"Siren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her contempt. She would feel the scorn and the indignation of a whole town about her. They would accuse her of leading an innocent boy astray, alienating him from his own mother. "No, Rafael; a thousand times no; I have a little conscience left! I'm not the irresponsible siren I used to be." ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... plot of his drama sketched in part in one of the novelli of Ser Giovanni; but the conception of an aristocratic yet gracious lady gifted with all perfection, with which he replaced the siren of Belmont, was not, as he supposed, a portrait from life of Marie de' Medici. The character sprang directly from his own intense longing, and by some unreasoning reflex action, his mind endowed the woman who happened to be ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... line tries to nose ahead of the men of the regiment, but rather 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 ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... despair To paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... 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
... 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
... the siren song that lured me to a certain nook on the side of the highest mountain in Massachusetts one June. The country was gloriously green and fresh and young, as if it had just been created. From my window I looked ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... 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 |
