"Aeolian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chalmers, "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to the January blasts making an Aeolian ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... good or bad wood, skilfully or unskilfully made, of this shape or the other; every thing in his life, no matter what we call it, plays upon him, and the instrument sounds for good or evil, as it is well or ill made. You are an AEolian harp—the sound is delightful, whatever breath of fate may touch it; I am a weather-cock—I turn whichever way the wind blows, and try to point right, but at the same time I creak, so that it hurts my own ears and those of other people. I am content if now and then a steersman ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the spirit of our past must be taken up and transmitted before a new type is realized in a new art and a new literature. We can see that Longfellow was essentially a scholar—a receiver of impressions from books; that he was like an AEolian harp, blown upon by many winds, so that his music was in many regards necessarily a melodious echo of what was 'whispered by world-wandering winds.' And we can see, too, that he came into American literary life just as it was passing from the germ to the plant, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... as a Truant or a Fugitive, 90 But as a Pilgrim resolute, I took, Even with the chance equipment of that hour, The road that pointed toward the chosen Vale. [F] It was a splendid evening, and my soul Once more made trial of her strength, nor lacked 95 AEolian visitations; but the harp Was soon defrauded, and the banded host Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds, And lastly utter silence! "Be it so; Why think of any thing but present good?" [H] 100 So, like a home-bound labourer I pursued My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed Mild influence; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... praise it. I conceive they shall be studied for a cock-shy of rainbow epithets slashed in at the target of Landed Gentry, premonitorily. The tintinnabulation's enough. Periodical footings of Clashthoughts into Mayfair or the Tyrol, signalled by the slide from its mast of a crested index of Aeolian caprice, blazon of their presence, give the curious a right to spin through the halls and galleries under a cackle of housekeeper guideship—scramble for a chuck of the dainties, dog fashion. There is something to be said for the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... she remained motionless as the marble statue of Psyche that adorned the recess in which she stood. Then the lips moved and the words "Put your trust in God," came forth soft and bewitching as the strain of an aeolian harp, and leaving, as it were, a holy hushed spell, subduing the soul ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... I can." Themistocles's voice was solemn as an aeolian harp, but the prisoner caught at ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... power over lyric verse. He had imitated at first the older Roman satirists; here by Maecenas' advice he copied from Greek models, from Alcaeus and Sappho, claiming ever afterwards with pride that he was the first amongst Roman poets to wed Aeolian lays to notes of Italy (Od. III, xxx, 13). He spent seven years in composing the first three Books of the Odes, which appeared in a single volume about B.C. 23. More than any of his poems they contain the essence of his indefinable magic art. They deal apparently ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... was a singular phenomenon, but it was also as beautiful as it was singular. I saw him in the part of Douglas, and he seemed almost like 'some gay creature of the element,' moving about gracefully, with all the flexibility of youth, and murmuring AEolian sounds with plaintive tenderness. I shall never forget the way in which he repeated the line in which young Norval says, speaking of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... now every breath of the soft atmosphere, every gleam from the changing foliage, the light's peculiar tone, and the soft indolence of the hazy days, stole into the recesses of Diana's heart, and smote on the nerves that answered every touch with vibrations of pain. The AEolian harp that had sounded such soft harmonies a year ago, when the notes rose and fell in breathings of joy, clanged now with sharp and keen discords that Diana could scarcely bear. The time of blackberries passed without her joining the yearly party which went ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the non so che, distils itself through Clorinda's voice into Tancredi's being. Afterwards it thrills there like moaning winds in an Aeolian lyre, reducing him to despair upon his bed of sickness, and reasserting its lyrical charm in the vision which he has of Clorinda among the trees of the enchanted forest. He stands before the cypress where the soul of his dead lady ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... knight undertook to make an immense Aeolian harp by stretching wires from tower to tower of his castle. When he finished the harp it was silent; but when the breezes began to blow he heard faint strains like the murmuring of distant music. At last a tempest arose and swept with fury over his castle, and then rich and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... give me much comfort, Florence, for long have I wanted some one who could sympathize with me on that subject. To most persons, sound alone is considered music; to me, a night like this should not be jarred save by soft vibrations of aeolian strings. And the same of beautiful scenery. I cannot bear to hear one burst forth in song, for the landscape is to me, in itself, a Te Deum, a perfect song ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... cannot touch the harp again; No chords will vibrate on the string; Like broken flowers upon the plain, My heart e'en withers while I sing. Aeolian harps have witching tones, On morning or the evening gale; No melody their music owns ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... while pontiffs climb With silent maids the Capitolian height. "Born," men will say, "where Aufidus is loud, Where Daunus, scant of streams, beneath him bow'd The rustic tribes, from dimness he wax'd bright, First of his race to wed the Aeolian lay To notes of Italy." Put glory on, My own Melpomene, by genius won, And crown me of thy grace with ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... the first of human joys.... I did not well know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind her when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an AEolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rantann when I looked and fingered over her hand to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualifications she sang sweetly; and ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... feed after sunset, it is necessary, when journeying, to allow them to graze for several hours during the day. They utter a peculiar low sound, which at a distance resembles, when the herd is large, the tone of numerous Aeolian harps. On seeing any strange object which excites their fears, they immediately scatter in every direction, and are with difficulty reunited. The Indians treat them kindly, ornamenting their ears with ribbons, and hanging little bells about their necks. When ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hand in hand, in the golden days Of the beautiful early summer weather, When skies were purple and breath was praise, When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds, And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards, And trees with voices aeolian. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... hues, and seated himself for his noonday meal. After satisfying his hunger and again quenching his thirst at the stream, he sat down to rest; a stupor came over him, as the gentle breeze fanned the mountain-side and whispered among the lofty branches of the forest trees, like the AEolian harp ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... Falesa" is a revelation of unfamiliar life and character, and one is attached to the little brown heroine. There was to have been "a supernatural element," better, probably, than the device of the AEolian harps hung in the thicket. "I have got the smell and the look of the thing a good deal," he said, and he had got the style of his rough English narrator, who was, as he told the missionary, "what you call a sinner, what I call a sweep," but repented ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... explorations he met a landsman who told him about the running down of an emigrant ship, and how he heard a sound coming over the sea 'like a great sorrowful flute or Aeolian harp.' He makes another and very humorous reference to this instrument in a letter to Landor, in which ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... farewell; Yet why to thee adieu? Thy vaults will echo back my knell, Thy towers my tomb will view; The faltering tongue which sung thy fall, And former glories of thy hall Forgets its wonted simple note; But yet the lyre retains the strings, And sometimes on Aeolian wings, In ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... Tempest, endeavours to confer the honour on the Island of Lampedosa. In reference to this question, a statement of the pseudo-Aristotle is remarkable. In his work "[Greek: peri thaumasion akousmaton]," he mentions Lipara, one of the AEolian Islands, lying to the north of Sicily, and nearly in the course of Shakspeare's Neapolitan fleet from Tunis to Naples. Among the [Greek: polla teratode] found ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... of Mycale—upon which followed closely the loss of Sestus, the European key of the Hellespont, and more remotely the loss not only of all Persian holdings in the Balkans and the islands, but also of the Ionian Greek cities and most of the Aeolian, and at last (after the final naval defeat off the Eurymedon) of the whole littoral of Anatolia from Pamphylia right round to the Propontis—not even after all these defeats and losses did the Persian power suffer diminution in inner Asia or loss of prestige in inland Asia Minor. ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... accomplished in musical learning. For it will be easy for you to choose a well-skilled man, having yourself been able to attain to that high and abstruse study". Then follow a string of reflections on the soothing power of music, a description of the five "modes" [97] (Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian, Ionian, and Lydian) and of the diapason; instances of the power of music drawn from the Scriptures and from heathen mythology, a discussion on the harmony of the spheres, and a doubt whether the enjoyment of this "astral music" be rightly placed among the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin redbreast" in The White Devil, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's Fourth Song,—"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative genius of English poetry, recently delivered from Sycorax. If we glance at Dry den's recension of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... form, and the sweet girl-face of our new "School Harm"! Say, boys! hev' ye heard an AEolian harp which a Zephyr's tremulous finger twangs? Wa'al, it kinder thrills ye the way I felt when I first ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... of eld, In that bright vision I beheld Greater and deeper mysteries. I saw, with its celestial keys, Its chords of air, its frets of fire, The Samian's great Aeolian lyre, Rising through all its sevenfold bars, From earth unto the fixed stars. And through the dewy atmosphere, Not only could I see, but hear, Its wondrous and harmonious strings, In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... therefore they are allowed to graze as they go, or to halt for a few hours at feeding-time. When resting they make a peculiar humming noise, which, when proceeding from a numerous flock at a distance, is like a number of AEolian harps sounding in concert. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... of human joys here below! How she caught the contagion I cannot tell.... Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an AEolian harp; and especially why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers that round them blow, 5 Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along, Deep, majestic, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... gazed one moment into the deep and dark recess where lay his wounded and the dying. The morning wind had freshened a bit, and a low, murmurous song, nature's AEolian, came softly from the swaying pine and stunted oak and juniper far on high. The whiff that swept to their nostrils from the lower depths of the canon told its own grewsome tale. There, scattered along the stream bed, lay the festering remains of their four-footed ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... blues. The radiant heat of Branchspell he found to affect every part of his body with unequal intensities. His ears awakened; the atmosphere was full of murmurs, the sands hummed, even the sun's rays had a sound of their own—a kind of faint Aeolian harp. Subtle, puzzling perfumes assailed his nostrils. His palate lingered over the memory of the gnawl water. All the pores of his skin were tickled and soothed by hitherto unperceived currents of air. His poigns explored actively the inward nature of everything in his immediate ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... people Zeus was the Supreme God, "the God of gods" as Plato calls him. Whilst all other deities in Greece are more or less local and tribal gods, Zeus was known in every village and to every clan. "He is at home on Ida,[176] on Olympus, at Dodona.[177] While Poseidon drew to himself the AEolian family, Apollo the Dorian, Athene the Ionian, there was one powerful God for all the sons of Hellen—Dorians, AEolians, Ionians, Achaeans, viz., the Panhellenic Zeus."[178] Zeus was the name invoked in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... age, nor does he exactly understand them himself. He cannot form a whole. He has not the constructive faculty. He can give only the fine tones of thought, drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds drawn from the AEolian harp by the wandering gale.—He is totally deficient in all the machinery of poetry. His Excursion, taken as a whole, notwithstanding the noble materials thrown away in it, is a proof of this. The line labours, the sentiment moves slow, but the poem stands stock-still. The reader makes ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... whooping howling wilderness, a sort of Malibran. With Lind, Labache and Melba mixed and all combined in one. I'm a grand cathedral organ and a calliope sharp, I'm a gushing, trembling nightingale, a vast AEolian harp. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the stillness round, As 'twere the shade of sound, Floats on the low sweet strain of lulling tones; Such as from trembling wire Of sweet AEolian lyre, With winds awake ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... regards these etudes, I have the advantage of having heard most of them played by Chopin himself, and, as Florestan whispered in my ear at the time, "He plays them very much a la Chopin." Imagine an AEolian harp that had all the scales, and that these were jumbled together by the hand of an artist into all sorts of fantastic ornaments, but in such a manner that a deeper fundamental tone and a softly-singing higher part were always audible, and you ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... took out of her pocket a bunch of little keys and unlocked an ingeniously made cupboard with a curved, sloping lid. When the lid was raised the cupboard emitted a plaintive note which made the lieutenant think of an AEolian harp. Susanna picked out another key and ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... as Monsieur Mesmer's. Richly-stained glass shed a dim religious light on his spacious saloons, which were almost covered with mirrors. Orange-blossoms scented all the air of his corridors; incense of the most expensive kinds burned in antique vases on his chimney-pieces; aeolian harps sighed melodious music from distant chambers; while sometimes a sweet female voice, from above or below, stole softly upon the mysterious silence that was kept in the house, and insisted upon ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... two little AEolian harps, which at the least ruffle of the breeze running through their blades of grass, emit a gentle tinkling sound, like the harmonious murmur of a brook; outside, to the very furthest limits of the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... we observe the attractive title of The AEolian Harp of the World's Poetry, a collection of poems of all countries and ages, "dedicated to German ladies and maidens," by FERD. SCHMIDT. Also by the same collector, a Household Treasury of the most beautiful Ballads, Romances, and Poetic Legends of all Times and Nations; by BRUNO LINDNER, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... limited means can afford to do. The body, you say, is a subtle instrument to be played upon in every variety of manner and rendered above all things as sensitive as possible to pleasurable impressions. In fact, you want to be a kind of Aeolian harp. I admit that this is more than a string of sophisms; you may call it a philosophy of life. But it is not my philosophy. It does not appeal to me in the least. You will get no satisfaction out of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... know all that you were going to say, I could repeat it to you in your own words. You were about to assault the double standard. Consider it done. You are right. Everyone with sense is right there. But if I hear it again I'll think I am at Aeolian Hall listening to an English author lecture. I'll put you in your car on Forty-second Street and ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... place! Most gentle are such transitions in the calm of nature and of the heart; all true poetry is full of them; and in music how pleasant are they, or how affecting! Those alternations of tears and smiles, of fervent aspirations and of quiet thoughts! The organ and the AEolian harp! As the one has ceased pealing praise, we can list the other whispering it—nor feels the soul any loss of emotion in the change—still true to itself and its wondrous nature—just as it is so when from the sunset clouds it turns its ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... quivered along the Ray like the touched string of an aeolian harp. She answered it in almost ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... was like a new-tuned harpsichord; But Longbow wild as an AEolian harp, With which the winds of heaven can claim accord, And make a music, whether flat or sharp. Of Strongbow's talk you would not change a word: At Longbow's phrases you might sometimes carp: Both wits—one born so, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... with a throbbing note in its character. That day, too, came the white squalls, lasting a minute or two each, with puffs of furious wind and a bucketful of rain, like bombs fired in advance of the hurricane by some huge aeolian howitzer. Steadily the whir of the advancing wind became louder, steady, without gusts, and more and more frequent became ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... take down what fell from his lips. And just as it fell it would have been literature. He was urged to write these things. But Leamy had not readily the will or the power to compel his spirit when the favoured moment had passed. He was mostly passive, like an AEolian harp, under the visitation. Ill-health, too, extreme and distressing, burdened him. He bore his trials cheerfully, and strove manfully to write, especially in his later days when the power and the will seemed to come to him just as illness tightened its hold. ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy |
