the Swan ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... the Carnuti, son Of my own duke, who spreads his every plume Soaring and singing, like harmonious swan, And even to heaven uplifts your name; with whom There is my lord of Guasto, not alone A theme for many an Athens, many a Rome; In his high strain he promises as well, Your praise to all posterity ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... know," said the postmaster, breathlessly and with bewilderment. "Soothin' syrup! I swan to man!... Hain't been out in the heat, have ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... Pucksies. This mere had the mist lying on it more dense than elsewhere. The vapor rested on the surface as a fine gossamer veil, not raised above a couple of feet, hardly ruffled by a passing sigh of air. A large bird floated over it on expanded wings, it looked white as a swan in the moonlight, but cast a shadow black as pitch on the vaporous sheet that covered the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the hues in the heavenly bodies are not so vividly different as are those which our railway people find necessary. There is a particularly beautiful double star of this kind in the constellation of the Swan. You could make an imitation of it by boring two holes, with a red-hot needle, in a piece of card, and then covering one of these holes with a small bit of the topaz-colored gelatine with which Christmas crackers are made. The other star is to be similarly colored with blue gelatine. A slide made ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... know is black as coal, was envious of the Swan, because her feathers were as white as the purest snow. The foolish bird got the idea that if he lived like the Swan, swimming and diving all day long and eating the weeds and plants that grow in the water, his feathers would turn white like ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... beside the fat woman at one of the little green tables at the back of the Potwell Inn, and struggled with the mystery of life. It was one of those evenings, serenely luminous, amply and atmospherically still, when the river bend was at its best. A swan floated against the dark green masses of the further bank, the stream flowed broad and shining to its destiny, with scarce a ripple—except where the reeds came out from the headland—the three poplars ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Gleam'd whiter than the mountain sleet Ere from the cloud that gave it birth It fell, and caught one stain of earth. The cygnet nobly walks the water; So moved on earth Circassia's daughter— The loveliest bird of Franguestan! As rears her crest the ruffled Swan, And spurns the waves with wings of pride, When pass the steps of stranger man Along the banks that bound her tide; Thus rose fair Leila's whiter neck:— Thus arm'd with beauty would she check Intrusion's glance, till Folly's gaze Shrunk from the charms it meant to praise. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... rhinoceros, that of nothing recks; Dusky-maned lions; spotted leopards fair That through the cane-brake move, unseen as air; The deep-mouthed tiger, dread of the brown man; The eagle, and the peacock, and the swan— —These be the nobles of the birds and beasts. But therewithal, for laughter at their feasts, They brought them the gods' jesters, such as be Quick-chattering apes, that yet in mockery Of anxious men wrinkle their ugly brows; Strange birds with pouches, birds with beaks like prows Of merchant-ships, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... into me. I swan to man! sometimes I get so discouraged and wore out and reckless—hello! here's Ros. You ask him now! Ros, she's layin' into me because ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it is certain, that we cannot will to think of a new train of ideas, without previously thinking of the first link of it; as I cannot will to think of a black swan, without previously thinking of a black swan. But if I now think of a tail, I can voluntarily recollect all animals, which have tails; my will is so far free, that I can pursue the ideas linked to this idea of tail, as far as my knowledge of the subject extends; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to behold a scene of surpassing beauty,—Isola Madre and Isola dei Pescatori look but a stone's throw from us across the shining water, and beyond a girdle of snow mountains seems to encircle the lake, our beloved Monte Rosa, white as a swan's breast, dominating them all. Despite the distracting beauty of the outlook from our cafe, on the terrace of a very indifferent looking hostel, we enjoyed our luncheon of Italian dishes, crowned by an omelette aux confitures ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... a more civilised, that is to say, a more roguish country than the north, and how ye are to get forward, I do not profess to know. If ye could wait here eight days, our waggons would go up, and I would recommend you to Joe Broadwheel, who would see you safe to the Swan and two Necks. And dinna sneeze at Joe, if he should be for drawing up wi' you" (continued Mrs. Bickerton, her acquired English mingling with her national or original dialect), "he's a handy boy, and a wanter, and no lad better ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mail there was so important an event that a gun was fired to announce its coming in. Sheffield set up a "flying machine on steel springs" to London in 1760: it "slept" the first night at the Black Man's Head Inn, Nottingham; the second at the Angel, Northampton; and arrived at the Swan with Two Necks, Lad-lane, on the evening of the third day. The fare was 1L. l7s., and 14 lbs. of luggage was allowed. But the principal part of the expense of travelling was for living and lodging on the road, not to mention the fees ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... maker, who was authorized to exercise and enjoy all the rights, profits, privileges, and advantages of his appointment of Pen Cutter and Quill Dresser to His Majesty King George IV. In the same circular it is stated that the quill pens supplied were of varying qualities, secured from the swan, raven, goose, turkey, crow, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... In his society he saw Pendleton, Carrington, Roane, Fleming, and Lyons, who composed the Court of Appeals at that day, and all of whom I heard him recall in living colors a few months before his death. It was the custom of the judges of the Court of Appeals to put up at the Swan, where they might easily consult with Pendleton, their chief, whose injured limb prevented him for the last thirty years of his life from going abroad. It was at the Swan the judges kept their black cloth suits during the recess of the courts; for in those days there were no public ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... Stebney Swan, John Stinger, Robert Emerson, Anthony Pugh and Isabella ——. This company came from Portsmouth, Va. Stebney is thirty-four years of age, medium size, mulatto, and quite wide awake. He was owned by an oysterman by the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Racine and Claude Lorrain, in ringing gold; only in Beethoven's and Rossini's music did the Eighteenth Century sing itself out—the century of enthusiasm, broken ideals, and fleeting joy. All real and original music is a swan song—Even our last form of music, despite its prevalence and its will to prevail, has perhaps only a short time to live, for it sprouted from a soil which was in the throes of a rapid subsidence,—of a ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... witness a special excavation among the ruins of the buried city, which search was instituted on account of our visit. A number of ancient household articles were dug up, and one, a terra cotta lamp bearing upon its crown in bas-relief the legend of "Leda and the Swan," was presented to me as a souvenir of the occasion, though it is usual for the Government to place in its museums everything of such value that ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... out, as he drew rein alongside the two lads. "What's this here yer lookin' at? Another dead calf? No, I swan if it ain't a yearling as has been pulled down now. Things seem t' be gittin' t' a warm pass when sech doin' air allowed. Huh! an' it looks like Sallie's work, too! That sly ole critter is goin' t' git t' the end of her ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... from his dizzy elevation of miles on its tub-like proportions, or its gay flag of motley. And yet we question whether even Mr. Wakley himself, with all his advantages, would venture to do more than assert his equality with the Swan of Avon. Homer, too, wrote in a very remote period,—so very remote and so very uncertain, that the critics have begun seriously to doubt whether the huge figure of the blind old man, as it looms through the grey obscure of ages, be in reality the figure of one poet, or of a whole school of poets ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... for the badges, accompanied by a certificate signed by two judges, shall be made either to the local representative of the Club or to the Hon. Secretary of the Council, K.R. Swan, Esq., 1 Essex Court, Temple, within three months of the passing of ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... on Board the Bachelor, during a Voyage from Old Swan Pier, London Bridge, to the Red ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... winter, O no! I will write an Article merely, or some such thing, and read trash if better be not. This, I do believe, is my horoscope for the next season: an Article on something about New-Year's-day (the Westminster Editor, a good- natured, admiring swan-goose from the North Country, will not let me rest); then Lectures; then—what? I am for some practical subject too; none of your pictures in the air, or aesthetisches Zeug (as Mullner's wife called it, Mullner of the Midnight Blade): nay, I cannot get up ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was evidently dealt with in the Assembly and the Convention, as the American Colonel Swan discovered, in 1791, that the tobacco question was dealt with—'by a knot of men who disposed of all things as they liked, and who turned ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the 'Swan,' reports that the tow-boat, 'Daniel Webster,' burst her larboard boiler on the 6th instant, while towing in a vessel over the South-west Bar. Mr. William Taylor, one of the Balize pilots, and one of the firemen were instantly killed. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... came Edith, Harold's betrothed bride, fair and graceful as a lily: Edith of the Swan's Neck, as people called her. Her face was pale and sorrowful, but she had resolved to ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... remain in doubt; but they are unwilling to raise objections at such a time. Socrates wonders at their reluctance. Let them regard him rather as the swan, who, having sung the praises of Apollo all his life long, sings at his death more lustily than ever. Simmias acknowledges that there is cowardice in not probing truth to the bottom. 'And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... yet awhile, and you shall turn From Mother Goose to Avon's swan; From Mary's lamb to grim Khayyam, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... mules, to say "Goodbye" to. Just before he went ashore the Round Fat Rosy Woman gave him his clothes back, for they were all dry by that time, and she stuffed something in his pocket besides. And what do you think it was? A toy anchor and chain that would just fit the "White Swan," the ship the Toyman had ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... and Noblemen being assembled in a beautiful and fair Palace, which was situate upon the river Rhine, they beheld a boat or small barge make toward the shore, drawn by a Swan in a silver chain, the one end fastened about her neck, the other to the vessel; and in it an unknown soldier, a man of a comely personage and graceful presence, who stept upon the shore; which done, the boat guided by the Swan left ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... woman ever gits the fever an' gits deliriums, I want to be round, handy like. I'll swan there'll be more interestin' things told than we've heerd in our born days—that woman ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... massing at Alexandersfontein, as if they had finally decided to take Kimberley without more ado. They deployed in battle array, preparatory to sweeping all before them. The hooters had been relegated to oblivion and already, swan-like, sung their sad, sweet song. Whether the silence of these atrocious mimics induced the Boer to fancy that he might surprise us, is not known. Certain it was that we did see him, and were awaiting his coming with composure. It was ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... there was a bold point with a picturesque clump of pines shading a number of the odd little gabled structures with which the Indians cover the graves of their dead. On the nearer side from off to left appeared a smaller stream which wound across the meadow and emptied into the Swan. At intervals during the day their trail had bordered this little river, which Clare had christened ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... he was asleep him befel a vision, that there came to him two birds, the one as white as a swan, and the other was marvellous black; but it was not so great as the other, but in the likeness of a Raven. Then the white bird came to him, and said: An thou wouldst give me meat and serve me I should give thee all the riches of the world, and I shall make thee as fair and as white as I am. ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Clemence of her friend, Mrs. Hardyng, as they sat together in the parlor of the latter's residence. "My income has stopped entirely, and I shall have but a small sum after settling Ruth's board, which I must do soon, for I cannot leave her any longer with Mrs. Swan." ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... an elephant proves that these misericords were not completed until after Bruere's death in 1244; the elephant having been first brought into England in 1255. There is also a representation of a knight in a swan-boat, showing that the legend of Lohengrin was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... the signatures are written with a steel nib. It cuts deeper into the paper, and the ink doesn't flow off it so evenly. The forged signature is written with the same kind of nib as the genuine ones. Also, the bodies of the letters are written in a fountain-pen ink—the 'Swan,' I think. The signatures are written in Stephens' blue-black ink. The forged signature is also written in Stephens' blue-black ink. No error ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... of whom Europe in late years has heard more than enough. It appears to me that we go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high-bred girl is so like a swan in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of ante-natal sin, to say nothing of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, 275 Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... marvellous adaptations of anatomical structure, the provisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes; with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions—the long neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot, the sting of the bee—all furnishing an ever accumulating body of irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... Beeton whipped the revolver out of its place on the top of the package, and Dick drove his hand among the khaki coat and breeches, the blue cloth leg-bands, and the heavy flannel shirts doubled over a pair of swan-neck spurs. Under these and the water-bottle lay a sketch-book and a pigskin ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... In their midst a white unruffled swan appear. One strange barge that snowy tapestries enfold, White its tasseled, silver prow. Who is here? Prince of Love in masquerade or Prince of Fear, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... singing psalms to God." Next day there were again requests from the House to Fairfax for their release. It could not be granted; but they were marched through the streets to better accommodation in two inns in the Strand, called the Swan and the King's Head. Meanwhile Pride's watch at the doors of the House had been effectively continued. There were several new arrests on the 7th; many members, not arrested, were forcibly turned back; and many more, among whom was Denzil ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... made a swan, a golden shower, Or seems a serpent, or a shepherd-swain, To work his amorous will in secret hour; Here, like an eagle, soars he o'er the plain, Love-led, and bears his Ganymede, the flower Of beauty, mid celestial peers to reign; The boy with cypress hath his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... no contradiction could be brought to hold another course, alleging they could not make the ship to work better, nor to lie otherways. The evening was fair and pleasant, yet not without token of storm to ensue, and most part of this Wednesday night, like the swan that singeth before her death, they in the Admiral, or Delight, continued in sounding of trumpets, with drums and fifes; also winding the cornets and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity, left with the battle and ringing of doleful knells. Towards the evening also we caught ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... through the eye with an arrow. His housecarls fought where they stood till they fell one by one; his brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, died beside him. The king's body was found upon the field, recognized only by a former mistress, the fair Eadgyth Swanneshals ("Edith of the swan's neck"). ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... time there was a Devaputra, riding on his thousand white-swan palace in the midst of space, who beheld the Parinirvana of Buddha. This one, for the universal benefit of the Deva assembly, sounded forth at large these ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... a Drakos, who had given him leave to enter forty only, a magic horse, and before the door of the room he finds a pool of gold in which he becomes gilded. In another (Hahn, No. 15) a prince finds in the forbidden fortieth a lake in which fairies of the swan-maiden species are bathing. In a third (No. 45) the fortieth room contains a golden horse and a golden dog which assist their bold releaser. In a fourth (No. 68) it imprisons "a fair maiden, shining like the sun," whom ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... bag in cock has been sixty-three in one day's shooting alone. I have lately taken to punting after ducks, and have been very successful. One gets twenty to thirty a day, and occasionally a swan. I once killed four of the latter with one shot from my punt gun (one of Holland & Holland's). Hares are not very numerous; to get three or four in a day is counted good luck; but one generally picks up one or two during a day's shooting. Thus ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... me on Sunium's marbled steep,[202] Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine— Dash down yon cup of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that can forget to blush at the Venus and Cupid by Titian, at Leda and her Swan, at Jupiter and Io, and others of equally evil intent, ought never to pretend to blush at any thing. Such pictures are a disgrace to the artists that painted, to the age that tolerates, and to the gallery that contains them. They are fit for ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but surely the learning of the ancients had been long ago obliterated, had every man thought himself at liberty to corrupt the lines which he did not understand. If we imagine that Varius had been by any of his contemporaries celebrated under the appellation of Musarum ales, "the swan of the Muses," the language of Horace becomes graceful and familiar; and that such a compliment was at least possible, we know from the transformation feigned by Horace ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... six miles away in the valley, a vast cloud came down with swan-shot of hail, black as blackest smoke, overwhelming house and wood, all gone and mixed with the sky; and behind the mass there followed a white cloud, sunlit, dragging along the ground like a cumulus fallen to ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... shop off Shaftesbury Avenue! It was four o'clock on a fine day early in April, and was Fanny the one to spend four o'clock on a fine day indoors? Other girls in that very street sat over ledgers, or drew long threads wearily between silk and gauze; or, festooned with ribbons in Swan and Edgars, rapidly added up pence and farthings on the back of the bill and twisted the yard and three-quarters in tissue paper and asked "Your ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... "Swan? Well, yes, I will, if you wish it: I don't mind," says Molly, amiably. "And now tell me, are you not surprised to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... of metre in common use, and appropriate to every occasion where God is worshipped and men are blessed. From the compositions of Billings, Holden, Maxim, Edson, Holyoke, Read, Kimball, Morgan, Wood, Swan, &c. &c., and eminent American authors now living, as well as from distinguished European composers. Embracing a greater variety of Music for Congregations, Societies, Singing Schools, and Choirs, than any ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... tale in the Gesta Romanorum (ch. 74 of the text translated by Swan) which seems to have been suggested by the Hebrew parable of the Desolate Island, and which has passed into general currency throughout Europe: A dying king bequeaths to his son a golden apple, which he is to give to the greatest ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of the ancient gods, father of most of them, and a regular Frenchman. Ambition: To run everything. Recreation: Killing giants, disguising himself as a swan, ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... the swan-like sough of her wings, and saw the rays of her starry diadem receding far and farther ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in the Gallery at Padua (Nos. 42 and 43), attributed with a query to Giorgione. These are apparently fragments of some decorative series, of which the other parts are missing. The one represents "Leda and the Swan," the other a mythological subject, where a woman is seated holding a child, and a man, also seated, holds flowers. The latter recalls one of the figures in the National Gallery "Epiphany." The charm of these ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... There was something dark on it—a piece of wreckage. It was on us now, and the boat was nearly full of water. But she was built in air-tight compartments—Heaven bless the man who invented them!—and lifted up through it like a swan. Through the foam and turmoil I saw the black thing on the wave hurrying right at me. I put out my right arm to ward it from me, and my hand closed on another arm, the wrist of which my fingers gripped like a vice. I am a very strong man, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... under Troy; And there withal his soothsayer and slave, His chanting bed-fellow, his leman brave, Who rubbed the galleys' benches at his side. But, oh, they had their guerdon as they died! For he lies thus, and she, the wild swan's way, Hath trod her last long weeping roundelay, And lies, his lover, ravisht o'er the main For his bed's ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus |
