"Melpomene" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has been set apart as the child of the Muses. At birth Melpomene marked him for her own. The doves of ancient story covered him over with the green leaves of the Apulian wood as, lost and overcome by weariness, he lay in peaceful slumber, and kept him safe from creeping and four-footed things, a babe secure in the favor of heaven. The sacred charm that rests upon ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... sitting at the parlor table, with shoulders confidentially touching. They were the more intimate because Tom had invited Mr. Wrenn, Nelly, and Mrs. Arty to the Grand Christmas Eve Ball of the Cigar-Makers' Union at Melpomene Hall. Nelly asked of Mr. Wrenn, almost as urgently as of Mrs. Arty, whether she should wear her new white mull or ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... to look about her. A new object instantly absorbed her attention. In the house opposite she observed a celebrated actress amidst her family; her daughter was performing her dancing lesson: the girl Clairon, the future Melpomene, was struck by the influence of this graceful and affectionate scene. "All my little being collected itself into my eyes; I lost not a single motion; as soon as the lesson ended, all the family applauded, and the mother embraced the daughter. The difference of her fate and mine filled ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... theatre again. Even as it is, the annoyance is much more than the pleasure; but I suppose I must go to see her in every character in which she acts. If Charlotte cares for plays, let me know, and I will write in more detail about this new Melpomene. I fear there are very few subjects on which I can say anything that will in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... of the player acquired a more decided expression from the mask, as his voice was strengthened by a contrivance attached to the mask, so the cothurnus, consisting of several soles of considerable thickness, as may be seen in the ancient statues of Melpomene, raised his figure considerably above the usual standard. The female parts were also played by men, as the voice and general carriage of women would have been inadequate to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Neither was the praise of Charles conferred without critical consideration; for he justly censured the concluding scene, in which Celadon and Florimel treat of their marriage in very light terms in presence of the Queen, who stands by, an idle spectator. This insult to Melpomene, and preference of her comic sister, our author acknowledges to be a fault, but seemingly only in deference to the royal opinion; for he instantly adds, that, in his own judgment, the scene was necessary to make the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... but there was no division of opinion as to the taste with which some of the details had been studied. It was considered a stroke of inspiration to have on the speaker's left, where Sophocles would have sat if he had been present at a supper given to AEschylus, the sitting figure of Melpomene, crowned with rosemary for remembrance. No allusion was made to AEschylus during the evening, after his health had been proposed by the chairman and drunk in silence, but a great and exquisite ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... at the Club Which Londoners with 'GARRICK'S' title dub, We both confessed, and each with equal grief, That poor Melpomene was past relief; So many symptoms of her dotage shows This nineteenth century of steam and prose. Nor in herself, said you, entirely lies Th' incurable complaint whereof she dies; 'Tis not alone that play-wrights are too poor For gods or men or columns to endure;[4] Nor that all ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... a wonderful thing that in France the comic Muse should be the gravest lady in the nation. Of late she is so grave, that one might almost mistake her for her sister Melpomene. Moliere made her indeed a good moral philosopher; but then she philosophised, like Democritus, with a merry, laughing face. Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... knew and were pleased to tell how she always started out in the direction of the swamp every evening when the gas was lit in the city, and that she turned out over the bridge along Melpomene Street, stopping to collect stray bits of cabbage leaves and refuse vegetables where the bridgeway leads through Dryades Market. Some said that she had a friend there, who hid such things for her to find, under one ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... me For Silence once departed, For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted, Whom evermore I follow wistfully, Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through; Thalia, not you, Not you, Melpomene, Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore, I seek in this great hall, But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Zeus and Mnemosyne, presided over the liberal arts particularly, were nine in number, and dwelt along with Apollo near Parnassus, Pieria, and Helicon; Clio presided over history, Euterpe over music, Thalia over comedy, Melpomene over tragedy, Terpsichore over choral dance and song, Erato over erotic poetry and elegy, Polyhymnia over lyric poetry, Urania over astronomy, and Calliope over eloquence and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... act, are—quite selon les regles—allowed to simmer till the end of the fourth, and to boil over in the fifth. Thus we have a tragedy after the manner of those lively productions that flourished in the time of Garrick; when Young, Murphy, and Francklin were Melpomene's head-cooks. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... smile and paid her the compliment of turning her back upon her. The Duke plied his guest with food and wine, declaring that ambrosia and nectar were better fitted for her; he toasted her; he praised her; he exhausted his knowledge of mythology in her honour, calling her Melpomene, the tragic Muse, for had she not made men weep with her song that very night? Song, did he say? nay, hymn it was! She was Polyhymnia, singer of sublimity. He named her Philomele, and desired the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... example of adhesion to one principle which, I am confident, might be extensively followed with great advantage to astronomy:—the principle of division of labour.'—Discoveries of small planets were now not infrequent: but the only one of interest to me is Melpomene, for the following reason. On 1852 June 24 I lost my most dear, amiable, clever daughter Elizabeth: she died at Southampton, two days after landing from Madeira. On that evening Mr Hind discovered the planet; and he requested me to give a name. I remembered ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... degree the minor importance of their work as compared with that of more serious scholars and acted accordingly. The preface to Turbervile's Tragical Tales throws some light on the author's idea of the comparative values of translations. He thought of translating Lucan, but Melpomene appeared to warn him against so ambitious an enterprise, and admitting his unfitness for the task, he applied himself instead to this translation "out of sundry Italians."[307] Anthony Munday apologizes for his "simple translation" of Palmerin d'Oliva ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... wreathed shell! Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene! O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly! Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong To vex its sylvan quiet with ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... and fixed in its place by the Royal trowel, as the visible and solid beginning of the stately fabric, which, according to pictorial models was to rise from this, its first foundation, into a temple of art and architecture, devoted to Melpomene and Thalia. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... is likewise grounded merely on a vulgar error; and yet it is used, not only by the poets, but also by the orators, and even the philosophers. O mutis quoque piscibus donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum,(306) says Horace to Melpomene. Cicero compares the excellent discourse which Crassus made in the Senate, a few days before his death, to the melodious singing of a dying swan: Illa tanquam cycnea fuit divini hominis vox et oratio. De Orat. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and invent the incidents of an imaginary tale be the higher task, we need not stop to discuss. But the young author was just now like the great actor in Sir Joshua's picture, between the allurements of Thalia and Melpomene, still doubtful whether he was to be a ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... vncertaintie of finding was farre greater, and the difficultie and danger of searching was no whit lesse. For hath not Herodotus (a man for his time, most skilfull and iudicial in Cosmographie, who writ aboue 2000. yeeres ago) in his 4. booke called Melpomene, signified vnto the Portugales in plaine termes; that Africa, except the small Isthmus between the Arabian gulfe and the Mediterran sea, was on all sides enuironed with the Ocean? And for the further confirmation ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... OF 60 GUNS.—Iphigenie, Independante, Didon, Uranie, Belle-Poulle, Surveillante, Andromaque, Forte, Minerve, Melpomene, Perseverante, Renomme, Vengeance, Etrepienante, Victoire, Semiramis, Guerrierre, ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... 1745, the last important survivors of the Queen Anne wits; and already the reaction against gayety had set in, in the deliberate and exaggerated solemnity which took possession of all departments of verse, and even invaded the theater; where Melpomene gradually crowded Thalia off the boards, until sentimental comedy—la comedie larmoyante—was in turn expelled by the ridicule of Garrick, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. That elegiac mood, that love of retirement and seclusion, which have been remarked in Shenstone, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... boy," she cried, while the nieces gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... claim the shining fame of glorious Stonewall Jackson, Who typifies the English race, a sterling Anglo-Saxon; To bravest song his deeds belong, to Clio and Melpomene"— (And why not for a British stream ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Phoebus?[71] are you smouching Thaly on her tender lips? There, hoi! peasant, avaunt! Come, pretty short-nosed nymph. O sweet Thalia, I do kiss thy foot. What, Clio? O sweet Clio! Nay, prythee, do not weep, Melpomene. What, Urania, Polyhymnia, and Calliope! let me do reverence to your deities. [PHANTASMA pulls him by the sleeve. I am your holy swain that, night and day, Sit for your sakes, rubbing my wrinkled brow, Studying ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various |
