"Lyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no poet's lyre O'er thee, sweet-breathing briar, Hung fondly, ill or well? And yet methinks with thee A poet's sympathy, Whether in weal or woe, in ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... be improvised. The costumes and properties had been invented from such things as came to hand. Sheets sculpturesquely draped the deities who took part; a fox-pelt from the hearth did duty as the leopard skin of Bacchus; a feather duster served Neptune for a trident; the lyre of Apollo was a dust-pan; a gull's breast furnished Jove with his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unguarded strays One hand o'er his fallen lyre; but all his soul Is lost—given up. He fain would turn to gaze, But cannot turn, so twined. Now all that stole Through every vein, and thrilled each separate nerve, Himself could not have told—all wound and clasped In her white arms ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... streams of liquid melody, Music's best seed-plot; when in ripen'd airs A golden-headed harvest fairly rears His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath, Which there reciprocally laboreth. In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire, Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre; Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats In cream of morning Helicon; and then Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, To woo them from their beds, still murmuring That men can sleep ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... whom Mnesis, happy nymph, first on the banks of Hebrus did produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charmed, and who, on that fair hill which overlooks the proud metropolis of Britain, sat'st, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the heroic lyre; fill my ravished fancy with the hopes of charming ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... helm the Crest stands between horns shaped like two elephant's trunks (for which they have often been mistaken by English Heralds), placed in the same erect position, and, like the trumpets, so adjusted as to have the general aspect of the curved outline of a classic lyre. The helm of Sir GEOFFREY LUTERELL, A.D. 1345, No. 380, drawn from a celebrated illumination, between the tall spikes has a late example of the Fan-Crest; and it exemplifies the practice sometimes adopted of charging armorial insignia upon Crests of this fan form. The Arms of Luterell—Or, ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... among these subterranean pictures, of a symbolic representation of the Saviour, drawn, not from Scripture, but from a heathen original. It is that of Orpheus playing upon his lyre, and drawing all creatures to him by the sweetness of his strains. It was a fiction widely spread soon after the introduction of Christianity among the Gentiles, that Orpheus, like the Sibyls and some other of the characters of mythology, had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... whose name they debase held her rule in the City of the Violet Crown, and gathered about her Phidias the divine, haughty and eloquent Antipho, the gay Crates, the subtle Protagorus, Cratinus so acrid and yet so jovial, Damon of the silver lyre, and the great poets who are poets for all time. Author and artist, noble and soldier, court the Zu-Zu order now; but it must be confessed that the Hellenic idols were of a more exalted type than are the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... capable of packing away in their awful bosoms hundreds of thousands of our galaxies. Measure off the abysmal space into seven hundred thousand stages each a hundred million miles wide, and you reach the nearest fixed stars, for instance, the constellation of the Lyre. Multiply that inconceivable distance by hundreds of thousands, and still you will discern enormous sand banks of stars obscurely glittering on the farthest verge of telescopic vision. And even all this is but a ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... strain, whose sounds of mounting fire May rise distinguished o'er the din of war; Or died it with yon Master of the Lyre Who sung beleaguered Ilion's evil star? Such, WELLINGTON, might reach thee from afar, Wafting its descant wide o'er Ocean's range; Nor shouts, nor clashing arms, its mood could mar, All, as it swelled 'twixt each loud trumpet-change, That clangs to ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... scholarship is the perfect balance his work presents of so many and varied effects, as regards both matter and form. The memories of a large range of poetic reading are blent into one methodical music so perfectly that at times the notes seem almost simple. Sounding almost all the harmonies of the modern lyre, he has, perhaps as a matter of course, some of the faults also, the "spasmodic" and other lapses, which from age to age, in successive changes of taste, have been the "defects" of excellent good "qualities." He ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... thine aid afford to me, Inspire my Ideality; Thou who, benign, in days of yore, Didst heavenly inspiration pour On him, who luckily for us Sang Propria Quae Maribus; Teach me to sound on quiv'ring lyre, Prosodial strains in notes of fire; Words' ends shall be my theme sublime, Now first descanted on in rhyme. Come, little boys, attention lend, All words are long in a that end: (In proof of which I'll bet a quart,) ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... behold the skies aloft Passing the pageantry of dreams, The cloud whose bosom, cygnet-soft, A couch for nuptial Juno seems, The ocean broad, the mountains bright, The shadowy vales with feeding herds, I from my lyre the music smite, Nor want for justly matching words. All forces of the sea and air, All interests of hill and plain, I so can sing, in seasons fair, That who hath felt may feel again. Elated oft by such free songs, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... he wandered, lyre in hand, a train of Lesbians and pederasts at his heels, through those halls which had risen on the ruins, and which inexhaustible Greece had furnished with a fresh crop of white immortals, the world rebelled. Afar on the outskirts of ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... in heaven's own quire Can sound no heavenlier lyre Than here: no purer fire Her soul can soar: No sweeter stars her eyes In unimagined skies Beyond our sight can rise ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... faithful to her Emperor, and the Emperor was successful against his son. But he soon died in disappointment and despair. With him the star of the Swabian dynasty had set, and the sweet sounds of the Swabian lyre died away with the last breath of Corradino, the last of the Hohenstaufen, on the scaffold at Naples, in 1268. Germany was breaking down under heavy burdens. It was visited by the papal interdict, by famine, by pestilence. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... teach— High souls of honour, pure hearts of fire, So startled the world with their rhythmic speech, That it seemed attuned to some unseen lyre. But the kingliest voice God ever gave man Words sweeter still spoke than poet hath sung,— For a nation's wail through the numbers ran, And the soul of the Celt exhaled on ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... and have supper afterwards. The whole gamut of merriment. Toute la lyre. And you shall have," I added, "some of your favourite ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... oldest bard is as the young, And the pipe is ever dropping honey, And the lyre's ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... he of Achilles' might, How sweetly of the sweet Andromache, How low his lyre when Ajax prays for light; (Well might he bend that lyre in sympathy For also great, and ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... dignity. He was following Dryden as his own performance became the law for the next generation. The style in which a woman is called a nymph—and women generally are "the fair"—in which shepherds are conscious swains, and a poet invokes the muses and strikes a lyre, and breathes on a reed, and a nightingale singing becomes Philomel "pouring her throat," represents a fashion as worn out as hoops and wigs. By the time of Wordsworth it was a mere survival—a dead form remaining after its true function had entirely ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... man in his pedantic art Soars far in feeble flights of song From Nature's heart, and thus he fails With Nature's God to hold commune! The bard has slept, dreamed many a dream, But failed to dream one dream of thee. High hangs his lyre on willow reed, And sitting 'neath yon shady nook, He fails to catch one note of thy Immortal song that fills the air. Awake, O bard, from sleep so deep! Attune thy lyre; let Nature breathe In her immortal breath of song; Then wilt thou sing a song most ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning-out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the Steinbruch (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva's aegis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, and did not fail to beset Ambrose. The more lively looked at his Lincoln-green ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bread, which had just fallen beside him, was the first object he discovered. A few paces beyond the negro reposed a beautiful boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, still sleeping by the side of his lyre; and farther yet, stretched in an uneasy slumber on a silken couch, lay the identical object of the freedman's search—the illustrious author of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... attempt the lyre; Rouse! rouse! thy whole poetic fire! Great FREDRICK'S deeds do still require More ample praise. Let his great acts the verse inspire, And ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... And softer than a little wild bird's wing Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth. Ah, never any more when spring like fire Will flicker in the newly opened leaves, Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre, Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice. Ah, never with a throat that aches with song, Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring, Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love The quiver and the crying of my ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... Not in the lyre of Orpheus, Not in the songs of Musaeus, Lurked the unfathomed bewitchment Wrought by the wind in the grasses, 10 Held by the rote of the ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." "Let us make man." "Let us bow before the Lord." "Let high-born seraphs tune the lyre." ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Goose and Gridiron only a few scanty facts have survived. Prior to the Great Fire it was known as the Mitre, but on its being rebuilt it was called the Lyre. When it came into repute through the concerts of a favourite musical society being given within its walls, the house was decorated with a sign of Apollo's lyre, surmounted by a swan. This provided too good an opportunity for ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... to recall the honors which have been bestowed on the testudinates from all antiquity. It was the sun-dried and sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury, as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world. Under the testudo the Roman legions swarmed into the walled cities of the orbis terrarum. And in that wise old fable which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... And God looked down from heaven, pleased to hear A young man's song arise so firm and clear. Has Fancy died? The Morning Star gone cold? Why are you silent? Have we grown so old? Must I alone keep playing? Will not you, Lord of the Measures, string your lyre anew? Lover of Greece, is this the richest store You bring us,—withered leaves and dusty lore, And broken vases widowed of their wine, To brand you pedant while you stand divine? Decorous words beseem the learned lip, But Poets have the ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... as the poets used When their fingers kissed the strings Of some sweet lyre, and caught the fire ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... By whom unequal Camoeens, borne along A torrent-stream, majestic, wild, and strong, Sung India's clime disclosed, and fiery showers Bursting on Calicut's perfidious towers: By whom soft Maro caught Maeonian fire, And plaintive Ossian tuned his Celtic lyre:— If still 'tis thine o'er Morven's heaths to rove, Tago's green banks, or Meles' hallow'd grove, Assist me thence—command my growing song To roll with nobler energy along! Before me Life's extended vale appears, Onward I hasten thro' the gulf of years, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... the same time, and Seneca alone could not restrain the Emperor from his foolish vanity. He would descend into the arena of the great amphitheatre and sing to the lyre his own compositions; and he showed off his charioteering in the circus before the whole assembled city, letting no one go away till the performance was over. It very much shocked the patricians, but ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... The feast, the cheerful guest, the flow'ry wreath, {350} And song that used to echo through my house: For never will I touch the lyre again, Nor to the Libyan flute's sweet measures raise My voice: with thee all my delights are dead. Thy beauteous figure, by the artist's hand Skillfully wrought, shall in my bed be laid; By that reclining, I will clasp it to me, And call it by thy name, and think ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... I seek at full its worth to blaze, Not mine were needful, but that noble lyre Which sounded at your touch the thunderer's praise, What time the giants sank in penal fire. Yet should you instruments, more fit to raise The votive work, bestow, as I desire, All labour and all thought will I combine, To shape and shadow ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... reared amidst all the uproar of the human tide, which was as loud, as incessant, as the tempest voice of an ocean. Then there was the detached mass of the opera-house, slowly steeped in gloom, and rising huge and mysterious like a symbol, its lyre-bearing figure of Apollo, right aloft, showing a last reflection of daylight amidst the livid sky. And all the windows of the house-fronts began to shine, gaiety sprang from those thousands of lamps which coruscated one by one, a universal ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... swift the soul to disenthrall Will Memory the past recall, 10 And Fear before the Victim's eyes Bid future ills and dangers rise. But hark! the Voice, the Lyre, their charms combine— Gay sparkles in the cup the generous Wine— Th' inebriate dance, the fair frail Nymph inspires, 15 And Virtue ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the soul; Baudelaire on a mediaeval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as faith. The world is merely ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... led on by guards, who place him in the pillory and adjust neck-irons. The populace nudge each other and point at him. Shoemaker's company slightly embarrassed. Enter a lyre player and an old blind woman, with a painted canvas on a pole. Old woman sings and points at canvas, which is painted in ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... where Egypt's realms are nam'd, What monster-gods her frantic sons have fram'd? Here Ibis gorg'd with well-grown serpents, there The Crocodile commands religious fear: Where Memnon's statue magic strings inspire With vocal sounds, that emulate the lyre; And Thebes, such, Fate, are thy disastrous turns! Now prostrate o'er her pompous ruins mourns; A monkey-god, prodigious to be told! Strikes the beholder's eye with burnish'd gold: To godship here blue Triton's scaly herd, The river-progeny is there preferr'd: Through towns ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... darling Muse, Recalling oft some heaven-born strain That warbled in Augustan reign; Or turn, well pleased, the Grecian page, If sweet Theocritus engage, Or blithe Anacreon, mirthful wight, Carol his easy love-lay light. . . And joys like these, if Peace inspire Peace, with thee I string the lyre."[9] ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... like bridegrooms, with lips and with breath, Drank the first kiss of Danger and clasped her in death; And the heart of brave WINTHROP grew mute, with his lyre, When the plumes of his genius lay moulting in fire,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... underfoot, There crown'd with worship—and these eyes will find The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl About the goal again, and hunters race The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings, In height and prowess more than human, strive Again for glory, while the golden lyre Is ever sounding in heroic ears Heroic hymns, and every way the vales Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume Of those who mix all odour to the Gods On one far height in one ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... branches as though limbs in his arms, he gives kisses to the wood, {and} yet the wood shrinks from his kisses. To her the God said: "But since thou canst not be my wife, at least thou shalt be my tree; my hair, my lyre,[85] my quiver shall always have thee, oh laurel! Thou shalt be presented to the Latian chieftains, when the joyous voice of the soldiers shall sing the song of triumph,[86] and the long procession shall resort to the Capitol. Thou, the same, shalt stand as a most faithful guardian ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... audience as long as inexhaustible fertility of invention, truth, fluency and vivacity of description, copious learning, and a pure, amiable and heart-ennobling morality shall be prized among the students of English verse, was now tuning his enchanting lyre; and the ear of Raleigh was the first to catch its strains. This eminent person was probably of obscure parentage and slender means, for it was as a sizer, the lowest order of students, that he was entered at Cambridge; but that his humble ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... a summer morning the notes of the bobolink came rushing off his lyre, and farther down the golden robin sounded his piccolo. But, chiefly, it was the home and refuge of the familiar red-breasted robin. The inn had its ancient customs. Each young bird, leaving his cradle, climbed his own stairway ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire In mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... fates Gave thy lyre to Mr. Yates[2], I have melted at thy strain When Bunn reign'd o'er Drury-lane; For the music of thy strings Haunts the ear when Romer sings. But to me that voice is mute! Tuneless kettle-drum and flute I but hear one liquid lyre— Kettle bubbling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... tell thee this that I have taken The tuneless lyre I thought to use no more, Yet once at thy returning may it waken, Then ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... splendor, dwelt in the country and became a worshipper of Pan, the god of the fields. On a certain occasion Pan had the temerity to compare his music with that of Apollo, and to challenge the god of the lyre to a trial of skill. The challenge was accepted; and Tmolus, the mountain-god, was chosen umpire. Tmolus took his seat and cleared away the trees from his ears to listen. At a given signal Pan blew on his pipes, and with his rustic melody gave ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the composer, resolved to present him with a large gold medal. The medal was designed by the famous engraver, Gateaux. It was adorned on one side with a likeness of Haydn, and on the other side with an ancient lyre, over which a flame flickered in the midst of a circle of stars. The inscription ran: "Homage a Haydn par les Musiciens qui ont execute l'oratorio de la Creation du Monde au Theatre des Arts l'au ix de la Republique Francais ou MDCCC." The medal was accompanied ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... loved her as she crept Near and nearer my heart of fire! Oh! how she loved me as I swept The master strings of her spirit's lyre! Oh! with what brooding tenderness Our low words died in her father's hall, In the meeting clasp, and parting press— Wilmur ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... to whom the indulgent Muse Vouchsafes a portion of celestial fire; Nor blame the partial Fates, if they refuse The Imperial banquet and the rich attire. Know thine own worth, and reverence the lyre. Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined? No; let thy heaven-taught soul to Heaven aspire, To fancy, freedom, harmony resign'd; Ambition's grovelling ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... sometimes is free and separate: sometimes, which is best, it is connected with the thing of which it is the image, this connection being made to aid and correspond mutually on both sides. Cicero says in his oration for Murena: "They who have not a genius for playing on the lyre, may become expert at playing on the flute (a proverbial saying among the Greeks to specify the man who can not make himself master of the superior sciences): so among us they who can not become orators, turn to the study of the law." ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... of phenomena, and final interpretation of them as a whole are, have been, and always will be the marks of the enduring in all literature, whether poetry or prose." [Footnote: Lewis Worthington Smith, "The New Naivete," Atlantic, April, 1916.] To quote another critic: "A rock, a star, a lyre, a cataract, do not, except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to the bare power of evoking reactions in a series of ocular envelopes or auditory canals. Their power lies in their freightage of association, in their tactical position at the focus of converging ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Epaminondas, who, in my opinion, was the greatest man among the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute; and Themistocles, some years before, was deemed ignorant because at an entertainment he declined the lyre when it was offered to him. For this reason musicians flourished in Greece; music was a general study; and whoever was unacquainted with it was not considered as fully instructed in learning. Geometry was in high esteem with them, therefore none were more honorable than mathematicians. But ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... thou! With a spirit as meek as the gentlest of those Who in life's sunny valley lie shelter'd and warm, Yet bold and heroic as ever yet rose To the top cliffs of Fortune, and breasted her storm; With an ardour for liberty, fresh as in youth It first kindles the bard and gives light to his lyre, Yet mellow'd e'en now by that mildness of truth, Which tempers, but chills not, the patriot fire; With an eloquence, not like those rills from a height, Which sparkle and foam, and in vapour are ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... mind, as heavenly fancy glows, Man masks the fearful shape with fair resembling: His torch put out, a mild youth doth repose; Soft is the end as the lyre's mournful trembling. Remembrance fades i' the gloom a shadow throws: So sang the song, a dreadful doom dissembling. Yet undefined remained eternal Night, The stern reminder of ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... noble zeal. The marked and fanatical pietism which then was much diffused among the Smaland peasantry he fought with his cheerful gospel of reason and sanity. Just as poetry to him meant the highest bloom of life, and his radiant lyre resounded with noble music like the statue of Memnon, when touched by the rays of the dawn; so religion was, in its essence, perfect sanity of soul, a beautiful equilibrium of mind, and complete self-mastery. His Christ was ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... epic numbers roll'd, And he who struck the softer lyre of love, By Death's [14]unequal hand alike controul'd, Fit comrades ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... wrought this, or rather genius, in whose hand a jews-harp is the lyre of Orpheus, a fiddle the harp of David, a chisel a hewer of heroic forms, a brush or a pen the scepter of souls, and, alas! ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... described in the manuscript of St. Blasius as a Lyre. Gerbertus rightly observes that it has only one string, and is more like a Cheli.[14] He quotes writers of different epochs relative to the meaning of the word Lyre as used by them, the tendency of his remarks apparently being to establish a connection between the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... pupil should be warned in her introductory lesson. The first is: that the Jewish annals open by one whole millennium before all other human records. Full a thousand years had the chronicles of the Hebrew nation been in motion and unfolding that sublime story, fitter for the lyre and the tumultuous organ, than for unimpassioned recitation, before the earliest whispers of the historic muse began to stir in any other land. Amongst Pagan nations, Greece was the very foremost to attempt that almost impracticable ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... came one who had both welcome and reverence from Jason; this one came without spear or bow, bearing in his hands a lyre only. He was Orpheus, and he knew all the ways of the gods and all the stories of the gods; when he sang to his lyre the trees would listen and the beasts would follow him. It was Chiron who had counseled Orpheus to go with Jason; Chiron the centaur had met him as he was wandering ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... thee round with fire, Learn to endure. Dark vigil hours shall tire Thy wakeful eyes; regrets thy bosom thrill; Slow years thy loveless flower of youth shall kill; Yea, thou shalt yearn for lute and wanton lyre. Yet is thy guerdon great; thine the reward Of those elect, who, scorning Circe's lure, Grown early wise, make living light their lord. Clothed with celestial steel, these walk secure, Masters, not slaves. Over their heads ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... proud clime. She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long-loved and for a season gone. For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage-bed.... And she, the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... human nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." In the next year, Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, summed up the political faith of our fathers in the Great Declaration. Its words vibrate through the history of those days. As the lyre of Amphion raised the walls of the city, so they are the music which sing course after course of the ascending structure of American civilization into its place. Our fathers stood indeed upon technical and legal grounds when the contest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bright of brow: "Lord of Torelore and king, Thy folk deem me a light thing, When my love doth me embrace, Fair he finds me, in good case, Then am I in such derray, Neither harp, nor lyre, nor lay, Dance nor game, nor ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... in the fireplace grate—a fire that burned without flame. On the hearth before it, reclining on large silvery cushions, was a woman holding in her hands a small stringed instrument like a tiny harp or lyre. When the men entered the room she laid her instrument aside and rose ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... melancholy cast of mind, and carries sal-volatile in her reticule, and fountains of tears in her eyes, for use on the most public occasions; she likes gloomy apartments, looking upon the sea, mountains, or black forests, and leading into endless corridors; she has an AEolian lyre ever at her casement, writes verses and weeps by moonlight, for—effect, or— nothing; and is enamoured with a being, who, in the common course of nature, could not exist; he possessing, amongst other fine qualities, that of omnipresence in an impious degree. Should the heroine reside in a town, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... on ambrosia and nectar, their food and drink, the latter being handed round by the lovely goddess Hebe. Here they conversed of the affairs of heaven and earth; and as they quaffed their nectar, Apollo, the god of music, delighted them with the tones of his lyre, to which the Muses sang in responsive strains. When the sun was set, the gods retired to sleep in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... rote, or would solace himself with the newest refrain of the minstrel, might win to his wish. Here stood the viol player, chanting ballads and lays to their appointed tunes. Everywhere might be heard the voice of viols and harp and flutes. In every place rose the sound of lyre and drum and shepherd's pipe, bagpipe, psaltery, cymbals, monochord, and all manner of music. Here the tumbler tumbled on his carpet. There the mime and the dancing girl put forth their feats. Of Arthur's guests some hearkened to the teller of tales ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... no notice of the comings and goings of the strange warrior, so busy were they with their noisy feast. As they feasted a minstrel played to them on his lyre, and sang a song of the return of the warriors from Troyland when the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... with some other young men, some priests and some savants, founded a literary brotherhood that was to become famous under the name of "Danica." Famous also is an image he conceived. "The Southern Slavs," said he, in his programme of 1836, "are as a triangular lyre whose extremities are at Scutari, Villach and Varna." He said there was a time when the strings of this lyre resounded with harmonious sounds, but that the winds in their fury have torn them. Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... who would be greater than I! For what hast thou bartered to me the golden rod of thy wealth and thy dominion over the flocks and the herds? For seven chords strung on a shell—for a melody not even thine own! For a lyre outshone by my syrinx hast thou sold all thine empire to me. Will human ears give heed to thy song now thy sceptre has passed to my hands? Immortal music only is left thee, and the vision foreseeing the future. O god! ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... prodigy, but very much of a born genius. Her memory for any composition she heard once was unfailingly accurate; her rendition of anything she knew was more than perfect, since to perfection of rendition she added sympathetic interpretation. She was already reputed the best female performer on the lyre, the most popular instrument in ancient times. The lyre had an effect something between that of a guitar and a harp, with some of the characteristics of the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... thing that I cannot remember at this moment of writing, without emotion. It is the finest presentation of grief that I can imagine. And when she has received hope from the Gods, and encouragement to go into the other world and seek Eurydice, Viardot's manner of taking the relinquished lyre from the tomb and becoming radiant again, is most noble. Also she recognizes Eurydice's touch, when at length the hand is put in hers from behind, like a most transcendant genius. And when, yielding to Eurydice's entreaties she has turned round and slain her with a look, her despair ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Breton. Romance lives again. The beautiful maiden is about to be devoured by a goggle-eyed monster, labelled on the back "Experimental Socialism"; the red cross knight flies to her aid, and drives away the monster by his magic music. Lance in rest! lyre at side! third class railway ticket in pocket! A Berkeley to the rescue! and there you have it.' And as he spoke, he tilted with his pen at an imaginary dragon supposed to be seated in the crimson ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the ready feast. At length, when neither thirst nor hunger more They felt unsatisfied, to new delights Their thoughts they turn'd, to song and sprightly dance, Enlivening sequel of the banquet's joys. 190 An herald, then, to Phemius' hand consign'd His beauteous lyre; he through constraint regaled The suitors with his song, and while the chords He struck in prelude to his pleasant strains, Telemachus his head inclining nigh To Pallas' ear, lest others should his words Witness, the blue-eyed Goddess thus bespake. My inmate ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... its own, And touch'd the Verse with Graces yet unknown. Each lawless branch thy level eye survey'd. And still corrected Nature as she stray'd: Warm'd Boileau's Sense with Britain's genuine Fire, And added Softness to Tassone's Lyre. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... minstrel woke— Devotion breathed aloud from every chord, The voice of praise was heard in every tone, And prayer and thanks to Him the Eternal One, To Him, that, with bright inspiration touched The high and gifted lyre of everlasting song, And warmed the ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... heaven of surmise Monross read the confirmation of his suspicions—of the eternal duel between the man and the woman; knew that Rhoda hated him most when most she trembled at his master bidding. And now Rhoda lay dead in her lyre-shaped coffin, saying these ironic things to her husband, when it was too late for repentance, too early ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... pleading and pity, to all the gentler and more feminine qualities. Desire in especial has inspired him with phrases more magically expressive even than those gasped out by panting Sappho when lust had made her body a lyre of deathless music. Her lyric to the beloved is not ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... within the walls of the Parthenon alone," rejoined her companion: "There is the silver-footed throne, on which Xerxes sat, while he watched the battle of Salamis; the scimitar of Mardonius, captured at Plataeae; a beautiful ivory Persephone, on a pedestal of pure gold; and a Methymnean lyre, said to have belonged to Terpander himself, who you know was the first that used seven strings. Victorious wreaths, coins, rings, and goblets of shining gold, are there without number; and Persian couches, ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... another place. New Haven saw the rising of the constellation; its meridian brilliancy shone upon Hartford. At the close of the war, the four poetical luminaries, as they were called by the "Connecticut Magazine and New Haven Gazette," hung up the sword in Hartford and grasped the lyre. The epidemic of verse broke out again. The four added to their number Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, a physician, Richard Alsop, a gentleman of much cultivation, and Theodore Dwight, a younger brother of Timothy. There were now seven stars of the first magnitude. Many other aspirants to a place in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... with which I was well able to sympathise. The royal annalist once read me a page or so, translating as he went; but the passage being genealogical, and the author boggling extremely in his version, I own I have been sometimes better entertained. Nor does he confine himself to prose, but touches the lyre too, in his leisure moments, and passes for the chief bard of his kingdom, as he is its sole public character, leading architect, and only merchant. His competence, however, does not reach to music; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the young and the brilliant aspire To sing what I gaze on in vain; For sorrow has torn from my lyre The string which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ye winds, whose fitful sound Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught; Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound The hundred wakeful ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... other teachers. He studied all classic literature. "The AEschylean drama had no attraction for him; he reveled in the rich and elegant strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of Horace and the silver lute of Catullus." From the full and inexhaustible fountain of English letters he drank unceasingly. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, and, later, Tennyson were his ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... every language by the public journals. This complication of events could not but be fatal to Europe and France, whatever might be its result, but it presented an opportunity favourable to the development of the Emperor's genius. Like his favourite poet Ossian, who loved best to touch his lyre midst the howlings of the tempest, Napoleon required political tempests for ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Then there come, lyre in hand, certain poets whose whole animal strength has left the ground floor and mounted to the upper story. They know better how to mount Pegasus than the beast of old Peter, they rarely marry, although they are accustomed to lavish the fury of their passions ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... harp is idle now, and its loosened strings will wait long for a hand to tune and draw from them such soul-moving cadences as we have been wont to hear. In purer air she sweeps a nobler lyre; and methinks her song may well be, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors, and ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... long before that, I think, when I was eight years old, I listened eagerly to the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' which my mother and aunt were reading aloud. When he was dying I was continually thinking of him, with Keble's words—'If ever floating from faint earthly lyre,' &c. (Sixth after Trin.). [Footnote: Compare a letter of Dr. Newman's to J. R. Hope in 1852. See ante, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... tune your lyre to Kathleen West, Of all the plays hers is the best; Long may she shine, long may she wave, Her shrine we deck with garlands brave; May Fortune bring her world renown— To Kathleen ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... was in the prime of life, belonging to a poor but honorable family, younger than Pelopidas, who was rich. He had acquired great reputation for his gymnastic exercises; and was the most cultivated man in Thebes, a good musician, and a still greater orator. He learned to play on both the lyre and flute from the teachings of the best masters, sought the conversation of the learned, but was especially eloquent in speech, and effective, even against the best Athenian opponents. He was modest, unambitious, patriotic, intellectual, contented with poverty, generous, and disinterested. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the skies October's mists hang dull and red, And with each wild gust's fall and rise, The yellow leaves are round me spread. 'Tis the third autumn, ay, so long, Since memory 'neath this very bough, Thrilled my sad lyre strings into song— What shall ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... days, Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine; Which leaves no record to the skeptic eye, But yields young history all to harmony; A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave, Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... works of Montgomery, Gray, Beattie, Collins, Byron, Cowper, Thomson, Milton, Young, Rogers, Campbell, Lamb, Hemans, Heber, Kirke White, Crabbe, the Miscellaneous Works of Goldsmith, and other masters of the lyre. The publishers are doing a great service by their publication, and their volumes are almost in as great demand as the fashionable novels of the day; and they deserve to be so: for they are certainly printed in a style superior to that in which we have before had the works ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... with the magi, it endowed India with wonderful traditions, it civilised Greece to the sounds of Orpheus's lyre.' ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... distant lands a warrior's beauteous bride To be thy father's and his people's curse, Joy to our foes, but to thyself reproach? Behold her husband! Darest thou not to face The warlike prince? Now learn how brave a Chief 60 Thou hast defrauded of his blooming spouse. Thy lyre, thy locks, thy person, specious gifts Of partial Venus, will avail thee nought, Once mixt by Menelaus with the dust. But we are base ourselves, or long ago, 65 For all thy numerous mischiefs, thou hadst slept Secure beneath a coverlet[5] of stone.[6] ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... lyre of widest range, Touched by all passion—did fall down and glance From tone to tone, and glided through all change of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... keeping close to the river, which wound in and out, fringed with a thick belt of scrub, amongst which rose tall red-gum trees. Flights of cockatoos screamed over their heads, and magpies gurgled in the thick shades by the water. Occasionally came the clear whistle of a lyre bird or the peal of a laughing jackass. Jim knew all the bird-notes, as well as the signs of bush game, and pointed them out as they rode. Once a big wallaby showed for an instant, and there was a general outcry and a plunge in pursuit, but the wallaby was too quick for them, and found ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... as well as of every individual authority which sought to emancipate itself. Their petty ambition was contented with little. The stories told of Metellus in Spain—that he not only allowed himself to be delighted with the far from harmonious lyre of the Spanish occasional poets, but even wherever he went had himself received like a god with libations of wine and odours of incense, and at table had his head crowned by descending Victories amidst theatrical thunder ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic—envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... superior breed), then leopards, then pumas and panthers; then bears, then jackals and hyenas; then bears and wolves; then kangaroos, musk-oxen, deer, and such harmless cattle; and then ostriches, emus, lyre-birds, birds-of-Paradise, and all ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... line; New graces yearly like thy works display, Soft without weakness, without glaring gay; Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains; And finish'd more through happiness than pains, The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire, One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre. Yet should the Graces all thy figures place, And breathe an air divine on ev'ry face; Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul; With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... life—this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Apollo and the muse Calliope. He was presented by his father with a lyre and taught to play upon it, and he played to such perfection that nothing could withstand the charm of his music. Not only his fellow mortals, but wild beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid by their fierceness, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... often carved, with large and very wide-rimmed wheels. They are drawn by a pair of Indian bullocks, sleek cream-coloured beasts with mild and patient eyes, and often bearing enormous horns, which, somewhat after the shape of a lyre, stand four ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... springs of grief, and in the other exhibiting brightness and happiness. At the end of the same year he sounded his third and deepest note in his poem On the Death of General Foy—one of France's truest patriots. Now his lyre was complete; it had its three strings—of ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... stride—Apollo, smiting his lyre with a majesty hardly supported by the seven small notes he could get out of it. The gossips said he loved Daphne, and madly withal, but she took to a tree.—No, let the gods pass as they will. It is with men ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... should prove to the modern reader, the debt of gratitude he owes to the inaugurator of a completely original system of fiction. Speaking of Balzac's impecunious and ambitious heroes, Gautier cries:[*] "O Corinne, who on the Cape of Messina allowest thy snowy arm to hang over the ivory lyre, while the son of Albion, clothed in a superb new cloak, and with elegant boots perfectly polished, gazes at thee, and listens in an elegant pose: Corinne, what wouldst thou have said to such heroes? They have nevertheless ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... small animals of slender frame; bovine muzzle; of sandy colour above and white underneath; small annulated horns, curved gracefully backwards, and in some species so elegantly formed as to take the shape of a lyre on looking at them full in front. The females of some have smaller, smoother horns, but others are hornless. The skull has an anteorbital vacuity, with a small anteorbital fossa. The auditory bullae are large; "eye-pits small; groin-pits distinct; large feet-pits in all feet; knees tufted" ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... call seemed re-echoed, so exactly, so cheerily, that for the moment I thought that the note was the mimicry of the shy mocking lyre bird, which mimics so merrily all that it hears in its coverts, from the whir of the locust to the howl of the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the eye; the design was a lattice, through which the flowers grew. An oval mirror hung lengthwise above the white marble chimney piece, and the Louis XV. clock was a charming composition of two figures. A Muse in a simple attitude leaned a little to the left in order to strike the lyre placed above the dial; on the other side, a Cupid listened attentive for the sound of the hour, presumably his hour. There was a little lyrical inevitableness in the lines of this clock, and Owen could not come into the room without admiring it. On the chimney piece there were ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... muse! For when mankind ran wild in grooves Came holy Orpheus with his songs And turned men's hearts from bestial loves, From brutal force and savage wrongs; Amphion, too, and on his lyre Made such sweet music all the day That rocks, instinct with warm desire, Pursued him ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... syren of the stage, Charmer of an idle age, Empty warbler, breathing lyre, Wanton gale of fond desire, Bane of every manly art, Sweet enfeebler of the heart; O! too pleasing is thy strain, Hence, to southern climes again, Tuneful mischief, vocal spell, To this island bid farewell, Leave us, as we ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... combined different instruments into regular orchestras. But the Greeks had frowned upon this barbaric foreign noise. They liked to hear a man recite the stately poetry of Homer and Pindar. They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre (the poorest of all stringed instruments). That was as far as any one could go without incurring the risk of popular disapproval. The Romans on the other hand had loved orchestral music at their dinners and parties and they had invented most ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... disguise the difficulty of his task; all have recognized that their greatest efforts would be required, not only to rise to the height of a subject of which its greatness is the first peril, but even to attune their lyre to the pitch of the enthusiasm that fires us, an enthusiasm of which the mighty voice, filling all France and heard in the remotest corner of Europe, is itself the grandest hymn of poetry and the most harmonious music. But no such obstacle has discouraged ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... in Latin! Blest a hundredfold The tie of sword and lyre; the selfsame laurel Binds them in friendship. I was born beneath A northern sky, but yet the Latin muse To me is a familiar voice; I love The blossoms of Parnassus, I believe The prophecies of singers. Not in vain The ecstasy boils in their flaming ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... barbarous custom in preparing the kabara-tel poison Blood-suckers The green calotes The lyre-headed lizard Chameleon Ceratophora ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... ideas, or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rhyme, which can turn man's utterance to the speech of gods; rhyme, the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre, became in Robert Browning's hands a grotesque, misshapen thing, which at times made him masquerade in poetry as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often with his tongue in his cheek. There are moments when he wounds us by monstrous music. Nay, if ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... enjoyment of life, of Nature, and his power of painting them, a certain largeness of touch, and noble amplitude of manner—these, with a burning sincerity, mark him above all others that smote the Latin lyre. Yet these great qualities are half-crushed by his task, by his attempt to turn the atomic theory into verse, by his unsympathetic effort to destroy all faith and hope, because these were united, in his mind, with dread of Styx ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... and old Night, Cimmerian Muse, all hail! That wrapt in never-twinkling gloom canst write, And shadowest meaning with thy dusky veil! What Poet sings and strikes the strings? It was the mighty Theban spoke. He from the ever-living lyre With magic hand elicits fire. Heard ye the din of modern rhymers bray? It was cool M-n; or warm G-y, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... piping notes of praise to the pure being who had come to dwell among men. Then Zeus looked down from high Olympus, and crowned the babe with a golden head-band, and put into his hands a silver bow and a sweet-toned lyre such as no man had ever seen; and he gave him a team of white swans to drive, and bade him go forth to teach men the things which are right and good, and to make light that which ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... more than 500 boys and girls and, among the number a twelve-year-old child, a candidate's son, who danced to the sound of castanets." Sallust, speaking of a Roman woman of little reputation, says, "She played on the lyre and danced better than is ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Evidently, as Anna-Felicitas said, it had a great many lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that they were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones on the principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She thought the canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and all of them of the biggest and ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... of ennui or boredom, and the demons of melancholy. It "hath charms," wrote William Congreve (1670-1729), "to soothe the savage breast."[177:1] Orpheus with his lyre was able to charm wild beasts, and even to control the forces of Nature; and because of its wonderful therapeutic effects, which were well known to the Greeks, they associated Music with Medicine as an attribute of Apollo.[178:1] ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... canopy, beneath which stood the image of a god. One raised hand seemed to implore silence, while the other showed clasping fingers, but they closed upon nothing. Around the statue's base lay scattered stones. Evadne gathered them, and reunited they formed the lyre of Apollo. She replaced, for an instant, in the cold and constant grasp a fragment of the ruined harp. Then the aspect of the god became regretful, sad, as of one who desires a voice from the lips of the dead. Hastily she flung the charm away, and gentle grace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... be impossible to give a list of the objects of every variety found among the ruins of Troy, with the aid of which we can form a very definite idea of the private life of its people. Some fragments of an ivory lyre, and some pipes pierced with three holes at equal distances, bear witness to their taste for music; a distaff, still full of charred wool, deserted by the spinner when she fled before the conflagration, tells of domestic industry ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... listen, listen, Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, And hear my lullaby! Child, I see thee! Child, I've found thee! Midst the quiet all around thee! Child, I see thee! Child, I spy thee! And thy mother sweet is nigh thee. Child, I know thee! Child no more, But a poet ever-more! See, see, the lyre, the lyre! In a flame of fire Upon the little cradle's top Flaring, flaring, flaring, Past the eyesight's bearing. Wake it from its sleep, And see if it can keep Its eyes upon the blaze— Amaze, amaze! ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... ye syllables of woe, From the deep throat of sad Melpomene! Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go, And touch the strings into a mystery; Sound mournfully upon the winds and low; For simple Isabel is soon to be Among the dead: She withers, like a palm Cut by an Indian ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... renovation. The phenomena of the universe are explained by Heraclitus as "the concurrence of opposite tendencies and efforts in the motions of this ever-living fire, out of which results the most beautiful harmony. This harmony of the world is one of conflicting impulses, like the lyre and the bow. The strife between opposite tendencies is the parent of all things. All life is change, and change ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... heard the Haytien's tale of wrong, Shall gather at that summons strong; Broglie, Passy, and he whose song Breathed over Syria's holy sod, And, in the paths which Jesus trod, And murmured midst the hills which hem Crownless and sad Jerusalem, Hath echoes whereso'er the tone Of Israel's prophet-lyre ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... epigrams by this poet. Inferior perhaps in clearness of outline and depth of insight to those of the Alexandrian poet Asclepiades, they are unequalled in the width of range, the profusion of imagination, the subtlety of emotion with which they sound the whole lyre of passion. Meleager was born in a Syrian town and educated at Tyre in the last age of the Seleucid empire; and though he writes Greek with perfect mastery, it becomes in his hands almost a new language, full of dreams, at once more ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... su la lira e seguente versi latini fu interotto da un pastore nunciatore della morte di Euridice." The name of the actor of Orfeo is mentioned as Baccio Ugolino. This stage "business" in English reads: "Orpheus singing on the hill to his lyre the following Latin verses is interrupted by a shepherd announcing the death of Euridice." Thirteen verses of the song are given before the entrance of the shepherd, and immediately after the announcement Orpheus descends into Hades. In the Padre Affo's later version ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... from them alone, but in some parts of the western Satpuras they are also the minstrels of the Korkus. Those who beg from the Korkus play on a kind of drum called dhank while the Gond Ojhas use the kingri or lyre. Some of them also catch birds and are therefore known as Moghia. Mr. Hislop [354] remarks of them: "The Ojhas follow the two occupations of bard and fowler. They lead a wandering life and when passing through villages they sing from house to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... through the country, its message sent not by men, but by gods. Perchance, like the statue of Memnon, it resounds only in the morning, when the first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like the first lyre or shell heard on the sea-shore,—that vibrating cord high in the air over the shores of earth. So have all things their higher and their lower uses. I heard a fairer news than the journals ever ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... from the canticles of the Old Testament. These psalms and prophecies are, as regards form, destitute of originality, but an admirable spirit of gentleness and of piety animates and pervades them. It is like a faint echo of the last productions of the sacred lyre of Israel. The Book of Psalms was in a measure the calyx from which the Christian bee sucked its first juice. The Pentateuch, on the contrary, was, as it would seem, little read and little studied; there was substituted for it allegories after the manner of the Jewish midraschim ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... blushes with love While to listen The red levin With the rapid pleiads even Which were seven Pauses in heaven! Pauses in heaven! And they say the starry choir And the other listening things, That Israfel's fire is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... our song birds are members of an exceedingly numerous "order" "Paseres." In it are included the crows (with those gaily-decorated crows, the Birds of Paradise, found only in New Guinea and the Moluccas), the bower birds and the lyre bird of Australia; the flycatchers, the pittas (or ground thrushes), the water-ouzel, the weaver birds, the wrens, the tits, the creepers, the honey-eaters, those African gems, the sun birds, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Perchance Leviathan of the deep sea Would lease a lost mermaiden's grot to me, There of your beauty we would joyance make— A music wistful for the sea-nymph's sake: Haply Elijah, o'er his spokes of fire, Cresting steep Leo, or the heavenly Lyre, Spied, tranced in azure of inanest space, Some eyrie hostel, meet for human grace, Where two might happy be—just you and I— Lost in the uttermost of Eternity. Think! In Time's smallest clock's minutest beat Might there not rest be found for wandering feet? ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare |
