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More "Siren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his share in the dialogue, and listened to her, rapt and dreamily as in his fiery youth he had listened to the songs of the sirens. No siren Isaura! She was defending her own cause, though unconsciously—defending the vocation of art as the embellisher of external nature, and more than embellisher of the nature which dwells crude, but plastic in the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up before my eyes, and his Excellency springs up the rounds, from Governor to Senatorship, thence to a place in the Cabinet, certainly to an important foreign embassy; where, in the eternal fitness of things, somebody, somebody with tender brown eyes like a thrush's, and the voice of a siren, and the red lips of Hebe—will be invited to reign as l'ambassadrice! If I am not as mad with jealous despair as Othello, attribute my escape either to a sublime faith in your adorable constancy and incorruptibility, or to my own colossal ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... discontents of the tribe were near the crisis, earnestly fostered by the French on the western boundaries, that vast domain then known as Louisiana, toward whose siren voice the Cherokees had ever lent a willing ear. The building by the British government, two or three years later, of those great defensive works, Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon, situated respectively at the eastern ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... himself the bitter question if there are not things he has done that he wishes he hadn't. Melancholy marks him for its own. He sits in his room some winter evening, the lamp swarming shadowy seductions, the grate glowing with siren invitation, the cigar box within easy reach for that moment when the pending sacrifice between his teeth shall be burned out; his feet upon the familiar corner of the mantel at that automatically calculated altitude which permits the ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... Salter received letters, anonymous, of course—the anonymous letter was then the suburban press—admonishing him to beware of his siren hostess. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the treble thickness spread Swallows up our next-ahead; When her siren's frightened whine Shows her sheering out of line; When, her passage undiscerned, We must turn where she has turned— Hear the Channel Fleet at ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... and skill and strength; but behind it all was the everlasting Luck, the thing that at times turned on its votaries and crushed the wise while it blessed the fools—Luck, the thing all men sought and dreamed to conquer. And so he. Deep in his life-processes Life itself sang the siren song of its own majesty, ever a-whisper and urgent, counseling him that he could achieve more than other men, win out where they failed, ride to success where they perished. It was the urge of Life healthy and strong, unaware of frailty and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... destruction went smoothly. The wireless operators said: 'Thank God. It's been like being under arrest day and night lately.' Presently the Emden signaled us, 'Hurry up.' I packed up, but simultaneously the Emden's siren wailed. I hurried to the bridge and saw the flag 'Anna' go up. That meant 'Weigh anchor.' We ran like mad to our boat, but already the Emden's pennant was up, the battle flag was raised, and they began to fire from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... departing siren was sounding. Friends and relatives of the passengers were crowding the exit incline. The deck was clearing. I had not seen George Prince come aboard. And then I thought I saw him down on the landing stage, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... But the Siren who sang and slew is now The fable outworn of an age remote, And the women to whom to-day we bow Have long abjured her sinister note; She heals, she helps, she follows the plough, And her song has fairly earned her ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... his father, with a sly smile; "people say that she is a perfect siren. I have myself been warned against ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to which it is exposed, but itself performing its own peculiar and private life. This last, in the case of Strether, involves a gradual, long-drawn change, from the moment when he takes up the charge of rescuing his young friend from the siren of Paris, to the moment when he finds himself wishing that his young friend would refuse to be rescued. Such is the curve in the unexpected adventure of his imagination. It is given as nobody's view—not his own, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... came. I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost, therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in company with a German who had been my fellow-passenger across ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... I have played the Infidel, If, as the fated Pitcher to the Well, Too oft to Love's empyrean Font I stray, To fall, at last, beneath some Siren's spell, ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... suffocated with it. She, upon her part, perceiving his emotions, responded with extreme good nature and complacency, so that had our hero been older, and the voyage proved longer, he might have become entirely enmeshed in the toils of his fair siren. For all this while, you are to understand, the pirates were making sail straight for Jamaica, which they reached upon the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who, having eyes, see not, and having ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... pictures undesirable save those few painted from the beautiful girl who stood for ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and ‘Forced Music.’ What his work from the nude suffered from this is incalculable, as may be seen in the crayon called ‘Ligeia Siren,’ a naked siren playing on a kind of lute, which Rossetti described as “certainly one of his best things.” The beauty and value of a crayon which for weird poetry—especially in the eyes—must be among Rossetti’s masterpieces are ruined by ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... accordingly related the whole. When I had concluded, she shook her head, and replied, "Beware, my friend, of his arts. Your own heart is too sincere to suspect treachery and dissimulation in another; but suffer not your ear to be charmed by the siren voice of flattery, nor your eye to be caught by the phantom of gayety and pleasure. Remember your engagements to Mr. Boyer. Let sincerity and virtue be your guides, and they will lead you to happiness and peace." She waited not for an answer, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... her way through a fleet of small fishing-boats, as I could tell by the reduced speed, the hooting of the siren, and the constant and prolonged rattle of the steering rods. Soon she would bring up to the quay in Palma harbour. Why should I not get ashore there and work out the hard problem that ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... wave until the man alongside you, who has spent years of his life learning to imitate a siren whistle with his face, suddenly twines his hands about his mouth and lets go a terrific blast right in your ear. Something seems to warn you that you are not going to ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the belated nightingales Sang all their moonlight raptures o'er, Enchanted still in echoing vales. We lingered by the brightening shore; We leapt upon the roseate strand: The joy that in our hearts we bore We loved, nor longed to understand. Soft siren voices evermore Chanted to chimes ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... by Marimonda, Selkirk, for the first time, has ventured to the woods and thickets between the hills beyond the shore and the False Coquimbo, when a sound, sweeter to his ear than would have been the songs of a siren, makes him pause suddenly in ecstasy: it is the mewing of ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... speak yet, Madeleine; do not answer until you have heard me,—until you have well comprehended my meaning. You do not know the thousand perils by which a young man is beset in Paris,—the siren lures that are thrown in his way to ensnare his feet, be they disposed to walk ever so warily. You do not know that your holy image, rising up before me, shining upon the path I trod, and beckoning me into the right road when I swerved aside, has alone saved me from falling into that ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... was not convinced, it is true, of her conscious guilt, still I did not trust her entirely. "Do not wear them on your return," she had said and that was odd; although I could not yet believe that she was such a siren as Father Pierre had warned us of, telling tales from old poets. Yet I doubted, shuddering as I did so. Her companionship with that vile priest, her strange eagerness to secure Pavannes' return, her mysterious directions ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Nile never looked more bewitchingly beautiful than this siren of France as she half reclined upon the couch, playing upon the King's heart with a bit of memory. His great nature realized her sorrow and ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... consciousness of a Regent Street blouse. The gardens and shrubberies would have been quite irresistible, had it not been that just beyond their bounds stretched the firm golden sands, on which the white-crested waves broke with a siren sound. ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... in a kind of loud whisper, are you caught too by the little siren?—My mother did well not to come up!—I question whether my father himself, after his first indignation, would not be turned round by her. Nobody but my brother can do any thing ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... came when we tired of the brilliancy and din of Naples, most noisy of cities. Neapolis, or Parthenope, as is well known, was founded by Parthenope, a siren who was cast ashore there. Her descendants still live here; and we have become a little weary of their inherited musical ability: they have learned to play upon many new instruments, with which they keep us awake ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and beating upon our wreck. As for me, I thought only of that voice. And I thought also of the sirens. If a ship had passed near by us what would the sailors have said? My troubled spirit lost itself in the dream! A siren! Was she not really a siren, this daughter of the sea, who had kept me on this worm-eaten ship and who was soon about to go down with me deep ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... his head against a wall like a hooded rook as he was. So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature, even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the archbishop with his head full of diabolical longings and his ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... The siren had been unfortunate in her choice of a ballad. For, at the mere name of Mam'zelle Zizi, Frantz was suddenly transported to a gloomy chamber in the Marais, a long way from Sidonie's salon, and his compassionate heart evoked the image of little Desiree Delobelle, who had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Parthenope, from the name of the siren who threw herself into the sea for grief at the departure of Ulysses, and was cast up and buried there.—Ovid, "Met.," xiv, 101.—W. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... had the Bishop began to visit than he began to pay attention to his hair: first he powdered it, and then he had it dressed. At length he swallowed the bait so completely, that he neither quitted the fair siren by night nor by day. His clergy ventured to exhort him to put an end to this scandal, but he replied that, if they did not cease their remonstrances, he would find means of making them. At length he even rode through the city in his ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... Heaven knows what of incredible charm in the girl who had detached the Signor Bobby Martin from the siren Leila. Her instant wonder was succeeded by a sensation of gay relief. After all, these things went by chance and favor. . . . And if Bobby Martin could prefer this brown young girl to that vision at the restaurant why then—then perhaps ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... pleasures. Thus day after day sped rapidly by. Imagine, if you can, the youth's felicity; he was of an ardent temperament, deeply enamoured, barely a score of years old, and he had been strictly brought up by serious parents. He therefore resigned himself entirely to the siren for whom he willingly forgot the world, and he wondered at his good fortune, which had thrown in his way a conquest richer than all the mines of Meru.[FN65] He could not sufficiently admire his Padmavati's grace, beauty, bright wit, and numberless accomplishments. Every morning, for vanity's ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Zachariah Sapp sounds a note of warning not without its lessons. The only safety in dealing with temptation is to repel its insidious approaches from the outset. Whoever listens in patience to the siren whisper is half lost already. Human experience abundantly confirms the divine wisdom of the command, "Get thee behind me, Satan," as the one sole safe way of meeting evil advances. At the close of well-spent, useful lives, myriads can thank ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... effervescence from the cloaca maxima of the putrid instincts which fasten themselves on national sin, and are in the midst of the luxury of European capitals, what Dante meant when he wrote "quel mi sveglio col puzzo," of the body of the Wealth-Siren; the mocking levity and mocking gloom being equally signs of the death of the soul; just as, contrariwise, a passionate seriousness and passionate joyfulness are signs of its full life in works such as those of Angelico, Luini, Ghiberti, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... bethought him of his book, and, consulting it, found that there was an outlet to the south, but that to reach it a lake was to be passed, inhabited by a siren, whose song was so entrancing as to be quite irresistible to whoever heard it; but his book instructed him how to protect himself against this danger. According to its directions, while pursuing his path, he gathered abundance of flowers, which sprung ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the appointed day came, and the start was made in John Pendleton's big new touring car with Jimmy at the wheel. A whir, a throbbing rumble, a chorus of good-bys, and they were off, with one long shriek of the siren under Jimmy's mischievous fingers. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Mrs. Forest with a vague and nameless terror. But a glimpse of that dark siren was enough to apprise her of her son's peril, and she unhesitatingly implored Blanch not to let him out of her sight—to go off with him alone as often as possible and flirt with him to any length; a tremendous ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors; Through the yelling Channel tempest when the siren hoots and roars — By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail — As the sheep that graze behind us so we ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... great prying eye which no one could avoid. To obviate this a screen has been placed on the landward side of the lantern. The light stands about 200 feet above the sea; and in addition to this there is a fog-siren, whose tremendous voice bellows through thick weather at intervals of two minutes. West of the lighthouse is the little fishing-cove and lifeboat station of Polpeor. In old times this headland was lit by a bonfire beacon, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... shining, his eyes flashing with excitement as he translated into articulate language the speech of the horns and sirens. "That's a steam-siren a-goin' it over there to the left. And you hear that fellow with a frog in his throat—a steam schooner as near as I can judge, crawlin' in from the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... while it enabled him to reveal the mysteries of communion with the Father of spirits, as he so wondrously does in his treatise on prayer. To use the language of Milton—'These are works that could not be composed by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it true," she wondered, "that a simple and loving heart is not all-sufficient to an artist; that to balance the weight of these powerful souls they need a union with feminine souls of a strength equal to their own? If I had been brought up like this siren, our weapons at least might have been equal in the ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... it before your eyes as a bit of the drapery that goes to the ball of life. But when dawn almost comes and the ball is over, you mustn't expect the paper roses to smell. This mystifies you a little, for you are a plain, downright siren. Your lovers' songs have been in simple measures. Well, the moral is this: take my love-letters as real (in their way) as the play, or rather, the opera; infinitely true for the moment, unreal for the hour, eternal as the dead passions of the ages. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Firmiani? I don't wish you to visit her." This remark is rich in meanings. Madame Firmiani! dangerous woman! a siren! dresses well, has taste; gives other women sleepless nights. Your informant belongs to the ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... modest invitation. Your excellency has, indeed, honoured my poor house by your presence. Mesdames, so kind of you not to forget the most sincere of your servants. Sir, it is really too good of you to neglect your important studies on my account! Countess, your siren song is generally acknowledged to be the gem ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... beyond those hills is Jena," said Pueckler, sadly. "Those are two melancholy names for a Prussian ear, and, like Ulysses, I should like to close mine so as not to hear that siren voice of death any more; for, I tell you, whenever I hear those two names, I am driven to despair, and would like to throw myself into ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... and listen to the conversation of a young girl in a dark-colored dress, who is walking with another of about her own age dressed in blue. They crossed a beautiful lawn, from the center of which sprang a fountain, with the figure of a siren executed in bronze, and strolled on, talking as they went, towards the terrace, along which, looking out upon the park and interspersed at frequent intervals, were erected summer-houses, diverse in form and ornament; these summer-houses were nearly all occupied; ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a polar star, high up in the heavens, and so on, and so on; for with all a lover's quickness of imagination and triteness of fancy, he called her a star, a flower, a nymph, a witch, an angel, or a mermaid, a nightingale, a siren, as one or another of her attributes rose up ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the offensive term "Protectionist." Shoddy treated with aniline dyes can produce effects that overwhelm the colours of the honest old materials which owed their hues to the efforts of the vegetable and the insect. A modern manufacturer is proud when his scarlet shoddy shrieks like a steam siren. Unfortunately some of the managers ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was "ruining himself with a married woman," and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such an intrigue would damage him later on, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... a powerful racing car, with a siren yelling like a vicious animal, came tearing along the Angers Road and promptly stopped. Three men got out and rushed up to the driver of the yellow taxicab. Don Luis recognized them. They were Weber, the deputy chief, and the men who had taken ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... an exceedingly brief instant, there was the illusion of silence. The next moment the factory siren rose to a shrill shriek, with a full head of steam ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the Italian Commedia had not seized on all minds. It would have been an evil thing for Italian, perhaps for European, literature if the siren tales of the Decameron had not been the first to occupy the ears with the charms of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Decrepit rais'd erect, and faded face With love's own hue illum'd. Recov'ring speech She forthwith warbling such a strain began, That I, how loth soe'er, could scarce have held Attention from the song. "I," thus she sang, "I am the Siren, she, whom mariners On the wide sea are wilder'd when they hear: Such fulness of delight the list'ner feels. I from his course Ulysses by my lay Enchanted drew. Whoe'er frequents me once Parts seldom; so I charm him, and his heart Contented knows ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... stood There on the threshold, following thy voice Away, away through mazy lengths of dreams. Music—low music from the lips we love, Is the true siren that still lures the soul From cares of earth to ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... murmured, "once again ere I forsake the flesh, are my ears blest with that voice! It is the song of the eternal woman! For me she sings!—Sing on, siren; my soul is a listening universe, and therein ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... that is visible, this weapon fired first in one direction, then in another, changing its aim so frequently that nobody could predict where the next shell might fall until it came hurtling through the air, in dangerous proximity, with a sound that suggests the half-throttled scream of a steam siren, and it generally finished, as it began, with a few shots at the Imperial Light Horse, or their ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... stopped. From away over the hills to his right, mingling with the call of the coyotes, came the unmistakable honk of a siren. He held his breath to listen. It came again, a long continued wail, in perfect tune with the whining of the coyotes. He turned to the right and started over the hills in the wake ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... of the Gold early in the evening, and made camp on their old ground, the sandy spit between the two rivers. The steamer from Dawson was due some time during the night, and before they turned in they set up a red lantern on the long steering sweep as a signal. The dawn had broken when the hoarse siren of the steamer was heard down the Lewes, and by the time all hands were awake she was backing water at the mouth of the Gold. The flat boat was quickly poled out to her, and what Swiftwater called their "dunnage" was placed aboard. Then, with the steamer's boat in tow the batteau was taken ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... The 'Landrail' was captured, after a somewhat smart action, and was sent to America, but was recaptured on the way. The victory was not remarkable, but the place of capture was very significant, and it happened July 12 only a fortnight after Blakely captured the 'Reindeer' farther westward. The 'Siren' was but one of many privateers in those waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... menacing one still grew higher and brighter. It came at us. A wall instantly appeared to overhang us, with a funnel and masts above it, and our skipper's yell was lost in the thunder of a churning propeller. The air shuddered, and a siren hooted in the heavens. A long, dark body seemed minutes going by us, and our skipper's insults were taken in silence by her superior deck. She left us riotous in her wake, and we continued our journey dancing our indignation on the uneasy ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... river slapping against piles and the iron sides of vessels, the whirr and clank of steam-cranes. Wreaths of brown smoke blew gustily in the sunlight; a train boomed across the latticed bridge; and the hoot of a siren tore all other sounds in shreds. Creakily our ship was warped in by straining cables, and I said to myself, "The overture's finished. The play is going ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the siren hung, And beat the measure as she sung; And, pressing closer and more near, He whispered praises in her ear. In loud applause the courtiers vied, And ladies winked and spoke aside. The witching dame to Marmion threw A glance, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... them aside into oblivion. Paris, said one of her greatest writers, “aime briser ses idoles!” As Ulysses and his companions fell, in other days, a prey to the allurements of Circe, so our powerful young nation has fallen more than any other under the influence of the French siren, and brings her a yearly tribute of gold which she receives with avidity, although in her heart there is little ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... siren lips learned their unworthy skill, Nor reck of how shame's black eclipse obscured her purer will. You think not whence fair thoughts like flowers gave room to passions low; You know not of her girlhood's hours; you do not ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... while the solemn cadences crept on their ears, fascinated them like a siren song, wakened wild dread of tribulations and terrors unknown till now. It was indeed a sound but seldom heard and wholly unfamiliar to those beside ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... sunlight, Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but, unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped into the imbroglio—a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate love of attention, which was, indeed, tolerably notorious; and Patricia's anger against ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... hope of getting her furniture renewed, was playing her cards to take the provincial home with her. No sheep upon the day of the Fete-Dieu ever more meekly allowed his little Saint John to lead him along than Gazonal as he followed his siren. ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... lower end is completely and its upper end partially immersed, and operated by being rotated in the opposite direction to that required for raising water. In acoustics he invented, about 1819, the improved siren which is known by his name, using it for ascertaining the number of vibrations corresponding to a sound of any particular pitch, and he also made experiments on the mechanism of voice-production. In course of an investigation in 1822-1823 on the effects of heat and pressure on certain ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... greatly excited, and for a moment believed that she had come in pursuit of him, and that on landing he might be seized by the Italian police like a common thief. But the yacht was swinging peacefully at anchor, her sailors cleaning the deck or repainting the red siren of her figurehead, as if they were expecting someone of importance. Paul had not the curiosity to ask who this personage was. He crossed the marble city, and returned by the coast railway from Genoa ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... steadily, a gloom and oppression not to be thwarted; it is silent and subtle and past defining—like shadow. The grey, heavy heave of the water; the great hull of the steamer backing into the bay; the gloom of the fog bank. A few uncertain lines, the shrill of the siren, the mist settling; I was alone. It ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... o'clock, Madame Gilbert called again upon me. When her card was brought in I trembled, and for a moment had in mind to deny myself to her. But I thrust away the cowardly thought. Be brave, said I to myself, advance boldly, attack the terrible delightful siren, say "no" to her once, and you will be saved! She entered, and though my knees shuddered as I rose to greet her, my mien was bold and warlike. She warmly squeezed my hand, and I returned the attention ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... once nude and soil-stained were clad in Frenchy boots, The once tanned face bore tintings of miscellaneous fruits; The voice that once admonished the mules to move along Was tuned to new-born music, as sweet as Siren's song! ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... frightful temptation and she was scarcely the girl to resist it long. In cold blood she might have shrunk from the siren voice which bade her release herself from all her present troubles by theft, but at this moment she was excited, worried, scarcely capable of calm thought. Here was her unexpected opportunity. It lay in her power ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... less, somehow; they seemed to have epitomized themselves in intense, frosty cold. It was just the sort of day for Peace to be declared. It would have made such a good finale. I should like to have suddenly heard an immense siren blowing. Everybody to stop and say, "What was that?" Siren blowing again: appearance of a small figure running across the frozen mud waving something. He gets closer—a telegraph boy with a wire! He ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... fortunate or disastrous! Thus minded, they could see no evil in the world,—no mischief,—no ominous crossings of Fate,—they had all earth and all heaven in each other! And the gay ship bearing them onward, danced over the smiling, singing, siren waves, as if she too had a human heart to feel and rejoice!—and in her swift course swept lightly over the very spot, now tranquil and radiant, where but a short while since, the body of Lotys had gone down, companioned by the King. Gloria leaning over the deck-rail ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... went slowly up and down, siren screaming. On every corner, in every open space, thick groups were clustered; arguing soldiers and students. Night came swiftly down, the wide-spaced street-lights flickered on, the tides of people flowed ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... just at this moment, a curious interruption, an interruption curious not only on its own account, but on account of the effect which it produced. From somewhere in the centre of the room there commenced ringing, softly at first, and afterwards with a greater volume, a gong, something like the siren of a motor-car, but much softer and more musical. Instantly a dead silence seemed to fall upon the place. Conversation was broken off, laughter was checked, even the waiters stood still in their places. The eyes of every ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have been because, while his fingers worked on, his thoughts were somewhere else, and that he saw another face as he mixed his colors, and not that of the siren before him. Or it may have been that, as he looked into the eyes of the Countess, he saw too deeply into the whirlpool of passion and pain which made up the undercurrent in this ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... into her face. If he had not been looking closely he would not have caught the swift change that shot into the siren-like play of her orbs. It was almost instantaneous. Her slow-travelling glance stopped as she saw him. He saw the quick intake of her breath, a sudden compression of her lips, the startled, searching scrutiny of a pair of eyes from which, for a ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... she sat like a siren among the rocks with the waves and seaweed snatching at her feet, and in another she crouched beneath the wheel of Herbert's touring car. All of the photographs were unprofessional and intimate, and the legends scrawled across them were ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... sought for than the gold of Golconda. We believe that Woman should associate freely with man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of her rights. She should become acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who condescended to sing the siren song of flattery. This, we think, should be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped in the guilt of contamination, which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... corned-beef hash, across shaking quagmires of veal glace, plunging into sloughs of slaw, until, haggard, weary, digestion shattered, complexion gone, he reaches the safe haven of roast beef, medium. Once there, he never again strays, although the pompadoured, white-aproned siren sing-songs in his ear the praises of Irish stew, and pork with ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... She could make caps like a Parisian milliner; she could dress her exquisitely; she could read for hours in the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of dull High Church novels. She could answer notes and sing like a siren, and she could embroider prie-dieu chairs and table-covers, and slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... There was one mouthful he only chewed fifteen times instead of the customary thirty-two. They contained all Heaven, and they contained all Hell; in them lay the glory of a God, the devilment of a Siren, and the peace of a woman . . . . And just once she looked at him during dinner—the look of a stranger—cool and self-possessed. Just casually she wondered whether it was worth while to buy money at the cost ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... lovely and romantic maidens, who sit in a bower of roses under the shadow of an umbrageous maple-tree, their arms intertwined, their eyes fixed upon a moonbeam, piping out Swedish melodies, which, to our two swains, prove seductive as the songs of a Siren. The moonbeam aforesaid is kind enough to convert into silver all the trees, bushes, leaves and twigs in the vicinity of the young ladies with the Thor-and-Odin names; whilst to complete this German ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... incredible, it was impossible. What woman would sing in a winter daybreak upon the Sunk Rocks—sing like the siren of old fable? Yet, there, quite close to him, over the quiet sea rose the song, strong, clear, and thrilling. Once it ceased, then began again in a deeper, more triumphant note, such as a Valkyrie might have sung as she led some Norn-doomed host to ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... that he has none to spare for any one else. But, Lydia, this is tedious; we shall never get through at this rate. Besides," with a mock-sentimental air, "you have not been here long enough to know the melancholy history,—to count the wrecks that are strewn along the coast, where the Siren resorts. Let me take up the list. Corning, who really loved me, (six,) and went to sea to cure the heart-ache. I heard of him in State Street a month ago,—with a blue shirt and leather belt, and chewing a piece of tobacco as large ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Dalila is wholly and simply a siren, a seductress who plays upon the known love of Samson from motives which are not disclosed. As yet one may imagine her moved by a genuine passion. She turns her lustrous black eyes upon him as she hails him a double victor over his foes and her heart, and invites him to rest ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... said. "And you mustn't go either." But she was weird. She seemed to lure me, like a strange little siren, with all a siren's witchery, though without her beauty. My voice sounded undecided, and I ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... A fog-siren somewhere on the invisible shore was sending out its unearthly blasts. Then a whistle seemed to cut the gloom right ahead, and a big black shape loomed through the murk. The Merry Seas sounded her warning, and the helm was jammed hard a-starboard. Another ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... to the Governor, who had paused beside Mistress Percy, "is not the Due Return high-pooped? Doth she not carry a blue pennant, and hath she not a gilt siren for figurehead?" ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... explain it for him. "Because writers are like Indians. The only good ones are the dead ones. And it's the same with those siren affinities of history. Annie Laurie lived to be eighty, though the ballad doesn't say so. And Lady Hamilton died poor and ugly and went around with red herrings in her pocket. And Cleopatra was really a redheaded old political schemer, and Paris got tired of Helen of Troy. Which means that ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... a river siren came moaning over the dusky roofs, and leaning back in till the ghostly curtains fell from her shoulder, she turned on the electric lamp. It was growing late. She knew there was some change in her purse, and she considered whether ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... disgust, that the transports still lay at the wharf where he had left them on his departure.[253] The muskets arrived at length, and the fleet sailed on the twenty-second of May. Three small frigates, the "Success," the "Mermaid," and the "Siren," commanded by the ex-privateersman, Captain Rous, acted as convoy; and on the twenty-sixth the whole force safely reached Annapolis. Thence after some delay they sailed up the Bay of Fundy, and at sunset on the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... which is familiar with melancholy, and gently brings on like a Siren, a shoeing-horn, or some sphinx to this irrevocable gulf, [1559]a primary cause, Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Circumstances were turning him away from his thoughtless youth. He had imagined it sinking down out of his sight into the purple sea, with the magic island in which it had danced the tarantella and heard the voice of the siren. But was it not leaving him, vanishing from him while still his feet trod the island and his eyes ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the laborer with the lifter brought it and let it down, and Murell sat down on his luggage. Tom lit a cigarette and gave it to him, and told him to remain perfectly still. In a couple of minutes, an ambulance was coming, its siren howling. ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... memento"). How kind Dati had been to him—Dati, "than whom there is not a better man, the beloved of all the sister Muses, the ornament of his country, having the reputation of being all but unique in Florence for learning in the vanished arts, siren at once in Tuscan, Latin, and Greek! ... This Dati soothed my fever-fits with the music of his liquid singing, and sat by my bed-side, and spoke words of sweetness, which inhere yet in my very marrow." And so Milton's Italian friend of friends (Vol. III. pp. 551-654 and 680-683) ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of rest. Three glorious weeks of smooth sailing over calm waters. Three weeks of warmth and sunshine by day, and of poetry and starlight by night. Three weeks of drifting in the romance which surrounds the name of that great sorceress, that wonderful siren, that consummate coquette, that most fascinating woman the world has ever known. Three weeks of steeping one's soul in the oldest, most complete and satisfactory ruins on the face of the earth. Here, in delving into the past, we would have no use for the comparative ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... in the land! Hark! Her call soars high and sweet. Hedge-rows flow'r at her command; Roses spring beneath her feet. Skies grow azure; life beats strong; Nature listens to adore; Thrilling at the siren's song, Yields her wond'rous treasured store. Precious fabrics of her loom Clothe her darling of the year; Wealth of sunshine; breath of bloom; Cloudless ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... the true way of pleasing her. The conversation then changed. He realized the hopes her expressive face had given him; yet, as he did so, new difficulties arose, and he was still forced to suspend his judgment on a girl who seemed to take delight in thwarting him, a siren with whom he grew more and more in love. After yielding to the seduction of her beauty, he was still more attracted to her mysterious soul, with a curiosity which Marie perceived and took pleasure in exciting. Their intercourse assumed, insensibly, a ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the ears. Have him in your room and have some other men in there to meet him. Take him about with you. Take him to Mory's, on a thick night there. Show him life, the way you know it. If you must, show him an occasional siren. I can say this to you, Reed, because I have taken pains to find out that your sirens are pretty decent ones, cleaner than most of them. To sum it up, let Scott Brenton see life as you are living it, not as he imagines it from the point of view of the man who never can do anything but sit back ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... I must have dozed a little, for the next thing I remember was the whoop of our siren and the engines going dead slow. As I tumbled out to go down it was three o'clock. The Third was standing by the reversing gear and I saw by the vacuum gauge that the temperature of the sea was down to forty-eight degrees. 'Fog, sir?' says the Third. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... no rank—no blood—no clime! What court poet of his day, Major Favraud, compared with Robert Burns for feeling, fire, and pathos? Who ever sung such siren strains as Moore, a simple Irishman of low degree? No Cavalier blood there, I fancy! What power, what beauty in the poems of Walter Scott! Byron was a poet in spite of his condition, not because of it. Hear Barry Cornwall—how ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... landing-stage of the Touring Club de France at Les Andelys in good time, our provisions, our gasoline and oil, our river charts, our wraps and ourselves all stowed comfortably away in the eight metres of length of our little boat. Our siren gave a hoot which startled the rooks circling about the donjon walls of Chateau Gaillard over our heads, and we passed under the brick arches of the bridge for a twelve-mile run to the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... out yon tryin' to make the Sally,' says the Cap'n. I stepped on the tread of the siren and kept her blattin' now and then and, after some minutes, we heard a splashin' alongside and there was a man ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... troops, and, crossing the pass of Tarvis, entered Germany at Villach. "We are come," he said to the inhabitants, "not as enemies, but as friends, to end a terrible war imposed by England on a ministry bought with her gold." And the populace, listening to his siren voice, believed him. All this was accomplished before the end of March; and Charles, his army reduced to less than three fourths, was resting northward on the road to Vienna, beyond the river Mur, exhausted, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Whew-ee-ee-ee-ew-ew went the siren whistle. And all the men and all the women hurried toward the factory. For that meant it was time to begin work. Each man and each woman went to his particular machine. The steam was up; the belts were moving; the wheels were whirring; the piston rods were shooting ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... glidest through the storm-tost world, And bearest Blessings of peace and rest unto the weak, Giddy and faint within its vortex whirled; O! fairest, Sweetest Pilot of the wavering soul Through the wide-yawning gulfs and shoals of crime, Whence issue siren-spells that seek To sink the wayward in their noxious slime; Emblem of Purity! That like the star of Bethlehem dost lume The wise of heart through this life's deepest gloom To hope, and joy, and blessedness, Hail to thee! Thou art the Priestess of all ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... just as it is all over the world; she is depicted as being above the waist a most lovely young woman, whilst below she is like a fish with fins and spreading tail. Both mermen and mermaids were fond, it is said, of combing their long hair, and the siren-like song of the latter was thought to be so seductive as to entice men to destruction. It was believed that beautiful mermaids fell in love with comely young men and even induced them to enter their abodes in the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... little get hold of Chopin as, to use L. Enault's expression, of the scaly back of a siren. Only after reading his letters to the few confidants to whom he freely gave his whole self do we know how little of himself he gave to the generality of his friends, whom he pays off with affectionateness and playfulness, and who, perhaps, never ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... a sudden diversion from outside the mob. Down the road from the great house, shrieking a warning, came a flying motor car. Its siren sounded quick, angry blasts, and the mob, terrified, broke and scattered to get out of the way of the car. Fred, stupefied, didn't run. He had to jump quickly to one side to get out of the car's path. Then he saw that it ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... could not be composed by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his Seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases, without reference ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... circumstances, on an American ship, we would have tied down the siren, sung the doxology, and broken everything on the bar. As it was, the Americans instinctively flocked to the smoking-room and drank to the British navy. While this ceremony was going forward, from the promenade-deck we heard tumultuous shouts ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... That word "siren" put me back on track, and I realized that the animal belonged to the order Sirenia: marine creatures that legends have turned into mermaids, half woman, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... yet, there would very likely be some swearing when the soldiers got there. In the meantime he was wet through, both with rain and perspiration. The thought of a bath and dry clothes urged him like the voice of a siren calling; and he had shown the babu all the courtesy his ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... departure from this life. It is better to be rich than to be ambitious. It is better to have at hand what you want than to work for it, and then not get it. Phyllis was scarcely an arm's length away now. I whistled as I locked up my desk, and proceeded down stairs and sang a siren song into the waxen ears of ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... can reach you Frowning o'er that dog-eared page? Yonder rushing brook can teach you More than half your Classic Age. Banish Greeks and Siren shores, Let your thoughts run ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... was obviously being stolen. He roared out at the top of his voice, and stumped over to the wall where he threw the alarm switch. Immediately, a hundred arc lights flashed on, lighting the level brighter than the noon sun, and a tremendously loud siren started wailing its warning to ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... what perils still environ[181] The happiest mortals even after dinner! A day of gold from out an age of iron Is all that Life allows the luckiest sinner; Pleasure (whene'er she sings, at least) 's a Siren, That lures, to flay alive, the young beginner; Lambro's reception at his people's banquet Was such as fire ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... drop; and the Captain must sing her one of his songs, his dear songs, and teach it to her. And when he had sung an Irish melody in his rich quavering voice, fancying it was he who was fascinating the little siren, she put her little question about Arthur Pendennis and his novel, and having got an answer, cared for nothing more, but left the Captain at the piano about to sing her another song, and the dinner-tray on the passage, and the shirts on the chair, and ran downstairs quickening ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they not have a right to laugh at us? They might imagine that we were slaves, who, coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like sheep lie asleep at noon around the well. But if they see us discoursing, and like Odysseus sailing past them, deaf to their siren voices, they may perhaps, out of respect, give us of the gifts which they receive from the gods that they may impart them ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... Valentine cried gaily. "In the wilds of South Kensington, in a tiny house, all Morris tapestry and Burne-Jones stained glass, dwells the latest siren who has been calling to our Ulysses. He is there, I suspect. Wait a moment, though. His telegram might tell us. Where was it ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... up too, boy, unless you want to become a graven image," commanded Manthis. His voice, which started at the ordinary pitch, went up like a siren at the end as the drug took effect. Dazedly Jack ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... you hide in the city's din And drown your ears with its siren songs, Some day steal in those thin, wild notes, And you leave ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... Thou sleepy-eyed Chinese—enticing siren, Pekoe! the Muse hath said in praise of thee, "That cheers but not inebriates"; and Byron Hath called thy sister "Queen of Tears", Bohea! And he, Anacreon of Rome's age of iron, Says, how untruly "Quis non potius te." While coffee, thou—bill-plastered gables say, Art like ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the Italian Commedia had not seized on all minds. It would have been an evil thing for Italian, perhaps for European, literature if the siren tales of the Decameron had not been the first to occupy the ears with the charms of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ships. The flashing lantern is superseded at night, flags and the semaphore by day, or, if these are retained, it is for services purely auxiliary. The hideous and bewildering shrieks of the steam-siren need no longer be heard in a fog, and the uncertain system of gun signals will soon become a thing of the past." The interest of the naval and military strategist in the Marconi apparatus extends far beyond its communication of intelligence. Any electrical ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... shrill, nerve-racking shriek of the fire whistle, four or five blocks away. In spite of himself, he was startled with its suddenness, and he stood tensed and waiting for the dismal hoots that would tell what ward the fire was in. One—two—three, croaked the siren like a giant hoot-owl calling in ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the affair, nor ever spoke again of Malpas and the siren who presided there. And meanwhile the autumn faded into winter, and with the coming of stormy weather Sir Oliver and Rosamund had fewer opportunities of meeting. To Godolphin Court he would not go since she did not desire it; and himself he deemed it best to remain away since otherwise he must ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... for women of my type—what may be called the intellectual siren—the lover phase is inevitable. We are goaded not only by the imperious demands of womanhood and the hope of the perfect companion, but by curiosity, love of adventure, ennui; possibly some more obscure complex—vengeance on the husband who has wrecked our first illusions—on Life itself. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... him, and once, as he faced it with an unquailing eye, it fell powerless at his feet. A demon, in the form of a woman, assailed him with the temptation which beset St. Benedict among the rocks of Subiaco; but Brbeuf signed the cross, and the infernal siren melted into air. He saw the vision of a vast and gorgeous palace; and a miraculous voice assured him that such was to be the reward of those who dwelt in savage hovels for the cause of God. Angels appeared to him; and, more than once, St. Joseph and the Virgin were visibly present before his ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... stood up successfully for its natural development at a time when the clever but less largely informed Campion and others threatened it with fantastic changes. He probably did as much as Waller to introduce polish of line into our poetry. Turn to the famous "Ulysses and the Siren," and read. Can anyone tell me of English verses that run more smoothly off the tongue, or ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... It was silently and unanimously voted that Mrs. Osbourne was a good fellow, and soon she was enjoying all the benefits of the Siron Club. When a frivolous member suggested that it be called the Siren Club he was met with an oppressive stillness ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was "ruining himself with a married woman," and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes, to warn ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the boy urged, still standing in a safe place by the doorway. "It's hot enough to melt brass in here, an' the siren's been shoutin' for half an hour! That means land—the Philippines! Perhaps you think you're lookin' for Battery Park, in little old New York! Get up an' look out of the port, over the rollin' sea, to the land of the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... application, during which he in a manner tied himself to the mast, had laid the seeds of a lurking malady in his system, and produced a severe illness in the course of the summer. Town life was not favorable to the health either of body or mind. He could not resist the siren voice of temptation, which, now that he had become a notoriety, assailed him on every side. Accordingly we find him launching away in a career of social dissipation; dining and supping out; at clubs, at routs, at theaters; he is a guest with Johnson at ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... on the languid eye Life's autumn scenes grow dim; When evening's shadows veil the sky; And pleasure's siren hymn Grows fainter on the tuneless ear, Like echoes from another sphere, Or dreams of seraphim— It were not sad to cast away This dull and ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... honoured my poor house by your presence. Mesdames, so kind of you not to forget the most sincere of your servants. Sir, it is really too good of you to neglect your important studies on my account! Countess, your siren song is generally acknowledged to be the gem of ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Euclid could exercise a siren's charm upon nearly all sorts of men. But Edward Henry knew one sort of men upon whom she could not exercise it—namely, the sort of men who are born and bred in the Five Towns. His instinctive belief in the Five Towns as the sole ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... of sparrows, the jingle of bells, the hooting of a siren, or was it my neighbor singing "A rose I gave to you"? of course it was,—the rumble of a post-office van, and the cry of children's voices, rather peevish voices, poor mites! Never mind, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... and composer, Pisani, with his sympathetic "barbiton" which moaned, groaned, growled, and laughed responsive to the feelings of its master; the description of Viola's and her father's triumph, when "The Siren," his masterpiece, is performed at the San Carlo in Naples; Glyndon's adventure at the Carnival in Naples; the death of his sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in Paris, closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and perhaps, above all, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... eyes, trying to drowse his consciousness, and exchanging it in his fitful snatches of sleep for oppressive dreams, in one of which Eileen figured as a Lorelei, combing her locks on a rock as she sang her siren song. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... market, from around a corner came a big motor car with the roar of a siren. There was Baron Ungern in the yellow silk Mongolian coat with a blue girdle. He was going very fast but recognized me at once, stopping and getting out to invite me to go with him to his yurta. The Baron lived in a small, simply arranged yurta, set up in the courtyard of a Chinese ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... Alizon Device is comely to view, no doubt, but who shall say whence her beauty is derived? Hell may have arrayed her in its fatal charms. Sin is beautiful, but all-destructive. And the time will come when you may thank me for delivering you from the snares of this seductive siren." Richard ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... shriek of a siren from the other end of the village. "Another stinking devil," they said. "Get out of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... him instead of the killers. The other car was traveling at top speed, swerving around the slower cars. Roger gained slowly. He fingered the spotlight, preparing to snap it in the driver's eyes. Taking a curve at 90, he crept up alongside the black car as he heard the siren of a patrol car behind him. Cursing, he edged over on the black car, snapped the spotlight full in ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... lives on earth. As they hurried on they urged themselves to diligence by cries of "In haste the mountains blessed Mary won!" "Caesar flew to Spain!" "Haste! Grace grows best in those who ardor feel!" As the poet meditated on their words, he lapsed into a dream in which he saw the Siren who drew brave mariners from their courses; and even as he listened to her melodious song, he beheld her exposed by a saint-like lady, Lucia, or Illuminating Grace. Day dawned, the Angel fanned the fourth ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Gathering courage from this devout act, and abandoning his useless weapon, he tiptoed to the door that led to the larger apartment, and there found his worst anticipations realised. With her back against the closed outer door stood a Siren of the Rhine, and, as if to show how futile is the support of the Evil One in a crisis, her very lips were pallid with fear and her blue eyes were wide with apprehension, as they met those of the Count von Schonburg. Her hair, the colour of ripe ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... treated him like a dog, and he could not help seeing that she adored the Gentile artist—a knowledge which almost broke his heart. But it was some satisfaction for him to note that Lambert would have nothing to do with the siren, and that she could not charm him to her feet, sang she ever so tenderly. It was an unhappy trio at ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... The monarch o'er the siren hung, And beat the measure as she sung; And, pressing closer and more near, He whispered praises in her ear. In loud applause the courtiers vied, And ladies winked and spoke aside. The witching dame to Marmion threw A glance, where seemed to reign ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... stones. Yet, Pharisaical snob, he did most violently resent that she should be opposite his wife in The Sunday Picture.... Eve! Eve! A few short weeks ago, and you made a mock of women who let themselves get into The Daily Picture. And now you are there yourself! (But so, and often, was the siren Lady Massulam! A ticklish thing, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not the things which so nearly concern their ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... until they had reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and shading his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused himself, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... was a lion, No, years ago, night was a python Weaving designs against space With undulations of his being— Night was a siren once. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... her in other scenes as a duellist, for instance, because forsooth she can fence. As a child of the ocean, half fish, half woman, she is indeed convincing. Such mermaids as this have haunted sailors, and lured them on the rocks to their doom, from the day the siren sang till the hour the Lorelei sang no more. The scene with the baby mermaid, when she swims with the pretty creature on her back, is irresistible. Why are our managers so mechanical? Why do they flatten out at the moment the fancy of the tiniest reader of fairy-tales begins to be alive? ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... wounded soldier and walked out. I barely reached Miasnitskaya Street before an armored car full of working men and soldiers passed by at about fifty miles an hour. Half a dozen bad faces looked at me. I decided to continue calmly on my way, but I heard the car coming back very soon sounding its siren. It stopped near me. "Come in, cavalry man, there is a seat for one. They found somebody in ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Girl, thou camest for other things! Thou lovedst his voice? Siren! what was the witchery of thine own? He deftly made up the packet, and placed it in the little hand. She paid for her small purchase, and with a farewell glance of her lustrous eyes, she left him. She passed slowly through the portal, and in a moment was lost in the crowd. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was in a state of ecstasy. He hardly knew whether he trod on air or no. No siren of old Greek fable had ever lured mortal more under her spell than this strange foreign woman thing—Queen or Princess or what you will. Nothing else in the world was of any consequence to him—and it was all the more remarkable because ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... of Siren tears, Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win! What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! How ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... see it again," said I, pouring out what remained of our bottle of claret; "the wine is capital, and so shall our toast be—'To your fireside, my good friend.' And now we shall go beg a Scots song without foreign graces from my little siren, Miss Katie." ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... names of the three Sirens were taken from the triple pleasure of the senses, wine, love, and music, which are the three most powerful means of seducing mankind; and hence so many exhortations to avoid the Sirens' fatal song; and probably it was hence that the Greeks obtained their etymology of Siren from a Greek word signifying a chain, as if there were no getting free from ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... than before. Give me rugged toils, fierce disputation, wrangling controversy, harassing research,—give me anything that calls forth the energies of the mind; but for Heaven's sake shield me from those calms, those tranquil slumberings, those enervating triflings, those siren blandishments, that I have for some time indulged in, which lull the mind into complete inaction, which benumb its powers, and cost it such painful and humiliating struggles to ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations. At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren was singing a song which Simon did not listen to. The floor of the auditorium was filled with chairs and tables in disorderly array, the occupants of which seemed to be paying more attention to their liquor and their cards than to the cracked voice of the songstress. There was a rattling of glasses, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... element was melancholy, sighed, "I've been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough! The lookout saw a siren and the Infanta Isabella was dashed on the rocks and something ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... insect has a voice, or rather utters a sound which, so far as it resembles any other animal sound, at the beginning remotely suggests batrachian affinities. The locomotive-whistle part of the utterance, however, resembles nothing so much as a small steam siren; when first heard it seems impossible that it can be produced by ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... but not for long. Louder and clearer came the frequent long-drawn wails of the steam fog-horn, until finally it seemed evident they were almost exactly above the lightship that, as Tom knew, was anchored on the shoals to warn mariners of their danger by means of a far-reaching lamp and the powerful siren's ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... cellars, and realized that into such places those they loved best were being landed, through the allurements of the brilliantly lighted drug-store, the fascinating billiard table, or the enticing beer gardens, with their siren attractions. A crowded house at night, to hear the report of the day's work, betrayed the rapidly increasing ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in a while the nose of a steel-gray ship, small or large, poked through the mist, and her growling siren warned the smaller craft to ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... murmur swelled from the crowd and the red police roused from their lethargy. The mounting scream of a siren echoed in the vaulted recesses above and re-echoed from the surrounding ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... It languished on the night with an o'ermastering appeal, sweet inexpressibly and melting, the air unknown to one listener at least, but by him enviously confessed a very siren spell. He looked at Olivia, and saw that she intended ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Now, in that silence suddenly I felt you! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to die so if you did love me! It brought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the drowsiness that was taking away my pain. I had begun to lean on it as a comfortable breast. I woke up and tore myself away from that siren sleep. It was my darling,—her love that saved me. Without that thought of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you thinking that brought you ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the East the ominous cry That tells a greedy foe draws nigh— The vulture, thirsting for the strife. Hear in the west the serpent's hiss Whose siren-fangs are set for this, To poison all your virtuous life. Near is the vulture's swoop; The serpent coils to stoop For the stroke; Then watch and pray Until the day— Your swords be sharpened for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... vengeance, smote me sore, My Siren called me from no classic shore; It was no Girton trumpet that laid low The walls of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... is assumed to be proper for gradation also; and a very flattering assumption it is, promising a perfectly homogeneous system of weights, measures, coins, and numbers, than which nothing can be more desirable; but, siren-like, it draws the mind away from a proper investigation of the subject, and the basic qualities of numbers, being unquestioned, remain unknown. When the natural order is adopted, and the base of gradation is ascertained by its adaptation to things, and the base of numeration by its agreement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... has given us but one idea of the mistress, the subtle, calculating siren who delights to prey on the souls of men. The journalism and the moral pamphleteering of the time seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a censorship of life had been established ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... about Madame Catalani. Being at a large party in Vienna, where Goethe was present, she was much surprised at the great respect with which that illustrious man was treated. On inquiring his name, she was informed it was the celebrated Goethe. "Celebrated!" said the siren; "what music did he ever compose? Why, I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... great source to which you must have recourse for the knowledge of the things you should know. Now you will find that there is hardly a single page of those sacred writings in which there is not a malediction pronounced against the world, and a warning for you to avoid its siren charms. You will find in the gospel according to St. John its true character described by Jesus Christ Himself, who, being the Incarnate Wisdom, could not have any other than the most perfect idea of things according to their ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... And damn that roof! Or was it the floor? It certainly had been under the chin that time. Got to get up—and it didn't seem possible—didn't seem as if he could. Was that English holding him? Round was over? "Pardon me. Didn't hear the bell. They'd ought to have a siren!" ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... word stirred the girl's heart like a message and blessing from heaven, like the sweetest harmony of the siren's song, like the word of acquittal from a judge's lips when the verdict is life or death, and her lips were already parted to say 'Publius' in a tone no less deep and heartfelt-but, with all the force of her soul, she restrained herself, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fair arms of the siren Summer Encircle the earth in their languorous fold. Will vast, deep oceans of sweet emotions Surge through my veins as they surged of old? Canst thou bring back from a day long vanished The leaping pulse and the boundless aim? I will pay thee ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sitteth in the high places of the city, and saith, Whoso is simple let him turn in hither.' And foolish men go after her, and—'know not that her guests are in the depth of hell.' Ah! my brother! beware of that siren voice that draws you away from all the sweet and simple and pure food which Wisdom spreads upon her table, to tempt the beast that is in you with the words, 'Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.' Beware of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... magenta-hued liquid. "It has lost its luster, like a woman's eyes when she has passed the meridian. Good wine, like a woman, has its life. First, sweetly innocent, delicately palatable, its blush like a maiden of sixteen; then glowing with a riper development, more passionate in hue, a siren vintage; finally, thin, waning and watery, with only memories of the deeper, rosy-hued days. Now here, my good, but muddled friend, is your youthful maiden!" Holding toward the lamp a glass, clear ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... sing; or that it is a pain To know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea, The miles profound of solid green, and be With loath'd cold fishes, far from man—or what;— I know the sadness but the cause know not. Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintively A piteous Siren sweetness on the sea, Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell, Or stretch'd chords tuneable on turtle's shell; Only with utterance of sweet breath they sung An antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue. Now melting ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... Lydia, this is tedious; we shall never get through at this rate. Besides," with a mock-sentimental air, "you have not been here long enough to know the melancholy history,—to count the wrecks that are strewn along the coast, where the Siren resorts. Let me take up the list. Corning, who really loved me, (six,) and went to sea to cure the heart-ache. I heard of him in State Street a month ago,—with a blue shirt and leather belt, and chewing a piece of tobacco as large as his thumb. He ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... and fell likewise a kerchief white; But that no doubt was accident, for when She sought her couch she deemed her conduct quite Beyond the reach of scandalous commenter,— Washing her hands of either gallant wight, Knowing the moralist might compliment her,— Thus voicing Siren with the words ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... lips, the delicate nostrils and beautifully moulded chin. Angel or devil? queries the beholder. Sometimes he is constrained to think that the possessor of such a face has the mingled souls of saint and siren. The light undertone of melancholy which pervades gypsy beauty, gypsy music, gypsy manners, has an extremely remarkable fascination for all who perceive it. Even when it is almost buried beneath ignorance and animal craft, it is still to be found in the gypsy nature after diligent search. This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... wished Jenny out of the way, and hinted as much, she never meant actual murder; while his, again, was the old Barnwell charge, that his better nature had been corrupted by the woman, and that he did it at her suggestion, and under the influence of her siren power. They thus got gradually into that state of feeling by which the runaway convicts from a penal settlement were actuated, when, toiling away through endless brakes and swamps where neither meat nor drink could be procured, they were so maddened by hunger, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... adventure occurred at the Opera in November, 1844. The Queen went, not in State, or even semi-state, but privately, to hear Auber's opera of "The Siren," when Mr. Bunn, the lessee, was found to have made known without authority her Majesty's intention. The result was a great house, but some inconvenience to the first lady in the land. The Queen was called for, but declined to come forward, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... now came the message: "S-W-A. All trading posts, mines and colonies are warned to prepare for possible attack. The Earth Government has just announced the receipt of an ultimatum from—" A raucous howl cut across the message and drowned it out. The siren blast howled on and on, mocking Jim's straining ears. "Well I'll be—Interference! Deliberate blanketing! The rats! The—" He blazed into a torrent of profanity whose imaginativeness was matched only ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... "You beautiful siren!" he said. "You are coaxing me. How you know how to use your charms and your powers, and what man ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... 'Careful; Emden near.' The work of destruction went smoothly. The wireless operators said: 'Thank God. It's been like being under arrest day and night lately.' Presently the Emden signaled us, 'Hurry up.' I packed up, but simultaneously the Emden's siren wailed. I hurried to the bridge and saw the flag 'Anna' go up. That meant 'Weigh anchor.' We ran like mad to our boat, but already the Emden's pennant was up, the battle flag was raised, and they began to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... all, man, don't blow your horn like that!" roared Windomshire at last, harassed and full of dread. Joe, in his abstraction, was sounding his siren ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... Del's siren tones, Frona's were purest silver as they rippled down-island through the trees. "Oyez! Oyez! Open water! Open water! And wait a ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... footfall of Pringle ceased. The house was silent; the city had become so. An occasional Madison Avenue car could be heard ringing along the cold rails, or rhythmically bounding down hill on a flat wheel. Once some distance away came the long, continuous complaint of the siren of a fire-engine and the bells and gongs of its comrades; and then a young man went past, whistling with the purest accuracy of time and tune the air to which he had ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... of them. He knew that he must become a prey, but was there any choice left to him as to which siren should have him? He had been quite aware in his more gallant days, before he had been knocked about on that Charybdis rock, that he might sip, and taste, and choose between the sweets. He had come to think lately that the younger young lady was the sweeter. Eight years ago indeed ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... enjoy an invention in the form of a machine that renders music when acted upon by air, and, at certain times, also by water. It is inspiring to listen to these Siren strains as the music city passes ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... nought within, They are but empty cells for pride; He who the Siren's hair would win Is ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... all right. She trains them front row eyes of hers on him, opens up with a few lines of lively chatter, and inside of half an hour she has him sittin' picturesque at her feet, callin' him Hermes of the Lobster Pots, and otherwise workin' the siren spell. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... "I have not forgotten, as you, Rosarita, the day when I first saw you in the forest. The twilight was so sombre I could scarce make out your form, which appeared like the graceful shadow of some siren of the woods. Your voice I could hear, and there was something in it that charmed my soul—something that I had never heard till ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... a grown-up strand Fish-wife siren, full of lure, Snaring with devices sure Lads who murdered on the sand. But on most days just a child Dimpled as no grown-folk are, Cold of kiss as some north star, Violet from the valleys wild. Snared as innocence must be, Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead— At the end ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... over to the window, her eyes wide with horror. "Billie, that's the signal to the life-savers. And there goes the siren," she groaned, clapping her hands over her ears as the moan of the siren rose wailingly into the ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... on to things unspeakable. It had clouded his brain, fired his blood to ugly resolve, blinded every finer instinct with its turbulent call, until the siren who beckons men onward through the marshland of passion had flung the gift at his feet in the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... firma when the Scheldt emptied itself into the Meuse? But, even leaving its origin out of the question, in what other country in the world do things happen as they happen in Zealand? In what other country do the fishermen catch in their nets a siren whose husband, after vain prayers to have her restored, in vengeance throws up a handful of sand, prophesying that it will bury the gates of the town—and lo his prophecy is fulfilled? In what other country do the souls of those lost at sea come as they come to Walcheren, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... not where those siren lips learned their unworthy skill, Nor reck of how shame's black eclipse obscured her purer will. You think not whence fair thoughts like flowers gave room to passions low; You know not of her girlhood's hours; you do ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... One mad May-dawn, three hundred years ago, When out of the woods we came with hawthorn boughs And found the doors locked, as they seemed to-night. Three hundred years ago—nay, Time was dead! No need to scan the sign-board any more Where that white-breasted siren of the sea Curled her moon-silvered tail among such rocks As never in the merriest seaman's tale Broke the blue-bliss of fabulous lagoons Beyond ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... accents of their worship. "Ye sons of women, such as ye are now, such once were we. Through many scenes of trial, through heroic constancy, and ever-during patience, have we attained to this bright eminence. Large and mysterious are the paths of heaven, just and immaculate his ways. If ye listen to the siren voice of pleasure, if upon the neck of heedless youth you throw the reins, that base and earth-born clay which now you wear, shall assume despotic empire. And when you quit the present narrow scene, ye shall ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... was jerked from him as he was snapped back into his seat. Regardless of admonitory shouts from patrolmen, the French car sang its growing song, while truck-drivers bellowed curses and pedestrians fled from crossings at the scream of its siren. A cross-town car blocked them, and the brakes screeched in agony, while Doctor Suydam was well-nigh catapulted into the street; then they were under way again, with the car leaping from speed to speed. It was ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Heaven, whom not the languid songs Of Luxury, the siren! nor the bribes Of sordid Wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils Of pageant Honour, can seduce to leave Those ever-blooming sweets which, from the store Of Nature, fair Imagination culls To charm th' enlivened soul! What though not all Of mortal offspring can attain the heights Of envied life, though ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... reductio ad absurdum. The subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... feeding, till he was well-nigh beside himself. Presently, out comes Moll from her state room, all glowing with exercise, flushed with pleasure, a rich colour in her cheek, and wild fire in her eyes, looking more witching than any siren. Swiftly she crosses the hall, and runs up the stairs to gain her chamber and reclothe herself, but half way up Dawson stops her, and clasping her about, cries hoarsely ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... us to endorse or condemn Olympia. We know that she gives the most delicious little suppers in the world, sings like a siren, smiles like an angel, and gets more and more fascinating as she grows older, as fruit ripens with age. No one ever thinks of asking her how old she is, or where she was born. It is enough that her beauty is in its summer, her voice perfect, and ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... scene before us Dalila is wholly and simply a siren, a seductress who plays upon the known love of Samson from motives which are not disclosed. As yet one may imagine her moved by a genuine passion. She turns her lustrous black eyes upon him as she hails him a double victor over his foes and her heart, and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... by an outrageous uproar, the grisly scream of a siren and the cannonade of a powerful exhaust, as a great white touring-car swung round us from behind at a speed that sickened me to see, and, snorting thunder, passed us "as if we had been ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... you if I had been wounded under your eyes—that duel, for a quarrel at play, in which my second unfortunately killed that young Frenchman, the Viscount St. Remy. Apropos, do you know what has become of that dangerous siren St. Remy brought to Oppenfeld, and whose name was, I think, Cecily David? You will smile with pity, my friend, to see me wander thus among these vague remembrances of the past, instead of proceeding to the grave confessions which I have announced to you; it is because, in spite of myself, I recoil ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... of James I. and the siren or mermaid of Lady Frazer, who is said to have worked her own golden hair in the heart of a Tudor rose on a ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... wall—the side where the nursery was. It was a very strange sound, indeed—most odd, and unlike any other sounds the children had ever heard. At least, they had heard sounds as much like it as a toy engine's whistle is like a steam siren's. ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... in the twilight does sometimes appear A nymph, a goddess, or a fairy queen, And though no siren but a sprite this were Yet by her beauty seemed it she had been One of those sisters false which haunted near The Tyrrhene shores and kept those waters sheen, Like theirs her face, her voice was, and her sound, And ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... day, having chanced to glance out of the window and down the harbor in the direction of Cottage Point, and having clapped eyes on a sight that pinched and shook the very heart of her, she was changed in a twinkling into the Siren of ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... basely deserted Ignatius to catch on the back of a buggy that came along the river road, leaving his unhappy friend clad in one small shirt, vainly imploring him to return, Ignatius could not go home, for his mother would know that he had again yielded to the siren's voice; so it was to the Barner back door that he turned his guilty steps. Miss Barner was talking to a patient in the office when she heard a small voice at the kitchen door full ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... O siren of tresses peroxide, And heart that is hard as a flint, Blue orbs of complacency ox-eyed, That light at the mark of the mint, Ears only for jingle of joybells, A conscience as light as a cork— You are wedded to follies and foibles, My ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... chimed sweetly over the waters as we left her, bidding us a tender farewell, almost reproachful that we could leave her so soon. Siren-like, she would fain entice us to remain with her, but the old charm-power has departed with her past glory; and we echoed Hervey's beautiful lament as we watched her domes and minarets disappear slowly one by one ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... sea-child, in her coral bower, Decked with the rare, rich treasures of the deep; Mild as the spirit of the dream whose power Bears back the infant's soul to heaven, in sleep Brightens the hues of summer's first-born flower Pure as the tears repentant mourners weep O'er deeds to which the siren, Sin, beguiled,— Art thou, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... do not think that this—this—shall we call it glamour, John?—this glamour, of the imagination and the senses, will overcome you in any detrimental way. I cannot picture you as the victim of a 'society' siren!" ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... — N. sea, ocean, main, deep, brine, salt water, waves, billows, high seas, offing, great waters, watery waste, vasty deep; wave, tide, &c (water in motion) 348. hydrography, hydrographer; Neptune, Poseidon, Thetis, Triton, Naiad, Nereid; sea nymph, Siren; trident, dolphin. Adj. oceanic; marine, maritime; pelagic, pelagian; seagoing; hydrographic; bathybic^, cotidal^. Adv. at ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... unromantic garment known as the business suit. The winding horn is become a goblet, and its notes are the tinkle of ice against glass. The baying of hounds has harshened to the squawk of the motor siren. The fresh-plowed field is a blue print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper. All the ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... her thoughts; for while she herself, in the depths of her immature, unsoftened heart, was given altogether to man-like ambition and the desire of power, the eyes were by turns bold, inviting, fiery, melting, and artful, like the eyes of a rapacious siren. And artful, in a sense, she was. Chafing that she was not a man, and could not shine by action, she had, conceived a woman's part, of answerable domination; she sought to subjugate for by-ends, to rain influence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lady living in this place That wears the radiant name of Victory; And we that love would bid her wingless be, Like the Athenian image, lest her grace, Lifting a siren's-tinted pinions, trace Its glittering course across the Tyrrhene sea To some more favored Cyprian sanctuary, Leaving us lonely, longing for her face. O daughter of the gods, though lovelier lands, If such there ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... granted to the daughter of the merchant, he could not refuse to the daughter of the court tailor, more particularly when the latter, by her own gifts and talents, had opened the doors of the palace for herself; when by the power of her siren voice she had made the barriers tremble and fall which separated the tailor's daughter from the court circle. If the lovely Anna became a celebrated singer, if she succeeded in winning the applause of the king, she would be ennobled; and no one ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... customed fetters fall; The chains of drudgery release; Set limits fade; horizons cease For you who hear the call No trumpet note—no roll of drums, But quiet, sure and sweet— The self-same voice that summoned Drake, The whisper for whose siren sake They manned the Devon fleet, More lawless than the gray gull's wait, More boundless than the sea, More subtle than ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... barbaric period never died. They grew up, instead, and proved serviceable friends. Fishing and hunting are now the high-lights of vacation time. The crude call of the weird and the inexplicable has modulated into a siren note from the forgotten psychic continents which we Western peoples have only just discovered and begun to explore. As for the buried treasure craze—why, my life-work practically amounts to a daily search for hidden valuables in the cellars and attics, the chimney-pieces and desert ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... time to open the big gates without and light the candles within under their red shades glowing over the mass of roses still wet from the garden, before I heard the devilish wail of a siren beyond the wall; then a sudden flash of white light from two search-lights illumined the courtyard, and with a wrenching growl Madame Alice de Breville's automobile whined up to my door. The next instant the tip of a little patent-leather slipper, followed by the trimmest of silken ankles ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... home life. They did not dream that 'Frisco Kid ever looked up at them from the cockpit of the Dazzler and in turn envied them just those things which sometimes were the most distasteful to them and from which they suffered to repletion. Just as the romance of adventure sang its siren song in their ears and whispered vague messages of strange lands and lusty deeds, so the delicious mysteries of home enticed 'Frisco Kid's roving fancies, and his brightest day-dreams were of the thing's he knew not—brothers, sisters, a ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and to listen to the song of the siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men engaged in the great and arduous struggle for 5 liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... listen.... During such singing the fire blazes up. The walls are rich in art. My rod is new and trig. There is work, but there is no worry.... I am rich, rich! I have the Singing Mouse. And so strange, so wondrous, so real are the things it sings; so bewitching is the song, so sweeter than that of any siren's; so broad and fine are the countries; so strong and true are the friendships; so brave and kind are the men I meet—so beautiful the whole world of the Singing Mouse, that when it is over, and in a chill I start up, ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... become intolerably hot. As is the way with the Siren city when June is half-way through, the asphalt pavements radiated heat; the air was heavy, laden with strange, unpleasing odours; and even the trees, which form such delicious oases of greenery in the older quarters of the town were powdered with ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... and thoughtless revels Fill up now each misspent night— 'Tis the reign of pride and folly, The Carnival is at its height. Every thought for siren pleasure, And its sinful, feverish mirth; Who can find one moment's leisure For aught else ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... if he was likely enough to beat her when they got home. But she hands up an ivory bowl for contributions amongst the young dandies on the roof of a neighbouring coach, who have been listening open-mouthed to the siren, and shillings and half-crowns, and a bit of gold from the one last out of the Bench, pour into it; and she moves off, to make way for three French glee-maidens with a monkey and a tambourine, and the swells return ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... What! that woman! The siren, the apparition, the lady in the visionary box, the light in the darkness! It was she! Yes; it ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Where self, for England's sake, was self-effaced, In silence reining-in his soul On the strait difficult line by wisdom traced, 'Twixt gulf and siren, avalanche and ravine, Guarding the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... sigh can soothe, And sweetest sounds may jar? Those winged words my thoughts had sent A thousand leagues afar. I listened to the thrilling strain, Unbidden tears would start, The sound fell lightly on the ear, But heavy on the heart. The low breath of the summer wind Seemed but the siren's voice, In vain I chid my coward fears, And struggled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... sweetness laps my sense, The strong desire of more that in me yearns, Restrain my spirit in its parting hence. Thus at her will I live; thus winds and turns The yarn of life which to my lot is given, Earth's single siren, sent ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... before your eyes as a bit of the drapery that goes to the ball of life. But when dawn almost comes and the ball is over, you mustn't expect the paper roses to smell. This mystifies you a little, for you are a plain, downright siren. Your lovers' songs have been in simple measures. Well, the moral is this: take my love-letters as real (in their way) as the play, or rather, the opera; infinitely true for the moment, unreal for the hour, eternal as the dead passions of the ages. Further, it ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... calculations upon eastern distances, or eastern areas. For, even after he has passed the wilderness of Arizona and the California frontier, he discovers that the Eldorado of his dreams lies on the other side of a desert, two hundred miles in breadth, beyond whose desolate expanse the siren of the Sunset Sea still beckons him and whispers: "This is the final barrier; cross it, and I am yours." The transit is not difficult, however, in days like these; for the whole distance from Chicago to the ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... place for children? A little flourish of imagination, and we see them,—Silas, who beats the drum, and Columbia, who carries the flag, manifest leaders of the wild little company, mermen and mermaids all; and the music is fit for the Siren, and the beauty would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... sad over his defeat as a dramatist. "Is it not a pity," he asks, "that the sweet human voice which was given man to speak with, to sing with, to whisper tones of love in, to express compliance, to convey a favour, or to grant a suit—that voice, which in a Siddons or a Braham rouses us, in a siren Catalani charms and captivates us—that the musical expressive human voice should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese and irrational venomous snakes? I never shall forget the sounds on my night!" He urges that the venial mistake of the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the noise sounded louder than ever. A splash of red appeared at the turn of the road, a siren whistle blew, and a well-known, crimson motor car rapidly approached her gate. Mrs. Thurston rubbed her eyes. It was the Stuart's automobile and no other. Sitting enthroned in it was that gentleman and his daughter. And, could it be possible? Barbara ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... died and Shalmaneser IV succeeded him on the throne in Nineveh, Hoshea gave ear to the siren voice of Egypt, ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... clothes and the individuality. But there's a simplicity about her, a directness, that comes from years of association with things I haven't had. Before I came here, I thought money could buy anything. But it can't. Mary Ballard couldn't be anything else. And I—I can be anything from a siren to a soubrette, but I can't be a lady—not the kind that you are—and ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... with a beaming countenance, convinced that he was the only man in the world to that shameless slut, as treacherous, but as lovely and as engaging as a siren. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... But before they stated their objections and preferences, the Bikari people called to us in a loud voice to come ashore, threatening us with the vengeance of the great Wami if we did not halt. As the voices were anything but siren-like, we obstinately refused to accede to the request. Finding threats of no avail, they had recourse to stones, and, accordingly, flung them at us in a most hearty manner. As one came within a foot ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... mist. Out of this murk, across this oily sweep, Might lost armadas grandly sail to shore; Jason might oar on Argo, or the stern Surge-wanderer from Ithaca's bleak isle Break on the sight, or Viking prows appear, And still not waken wonder. Aye, the sound Of siren singing might drift o'er the main, And yet not fall upon amazed ears! The soul is ripe for marvels. O great deep, Give up your host of stately presences, Adventurers and sea-heroes of old time, And let them pass before us down the day In proud ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... us to Reinhardt's studio in a German residence. A year has gone by since he wooed and won his bride; alas, he is already tired of her. The siren Maria countess of Matran, with whom he was enamoured years ago and whose portrait he has just finished, has ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... now intend to change my ways"— Thus Juan said—"No more for me A round on round of idle days 'Mid soul-debasing company. I've pleasure woo'd from year to year As by a siren onward lured, At last of roystering, once held dear, I'm as a man of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... agony before the little dog scrambled to his feet and gave further employment to his voice in a frenzy of profanity. At the same time the subterranean diapason of a demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal attack upon the hobgoblin—and ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... bumping his head against a wall like a hooded rook as he was. So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature, even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the archbishop with his head full of diabolical ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... he led me—for not a word was I capable of uttering; and just before we reached that artery of Chinatown, from down-river came the deep, sustained note of a steamer's siren, the warning of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... seiren, a siren—the generic name of the Mud-eel or Siren lacertina). A genus of Dipnoous fishes, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... cars, but she remembered that Francis' room looked out on a part of the garden and that the drive was not visible from the windows. Therefore, although it was possible that he might have heard the sound of a horn or siren, he would never actually have seen a car. Electric light was installed in his room. She had no idea when this had been done, but he must be ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... which plainly said it was about time, and reached over to press down the emergency key. He held it down. Eleven light-years away, if one had to depend upon impossibly slow three-dimensional space time, a siren which could be heard for ten miles in Eden's atmosphere ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... out; again and again. "Hurrah for the union! Hurrah for the United Mine-Workers!" A big American miner, Ferris, was in the front of the throng, and his voice beat in Hal's ears like a steam-siren. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... suggestion to passengers that it was strange the whole train did not empty itself upon the platform. So far from this being the case, however, not more than six men and half as many women, one with two sleepy, whimpering children, obeyed the siren call. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in the East the ominous cry That tells a greedy foe draws nigh— The vulture, thirsting for the strife. Hear in the west the serpent's hiss Whose siren-fangs are set for this, To poison all your virtuous life. Near is the vulture's swoop; The serpent coils to stoop For the stroke; Then watch and pray Until the day— Your swords ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... house was silent; the city had become so. An occasional Madison Avenue car could be heard ringing along the cold rails, or rhythmically bounding down hill on a flat wheel. Once some distance away came the long, continuous complaint of the siren of a fire-engine and the bells and gongs of its comrades; and then a young man went past, whistling with the purest accuracy of time and tune the air to which he ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... is almost forced to believe that Savage's well-wisher, the writer of the little satire, "To the Ingenious Riverius, on his writing in the Praise of Friendship," was none other than Eliza herself.[14] Exactly what injury she had sustained from him and his Siren is not known, but although he still stood high in her esteem, she was implacable against that "worse than Lais" whom in a long and pungent description she satirized under the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... bad habit is formed. "It won't hurt me" is whispered by the siren voice of temptation, because the consequences of the transgression are not felt or seen immediately, a second offence seems less serious than the first. Soon habit steps in and stamps the process on mind and body and before the author is conscious of it, a serious appetite ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... eagle, and the burning faggot. But all little old books marked with spheres are not Elzevirs, as many booksellers suppose. Other printers also stole the designs for the tops of chapters, the Aegipan, the Siren, the head of Medusa, the crossed sceptres, and the rest. In some cases the Elzevirs published their books, especially when they were piracies, anonymously. When they published for the Jansenists, they allowed their clients to ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... and its doings seemed centuries ago. She still heard Emile's voice as if from a distance, telling the story of the lovely siren woman who had been strangled, and then the room rocked, and the ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... our roads with step So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse. But warmer climes Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where The Siren waits thee, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... inches from his head. Her, sleeve touched him. He turned more wooden under the spell of the orris root and violet. Her courtiers thought it all a graceful pose, but Coleman believed otherwise. Her voice sank to the liquid, siren note of a succubus. " Do you know what kind of a man I like? Really like? I like a man that a woman can't bend in a thousand different ways in five minutes. He must have some steel in him. He obliges me to admire him the most when he remains stolid; stolid to me lures. Ah, that is the only kind ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... such as ye are now, such once were we. Through many scenes of trial, through heroic constancy, and ever-during patience, have we attained to this bright eminence. Large and mysterious are the paths of heaven, just and immaculate his ways. If ye listen to the siren voice of pleasure, if upon the neck of heedless youth you throw the reins, that base and earth-born clay which now you wear, shall assume despotic empire. And when you quit the present narrow scene, ye shall wear a form congenial to your vices. The fierce and lawless shall assume the figure ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... smocks and sandals. The men are long-haired softies. They all talk kinda foolish." Kitty despaired of making the situation clear to him and resorted to the personal. "Can't you come down to-night to The Purple Pup or The Sea Siren and see for yourself?" she proposed, and gave him directions for finding ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... that she had come in pursuit of him, and that on landing he might be seized by the Italian police like a common thief. But the yacht was swinging peacefully at anchor, her sailors cleaning the deck or repainting the red siren of her figurehead, as if they were expecting someone of importance. Paul had not the curiosity to ask who this personage was. He crossed the marble city, and returned by the coast railway from Genoa to Marseilles—that marvellous route where one passes suddenly from the blackness of the tunnels ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... mournful in effect as some eighteenth-century Dutch picture. A linnet twittered, flitting from perch to perch of its cage at an open window. A boy, clad in an old mouse-brown corduroy coat, passed slowly, crying "Sweet lavender" shrilly yet in a plaintive cadence. Occasionally the siren of a steam-tug tore the air with a long-drawn wavering scream. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... becomes cognizant that his wife is an unscrupulous adventuress, who has deceived him from the day of their first meeting. The rapid and mortal duel between them from that moment—she with her magnificent lies and siren charm, winding about him like a serpent, trying to recover her lost ground; he with his man's agony and scorn and lost faith, trying to tear her from his heart. That scene I always thought was a crackerjack. When Capt. Marchmont discovers ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... But no! The siren had been unfortunate in her choice of a ballad. For, at the mere name of Mam'zelle Zizi, Frantz was suddenly transported to a gloomy chamber in the Marais, a long way from Sidonie's salon, and his compassionate heart evoked the image of little Desiree Delobelle, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Tungku Indut's house, the shrill screams of defiance from three hundred dainty throats pierced my ear-drums like a steam siren, and they were all so marvellously noisy, brave, and defiant, that, in spite of an occasional girlish giggle from one or another of them, I began to fear there would be bad trouble before the dawn. So wild was their excitement, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... illustration is taken from Zarate's "Peru," and depicts "the god of a degrading worship." He is very much like the traditional conception of the European devil-horns, pointed ears, wings, and poker. Compare this last figure, from Peru, with the representation on page 430 of a Greek siren, one of those cruel monsters who, according to Grecian mythology, sat in the midst of bones and blood, tempting men to ruin by their sweet music. Here we have the same bird-like legs and claws as ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... is familiar with melancholy, and gently brings on like a Siren, a shoeing-horn, or some sphinx to this irrevocable gulf, [1559]a primary cause, Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... that melody Spell-bound holds th' entranc'ed soul. Ah! from such divine control Who his fettered soul could free?— Human Siren, leave me, go! Too well I feel its fatal power. I faint before it like a flower By warm-winds wooed in noontide's glow. The close-pressed lips the mouth can lock, And so repress the vain reply, The ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... discontented. As for Kara, he had long since loved Chaldea, who treated him like a dog, and he could not help seeing that she adored the Gentile artist—a knowledge which almost broke his heart. But it was some satisfaction for him to note that Lambert would have nothing to do with the siren, and that she could not charm him to her feet, sang she ever so tenderly. It was an unhappy ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... exclaimed, "I sure ought to know the sound of that old siren. That's my wheel; and who do you think's on it but our ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... the wind whistling among cordage of sea-going ships, the shouts of men at work, the river slapping against piles and the iron sides of vessels, the whirr and clank of steam-cranes. Wreaths of brown smoke blew gustily in the sunlight; a train boomed across the latticed bridge; and the hoot of a siren tore all other sounds in shreds. Creakily our ship was warped in by straining cables, and I said to myself, "The overture's finished. The play is ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... position, and turned her head, looking towards the calm and untroubled water that stretched between her and Naples. For the voice that sang of the beautiful city was coming towards her from the beautiful city, hymning the siren it had left perhaps but ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... that silence suddenly I felt you! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to die so if you did love me! It brought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the drowsiness that was taking away my pain. I had begun to lean on it as a comfortable breast. I woke up and tore myself away from that siren sleep. It was my darling,—her love that saved me. Without that thought of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you thinking that brought you so ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the obscure race and country of the heavenly siren? Ithaca is his country, Telemachus his father, and Epicasta, Nestor's daughter, the mother that bare him, a man by far the wisest of mortal kind.' This we must most implicitly believe, the inquirer and the answerer being who they ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... lived and died under the influence of the unprincipled woman who then governed him with the arts of a siren. His nature was noble, and his moral impressions, even, were not bad; but his simple and confiding nature was not equal to contending with one as practised in profligacy as the woman into whose arms he was thrown, at a most evil moment ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him also, and that'll put an end to his enmity. He's a fine fellow. He's on my track, but you'll see how enchantment will put him off it. Now, don't grumble. I'll be as tender and sweet with the boy as a siren. You will come in only when I feel that the spell doesn't work. Rely on me ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle. As she unstoppered it she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air and tinkled its siren song. It was as if an idle hand played.... Bat spat almost noiselessly. But he did not retreat. Bat had ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... in league with Vice and Shame, And lending all her light to gild a lie; Crowning with laureate-wreaths an impious name, Or lulling us with Siren minstrelsy To false repose when peril most is nigh; Decking things vile or vain with colours rare, Till what is false and foul seems ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... zigzags (I need scarcely say) are short-cuts or slides made by the brown-footed children, who plunge down almost as steeply and quickly as the stream itself when the fortnightly fruit-steamer blows her siren ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she continued calmly. "You need not trouble to contradict me. Hadn't you better hurry away before I have the chance to do you any harm? There is one young man I know, of a melodramatic turn of mind, who persists in looking upon me as a sort of siren, calling my victims on to the rocks. I expect that is the person with whom you have been talking. Douglas Jesson, I think that I am a ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... down she flung open the front door. There came from the curb the bleat of a siren, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... devout act, and abandoning his useless weapon, he tiptoed to the door that led to the larger apartment, and there found his worst anticipations realised. With her back against the closed outer door stood a Siren of the Rhine, and, as if to show how futile is the support of the Evil One in a crisis, her very lips were pallid with fear and her blue eyes were wide with apprehension, as they met those of the Count von Schonburg. Her hair, the colour of ripe yellow wheat, rose ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... he said, smiling. "I am, perhaps, not as wise as Ulysses, and shall not fill my ears with wax, but listen to the song of the siren, even at the risk of perishing in the whirlpool of passion. Let us not impose upon ourselves any promises concerning the destiny of our hearts; but your position in the world is an entirely different question. As to this, I must make you promises, and swear that I shall fulfil them. You promise ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... note out of distance flung, From the moment man hears the siren call Of Victory's bugle, which sounds for all, To his inner self the promise is made To weary not, rest not, but all unafraid Press on—till for ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... smile of woman's love, That potent, siren spell, Which uplifts men to heaven above, Or lures them down ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... he comes into collision with the man in front of him, who has stopped dead at the sound. A strange tingling feeling goes up his spine. There is a hush! No one speaks. The whole essence of vitality strains to listen. A faint whir crescendoes rapidly into the shrill whoop of a steam-siren, and a great balloon-shaped cloud of smoke and dust has already arisen from amidst the marching mass of men ahead. There is no sign whence came the shot. Nothing can be more peaceful-looking than the shoulders of these hills lying bathed in ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... judgment evinced by Kit Carson on this occasion of his eventful life. He found himself surrounded with the choice spirits of the new El Dorado; his name a prestige of strength and position, and his society courted by everybody. The siren voice of pleasure failed not to speak in his ear her most flattering invitations. Good-fellowship took him incessantly by the hand, desiring to lead him into the paths of dissipation. But the gay vortex, with all its brilliancy, had no attractions for him; the wine cup, with its sparkling ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... intends!" But, ah! those sounds whose sweetness laps my sense, The strong desire of more that in me yearns, Restrain my spirit in its parting hence. Thus at her will I live; thus winds and turns The yarn of life which to my lot is given, Earth's single siren, sent to us ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... servants, who had obeyed his impatient summons, were hastily directed to search for this tantalising siren in every direction. Their master, in the meantime, eager and vehement in every new pursuit, but especially when his vanity was piqued, encouraged their diligence by bribes, and threats, and commands. All was in vain. They found nothing of the Mauritanian Princess, as she ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... moonlight, and that pretty air of timidity on her face, she was more ravishing than ever. Her voice called as a siren's; her eyes drew Sam irresistibly. In a second all his fears, doubts, scruples, were flung to the winds. He held up the portmanteau, and advanced ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... justified the belief that Alexis would follow the path that led Theodore, and Ferdinand, and Ivan, and Milosch to their ruin. Each of these rulers began to reign under favorable auspices, yet each succumbed to the siren's spell, and there was no reason at all, according to such reckoning, why the handsome and impulsive Alexis should escape. That a pretty Parisienne who was also an artist should fail to offer herself as a willing bait did not enter at ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... him to approve of Anne. If Amy had thought in a less limited circle she might have worked the thing out that if Maxwell married Anne it would narrow Murray's choice down to herself and Ethel. But there was always that vague fear of some outside siren who would capture Murray. If he had Anne, he would then be safely in ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... said I, pouring out what remained of our bottle of claret; "the wine is capital, and so shall our toast be—'To your fireside, my good friend.' And now we shall go beg a Scots song without foreign graces from my little siren, Miss Katie." ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the ponderous sea, The miles profound of solid green, and be With loath'd cold fishes, far from man—or what;— I know the sadness but the cause know not. Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintively A piteous Siren sweetness on the sea, Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell, Or stretch'd chords tuneable on turtle's shell; Only with utterance of sweet breath they sung An antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue. Now melting upward through the sloping ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... Summer's in the land! Hark! Her call soars high and sweet. Hedge-rows flow'r at her command; Roses spring beneath her feet. Skies grow azure; life beats strong; Nature listens to adore; Thrilling at the siren's song, Yields her wond'rous treasured store. Precious fabrics of her loom Clothe her darling of the year; Wealth of sunshine; breath of bloom; Cloudless days, so fair, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... gloom and oppression not to be thwarted; it is silent and subtle and past defining—like shadow. The grey, heavy heave of the water; the great hull of the steamer backing into the bay; the gloom of the fog bank. A few uncertain lines, the shrill of the siren, the mist settling; I was ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... to leave the table when the shrill screams of a distant whistle sliced through the noise of the crowd. Voices broke off in mid-sentence and bodies froze into immobility. As the siren's piercing tones faded the restaurant's customers looked at one another in silent terror. Then, as the shock wore off and unanswered questions were beginning to fly, a man suddenly ran ...
— This One Problem • M. C. Pease
... that the electric lights of Fairview Avenue were just beginning to sputter and glow in the twilight, and as they came along the shore road into New Haven, the first car out of New Haven in the race back to New York leaped at them with siren shrieks of warning, and dancing, dazzling eyes. It passed like a thing driven by the Furies; and before the Scarlet Car could swing back into what had been an empty road, in swift pursuit of the first came many more cars, with blinding searchlights, with a roar of ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... The old lady must not let it be suspected that she was aware of Gregory's need of cotton in straining ears, such as had saved Ulysses from siren voices. The pretense of observing no danger kept the fine ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... little ketch, with its crew of some seventy-five men, sailed out of the harbor of Syracuse amid three lusty cheers. The war brig Siren went ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... of voyagers had lived too long near the coast not to recognize a fog-siren when they heard ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadys were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick
... occupants of the saloon were endeavoring to persuade each other that all was well, the loud wail of the siren thrilled them with increased foreboding. It was not the warning note of a fog, nor the sharp course-signal for the guidance of a passing ship, but a sustained trumpeting, which announced to any steamer hidden in the darkening waste of waters ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... said Reggie hastily, "though it's a great place. Air—scenery—and what not! But Nice and Bordighera and Mentone and other fairly ripe resorts. You'd enjoy them. And after that . . . I had a scheme for buying back my yacht, the jolly old Siren, and cruising about the Mediterranean for a month or so. I sold her to a local sportsman when I was in America a couple of years ago. But I saw in the paper yesterday that the poor old buffer had died suddenly, so I suppose it would be difficult to get hold of her for ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... sanctuary of virtue. But Mlle. Celestine was not only a virtuous and sensible woman, but a woman of eloquence. Nothing could be more attractive than the harangues she made use of to induce lodgers to occupy her rooms. Honey flowed from her mouth, and many persons were led away by the siren's song. But generally they soon became terrified and fled from the terrors which besieged them. Mlle. Celestine Crepeneau therefore could not praise her new lodger too highly. "What a charming man," said she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... shall say whence her beauty is derived? Hell may have arrayed her in its fatal charms. Sin is beautiful, but all-destructive. And the time will come when you may thank me for delivering you from the snares of this seductive siren." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Madeleine; do not answer until you have heard me,—until you have well comprehended my meaning. You do not know the thousand perils by which a young man is beset in Paris,—the siren lures that are thrown in his way to ensnare his feet, be they disposed to walk ever so warily. You do not know that your holy image, rising up before me, shining upon the path I trod, and beckoning me into the right road when I swerved aside, has alone saved me from falling into that vortex ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... 'Well, shoot yourself!' But of course he doesn't—they never do. And Sinclair got hold of me this afternoon and began bothering me to give an answer, and accusing me of flirting with Alfred Perrott, and told me I'd no heart, and was merely a Siren, oh, and quantities of pleasant things like that. So at last I said to him, 'Well, Sinclair, you've said enough now. You can just let me go.' And then he caught me and kissed me—the disgusting brute—I can still feel his nasty hairy face just there—as if ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... to the cave in question. And here, says the legend, he is confined with a chain of gold, sufficiently long to admit of his walking at times on a small piece of sand under the western side of the Head; and here, too, the fair siren laves herself in the tiny waves on fine summer evenings, but no consideration will induce her to loose his fetters of gold, or trust him one ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... she wondered, "that a simple and loving heart is not all-sufficient to an artist; that to balance the weight of these powerful souls they need a union with feminine souls of a strength equal to their own? If I had been brought up like this siren, our weapons at least might have been equal in the ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... take the rudder and thy room supply." To whom the yawning pilot, half asleep: "Me dost thou bid to trust the treach'rous deep, The harlot smiles of her dissembling face, And to her faith commit the Trojan race? Shall I believe the Siren South again, And, oft betray'd, not know the monster main?" He said: his fasten'd hands the rudder keep, And, fix'd on heav'n, his eyes repel invading sleep. The god was wroth, and at his temples threw A branch in ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Madame Catalani. Being at a large party in Vienna, where Goethe was present, she was much surprised at the great respect with which that illustrious man was treated. On inquiring his name, she was informed it was the celebrated Goethe. "Celebrated!" said the siren; "what music did he ever compose? Why, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... frame-house in the distance, and in front of it a barnyard, and sheds with thatched roofs. There came a scream, exactly like the siren of Hook and Ladder Company Number One that used to go tearing about the streets in Leesville, U.S.A; a light flashed in one of the sheds, and everything disappeared in a burst of smoke, which spread ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... you mustn't go either." But she was weird. She seemed to lure me, like a strange little siren, with all a siren's witchery, though without her beauty. My voice sounded ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the Intelligence that conceived the work and the Science that made it possible, move upward and onward, while a victorious trumpeter announces the triumph. One figure, with covered face, flees from the appeal of the siren, but whom he represents, or why he ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... touchingly for pardon; sometimes her voice seemed full of tears—then cold and commanding. The king stood with folded arms, leaning against the other side of the door. He heard these paroxysms of grief and rage, and every word fell upon his heart as the song of the siren upon the ear of Ulysses. But Frederick was mighty and powerful; he needed no ropes or wax to hold him back. He had the strength to control his will, and the voice of wisdom, the warning voice of duty, spoke louder than ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in the great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... If the sweet joy of living ever sang to him in his youth, he shut his ears to the sound as to siren temptings, and sternly set himself to the fierce delight of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... If he won't come, then haul him out by the ears. Have him in your room and have some other men in there to meet him. Take him about with you. Take him to Mory's, on a thick night there. Show him life, the way you know it. If you must, show him an occasional siren. I can say this to you, Reed, because I have taken pains to find out that your sirens are pretty decent ones, cleaner than most of them. To sum it up, let Scott Brenton see life as you are living it, not as he imagines ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... The Moaning Sisters A Ride for a Bride Spooks of the Hiawassee Lake of the Dismal Swamp The Barge of Defeat Natural Bridge The Silence Broken Siren of the French Broad The Hunter of Calawassee Revenge of the Accabee Toccoa Falls Two Lives for One A Ghostly Avenger The Wraith Ringer of Atlanta The Swallowing Earthquake The Last Stand of the Biloxi The Sacred Fire of Natchez Pass Christian The ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... on!" the boy urged, still standing in a safe place by the doorway. "It's hot enough to melt brass in here, an' the siren's been shoutin' for half an hour! That means land—the Philippines! Perhaps you think you're lookin' for Battery Park, in little old New York! Get up an' look out of the port, over the rollin' sea, to the land ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... for the salvation of the creature? A heavy woe is denounced against any and every one who tempts a fellow-being. Temptation implies malice. It is Satanic. It betokens a desire to ruin an immortal spirit. When therefore the siren would allure a human creature from the path of virtue, the inspiration of God utters a deep and bitter curse against her. But when the cold-blooded Mephistopheles endeavors to sophisticate the reason, to debauch the judgment, to sear the conscience; when the temptation is ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... on a lark, I said, the spring fever working in his blood? After a time his drumming grew less frequent, and finally, in the middle of April, ceased entirely. Had some accident befallen him, or had he wandered away to fresh fields, following some siren of his species? Probably the latter. Another bird that I had under observation also left his winter-quarters in the spring. This, then, appears to be the usual custom. The wrens and the nut-hatches and chickadees succeed to these abandoned ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... his funds, awaiting opportunity for investment. He burns the midnight oil in deep studies. The two men wander over the growing avenues of the Babel of the West. Every allurement of luxury, every scheme of vice, all the arts of painted siren, glib knave, and lurking sharper are here; where the game is, there the hunter follows. Rapidly arriving steamers pour in hundreds. The camp followers of the Mexican war have streamed over to San Francisco. The notable arrival ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... us Dalila is wholly and simply a siren, a seductress who plays upon the known love of Samson from motives which are not disclosed. As yet one may imagine her moved by a genuine passion. She turns her lustrous black eyes upon him as she hails him a double victor ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... thought of what sin is, lies in that final word for it, which means 'missing an aim.' How strikingly that puts a truth which siren voices are constantly trying to sing us out of believing! Every sin is a blunder as well as a crime. And that for two reasons, because, first, God has made us for Himself, and to take anything besides for our life's end or our heart's portion is to divert ourselves from our true destiny; and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with deft strokes, steered them, between the grinding bergs, raising his voice in lone signals like the weird cry of a siren. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... to be ambitious. It is better to have at hand what you want than to work for it, and then not get it. Phyllis was scarcely an arm's length away now. I whistled as I locked up my desk, and proceeded down stairs and sang a siren song into the ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... in concern. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? I'll fix it myself. There! Take some of these toasted muffins. What an extraordinary life you must lead! I can almost forgive you for being so outrageous because you're so—so interesting." She let her siren eyes shine on him in a way that had wrought the discomfiture ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... relaxed his share in the dialogue, and listened to her, rapt and dreamily as in his fiery youth he had listened to the songs of the sirens. No siren Isaura! She was defending her own cause, though unconsciously—defending the vocation of art as the embellisher of external nature, and more than embellisher of the nature which dwells crude, but plastic in the soul of man: indeed therein the creator of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... power abides transfused from sire to son: The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, With sure impulsion to keep honor clear. When, pointing down, his father whispers, 'Here, Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely great, Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.' Historic town, thou holdest sacred dust, 10 Once known to men as pious, learned, just, And one memorial pile that dares to last: But Memory greets with reverential kiss No spot in all thy circuit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... invitation. Your excellency has, indeed, honoured my poor house by your presence. Mesdames, so kind of you not to forget the most sincere of your servants. Sir, it is really too good of you to neglect your important studies on my account! Countess, your siren song is generally acknowledged to be the gem ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... When her card was brought in I trembled, and for a moment had in mind to deny myself to her. But I thrust away the cowardly thought. Be brave, said I to myself, advance boldly, attack the terrible delightful siren, say "no" to her once, and you will be saved! She entered, and though my knees shuddered as I rose to greet her, my mien was bold and warlike. She warmly squeezed my hand, and I returned the attention ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Ornithoides and the Ichthyoides. The latter are Brongniart's Batrachia, plus the Caeciliae, whose true affinities had, in the meanwhile, been shown by A. M. C. Dumeril; and, in this arrangement, the name Amphibiens is restricted to Proteus and Siren. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... by which Durward was easily beset, the noise with which the caserne of the guards resounded after the first toll of primes, had certainly banished the siren from his couch; but the discipline of his father's tower, and of the convent of Aberbrothick, had taught him to start with the dawn; and he did on his clothes gaily, amid the sounding of bugles and the clash of armour, which announced the change of the vigilant guards—some of whom were ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... earth bequeathed[my][21.H.] His dust,—and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?[440] That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? No;—even his tomb Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... friends off on the first voyage of the great ship. Wagons, taxicabs and autos blocked the street in front of the docks. Photographers and reporters swarmed everywhere. The confusion was tremendous, yet, promptly at the hour set for sailing, the booming siren began to sound, last farewells were shouted, and the invariable late stayer on board made his wild leap for the gang-plank ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and horror. "Wretch! would you kill your king? God forbid that I should counsel the injury of a hair of his head! I do not want you to play the assassin, Wyat," he added more calmly, "but the just avenger. Liberate the king from the thraldom of the capricious siren who enslaves him, and you will do a service to the whole country. A word from you—a letter—a token—will cast her from the king, and place her on the block. And what matter? The gory scaffold ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, not to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the life of whom he pleases. To this must ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... encountering the attractive enjoyment, the material delight, which might lead you astray, or the siren voice which would allure you from your duty for a moment—then when conscience whispers, "Beware," ... would you ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... went on, still toying with the moustache that did not hide his smiling lips. "You have not told him yet? Ah! but it would amuse him. That night you passed with the fairies, a siren among the sirens, has he never heard of that? But you should tell him that! Or was it perhaps only a joke a deux, and not a trois? I have heard that the English husband can be strict, and you have found it ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... trains them front row eyes of hers on him, opens up with a few lines of lively chatter, and inside of half an hour she has him sittin' picturesque at her feet, callin' him Hermes of the Lobster Pots, and otherwise workin' the siren spell. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... logic, nor much on physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... to socialism by hundreds and thousands. Show a working-man that his union fails, and he becomes a revolutionist. Break a strike with an injunction or bankrupt a union with a civil suit, and the working-men hurt thereby listen to the siren song of the socialist and are lost for ever to ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... they hurried on they urged themselves to diligence by cries of "In haste the mountains blessed Mary won!" "Caesar flew to Spain!" "Haste! Grace grows best in those who ardor feel!" As the poet meditated on their words, he lapsed into a dream in which he saw the Siren who drew brave mariners from their courses; and even as he listened to her melodious song, he beheld her exposed by a saint-like lady, Lucia, or Illuminating Grace. Day dawned, the Angel fanned the fourth "P" from his forehead, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... sharply about as he set foot on the solid deck, and then, without a word, Loring's hand was placed on the colonel's arm, and the lieutenant's eyes said "Look!" for as the girl's face was turned for an instant toward them, there stood revealed the dusky little maid of the Gila, Blake's siren—Pancha. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... BLUMI'NE, the siren that Calypsowise in "Sartor" seduced Teufelsdroeckh at the commencement of his career, but who opened his eyes to see that it is not in sentiment, however fine, that the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... took off her cap, and let down her beautiful hair. I unlaced her corset, and in the twinkling of an eye I had before me such a siren as one sees on the canvas of Correggio. I could not look upon her long without covering her with my burning kisses, and, communicating my ardour, before long she made a place for me beside herself. I felt that there was no time for thinking, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fingers, whereupon he blew it out and carefully crushed it under his foot. A faint reflected light rendered perceptible the stone steps below. At the top, Soames stood looking down. Nothing stirred above, below, or around him. What did it mean? Dimly to his ears came the hooting of some siren from the river—evidently that of a large vessel. Still he hesitated; why he did so, he scarce knew, save ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... how the siren songs of a little brook in early spring, or it may have been the golden willows filled with gurgling red wings, caused a court scene at school. The teacher was one of that type who study the stars by night but never his boys by day. He knew the golden willow not from the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... handkerchief, who scowled and prowled about her, and looked as if he was likely enough to beat her when they got home. But she hands up an ivory bowl for contributions amongst the young dandies on the roof of a neighbouring coach, who have been listening open-mouthed to the siren, and shillings and half-crowns, and a bit of gold from the one last out of the Bench, pour into it; and she moves off, to make way for three French glee-maidens with a monkey and a tambourine, and ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... ring round us while he flings Intent each stone toward yon shining object Afloat inshore ... I eat my heart to think How all which makes him worthy of more love Must train his ear to catch the siren croon That never else had reached his upland home! And he who failed in proof, how should he arm Another against perils? Ah, false hope And credulous enjoyment! How should I, Life's fool, while wakening ready wit in him, Teach how to shun applause and those bright eyes Of women who pour in the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... measure a character, we can forfend against surprises—discount virtues, exaggerate faults, strike a balance to our own ego; but when what you know is only a faint margin of what you don't know, a siren of the unknown beckons and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... witness to her thoughts; for while she herself, in the depths of her immature, unsoftened heart, was given altogether to man-like ambition and the desire of power, the eyes were by turns bold, inviting, fiery, melting, and artful, like the eyes of a rapacious siren. And artful, in a sense, she was. Chafing that she was not a man, and could not shine by action, she had, conceived a woman's part, of answerable domination; she sought to subjugate for by-ends, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away from the landing-stage of the Touring Club de France at Les Andelys in good time, our provisions, our gasoline and oil, our river charts, our wraps and ourselves all stowed comfortably away in the eight metres of length of our little boat. Our siren gave a hoot which startled the rooks circling about the donjon walls of Chateau Gaillard over our heads, and we passed under the brick arches of the bridge for a twelve-mile run to the first ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... a forlorn little jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off, and in the pauses Harvey heard the muffled shriek of a liner's siren, and he knew enough of the Banks to know what that meant. It came to him, with horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherry-coloured jersey—he despised fancy blazers now with all a fisher-man's contempt—how an ignorant, rowdy ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... perceptibly the truer singer; singing within compass, and from the heart; while the Phoebus shows himself acquainted with art, and warbles in seductive quavers, now and then beyond the pitch of his voice. We must own also, Friedrich proves little seducible; shows himself laudably indifferent to such siren-singing;—perhaps more used to flattery, and knowing by experience how little meal is to be made of chaff. Voltaire, in an ungrateful France, naturally plumes himself a good deal on such recognition by a Foreign Rising Sun; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... presents for the Uncle. The girls made him a handkerchief case and a comb bag, out of some of the pieces of silk he had given them. I got him a knife with three blades; H. O. got a siren whistle, a very strong one, and Dicky joined with me in the knife, and Noel would give the Indian ivory box that Uncle's friend had sent on the wonderful Fairy Cab day. He said it was the very nicest thing he had, and ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... we shall pause to present a few sketches representative of the great French capital. It is the gayest metropolis of Europe, the spot where the traveller is most inclined to linger, and whose siren voice is most dangerous to the inexperienced. Its attractions are innumerable, combining unequalled educational advantages in art, literature, and the learned professions, together with unlimited temptations to ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... "but the Intendant alone would have had no power to lure him back. It was the message of that artful siren which has drawn Le Gardeur de Repentigny again into the whirlpool ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... booming note came then from the hills, commencing like the warning siren of a space liner approaching its berth and swelling to a bombilation of ear-shattering sound that set the steel of the Nomad's hull vibrating and their very flesh and bones a-tingle. Then it died away as had the bird note which was the first sound of this ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... satisfied, sir?" On his part, Cappy, jubilant, even in the instant when he knew thirty new faces were already whining round the devil, dashed out on the bridge, seized the whistle cord and swung on it. A sad, nautical sob from the Costa Rica's siren answered him, and ten seconds later Terence Reardon whistled up the bridge. Cappy let go the whistle cord and took up the speaking ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... down the hill as he spoke. The next moment he looked ahead again as they shot round a curve. As they did so his hand sought a button and an ear-splitting screech arose from a powerful siren. ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... a strip of yielding metal that glowed faintly with an unnatural greenish light. He was nearing its lower end when the siren of the ethership shrieked and he heard the clang of the outer door of its air-lock as it swung to ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... always deceptive, on the unknown woman, and fires the imagination, carrying it far beyond the truth. The senses then bestir themselves; everything takes color and animation; the woman appears in an altogether novel aspect; her person becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren, who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house, where the worthy bourgeoise, frightened by your threatening step and the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your face ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... gripped the Inspector's arm. The place where the Durham had been anchored was empty. Already, half a mile down the river, with a trail of light behind and her siren shrieking, the ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could exercise a siren's charm upon nearly all sorts of men. But Edward Henry knew one sort of men upon whom she could not exercise it—namely, the sort of men who are born and bred in the Five Towns. His instinctive belief in the Five Towns as the sole cradle of hard practical common ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... and all the other one-eyed monsters were nothing but sea-wrack, bowlders, and weeds. He sailed farther, past Scylla and Charybdis, and discovered no greater dangers than sharp rocks and whirlpools. Yet farther he sailed out into the unknown sea, and the only Siren's song he heard was the whistling of the wind through the cordage of ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... there were two of them. He knew that he must become a prey, but was there any choice left to him as to which siren should have him? He had been quite aware in his more gallant days, before he had been knocked about on that Charybdis rock, that he might sip, and taste, and choose between the sweets. He had come to think lately that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... beneath the hill of Hoerselberg in Thuringia. There we find the minstrel Tannhaeuser at the opening of the opera. He has left the world above, its strifes and its duties, for the wicked delights of the grotto of Venus. There he lies in the embraces of the siren goddess, while life passes in a ceaseless orgy of sinful pleasure. But the poet wearies of his amorous captivity, and would fain return to the earth once more. In vain the goddess pleads, in vain she calls up new scenes ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... was melancholy, sighed, "I've been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough! The lookout saw a siren and the Infanta Isabella was dashed on the rocks and something ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... can see Lake Leman, closed in near here by mountains, blue like a great turquoise, ploughed by white, triangular sails. From time to time one hears the strident noise of a steamboat's siren and the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... "The Siren Song," he grunted. "What is it? something new? Lord, look at the scale. Looks like one of those screaming arias from ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... bewitching, captivating, enchanting, enrapturing, entrancing, magical, fascinating, winning, ecstatic, siren, delightful, winsome, seductive, ravishing. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... now and beating upon our wreck. As for me, I thought only of that voice. And I thought also of the sirens. If a ship had passed near by us what would the sailors have said? My troubled spirit lost itself in the dream! A siren! Was she not really a siren, this daughter of the sea, who had kept me on this worm-eaten ship and who was soon about to go down with me deep into ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... made him accept an invitation to a bachelor dinner, where champagne and smutty stories were flowing freely, too freely. He left about midnight, and as the night was beautiful he decided to walk home. He met a siren, who invited him to accompany her. Under other circumstances he would have sent her on her way, or at least he would have stepped into a drugstore for a prophylactic. But, excited by the wine, the smutty stories and the year's abstinence, he went ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... plume yourself mightily upon your resolve to do justice to the merits of your wife, and upon the courage you have shown in stuffing cotton into your ears to prevent your listening to the voice of the siren: but pray take the cotton out, and hear all she can say or sing. Lady Leonora cannot be hurt by any thing Olivia can say, but her ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... fancied that Jack seemed sorry for the way he has been treating me lately; treatment which I should never have put up with, except from a man whom I love so devotedly—a man whom I meant to rescue (selfishly, I admit) from that siren's clutches. In all I have done I have been guided by your advice, and therefore to you remains all the credit, coupled with the life-long devotion of ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... hundred years ago, When out of the woods we came with hawthorn boughs And found the doors locked, as they seemed to-night. Three hundred years ago—nay, Time was dead! No need to scan the sign-board any more Where that white-breasted siren of the sea Curled her moon-silvered tail among such rocks As never in the merriest seaman's tale Broke the blue-bliss of fabulous lagoons Beyond the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... local symptoms in a natural manner. Thousands of cases cured by us by these methods attest the truth of our statements; while those who failed to understand the simple reasoning of the Nature Cure philosophy or lacked will power to withstand the arguments of friends and physicians followed the siren call of the operating table and have been sorry for ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... down life's morning stream we glide, Full oft some Flower stoops o'er its side, And beckons to the smiling shore, Where roses strew the landscape o'er: Yet as we reach that Flower to clasp, It seems to mock the cheated grasp, And whisper soft, with siren glee, "My bloom is not—oh ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... the pale amber hue of which enhanced her dark loveliness. The white arms were half shown, half covered by rich lace—in the waves of her dark hair lay a yellow rose. She looked like a woman whose smile could be fatal and dangerous as that of a siren, who could be madly loved or madly hated, yet to whom no man living ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... thy grave with aching eye I scan, And inly groan for Heaven's poor outcast—Man! 'Tis tempest all or gloom: in early youth If gifted with th' Ithuriel lance of Truth We force to start amid her feign'd caress 5 Vice, siren-hag! in native ugliness; A Brother's fate will haply rouse the tear, And on we go in heaviness and fear! But if our fond hearts call to Pleasure's bower Some pigmy Folly in a careless hour, 10 The faithless guest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rank—no blood—no clime! What court poet of his day, Major Favraud, compared with Robert Burns for feeling, fire, and pathos? Who ever sung such siren strains as Moore, a simple Irishman of low degree? No Cavalier blood there, I fancy! What power, what beauty in the poems of Walter Scott! Byron was a poet in spite of his condition, not because of it. Hear Barry Cornwall—how he stirs the blood! ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... side they took their accustomed places upon the horse-hair sofa. Her head sank upon his shoulder, her hands clasped his, her eyes were wet with tears. A siren blew from the river. A little tug, with two barges lashed alongside, was coming valiantly along. The dark coil of water seemed ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... yourselves. In the successive plates, XV.-XVIII., I show you,[38] typically represented as the protectresses of nations, the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse; the fountain Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Siren Ligeia of Terina. Now, of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature than the rest, and some softer in expression: in other respects, can you trace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth and Heaven, or between the Goddess ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... meekly do these youngsters try to sneak their advantage, as one swiping an apple; no great special privilege is theirs. Interminable lines of truck-mounted guns rattle along, each great gun festively named, as for instance, "The Siren," or "Baby" or "The Peach" or "The Cooing Dove." Curious snaky looking objects all covered with wiggly camouflage—some artist's pride—are these guns, and back of them or in front of them and around them, clank huge empty ammunition wagons going out, or heavy ones coming in. At short intervals ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... more effective alarm was used than the whistle. It was well known that, as the whistle instrument was enlarged, the sound became more and more a roar. He would have ships use all their boiler power in sounding a siren, so that the sound could be heard at a distance of not less than two or three miles in any weather. With such a signal as that there ought to be, not absolute safety, but collisions would be more easily prevented. He was glad to say that a universal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... told its tale, for the Duke died in 1787, at the early age of thirty-three. Though having the most beautiful wife in England, his affections wandered, and tales are told of his attachment to that siren singer, Mrs. Billington. The Duchess's manner had somewhat of levity and much coquetry in it, though she could not be classed with that company who have not time to be virtuous. At the time of her lord's death, she was living with ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of course it was very banal to talk about Italy. But, still, these moments must come sometimes to all those who go much into the world. And what is Italy, beautiful, siren-like Italy, for if not to be talked about? Charmian said that to herself afterward, and was amazed at her own vulgarity of mind. Ah, yes! That was what she had disliked in Claude Heath—his faculty ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... without a word, Loring's hand was placed on the colonel's arm, and the lieutenant's eyes said "Look!" for as the girl's face was turned for an instant toward them, there stood revealed the dusky little maid of the Gila, Blake's siren—Pancha. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... looks forward to marriage with this aristocratic heiress, and the future is most luminous. Even haunting memories of Alice Webster and Oswald Langdon fail to dampen Paul's expectant joy. These recede, their menacing voices stilled by hope's siren lullaby. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Siggen on Bommelo. In the course of the night we came under the coast, and on Sunday morning, July 10, we ran into Saelbjomsfjord. We had no detailed chart of this inlet, but after making a great noise with our powerful air-siren, we at last roused the inmates of the pilot-station, and a pilot came aboard. He showed visible signs of surprise when he found out, by reading the name on the ship's side, that it was the Fram he had before him. "Lord, I thought you were ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... fair a doom intends!" But, ah! those sounds whose sweetness laps my sense, The strong desire of more that in me yearns, Restrain my spirit in its parting hence. Thus at her will I live; thus winds and turns The yarn of life which to my lot is given, Earth's single siren, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... sometimes can with advantage, be gulped down. Though the drinker makes wry faces, there may, after all, be a wholesome goodness in the cup. But debt, however courteously it may be offered, is the Cup of Siren; and the wine, spiced and delicious though it be, is poison. My son, if poor, see Hyson in the running spring; see thy mouth water at a last week's roll; think a threadbare coat the only wear; and acknowledge a whitewashed garret the fittest housing-place ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Plato upon Menander? Eupolis, Archilochus? For what end did you bring abroad such companions? What? are you setting about appeasing envy by deserting virtue? Wretch, you will be despised. That guilty Siren, Sloth, must be avoided; or whatever acquisitions you have made in the better part of your life, must with equanimity be given up. May the gods and godnesses, O Damasippus, present you with a barber for your sound advice! But by what means ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... calm, even at its lowest ebb—now, on this last night of the long, weary week, all the currents and counter-currents of the worker's world were suddenly released. At the stroke of bell, at the clang of deep-mouthed gong, at the scream of siren whistle, the sluice-gates were lifted from the great human reservoirs of factory and shop and office, and their myriad toilers burst forth with the cumulative ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
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