"Swan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of day is dying over the forests of the upper Mississippi. The silence of high space falls upon the vast stream. On a thunder-blasted tree-top near the western bank sits a lone, stern figure waiting for its lordliest prey—the eagle waiting for the swan. Long the stillness continues among the rocks, the tree-tops, and above the river. But far away in the north a white shape is floating nearer. At last it comes into sight, flying heavily, for it is already ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... the guest of John Jacob Swan, an old and worthy resident, after whom the village had been named. Everything was done for his comfort by the Swan family, of which we find some pleasant reminiscences noted in the Journal. Mr. Swan's son, Andrew, was a lieutenant-colonel ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... pursued his way toward Tranquil Vale, a. row of neat cottages situated about a mile and a half from the town, and inhabited principally by retired mariners. The gardens, which ran down to the river, boasted a particularly fine strain of flag-staffs; battered figure-heads in swan-like attitudes lent a pleasing touch of colour, and old boats sawn in halves made convenient arbours in which to sit and watch the passing pageant of ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... screws, not agitating the water beyond a light ripple at the bows. The bay at the moment was quiet as a mill-pond, and it needed little imagination to prompt recognition of the identity of dignified movement with that of a swan making its leisurely way by means equally unseen; no turbulent display of energy, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Parliament were great smokers, for the finds of seventeenth-century pipes on the sites of their camps have been numerous. A considerable number of pipes of the Caroline period, with the usual small elongated bowls, were found in 1902 at Chichester, in the course of excavating the foundations of the Old Swan Inn, East Street, for building the present branch of the London ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Said the Swan, by way of answer: "I have wondered, when you make Such a shocking, senseless clatter, Whether you are ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... I am all white: a sacramental Host! What more reproaches can they hurl, O Father, Against our hapless fate?—Oh, hush! I add In silence Schoenbrunn to Saint Helena!— 'Tis done!—But if the Eaglet is resigned To perish like the innocent, yielding swan, Nailed in the gloom above some lofty gate, He must become the high and holy signal That scares the ravens and calls back the eagles. There must be no more meanings in the field, Nor dreadful writhings in the underwood. Bear on thy wings, O whirlwind of the plain, The shouts of conquerors ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... so important an event that a gun was fired to announce its coming in. Sheffield set up a "flying machine on steel springs" to London in 1760: it "slept" the first night at the Black Man's Head Inn, Nottingham; the second at the Angel, Northampton; and arrived at the Swan with Two Necks, Lad-lane, on the evening of the third day. The fare was 1L. l7s., and 14 lbs. of luggage was allowed. But the principal part of the expense of travelling was for living and lodging on the road, not to mention the fees to guards ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... work; at other times he commended the symmetry and proportion of the rooms. He walked about the gardens; he bathed himself in the canal, swimming, diving, and beating the liquid element like a milk-white swan. The hall resounded with the sprightly violin and the martial hautbois. The family tripped it about, and capered like hailstones bounding from a marble floor. Wine, ale, and October flew about as plentifully ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... please any one of his idiot flatterers, . . moreover my 'master!"—and he emphasized this word with indescribable bitterness—"hath slept as soundly as a swine, and hath duly bathed with the punctiliousness of a conceited swan, and being suitably combed, perfumed, attired, and throned as becomes his dainty puppetship, is now condescending to partake of vulgar food in the seclusion of his own apartment. Go thither and you shall find his verse-stringing Mightiness nobly enshrined as a god among a worshipping ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... composer far surpasses all his other compositions. It is his swan's song, for he composed it in the summer of 1880 and he died in October of the same year after having given his best to the world, a true work of genius, so full of grace, of delicate feeling and of phantastic loveliness, that nobody can hear it ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Christina's side across the dim pasture field, with the golden and purple sunset ahead of them and the silver moonlight behind coming down over Craig-Ellachie. The night was warm and still and the endless song of the grass, the swan song of all that was left of ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... expect them to do so,' she remarked candidly. 'As a girl I was plain featured, and so shy and awkward that your Uncle Joe used to tell me that I was the only ugly duckling that would never turn into a swan.'" ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... frolicsome, for her to get comfortably buried instead of happily married,—and perhaps it is just as well. Even a French novelist must make some little mock concession to the orthodox belief that the wage of sin is death. So Trilby sinks into the grave with a song like the dying swan, and Little Billee follows suit—upsets the entire Christian religion by dying very peaceably as an Atheist, without so much as a shudder on the brink of that outer darkness where there's supposed to be weeping ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... melodrama would have ejaculated "Saved!" but I haven't a tragedy nose, and I gave only a stifled squeak, more like the swan-song of a dying frog than ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a carpet of bright flowers, and on the walls of Beacon Street the great creepers have burst into blossom and are stretching long shoots over the brown stone and the iron balconies. There is a smell of violets and flowers in the warm air, and down on the little pond the swan- shaped boats are paddling about with their cargoes of merry children and calico nursery-maids, while the Irish boys look on from the banks and throw pebbles when the policemen are not looking, wishing they had the spare coin necessary to embark for a ten minutes' voyage on the mimic ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... old libraries, with the exception of Caleb Williams. Political Justice should be read in the second edition (1796), which is maturer than the first and more lively than the third. A modern summary of it by Mr. Salt, with the full text of the last section "On Property," was published by Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. This selection emphasises his communism, but hardly does full justice to the novelty of his anarchist opinions. Full biographical data are to be found in William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, by Mr. Kegan Paul, which contains a readable ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... tendency of men being to claim descent from a God, for each family with this claim a myth of a separate divine amour was needed. Where there had existed Totemism, or belief in kinship with beasts, the myth of the amour of a wolf, bull, serpent, swan, and so forth, was attached to the legend of Zeus. Zeus had been that swan, serpent, wolf, or bull. Once more, ritual arose, in great part, from ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... which we found feeding on the marshy banks of a lake, to which we made our way, attracted by its loud and peculiar cry. Creeping on, we caught sight of it as it stood on the shore. Houlston, who first saw it, declared that it was a large crane. It was about the size of a swan, and getting nearer, I saw that it had an extraordinary horn on the top of its head, surrounded by black and white feathers, while the upper part of its wings had two sharp horns projecting from them—formidable weapons of ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... old bachelor, and will not think me a particularly great donkey for prattling on in this way about my swan, who probably to unprejudiced eyes has a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... done for the Isle of Wight—the shore line is broken and ragged. Viewed upon the map, the fantastic fragments of island and promontory which lie scattered between the South-West Cape and the greater Swan Port, are like the curious forms assumed by melted lead spilt into water. If the supposition were not too extravagant, one might imagine that when the Australian continent was fused, a careless giant upset the crucible, and spilt Van Diemen's ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of a fine rod or stick of carbon rendered white-hot by the current, and to preserve the carbon from burning in the atmosphere, he enclosed it in a glass bulb, from which the air was exhausted by an air pump. Edison and Swan, in 1878, and subsequently, went a step further, and substituted a filament or fine thread of carbon for the rod. The new lamp united the advantages of wire in point of form with those of carbon as a material. The Edison filament was made by cutting thin slips of bamboo and charring them, the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been honoured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came Heracles the mighty, with his lion's skin and club, and behind him Hylas his young squire, who bore his arrows and his bow; and Tiphys, the skilful steersman; and Butes, the fairest of all men; and Castor and Polydeuces the twins, the sons of the magic swan; and Caineus, the strongest of mortals, whom the Centaurs tried in vain to kill, and overwhelmed him with trunks of pine trees, but even so he would not die; and thither came Zetes and Calais, the winged ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... may answer the first before sunrise, unless I am badly mistaken. I have heard an old adage which declares that if you give a man long enough rope he will hang himself. My new application is that you let him talk enough he is apt to sing his own swan song, for a farewell perch on the electric chair ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... a sweet alphabetical miscellany of drugs, herbs, minerals, and groceries commonly used in manufacturing our best Old Bourbon whisky, Swan gin, Madeira wine, pale ale, London brown stout, Heidsieck, Clicquot, Lafitte, and other nice drinks; names the chief of such ingredients ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... contrast with the gloomy purple of the hangings, and was of so fine a texture that it concealed nothing of her body's charming form, and allowed the eye to follow those beautiful outlines—undulating like the neck of a swan—which even death had not robbed of their supple grace. She seemed an alabaster statue executed by some skilful sculptor to place upon the tomb of a queen, or rather, perhaps, like a slumbering maiden over whom the silent snow ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... an extra window, lighted from the adjoining conservatory, threw a wonderful, rich light into the apartment. It was a Gothic window of stained glass, very large, the centre figures being armed warriors, Parsifal and Lohengrin; the one with a banner, the other with a swan. The effect was exquisite, the window a veritable masterpiece, glowing, flaming, and burning with a hundred tints and colours—opalescent, purple, wine-red, clouded pinks, royal blues, saffrons, violets so dark as to be ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 30. This being the anniversary of the Tutelar Saint of Scotland, we had in addition to our usual dinner a roasted swan and a moose-nose, a rice pudding, a cranberry tart, and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... "why should I sit there? I am like to thee, am I not?" "Yea," said the Lady, "as the swan is like to the loon." "Yea, my Lady," said Agatha, "which is the swan and which the loon? Well, well, fear not; I shall set Joyce in thy seat by my Lord's leave; she is tall and fair, and forsooth somewhat like to thee." "Why wilt thou do this?" quoth the Lady; "Why should ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... that a game which called for such vigorous exorcise [Footnote: Ferdinand Vol. I, p. 134, and Major C. Swan in a Report concerning the Creeks in 1791. Schoolcraft, Vol. v, p. 277, that the Whites exceed the Indians at this game.] and which taxed the strength, agility and endurance of the players to such a degree, should be ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... thinking that it was the most stupid one he ever sat through, when just as the soprano was in the midst of that touching ballad, "Comin' thro' the Rye" (the soprano always sings "Comin' thro' the Rye" on an encore)—the Black Swan used to make it irresistible, Philip remembered, with her arch, "If a body kiss a body" there was a cry ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the Elizabethan theatre is based on information concerning the Globe, Fortune and Swan Theatres. From this a certain clear conception—not agreed upon, however, in all points by critics—may be deduced with regard to the earlier ones. They were round or hexagonal in shape. The stage was placed with its back to the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... horse. In a minute or two the giraffe was seen to get clear of the mimosa, and then set off in an awkward, shambling kind of gallop; but, awkward as the gallop appeared, the animal soon left the Major behind. It sailed along with incredible velocity, its long swan-like neck keeping time with its legs, and its black tail curled above ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of Swan River, from its moist state, is better adapted to the cultivation of tobacco and cotton than any other part of Australia. Both these articles are intended to be cultivated on a large scale, as also sugar and flax, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... Mount Olympus, and played so sweetly upon his lyre that Zeus and all his court were entranced. Then he wandered up and down through the whole length of the Thessalian land; but nowhere could he find a spot in which he was willing to dwell. At length he climbed into his car, and bade his swan team fly with him to the country of the Hyperboreans beyond the far-off northern mountains. Forthwith they obeyed; and through the pure regions of the upper air they bore him, winging their way ever northward. They carried him over many an unknown land, and on the seventh ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... this that fires our northland night, This is the song that made Love fearful, even the heart of love afraid, With the great anguish of its great delight. No swan-song, no far-fluttering half-drawn breath, No word that love of love's sweet nature saith, No dirge that lulls the narrowing lids of death, No healing hymn of peace-prevented strife,— This is her song ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... preparing with their help during the long evenings of the preceding winter, in the course of which he has made as many as from 5000 to 10,000 horsehair springes and prepared as many pieces of flexible wood, rather thicker than a swan-quill, in and on which to hang the birds. He hires what he calls his 'tenderie,' being from four to five acres of underwood about three to five years old, pays some thirty shillings for permission to place his springes, and his greatest ambition is to retain for several years the same ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... his character, hazards of every kind did not displease him, when the public esteem was to be deserved by incurring them, I was quite sensible of the danger to which any work of his which should displease the first consul, would expose myself; but I could not resolve to stifle this song of the swan, who wished to make himself heard once more on the tomb of French liberty. I encouraged him therefore in his design, but we deferred to the following year the question whether what he wrote should ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... elevation of miles on its tub-like proportions, or its gay flag of motley. And yet we question whether even Mr. Wakley himself, with all his advantages, would venture to do more than assert his equality with the Swan of Avon. Homer, too, wrote in a very remote period,—so very remote and so very uncertain, that the critics have begun seriously to doubt whether the huge figure of the blind old man, as it looms through the grey ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of London had, from a very early time, their two ports of Billingsgate and Queenhithe, both of them still ports. They had also their communication with the south by means of a ferry, which ran from the place now called the Old Swan Stairs to a port or dock on the Surrey side, still existing, afterwards called St. Mary of the Ferry, or St. Mary Overies. The City became rapidly populous and full of trade and wealth. Vast numbers of ships came yearly, bringing merchandise, and taking away what the country had to ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... A bill to strike from the suffrage clause of the State constitution the word "male" was for the first time presented to the Legislature. It was introduced in the Senate January 7, by David J. Reinhardt; in the House by Albert I. Swan. The members had been previously circularized by the corresponding secretary, Miss Mary R. de Vou, announcing this action in the spirit of the age, in the name of justice and democracy and for the credit of the State. On February 26 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... for another wail reached them from the disconsolate warship. "He's fixed there as though, he was glued to it. He'll have to jettison all his bunker an' a gun or two afore he gets off. They tell me Cigno means 'swan.' I wonder wot's the I-talian for 'goose.' Go an' tell Tagg. Tell him to tumble up quick, if on'y for the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Even the ghosts are gone From lightless fields of mint and euphrasy: There sings no wind in any willow-tree, And shadowy flute-girls wander listlessly Down to the shore where Charon's empty boat, As shadowed swan doth float, Rides all as listlessly, with none to steer. A shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan Unsought of any man: Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown, And now she seeks Persephone alone. The gods have ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... best dressmaker they could find. The oldest sister chose a pink silk gown. "I shall wear my red satin cloak trimmed with swan's-down," ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... any very melancholy trials!" replied he: "hitherto your young life has glided along as peacefully as a swan ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... wool of the beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt the bud o' the brier? Or the nard in the fire? Or ha' tasted the bag o' the bee? Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... a natural disposition to forgive butlers—Pharaoh, for instance, felt it. There hovers around butlers an atmosphere in which common ethics lose their pertinence. But mine was a rare bird—a black swan among butlers! He was more than a butler: he was a quick and brightly gifted man. Of the accuracy of his taste, and the unusual scope of his endeavour, you will be able to form some opinion when I assure you he modelled himself ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow' as my 'dying swan song'," protested Jess. "The kids are far enough away. No ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... took precious good care not to. You've done the same thing before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cut outside Swan and ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... learnedst tyme. In Grece, whan Poetrie was euen at the hiest pitch of per- fitnes, one Simmias Rhodius of a certaine singularitie wrote a booke in ryming Greke verses, naming it oon, conteyning the fable, how Iupiter in likenes of a swan, gat that egge vpon Leda, whereof came Castor, Pollux and faire Elena. This booke was so liked, that it had few to read it, but none to folow it: But was presentlie contemned: and sone after, both Author and booke, so forgotten by men, and consumed by tyme, as scarse the name of ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... excited and hospitable people and I lectured to an enthusiastic audience. I do not know how it is with professional speakers, but with the amateur the chairman and the audience make the speech. The Rev. Swan Wiers introduced me in an address of eloquence for which I ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... welcome at the hands of their fellow-creatures. As they stood gazing with entranced attention on the scene before them, a red man, crowned with feathers, issued from one of these glens, and after contemplating in silent wonder the gallant ship, as she sat like a stately swan swimming on a silver lake, sounded the war-whoop, and bounded into the woods like a wild deer, to the utter astonishment of the phlegmatic Dutchmen, who had never heard such a noise or witnessed such a caper ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... warlike trophies either quarter dress'd; Then tower'd the masts, the canvas swell'd on high, And waving streamers floated in the sky. Thus the rich vessel moves in trim array, Like some fair virgin on her bridal day; Thus, like a swan, she cleaved the watery plain, The pride and wonder of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... of the poet is more at home than in his own degenerate age.(18) To him too his own song "gracefully welling up out of rich feeling" sounds, as compared with the common poems, "like the brief song of the swan compared with the cry of the crane";—with him too the heart swells, listening to the melodies of its own invention, with the hope of illustrious honours—just as Ennius forbids the men to whom he "gave from the depth of the heart a foretaste of fiery ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... graceful,' said another young lady. A third young lady said it was elegant, and a fourth expressed her opinion that it was 'swan-like.' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and placed in position; and, generally, the ship made to look as much like a man-of-war as possible, though she as much resembled the old-fashioned sailing sloop which then still performed duty on our more distant stations as a swan does a goose, her sailing powers far exceeding those of the fastest of them, whilst Williams' metamorphosis of her only had the effect of imparting to her an ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or "steamer duck" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... espressione. It is a wonderful elegy, a yearning without hope, a swan-song of desire, sadder almost than the frank despair of the Finale of the Pathetique symphony,—pulsing with passion, gorgeous with a hectic glow of expressive beauty, moving too with a noble grace. Though there is a foil of lighter ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Benvolio, a friend of Romeo, persuaded the young lord to go to this assembly in the disguise of a mask, that he might see his Rosaline, and, seeing her, compare her with some choice beauties of Verona, who (he said) would make him think his swan a crow. Romeo had small faith in Benvolio's words; nevertheless, for the love of Rosaline, he was persuaded to go. For Romeo was a sincere and passionate lover, and one that lost his sleep for love ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... will dream like any child; For, lo! a mighty swan, With radiant plumage undented, And folded airy van, With serpent neck all proudly bent, And stroke of swarthy oar, Dreams on to me, by sea-maids sent Over ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Local Parliament, which was forthwith adjourned from the Church to a more convenient and also more congenial time and place, viz., at six o'clock in the evening "at the house of William Cobb, at the sign of the Black Swan," or some other name and house as ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... But yet the spirit and the majesty of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille. Nor has any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works, shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought. Racine is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perch ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... guess it must be this way," Jenkins suggested. "There was a dozen of us usin' the same bit of lookin' glass, an' I swan I must have ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... dark silk cushions of the divan like a swan upon the opalline waters of the lake at sunset. One arm, white and firm as Carrara marble, supported her graceful head, while in her right hand she held an ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... waters calm, the sands bare and glistening in the early sunbeams; no vestige of the storm or of the bloody outrage of the night remained—all was peace and beauty. In the distance was a single snow-white sail, floating swan-like on the bosom of the blue waters. All around was beauty and peace, yet from the young man's tortured bosom peace had fled, and remorse, vulture-like, had struck its talons deep into his heart. He called himself a murderer, the destroyer ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... am, and Suffolk am I call'd. Be not offended, nature's miracle, Thou art allotted to be ta'en by me. So doth the swan her downy cygnets save, Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings. Yet, if this servile usage once offend, Go and be free ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... Snake and the Spokane are several beautiful lakes. We met a hunter coming from one of them, who had shot a white swan. He said he found it circling round and round its dead mate, in so much distress that he thought it was a kindness ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some youth, snatched [by death] from his mournful bride—he elevates both his strength, and courage, and golden morals to the stars, and rescues him from the murky grave. A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan, O Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds: but I, after the custom and manner of the Macinian bee, that laboriously gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate verses about the grove and the banks of the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... issue, even so, the race Of Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shines In his well toned, and true-filed lines : In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance, As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance. Sweet swan of Avon! what a fight it were To see thee in our waters yet appeare, And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames, That so did take Eliza, and our James ! But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere Advanc'd, and made a Constellation ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tell us, then you should not be sorry, although it hurts very, very much. Once you told us how Hus was burned because he had dared to tell the truth to those in power. You told us how he went to the stake and joyfully commended himself into the hands of God, and how he prophesied about the swan that should come singing new songs in praise of awakened freedom. That's the way I have thought that you would meet your death—with your head thrown back, and your eyes toward the sky, and the people crying: "So ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... displayed in a sleeved corset of dark green color, cut after the fashion of a habit, with an incision in front, disclosing a stomacher of fine Spanish lace, set with rows of tiny brilliants. Her gauntlets quickly followed her jerkin, exposing tiny, swan white fingers, sparkling with jewels. And although herself unconscious of the cause, such was the perfection of her beauty, that I stood as if transfixed, gazing upon her in mute admiration, until my emotions melted into confusion. Nor was Nat ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... with safety at any season of the year; but for this there must be a proper boat. Any person going there at present ought not to land if the surf is high, without Captain Davies' large sail-boat, which is as safe as a tug, and rides the sea like a swan. Send him word to send his largest boat at the best hour for landing. The Captain is a native merchant, and ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... while noble Rosalind accompanied St. Anthony of Italy. St. David of Wales, after his seven years' sleep, came full of eager desire for adventure. St. Patrick of Ireland, ever courteous, brought all the six Swan-princesses who, in gratitude, had been seeking their deliverer St. Andrew of Scotland; since he, leaving all worldly things, had chosen to fight for ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... to the opposite sky. Kunda, following the indication, saw traced on the blue vault the figure of a man more beautiful than a god. Beholding his high, capacious forehead, his sincere kindly glance, his swan-like neck a little bent, and other traits of a fine man, no one would have believed that from him there was ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... supra-sensible forms," than on that work-day earth wherein you nevertheless acquit yourself so well? There—I must stop describing you, or I shall catch the infection of your own euphuism, and talk of you as you would have talked of Sidney or of Spenser, or of that Swan of Avon, whose song had just begun when yours—but I will not anticipate; my Lady Bath is waiting to give ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Arthurs had invited them all to join the luncheon party when the launch was over. The Vicereine had come from Dublin to cut the ribbon which would release the great ship and send it moving like a swan down the greasy slips into the river; and Tom Arthurs had conducted her through the Yard, telling her of the purpose of this machine and that engine until the poor lady began to be dubious of her capacity to launch the liner. There were other guides, explaining, as Tom Arthurs ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... 125 millimeters, and whose weight was from 5 to 6 kilogrammes. The results were: intensity, 1 ampere; electro-motive power, 25 volts, corresponding to an energy of 25 volt-amperes, or about 2.5 kilogrammeters per second. The pile was covered with a copper jacket whose upper parts supported two Swan lamps. Upon putting on the cover a contact was formed with the electrodes, and it was possible by means of a commutator key with three eccentrics to light or extinguish one of the lamps or both at once. A single element would have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... five judges, three held that the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave law was settled conclusively by repeated decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and that the State courts could not release the prisoner. Chief Justice Swan gave the leading opinion. Its positions were thoroughly distasteful to the people of Ohio. He knew they would be. His term, which was one of five years, expired in the following February, and the vacancy was to be filled at ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... had in his house a crow, Which in a cage he fostered many a day, And taught to speak, as folks will teach a jay. White was the crow; as is a snow-white swan, And could repeat a tale told by a man, And sing. No nightingale, down in a dell, Could sing ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... brotherly love for you!" Not at my Lord Carlisle's, as in Bouverie Street, would you hear Shirley Brooks ask the famous two-edged riddle which Dean Hole reminds us of—"Why is Lady Palmerston's house like Swan and Edgar's? Because it's the best house for muzzling Delane (mousseline de laine)"—Delane being then unjustly suspected of having been "nobbled" during his visits to my lady's salon, at the expense of the "Times," of which he was at that time the editor. Nor would you enjoy the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Mid-Summer Even ere the undark night began Siggeir the King of the Goth-folk went up from the bath of the swan Unto the Volsung dwelling with many an Earl about; There through the glimmering thicket the linked mail rang out, And sang as mid the woodways sings the summer-hidden ford: There were gold-rings ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... "Well, I'll be gol darned if you didn't get me. You must have right smart eyes, for I swan I didn't know which ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... b'ar-trap I hed sot up back in thet green timber on Loon Pond Maountin' six year ago last fall, when he wuz a pup," he would say, holding the dog in his lap,—his favorite seat. "I swan, ef it warn't too bad! Thinks I, when I sot it, I'll tell the leetle cuss whar it wuz; then—I must hev forgot it. It warn't a week afore he wuz runnin' a rabbet and run right into it. Wall, sir, them iron jaws took thet tail er his'n off julluk a knife. He's allus been kinder sore ag'in ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it, All night under blossom and star; The wild swan is dying without it, And the eagle cryeth afar; The sun he doth mount but to find it, Searching the green earth o'er; But more doth a man's heart mind it, Oh, more, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... Vauxhall. It was to pique my Lady Rochford, in return for the Prince of Hesse. I saw the company get into their barges at Whitehall Stairs, as I was going myself, and just then passed by two city companies in their great barges, who had been a swan-hopping:. They laid by and played "God save our noble King," and altogether it was a mighty pretty show. When they came to Vauxhall, there were assembled about five-and-twenty hundred people, besides crowds without. They huzzaed, and surrounded him so, that he was forced ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... much about the piano, but there was inspiration in the very sight of a harp. In imagination I was Corinna, improvising the impassioned strains of Italy, or a Sappho, breathing out my soul, like the dying swan, in strains of thrilling melody. Edith was a St. Cecilia. Had my hand swept the chords, the hearts of mortals would have vibrated at the touch; she touched the divine string, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... then clutched at the lever to recover, for they were sweeping down. When the aeropile was rising again he drew a deep breath and replied. "That," and he indicated the white thing still fluttering down, "was a swan." ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... talking of what is believed to exist, and I am talking of what is. Every man feels what you call love toward each pretty woman he sees, and very little toward his wife. That is the origin of the proverb,—and it is a true one,—'Another's wife is a white swan, ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... sweeter than the aged swan, None would prefer the Eastern pearl before her, Or the new-polished tooth of Indic beasts, Or the first snow, lilies untouched by hand; She who breathed fragrance of the Paestan rose, Compared with whom the peacock was but dull, The squirrel uncharming, and unrare the ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... they felt, henceforward a sister no more, Miss Leaf attired herself in her violet silk and white China shawl, and Miss Hilary put on her silver-grey poplin, with a cardinal cape, as was then in fashion, trimmed with white swan's-down. It was rather an elderly costume for a bridemaid; but she was determined to dress warmly, and not risk, in muslins and laces, the health which to her now was money, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Swan's Hotel was one of those nondescript buildings of wood which are not worth more than a three-line paragraph even when they burn down. It was smelly. The kitchen joined the dining-room, and the dining-room the office, which was half a bar-room, with a few boxes of sawdust mathematically ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... with extraordinary success." This was, of course, our old friend "Boots at the Swan," which Frank Robson, later, made his own. As Boz had nothing to do with it, there could be no objection. Barnaby Rudge, however, was the piece of resistance. On another occasion, January, 1840, came Mr. J. Russell, with his vocal entertainment, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... All around were swan-white mansions, lofty domes and turrets high, Like the peaks of white Kailasa cleaving ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... the grease he mixed with our beans and maize. This chief showed me his idol; it was a male cat's head, with the teeth sticking out; it was dressed in duffel cloth. Others have a snake, a turtle, a swan, a crane, a pigeon, or the like for their idols, to tell the fortune; they think they will always have good luck in doing so. From here two savages went with their skins to ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... Leuvin, Edels, and Endracht Islands were next to be visited, Swan River to be followed as far as possible, and a survey taken of Rottnest Island and the coast near it. From thence the expedition was to proceed to Shark Bay, to determine various points in De Witt Land, and, leaving the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "I am sorry," he said, and without another word we left the room and the house. There was a pond in the park, and to this my friend led the way. It was frozen over, but a single hole was left for the convenience of a solitary swan. Holmes gazed at it, and then passed on to the lodge gate. There he scribbled a short note for Stanley Hopkins, and left it with ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... life must pay. 170 Encouraging his men, he gives the word, With fierce intent that hated ship to board, And make the guilty Dutch, with his own arm, Wait on his friends, while yet their blood is warm. His winged vessel like an eagle shows, When through the clouds to truss a swan she goes; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... ancient place as queen, And mistress of the house, once more thou dost resume, The long-time loosen'd reins grasp thou; be ruler here, And in possession take the treasures, us with them! Me before all protect, who am the elder-born, From this young brood, who seem, thy swan-like beauty near, But as a basely winged flock ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... deep and slimy swamps, along the belt of these Booth and Harold picked up a negro named Swan, who volunteered to show them the road for two dollars; they gave him five more to show them the route to Allen's Fresh, but really wished, as their actions intimated, to gain the house of one Sam. ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... swan of the flocks of Phoebus ever began life as a more ungainly duckling than Ibsen did. The ingenuity of biographers has done its best to brighten up the dreary record of his childhood with anecdotes, yet the sum of them ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the Princess. Princess Winsome is one of our names for Lloyd. And he says it is ridiculous for me to try to do things the way she does. He is always quoting Epictetus to me: 'Were I a nightingale I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.' He says that trying to copy her is what makes me just plain goose so ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was about to break up, and the young men who had been members of it were to return to their homes to get ready for the opening of college. The picnic at the camp was to be their swan song. The camp was composed of fourteen young men and two professors from Columbia University. Professor Gordon looked after the athletics and Professor Gamage the general management of the camp. The men lived ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... these days," he said, "remind me to talk to you about sunlight and dust, and I'll tell you a heap of things you don't know. Right now, get this idea in your head. The larger a piece of matter is, the smaller is the surface in proportion to the bulk. A feather of swan's down will float in a high wind, but if you roll that feather into a ball, it will fall. Why? You haven't made it any heavier. You've only reduced the amount of surface which was borne up by the air. It's ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... as good to be a goose, as to be a lady—no, a gentleman of fashion. Suppose I were a Viscount, an Earl, a Marquis, a Duke, would you say Goose? No, you would say Swan. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Come from afar. To him greatest of comforts It became in the world at the wished-for tidings,— His heart delighted,—which army-leaders 995 Over the east-ways, messengers, brought him, How happy a journey over the swan-road The men with the queen successfully made To the land of the Greeks. The Caesar bade them With greatest haste again prepare 1000 Themselves for the way. The men delayed not As soon as they had the answer heard, The words ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... to those of the other there can be no doubt. Then, his gifts of fortune were already his own, and for ought that Miss Furnival knew, might be equal to any that would ever appertain to the other gentleman. That Lady Staveley should think her swan better looking than Lady Mason's goose was very natural; but then Lady Mason would no doubt have regarded the two birds in an exactly opposite light. It is only fair to conceive that Miss Furnival was a better judge than either ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... that you might have thought a 30 goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it, in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... church was somewhat poorly attended on this fine autumn evening, when the hunter's moon hung like a big golden shield above the river, glorifying the dipping willows, the narrow eyots, haunts of swan and cygnet, and the distant woodlands of Surrey. It was a night which tempted the free to wander in the cool shadowy river-side paths, rather than to worship in ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... glow with a strange, unaccustomed warmth. It was as if it had just been unclasped from the arm of a yohng woman full of red blood and tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had never looked to her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the water,—bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river, and strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length afloat upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first time found her ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... deck with her. There was no help for it. Bivens would allow no one except the doctor in his room, and so he resigned himself to the beauty of the glorious scene. Not a sound broke the stillness save the soft ripple of the water about the bow of the swan-like yacht. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... was evidently dealt with in the Assembly and the Convention, as the American Colonel Swan discovered, in 1791, that the tobacco question was dealt with—'by a knot of men who disposed of all things as they liked, and who turned everything ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... stern, fierce-eyed man, sounded lovelier than the swan-song of De Rezke. She faltered, with her joyful heart leaping at the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sandy. Yet the same evening I reached a little place called Sutton, where everything, however, appeared to be too grand for me to hope to obtain lodgings in it, till quite at the end of it I came to a small inn with the sign of the Swan, under ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... Jove but find my fair, He would fall in love, I swear, And to his old tricks repair: In a cloud of gold descending As on Danae's brazen tower, Or the sturdy bull's back bending, Or would veil his godhood's power In a swan's form for one hour. Oh, the joys of this possessing! How unspeakable the blessing! How divine my ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... would pass back to the earlier time when the boats of the nobles lay there in such numbers that Charles II. described the river as 'Hyde Park upon the Thames.' Once more Bess of Hardwick lived at Shrewsbury House, Princess Elizabeth sheltered under the Queen's Elm; at the old Swan in Swan Walk, Doggett founded the coat and badge to be rowed for by the watermen's apprentices 'when the tide shall be full.' These things may be found in many a guide-book and in the lectures which he delivered more than ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... up and down the room—at first abstractedly, with her features as firmly set as ever; but by degrees her brow relaxed, her footsteps became lighter and more leisurely; her head rode gracefully and was no longer bowed. She plumed herself like a swan ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... SWAN.—This bird is significant of tribulation, troublesome conditions in the home, and sometimes of separation from those ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... upon the typical little German court, is delightful. But "La Belle Helene" is a wittier play than "La Grande Duchesse," and it is the vividest expression of the spirit of opera bouffe. It is full of such lively mockeries as that of Helen when she gazes upon the picture of Leda and the Swan: "J'aime a me recueiller devant ce tableau de famille! Mon pere, ma mere, les voici tous les deux! O mon pere, tourne vers ton enfant un bec favorable!"—or of Paris when he represses the zeal of Calchas, who desires to present him at once to Helen: "Soit! mais sans lui dire qui je suis;—je ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... beside her, felt reply a little awkward, and said nothing. For a minute or two the night made itself heard, the gentle slipping of the river, the fitful breathings from the trees. A swan passed and repassed below them, and an owl called ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends cakes of snow flying from the horse's back and shoulders. The officer gets into the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the horse, cranes his neck like a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity brandishes his whip. The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... falcon to attack The osprey, swan, and hern, And showed me, when he wished it back, The lure for its return. I thought it was a noble sport; I struggled to excel My gentle teacher, and, in short, I ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton |
