"Lyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... garment of green and blue sarcenet, chequered and lined with red buckram, also two caps of yellow and red sarcenet, and two curtains of green and yellow sarcenet. Also two long broad pieces of blue linen cloth, with lyre in them. Also three pieces of open silvered linen cloths; also one long broad piece of red buckram. Which said stuff and goods the said Walton promised to deliver again to your said orator, whensoever he should be by your said orator thereto required. Which said stuff ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... die of love's keen fire: The martyrdom of which my heart is fain! Hasten, ye Cherubim, to tune your lyre; I shall not linger long in exile's pain! . . . ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... again, defending the Trojans and deceiving Achilles. In the Homeric Hymn his birth on Delos is sweetly told; and how, when he was born, Earth smiled around, and all the goddesses shouted. Themis fed him on nectar and ambrosia; then he sprang up, called for a lyre and bow, and said he would declare henceforth to men the will of Jove; and Delos, exulting, became ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... length, when neither thirst nor hunger more They felt unsatisfied, to new delights Their thoughts they turn'd, to song and sprightly dance, Enlivening sequel of the banquet's joys. 190 An herald, then, to Phemius' hand consign'd His beauteous lyre; he through constraint regaled The suitors with his song, and while the chords He struck in prelude to his pleasant strains, Telemachus his head inclining nigh To Pallas' ear, lest others should his words Witness, the blue-eyed Goddess thus bespake. My inmate and my friend! far from my lips Be ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders; The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... King of the Gods yawned, stroked his long beard, and said: "Enough of stories, Phoebus. Tune your lyre." ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... recall the honors which have been bestowed on the testudinates from all antiquity. It was the sun-dried and sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury, as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world. Under the testudo the Roman legions swarmed into the walled cities of the orbis terrarum. And in that wise old fable which childhood learns, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... be written on the reputation of painters,' says Mr. Croker in a note to his edition of Boswell; 'Horace Walpole talked at one time of Ramsay as of equal fame with Reynolds; and Hayley dedicated his lyre (such as it was) to Romney. What is a picture of Ramsay or ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... reconciliation of opposites; and I suppose that this must have been the meaning of Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate; for he says that The One is united by disunion, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre. Now there is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or is composed of elements which are still in a state of discord. But what he probably meant was, that harmony is composed of differing notes of higher or ...
— Symposium • Plato
... he told Of the changed limbs of Tereus- what a feast, What gifts, to him by Philomel were given; How swift she sought the desert, with what wings Hovered in anguish o'er her ancient home? All that, of old, Eurotas, happy stream, Heard, as Apollo mused upon the lyre, And bade his laurels learn, Silenus sang; Till from Olympus, loth at his approach, Vesper, advancing, bade the shepherds tell Their tale of sheep, and pen ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... lyre-strings, hearties, and begin: Bawl your harsh souls all out upon the gravel. I must endure you, for you'll never sin By robbing coaches, until dead ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... certain notices which seem to show that he had his purely poetical motives also, as befitted his age; motives which prompted works of mere fancy, like his Muse [248] with the Lyre, symbolising the chromatic style of music; Aristocles his brother, and Ageladas of Argos executing each another statue to symbolise the two other orders of music. The Riding Boys, of which Pliny speaks, like the mechanical stag on the hand of Apollo, which ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the spirit of party. "I have privately," thus writes the poet to Heron, "printed a good many copies of the ballads, and have sent them among friends about the country. You have already, as your auxiliary, the sober detestation of mankind on the heads of your opponents; find I swear by the lyre of Thalia, to muster on your side all the votaries of honest laughter and fair, candid ridicule." The ridicule was uncandid, and the laughter dishonest. The poet was unfortunate in his political attachments: Miller gained the boroughs which Burns wished he might lose, and Heron lost the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... loved her as she crept Near and nearer my heart of fire! Oh! how she loved me as I swept The master strings of her spirit's lyre! Oh! with what brooding tenderness Our low words died in her father's hall, In the meeting clasp, and parting press— Wilmur and Mary, ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... intensity here, a note of passion beyond the deepest of Herrick's. This tone (whether from temperament or circumstance or scheme of art), is wanting to the HESPERIDES and NOBLE NUMBERS: nor does Herrick's lyre, sweet and varied as it is, own that purple chord, that more inwoven harmony, possessed by poets of greater depth and splendour,—by Shakespeare and Milton often, by Spenser more rarely. But if we put aside these 'greater ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... human nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." In the next year, Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, summed up the political faith of our fathers in the Great Declaration. Its words vibrate through the history of those days. As the lyre of Amphion raised the walls of the city, so they are the music which sing course after course of the ascending structure of American civilization into its place. Our fathers stood indeed upon technical and legal grounds when ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country, take possession of the North American continent! Gladden the waste places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, with every English word that has been spoken well for liberty and for man! Give an echo to the now silent and solitary mountains; gush out with the fountains that as yet sing their anthems all day long without ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... these, the dance inspire; Or wake th' enlivening notes of mirth, Oh shivered be the recreant lyre, That gave the base idea birth; Other sounds I ween were there, Other music rent the air, Other waltz the warriors knew, When they ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... Leschenalt had found over 600 species of plants which were believed to be new to science; and he eulogised the zoological work of Peron, who had succeeded in bringing to France alive seven kinds of kangaroo, an emu, a lyre-bird and several black swan. Altogether, 18,414 specimens of Australian fauna had been collected, comprised in 3872 species, of which 2592 species were new to the museum. The men of science had "succeeded ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... now lapis had appeared, Blest leech! to Phoebus'-self endeared Beyond all men below; On whom the fond, indulgent God His augury had fain bestowed, His lyre-his sounding bow! But he, the further to prolong A fellow creature's span, The humbler art of Medicine chose, The knowledge of each plant that grows, Plying a craft not known to song, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the crowd. For instance, when Drury Lane was burned down in the first decennium of this century, the falling in of the roof was signalized by a mimic suicide of the protecting Apollo that surmounted and crested the centre of this roof. The god was stationary with his lyre, and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins that were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly the supporting timbers below him gave way; a convulsive heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to raise the statue; and then, as if on some impulse of despair, the presiding deity ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... she spake the bright of brow: "Lord of Torelore and king, Thy folk deem me a light thing, When my love doth me embrace, Fair he finds me, in good case, Then am I in such derray, Neither harp, nor lyre, nor lay, Dance nor game, nor ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... Altheetor; still unguarded strays One hand o'er his fallen lyre; but all his soul Is lost—given up. He fain would turn to gaze, But cannot turn, so twined. Now all that stole Through every vein, and thrilled each separate nerve, Himself could not have told—all wound and clasped In her white arms and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... thine aid afford to me, Inspire my Ideality; Thou who, benign, in days of yore, Didst heavenly inspiration pour On him, who luckily for us Sang Propria Quae Maribus; Teach me to sound on quiv'ring lyre, Prosodial strains in notes of fire; Words' ends shall be my theme sublime, Now first descanted on in rhyme. Come, little boys, attention lend, All words are long in a that end: (In proof of which I'll bet a quart,) Excepting those ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... of corn, Her heart a guarded fire; The wind played in his trembling soul Like a hand upon a lyre, The wind drew faintly on the stone Symbols of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... way these old pedants will talk, after all their youth and all their poetry, if they ever had any, are gone. The smiles of woman, in the mean time, encouraged the young poet to smite the lyre. Fame beckoned him upward from her templed steep. The rhymes which rose before him unbidden were as the rounds of Jacob's ladder, on which he would climb ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... listen, listen, Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, And hear my lullaby! Child, I see thee! Child, I've found thee! Midst the quiet all around thee! Child, I see thee! Child, I spy thee! And thy mother sweet is nigh thee. Child, I know thee! Child no more, But a poet ever-more! See, see, the lyre, the lyre! In a flame of fire Upon the little cradle's top Flaring, flaring, flaring, Past the eyesight's bearing. Wake it from its sleep, And see if it can keep Its eyes upon the blaze— Amaze, amaze! It stares, it stares, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... been a want of candour on her part to affect a cheerfulness which she did not feel, or pretend a respect for those towards whom it was quite impossible she should entertain any reverence? If a poetess may not bemoan her lot, of what earthly use is her lyre? Blanche struck hers only to the saddest of tunes; and sang elegies over her dead hopes, dirges over her early frost-nipt buds of affection, as became such a melancholy ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Here, an eagle was soaring into the sky bearing the shepherd of Mount Ida to heaven; there, the comely Hylas was struggling to escape from the embrace of the lascivious Naiad. Here, too, was Apollo, cursing his murderous hand and adorning his unstrung lyre with the flower just created. Standing among these lovers, which were only painted, "It seems that even the gods are wracked by love," I cried aloud, as if I were in a wilderness. "Jupiter could find none to his taste, even in his own heaven, so he had to sin on earth, but ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... him a coin): Go, drink my health! (Seeing Lise enter): Hush! My wife. Bustle, pass on, and hide that money! (To Lise, showing her the lyre, with a conscious ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... hundreds of square miles given up to them. There were forests and lakes and streams; there were gardens and greenhouses filled with rare plants and flowers, and parks with deer browsing, and peacocks and lyre-birds strutting about. The road wound in and out among hills, the surfaces of which would be one unbroken lawn; and upon the highest points stood palaces of every ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... herald, hail! come from the forest's choir, From ocean's roar, from armd hosts and grim! Though sometimes carelessly you struck the lyre,— Where rich growth is, one can the rank shoots trim. The small trolls jeer the gestures of a giant, I love you so,—unique ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... were more pertinent for making men ashamed of their discords than the concord of strings on a lyre. ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... Lyric Poetry? It is the oldest kind of poetry, and was originally intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings— The trembling living wire ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... beside the blacksmith's door, And hearing the hammers, as they smote The anvils with a different note, Stole from the varying tones, that hung Vibrant on every iron tongue, The secret of the sounding wire. And formed the seven-chorded lyre. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the gift and faculty divine was purely inferential. Not only had he never been known to court the muse, but in truth he could not have written correctly a line of verse to save himself from the Killer of the Wise. Still, there was no knowing when the dormant faculty might wake and smite the lyre. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... was described in the manuscript of St. Blasius as a Lyre. Gerbertus rightly observes that it has only one string, and is more like a Cheli.[14] He quotes writers of different epochs relative to the meaning of the word Lyre as used by them, the tendency of his remarks apparently ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and banquet house withal" (Rolls Calendars of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., III. pt. 1.). No doubt it was also thought that this would be an excellent opportunity for the eulogist of the Defender of the Faith to again take up the lyre to sing the glories of his royal master, but no effort of his muse on the subject of this great chivalric pageant has descended to us if ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... tradition by the test of positive experience. There is still a gleaning of poetry which might be culled, in some few districts, from the "lyre of the unlettered muse." There are songs scattered up and down our own and the neighbouring counties among the population least affected by the spread of literature which are of great antiquity, and are not to be found in any books ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... so gently steal into our very souls, and involve us in the sweetest confusion; or whose animating strains fire us even to madness: how has the shore of Greece echoed with the wildest sounds; the delicious warblings of the Lyre charmed and astonished every ear. The blaze of rhetoric then burst forth; the ancients sought not by false thoughts, and glittering diction, to captivate the ear, but by manly and energetic modes of expression, to rule the heart and sway ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... august in his rags than in his purple? Fate, Passion, Mystery, the Victim, the Avenger, the Hate that harms, the Furies that tear, the Love that bleeds, are not these with us Still? are not these still the weapons of the Artist? the colors of his palette? the chords of his lyre? Listen! I tell thee a tale—not of Kings—but of Men—not of Thrones, but of Love, and Grief, and Crime. Listen, and but once more. 'Tis for the last time (probably) these fingers shall sweep ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fair Touches with a lover's care; Though the pride of my desire Asks immortal friendship's name, Asks the palm of honest fame And the old heroic lyre; Though the day have smoothly gone, Or to letter'd leisure known, Or in social duty spent; Yet at the eve my lonely breast Seeks in vain for perfect rest, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... appeared in 1847, strikes the modern reader with amazement. Some idea of the estimation in which she was then held is proved by Allan Cunningham's dictum that 'Mary Howitt has shown herself mistress of every string of the minstrel's lyre, save that which sounds of broil and bloodshed. There is more of the old ballad simplicity in her composition than can be found in the strains of any living poet besides.' Another critic compared Mrs. Hewitt's ballads to those of Lord Macaulay, while Mrs. Alaric Watts, in her capacity of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... time Canalis had, as the journalists say, exhausted his budget. He felt himself unable to invent any new form of poetry; his lyre did not have seven strings, it had one; and having played on that one string so long, the public allowed him no other alternative but to hang himself with it, or to hold his tongue. De Marsay, who did not like Canalis, made a remark whose poisoned shaft touched ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... very likely true, but not enough; for in the answer a further question is involved: Of what does the Sophist make a man talk eloquently? The player on the lyre may be supposed to make a man talk eloquently about that which he makes him understand, that is about playing the lyre. Is not ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... the assembled Roman poets recited her praises; Prince Castel Forte, the most honoured of Roman noblemen, uttered a eulogy of her; and, ere she received the destined bays, she took up her lyre and in accordance with custom gave a poetic improvisation. The subject of her passionate chant was the glory of Italy; and amid the impetuous applause that followed, Corinne, looking round, observed Oswald. She saw him to be English; she was struck by his melancholy, and by the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... ignores the human instrumentality in the writing of the Scriptures altogether, and claims that the writers were passive instruments mere machines, just as insensible to what they were accomplishing as is the string of the harp or lyre to ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... as "the concurrence of opposite tendencies and efforts in the motions of this ever-living fire, out of which results the most beautiful harmony. This harmony of the world is one of conflicting impulses, like the lyre and the bow. The strife between opposite tendencies is the parent of all things. All life is change, and change ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... robins, and all our song birds are members of an exceedingly numerous "order" "Paseres." In it are included the crows (with those gaily-decorated crows, the Birds of Paradise, found only in New Guinea and the Moluccas), the bower birds and the lyre bird of Australia; the flycatchers, the pittas (or ground thrushes), the water-ouzel, the weaver birds, the wrens, the tits, the creepers, the honey-eaters, those African gems, the sun birds, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... flashed delighted. "I, like you, 'keep his covenant,'" he cried; and then without a lyre, for his was still in David's hands, he sang, in ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Norwegian master. Nothing, surely, could be truer, nothing touched with a lighter hand than "Pill-doctor Herdal"—an achievement attained solely by a profound study of the dramatist. Again, in "The Man from Blankley's" and in "Lyre and Lancet" we have social satires grafted on to a most entertaining plot—a creation in both cases which may be compared with Keene's drawings for observation, and with Goldsmith's and Moliere's plays for the happy construction of these comedies of errors. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow; the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the supposition that attributes the [Greek: Eithe lure chale genoimen] to Alcaeus) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;—all poor conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too, would, as far as his ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the soul; Baudelaire on a mediæval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as faith. The world ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... required to show the gravity of a king, he would appear to be an old man. He played upon the lyre; he took interest in public affairs; and was of a kingly mind, following thus the example of his father, who, while he was over-careful to do right, managed to exhibit himself to the world in an evil light. But the son was free from any suspicion of such a charge, and his ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the young and the brilliant aspire To sing what I gaze on in vain, For sorrow has torn from my lyre The string which was worthy ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... scourge of the storm-wind that smites as a harper smites on a lyre, And consumed of the storm as the sacrifice, loved of their God, is consumed with fire, And devoured of the darkness as men that are slain in the fires of his love are devoured, And deflowered of their lives by the storms as by priests is the spirit ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... "The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz," he continued, a moment later, "and only by the fingers of love; we need Bellona to ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... only absurd to him; they were naughty children whom, if one had the spell, one could enchant into goodness. And in The Magic Flute the spell works. It works in the flute itself and in Papageno's lyre when the wicked negro Monostatos threatens him and Tamino with his ugly attendants. Papageno has only to play a beautiful childish tune on his lyre and the attendants all march backwards to an absurd goose-step in time with it. They are played off the stage; and the music ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... The Chinese pavilion consists of a pole about 6 ft. high terminating in a conical metal cap or pavilion, hung with small jingling bells and surmounted by a crescent and a star. Below this pavilion are two or more metal bands forming a fanciful double crescent or squat lyre, likewise furnished with tiny bells. The two points of the crescent are curved over, ending in fanciful animal heads from whose mouths hang low streaming tails of horse-hair. The Chinese pavilion is played by shaking ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... will then admire And emulate our matchless fame, And Asia burn with fierce desire To burst her galling bonds of shame! Greece will resume th' Aonian lyre, And Rome again to heaven aspire, And vestal Freedom's quenchless fire From the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the habitant of some bright planet, such as she pointed out to us in the Bay of Naples—a seraph with a golden lyre—and shrouded in a white cymar! No, no!" would he continue, turning his footsteps towards the adjacent room, where the suffering pangs of Apollo's high priest are painfully told in marble, "let let me rather contemplate the Laocoon! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... ye make to resound the stone melodious, the Ming-Khieou,— When ye touch the lyre that is called Kin, or the guitar that is called Sse,— Accompanying their sound with song,— Then do the grandfather and the father return; Then do the ghosts of the ancestors ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... the lyre To more majestic sound aspire, Behold the mad'ning throng, In wonder and oblivion drowned, To sculpture turned by ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... recognised by a learned monk as one of the old pagan gods, and handed over to the spiritual tribunal. On the rack he confessed that he was the god Apollo; and before his execution he begged that he might be suffered to play once more upon the lyre, and to sing a song. And he played so touchingly, and sang with such magic, and was withal so [33] beautiful in form and feature, that all the women wept, and many of them were so deeply impressed that they shortly ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... schools of Autun and Bordeaux; and the language of Cicero and Virgil was familiar to the Gallic youth. Their ears were astonished by the harsh and unknown sounds of the Germanic dialect, and they ingeniously lamented that the trembling muses fled from the harmony of a Burgundian lyre. The Gauls were endowed with all the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend them, they were justly condemned to obey, and even to flatter, the victorious Barbarians, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... has long been known. For ages warriors have been led to battle to the sounds of martial strains. David charmed away Saul's evil spirit with his harp. Horace in his 32d Ode Book 1, concludes his address to the lyre:— ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... has Cockatoos, Laughing Jackasses, Native Bears, Platypusses, Black Swans, Emus, Magpies, Opossums, and Lyre Birds, also a BUNYIP to sing deep bass, all the other Animals in the World sing the chorus, each in his natural voice. The tune is "MARY HAD ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... in every Irish feast. The Dean was pleased with many of the Irish airs, but was peculiarly struck with the Feast of O'Rourke, which was played by Jeremy Dignum, the Irish Timotheus, who swept the lyre with flying fingers, when he was told that in the judgment of the Dean, he carried off the spolia opima from all the rest of the musical circle. The words of the air were afterwards sung by a young man with so much taste and execution, that the Dean expressed a desire ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... covered with fly-spots, shows a nymph with a lyre, standing beside a waterfall. This nymph was Aunt Ursula. How ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... mystery. When the bitter cup of memory overflowed in them, they believed it to be a new vein which had opened in the writer's brain. Octave received, every day, congratulations upon this sadly exquisite tone of his lyre, whose vibrations surpassed in supreme intensity the sighs of Rene or Obermann's Reveries. Nobody knew that those sad pages were written under the inspiration of the most mournful of visions, and that this dark and melancholy tinge, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mere des dieux, Reine au sein fecond, au corps radieux, Tu surgis au bord de la tombe amere; Tu nous apparais, o Mort, vierge et mere, Effroi des humains, Le divin laurier sur la tete altiere Et la lyre aux mains. ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... mountain!—lyre of bird and tree! Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, leaps wild in thee! Although, where'er thy devious current strays, The lap of earth with gold and silver teems, To me thy clear proceeding ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... convict. "You can get the beautiful lyre bird, with its wonderful curved tail. I can show you the bower birds' nests, with their decorations. Then there is that beautiful purply black kind of crow—the rifle bird they call it. As to the parrots and cockatoos, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... we turn to Aristotle's Poetics, and it gives us a sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of imitation" ([Greek: pasai tynchhanoysin ohysai mimheseis to hynolon]). "What?" we say—"Nothing better than that?"—for "imitation" has a bad name among men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind that there ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seed-plot; when in ripen'd airs A golden-headed harvest fairly rears His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath, Which there reciprocally laboreth. In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire, Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre; Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats In cream of morning Helicon; and then Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, To woo them ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... mountains of Helicon and Cithaeron—the haunt of the muses; here Pentheus fell beneath the raging bands of the Bacchanals, and Actaeon endured the wrath of the Goddess of the Woods; here rose the walls of Thebes to the harmony of Amphion's lyre—and still, in the time of Pausanias, the Thebans showed, to the admiration of the traveller, the place where Cadmus sowed the dragon-seed—the images of the witches sent by Juno to lengthen the pains of Alcmena—the wooden ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Kokaku, and a Japanese historian remarks with regard to the event and to the growth of the spirit fostered by Yamazaki Ansai, Takenouchi Shikibu, and Yamagata Daini, that "the first string of the Meiji Restoration lyre vibrated at this time in Japan." Kokaku's reign will be referred to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... favours. Moreover, he knows that you are fickle by nature and betray your poets when they grow old. What fate befell Magnes,[67] when his hair went white? Often enough has he triumphed over his rivals; he has sung in all keys, played the lyre and fluttered wings; he turned into a Lydian and even into a gnat, daubed himself with green to become a frog.[68] All in vain! When young, you applauded him; in his old age you hooted and mocked him, because his genius for raillery had gone. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... iron and brass Jew's harps (also known as Jew's trumps) have been found. This small instrument is lyre-shaped, and when placed between the teeth gives tones from a bent metal tongue when struck by the finger. Modulation of tone is produced by changing the size and shape of ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... mighty hunter; and that Chief Who did belie his mother's fame, that so He might be called young Ammon. In this court Caesar was crown'd, accurst liberticide; And he who murdered Tully, that cold villain, Octavius, tho' the courtly minion's lyre Hath hymn'd his praise, tho' Maro sung to him, And when Death levelled to original clay The royal carcase, FLATTERY, fawning low, Fell at his feet, and worshipped the new God. Titus [3] was here, the Conqueror of the Jews, He the Delight of human-kind misnamed; Caesars and Soldans, Emperors ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... the labium becomes nearly obsolete. Figure 118 represents a front view of the mouth parts of a bird louse, Goniodes; lb, is the upper lip, or labrum, lying under the clypeus; mad, the mandibles; max, the maxillae; l, the lyre-formed piece; ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... separated from their homes, and completely under control of the State. The purpose was to secure strong, beautiful, and supple bodies, inured to hardship, as a preparation for the life of the soldier. The only intellectual education was music, which consisted in playing the lyre as an accompaniment to the dance. Reading and writing were despised as ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... infinite. Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing, Escap't the Stygian Pool, though long detain'd In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight Through utter and through middle darkness borne With other notes then to th' Orphean Lyre I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night, Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to reascend, 20 Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that rowle in vain To find thy piercing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... mountain! lyre of bird and tree! Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, leaps ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... he had sung. They then, well pleased to think that they should hear the best of all minstrels upon earth, drew back from the stern towards the middle of the ship; and he put on the full minstrel's garb and took his lyre, and standing on the deck performed the Orthian measure. Then as the measure ended, he threw himself into the sea just as he was, in his full minstrel's garb; and they went on sailing away to Corinth, but him, they say, a dolphin supported on its back and brought him to shore at Tainaron: ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... desire—old passion— old forgetfulness—old pain— not this, nor any flower, but if you turn again, seek strength of arm and throat, touch as the god; neglect the lyre-note; knowing that you shall feel, about the frame, no trembling of the string but heat, more passionate of bone and the white shell and ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... summer from Magdeburg on the occasion of the festival. Your remarkable work "La Lyre et la Harpe" figured on the programme; a delay in the translation and in the study of the choruses obliged me, to my great regret, to defer the performance of it till next summer, when the Tonkunstler-Versammlung, which is honored by your active membership and has just named ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... in honor of fair Branwen's worth Bore gifts to her:—and Jove, Olympus' lord, Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord, And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth, And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword, And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard And ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... blushes with love While to listen The red levin With the rapid pleiads even Which were seven Pauses in heaven! Pauses in heaven! And they say the starry choir And the other listening things, That Israfel's fire is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings The trembling living wire Of those unusual ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... shadows of pine. And it divides itself, like the Oberland, into three regions: first, the region of rock and snow, sacred to Mercury and Apollo, in which Mercury's birth on Cyllene, his construction of the lyre, and his stealing the oxen of Apollo, are all expressions of the enchantments of cloud and sound, mingling with the sunshine, on the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... ye muses, my spirit inspire, Breathe softly and sweetly, sweep gently my lyre; There's gloom in my harp-string's low murmuring tone, Speak kindly, speak gently, to ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... prodigy, but very much of a born genius. Her memory for any composition she heard once was unfailingly accurate; her rendition of anything she knew was more than perfect, since to perfection of rendition she added sympathetic interpretation. She was already reputed the best female performer on the lyre, the most popular instrument in ancient times. The lyre had an effect something between that of a guitar and a harp, with some of the characteristics of the modern banjo, zither ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... himself a man of genius, and whose lyre has been too long capriciously silent, appreciated the high merit of these and similar passages, and drew a proud ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and out, fringed with a thick belt of scrub, amongst which rose tall red-gum trees. Flights of cockatoos screamed over their heads, and magpies gurgled in the thick shades by the water. Occasionally came the clear whistle of a lyre bird or the peal of a laughing jackass. Jim knew all the bird-notes, as well as the signs of bush game, and pointed them out as they rode. Once a big wallaby showed for an instant, and there was a general outcry and a plunge in pursuit, but the wallaby was too quick for them, and ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... of solitude, and there Life met a god, who challenged her and said: "Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed, And in my live flank dug a finger-hole, And wrung new music from ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... viewed? Where now thy might which all those kings subdued? No martial myriads muster in thy gate; No suppliant nations in thy temple wait; No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among, Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song: But lawless force and meagre want are there, And the quick-darting eye of restless fear, While cold oblivion, 'mid thy ruins laid, Folds its dank wing beneath the ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... cheeks are wan, Yet art thou born of an immortal sire, The child of Nemesis and of the Swan; Thy veins should run with ichor and with fire. Yet this is thy delight and thy desire, To love a mortal lord, a mortal child, To live, unpraised of lute, unhymn'd of lyre, As any woman ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... of the Arts"; Genius taming Pegasus, inspiration in art; Wisdom inspiring Youth; Music with lyre; figures ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... thy lyre, even as the forest is; What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone. Sweet, though in sadness, be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... carpet—it impressed me as about as big as Sarmatia in the store-room Atlas—were islands and archipelagoes of chintz-covered chairs and couches, tables, great Sevres vases on pedestals, a bronze man and horse. Somewhere in this wilderness one came, I remember, upon—a big harp beside a lyre-shaped music stand, and a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... some poet, whose lyre had never lost a string, to whom mortality, kinder than is her custom, had vouchsafed a day whose down had been untouched,—that to him these plains might enter, and flow forth in airy song. And you, forests, under whose symmetrical shields of dark green the colors of the fawns move, like the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us—they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 15 —He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering—not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. 20 Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, One ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and where art thou, My Country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now— The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy Lyre, so long divine, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... dread desire! By all the dreams that throng Love's golden ways, By all the honied vows thy votary pays, By sacrificial wine, and holy fire! Thou who hast made my heart thy living lyre, Hast thou no gift for me, nor any grace? Why hast thou turned the light of Love's sweet face From me, the sweetest ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... remarkable and beautiful birds are found in Australia and Tasmania: the lyre-bird, with its wonderful tail feathers; the odd owl-like "morepoke," which screams its own name through the forest solitudes all night long; glistening bronze-winged pigeons; strange and gorgeous parrots; and others, to describe which would fill a large volume. In this locality are nearly a hundred ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... if you "do me down," I have my lyre, And I shall trumpet (at the normal Press wage) Such things about that house, and with such fire, That all men ever after shall conspire To shun the said demesne and curse ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... trunks (for which they have often been mistaken by English Heralds), placed in the same erect position, and, like the trumpets, so adjusted as to have the general aspect of the curved outline of a classic lyre. The helm of Sir GEOFFREY LUTERELL, A.D. 1345, No. 380, drawn from a celebrated illumination, between the tall spikes has a late example of the Fan-Crest; and it exemplifies the practice sometimes adopted of ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... Fancy closed her wings And Passion quenched his fire, Love, Love, still echoed from the strings As from Anacreon's lyre! ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... castled Town, Rare spot of beauty, grandeur, and renown, Seat of East-Anglian kings!—proud child of fame, Hallowed by time, illustrious Framlinghame! I touch my lyre delighted, thus to bring To thee my heart's full homage while I sing! And thou, old Castle!—thy bold turrets high, Have shed their deep enchantment on mine eye, Though years have changed thee, I have gazed intent In silent joy, on tower and battlement, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... of the upper Thames with its fairy house-boats and green banks has been sung by poets, but rash is the minstrel who tunes his lyre to sound the praises of this muddy stream in the vicinity of Chelsea. As yellow as the Tiber and thick as the Missouri after a flood, it comes twice a day bearing upon its tossing tide a unique assortment of uncanny sights and sickening smells from the swarming ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... From gaping crowds loud thunder of applause, Was vainer than the King: his only thirst Was to be hailed, in every race, the first. When tournament was held, in knightly guise The King would ride the lists and win the prize; When music charmed the court, with golden lyre The King would take the stage and lead the choir; In hunting, his the lance to slay the boar; In hawking, see his falcon highest soar; In painting, he would wield the master's brush; In high debate,—"the King is speaking! Hush!" ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... were made in the grand pianoforte both externally and in the instrument. The harpsichord boxed up front gave way to the cylinder front, invented by Henry Pape, a clever German pianoforte-maker who bad settled in Paris. Who put the pedals upon the familiar lyre I have not been able to learn. It would be in the Empire time, when a classical taste was predominant. But the greatest change was from a wooden resisting structure to one in which iron should play an important part. The invention belongs to this country, and is due to a tuner named ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... far depth where sheeted lightning plays; Or, on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely, Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely: That I should never hear Apollo's song, Though feathery clouds were floating all along The purple west, and, two bright streaks between, The golden lyre itself were dimly seen: That the still murmur of the honey bee Would never teach a rural song to me: That the bright glance from beauty's eyelids slanting Would never make a lay of mine enchanting, Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold Some tale ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... adorned with a wainscot, fearful to behold, painted the color of powder blue. The panels were decorated with wall-paper —Oriental scenes in sepia tint—and for all furniture, half-a-dozen chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather cushions were ranged round the room. The two clumsy arched windows that gave upon the Place du Murier were curtainless; there was neither clock nor candle sconce nor mirror above the mantel-shelf, for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long-loved and for a season gone. For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage-bed.... And she, the mother ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... the lyric that most displeaseth, who with his tuned lyre and well-accorded voice, giveth praise, the reward of virtue, to virtuous acts? who giveth moral precepts and natural problems? who sometimes raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in singing ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... take up the lyre, For a rustling noise I hear In this shady thicket near: Yes, I 'm right, I must retire. Swift as feet can fly I 'll go. For these men that here have strayed Must have heard me while I ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... every pictured phrase to tell Our sorrowing hearts' desire; The shattered harp, the broken shell, The silent unstrung lyre; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was instructed in the learning of his time. Castor, the most experienced charioteer of his day, taught him, Eurytus also, how to shoot with a bow and arrows; Linus how to play upon the lyre; and Eumolpus, grandson of the North Wind, drilled him in singing. Thus time passed to his eighteenth year when, so great already had become his strength and knowledge, he killed a fierce lion which had preyed upon the flocks of Amphitryon while they were grazing ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... I can drown, or, like a broken lyre, Be thrown to earth, or cast upon a fire,— I can be made to feel the pangs of death, And yet be constant to the quest of breath,— Our poor pale trick of living through the lies We name Existence when that 'something' dies Which we call Honor. Many and many a way Can ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... with his lyre Supreme among the Elysian quire, Is, for the dwellers upon earth, Mute as ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... were hushed with vague desire; We breathed in kingdoms wildly new, Enthralled by Memnon's mystic lyre In regions whence the Ph[oe]nix flew; Dumb splendour round us blown, and higher On heaven's deep dome—the peacock's hue, Bright ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... of the mountaineer. It was in the mountain districts where were preserved the recollections of Scander Beg, and where the manners of ancient Laconia prevailed, the deeds of the brave soldier were sung on the lyre, and the skilful robber quoted as an example to the children by the father of the family. Village feasts were held on the booty taken from strangers; and the favourite dish was always a stolen sheep. Every man was esteemed in proportion to his skill and courage, and a man's chances ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... repeated. "It is ridiculous of me, but I have heard the signals and the music more than once and wondered. I did not know"—he smiled the smile of the flaneur—"I did not know it was, let me say, Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus with his lyre restored from among the constellations, and forgetting something of its old wonder. Madame, I hope Orpheus will not en-rheum himself by ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... of S. Mark looks down alone on staring desolation, strode the Borgia in all his panoply of war, a gilded glittering dragon, and from the dais tore the Montefeltri's throne, and from the arras stripped their ensigns, replacing these with his own Bull and Valentinus Dux? Here Tasso tuned his lyre for Francesco Maria's wedding-feast, and read 'Aminta' to Lucrezia d'Este. Here Guidobaldo listened to the jests and whispered scandals of the Aretine. Here Titian set his easel up to paint; here the boy Raphael, cap in hand, took signed and sealed credentials from his Duchess to the Gonfalonier ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Shrunken and mean the spirit fails Like old snow falling from the crags And priest and pedagog compete With nostrums for the age that ails, But learn not why the spirit lags. Tuneless and dull the loose lyre thrums Ill-plucked by fingers strange to skill That change and change the fever'd chords, But still no inspiration comes Though priest and pundit labor still. Lust-urged the clamoring clans denounce Whate'er ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Thebes, was proud of many things. Amphion, her husband, had received from the Muses a wonderful lyre, to the music of which the stones of the royal palace had of themselves assumed place. Her father was Tantalus, who had been entertained by the gods; and she herself was the ruler of a powerful kingdom and a woman of great pride of spirit and majestic beauty. But of none of these ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... transmuted by thy wand, Their lips shall open, and their arms expand; The love-lost lady, and the warrior slain, Leap from their tombs, and sigh or fight again. —So when ill-fated ORPHEUS tuned to woe His potent lyre, and sought the realms below; Charm'd into life unreal forms respir'd, And list'ning shades ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... without weakness, without glaring gay; Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains; And finish'd more through happiness than pains. The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire, One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre. Yet should the Graces all thy figures place, And breathe an air divine on ev'ry face; Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul; With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie, And these be sung ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... see several beings!" he said. "Some of them are distinguished-looking, that one on horseback, for example, and the one with the lyre. But others have a frivolous air, and there is one with positively a low expression; and yet he is attractive too, when I look closer, and I seem to know him. What ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... rose in rebellion. Germany remained faithful to her Emperor, and the Emperor was successful against his son. But he soon died in disappointment and despair. With him the star of the Swabian dynasty had set, and the sweet sounds of the Swabian lyre died away with the last breath of Corradino, the last of the Hohenstaufen, on the scaffold at Naples, in 1268. Germany was breaking down under heavy burdens. It was visited by the papal interdict, by famine, by pestilence. Sometimes there was no Emperor, sometimes there ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, Though hard and rare; thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... warrior kings, In height and prowess more than human, strive Again for glory, while the golden lyre Is ever sounding in heroic ears ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... that day only," at his own desire to see Wordsworth, and I feared he would be disappointed, as I know I should have been at his age, if, when called to see a poet, I had found no Apollo, flaming with youthful glory, laurel-crowned and lyre in hand, but, instead, a reverend old man clothed in black, and walking with cautious step along the level garden-path; however, he was not disappointed, but seemed in timid reverence to recognize the spirit that had dictated "Laodamia" ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a little of Prior, A sketch of a Milkmaid, a lay of the Squire— These, these are 'on draught' 'At the Sign of the Lyre!' ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... his epicureanism, with its tinge of grossness. This, no doubt, was what made Lamartine dislike him. The religious note is absent from his lyre; there is nothing in him which shows any contact with Christianity, any knowledge of the sublimer tragedies of the soul. Kind nature is his goddess, Horace his prophet, and Montaigne his gospel. In other words, his horizon is that of the Renaissance. This pagan island ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made of golden sunbeams; his garments were like light summer clouds; and the expression of his face was so exceedingly vivid, that Hecate held her hands before her eyes, muttering that he ought to wear a black veil. Phoebus (for this was the very person whom they were seeking) had a lyre in his hands, and was making its chords tremble with sweet music; at the same time singing a most exquisite song, which he had recently composed. For besides a great many other accomplishments, this young man was renowned for ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... thoughts are fingers, Of the hands that witch the lyre— Greenland has its mountain icebergs, AEtna has its heart of fire; Calculation has its plummet; Self-control its iron rules; Genius has its sparkling fountains; Dulness has its stagnant pools; Like a halcyon on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... its own paradise, - Dies, and relives eternal from its death, Immortal melodies in each deep breath; Sweeps thro' my being, bearing up to thee Myself, the weight of its eternity; Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire, It marries music with the human lyre, Blending divine delight with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ion, because you may possibly have a knowledge of the art of the general as well as of the rhapsode; and you may also have a knowledge of horsemanship as well as of the lyre: and then you would know when horses were well or ill managed. But suppose I were to ask you: By the help of which art, Ion, do you know whether horses are well managed, by your skill as a horseman or as a performer on the lyre—what would ...
— Ion • Plato
... glowing lyre A wild and careless hand had flung. The base, cold crowd, that nought admire, Stood round, responseless to his fire, With heavy eye ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Phillips's play he does not actually play on the lyre, but he improvises and recites ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... floor, formerly the kitchen of the chateau. The thing that impresses one on entering is a huge, high fireplace of the old pattern, in red brick, with two stone benches facing each other under the mantel, and the singer's crest—an immense lyre with a roll of music—carved on the monumental pediment. The effect was striking; but there came from it a terrible blast of air, which, added to the cold of the floor, to the pale light falling through the windows on a level with the ground, made one ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Epaminondas, who, in my opinion, was the greatest man among the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute; and Themistocles, some years before, was deemed ignorant because at an entertainment he declined the lyre when it was offered to him. For this reason musicians flourished in Greece; music was a general study; and whoever was unacquainted with it was not considered as fully instructed in learning. Geometry was in high esteem with them, therefore none were more honorable than mathematicians. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Then Cheiron put the lyre into his hands, and taught him how to play it, till the sun sank low behind the cliff, and a shout was ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... public journals. This complication of events could not but be fatal to Europe and France, whatever might be its result, but it presented an opportunity favourable to the development of the Emperor's genius. Like his favourite poet Ossian, who loved best to touch his lyre midst the howlings of the tempest, Napoleon required political tempests for the display ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... discovers Tmolus seated on a throne of turf, on his right hand Apollo with his lyre, attended by the Muses; on the left, ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... of the child as inventor, is the lyre, the discovery of which, classical mythology attributes to the infant Mercury or Hermes. Four hours after his birth the baby god is said to have found the shell of a tortoise, through the opposite edges of which he bored holes, and, inserting into these ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre? Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes? Who first from out the still watch, lone and long, Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise Within his dark-kept ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... painter of the human passions. The picture which he draws of Achilles,[1] receiving the subsequent deputation from the Greeks, illustrates our subject exactly. It was in vain for the hero to attempt to sooth his mind with the melodies of the lyre; his blood kindled only at the music of war; it was idle for him to seek sufficient pleasure in celebrating the renown of heroes; this was but a vain effort to quell the burning passion for surpassing them in glory. He listens to the deputation, not tranquilly, but peevishly. He charges them with ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Fingers the sunken spire; Crocket by crocket slowly creepeth down; Brushes the maze of wire, Dewy, electric lyre, And with a silent hymn one moment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... lyre awhile unstrung Till health again invigorate thy frame; With brain renewed, with vigorous heart and lung Take up thy work once more, and greater fame— A richer man by far than e'er before, For thou hast ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... music and poetry were inseparable. The poet of his time recited his lines with lyre in hand, striking upon it in the measure he thought best suited to his song. Doubtless the poems of Anacreon were delivered in this way. His themes were simple,—wine, love, and the glorification of youth and poetry; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a more watchful and provident care to all the equipage of rank and ostentation. Flattery, we may safely assert, will never offer its incense in a more seductive form, than when it borrowed the pencil of Holbein and the lyre of Spenser. Yet these persons were the same who trode upon floors strewn with rushes, and deemed it a point of nicety and refinement if these were changed sufficiently often to prevent the soiling of their clothes. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... reward of learned brows, equals me with the gods above: the cool grove, and the light dances of nymphs and satyrs, distinguish me from the crowd; if neither Euterpe withholds her pipe, nor Polyhymnia disdains to tune the Lesbian lyre. But, if you rank me among the lyric poets, I shall tower to the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... voice one syllable—an ocean of love in themselves, it is true, and he who has never swum there misses part of the poetry of the senses, as he who has never seen the sea has lost some strings of his lyre. You know the why and wherefore of these words. My relations with the Marchioness of Dudley had a disastrous celebrity. At an age when the senses have dominion over our conduct, and when in my case they had been violently repressed by circumstances, the image of the saint bearing ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... his head. Kings have no rights divine, except when deposed and fallen; they are then invested with the awe that belongs to each solemn image of mortal vicissitude,—vicissitude that startles the Epicurean, "insanientis sapientiae consultus," and strikes from his careless lyre the notes that attest a god! Some proud shadow chases another from the throne of Cyrus, and Horace hears in the thunder the rush of Diespiter, and identifies Providence with the Fortune that snatches off the diadem in her whirring swoop. But fronts discrowned take a ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
