|
|
|
More "Merlin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hovering over the early history of Windsor Castle appear the mighty phantoms of the renowned King Arthur and his knights, for whom it is said Merlin reared a magic fortress upon its heights, in a great hall whereof, decorated with trophies of war and of the chase, was placed the famous Round Table. But if the antique tale is now worn out, and no longer part of our faith, it is pleasant ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... till the 4th of May we were busily occupied in fitting the ship for sea, and not an hour was lost after that was accomplished, in getting under weigh, when we stood to the southward. We were not sorry to have the chance of seeing some active service. On the 8th we spoke HMS Merlin, with two transports bound for Halifax, on the 12th the Milford and Lively, on a cruise. On the same day we anchored in Nantucket Roads, Boston, where we found lying the Renown, wearing the broad pennant of Commodore Banks, which we saluted ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... is gone, and yet will not depart!— Is with me still, yet I from him exiled! 35 For still there lives within my secret heart The magic image of the magic Child, Which there he made up-grow by his strong art, As in that crystal[458:1] orb—wise Merlin's feat,— The wondrous 'World of Glass,' wherein inisled 40 All long'd-for things their beings did repeat;— And there he left it, like a Sylph beguiled, To live and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... disproved or they would disprove the claim of Shakespeare to the sole authorship of Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Hamlet, and Othello; they had established or they would establish the fact of his partnership in Locrine, Mucedorus, The Birth of Merlin, Dr. Dodipoll, and Sir Giles Goosecap. They had with them the incomparable critics of Germany; men whose knowledge and judgment on all questions of English literature were as far beyond the reach of their ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... most difficulty in rooting out. Thence Celtic Messianism, that belief in a future avenger who shall restore Cambria, and deliver her out of the hands of her oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok promised by Merlin, the Lez- Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur of the Welsh. [Footnote: M. Augustin Thierry has finely remarked that the renown attaching to Welsh prophecies in the Middle Ages was due to their steadfastness in affirming the future of their race. (Histoire ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... of September, after three sessions of the Court of Appeals in which the lawyers for the defence pleaded, and the attorney-general Merlin himself spoke for the prosecution, the appeal was rejected. The Imperial Court of Paris was by this time instituted. Monsieur de Grandville was appointed assistant attorney-general, and the department of the Aube coming under the jurisdiction of this court, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... them happy, when may be shew'd for a penny The Fleet-streete Mandrakes, that heavenly motion of Eltham, Westminster Monuments, and Guildhall huge Corinaeus, That horne of Windsor (of an Unicorne very likely), The cave of Merlin, the skirts of Old Tom a Lincolne, King John's sword at Linne, with the cup the Fraternity drinke in, The tombe of Beauchampe, and sword of Sir Guy a Warwicke, The great long Dutchman, and roaring Marget a Barwicke, The mummied Princes, and Caesar's wine yet i' Dover, Saint ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... printed, and will be published after Christmas Day; I like it mightily: I don't know how it will pass. You will never understand it at your distance, without help. I believe everybody will guess it to be mine, because it is somewhat in the same manner with that of "Merlin"(8) in the Miscellanies. My Lord Privy Seal set out this day for Holland: he'll have a cold journey. I gave Patrick half a crown for his Christmas box, on condition he would be good, and he came home drunk at midnight. I have taken ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... after sunrise I continued my way very briskly; then what had been the warmth of the early sun turned into the violent heat of day, and remembering Merlin where he says that those who will walk by night must sleep by day, and having in my mind the severe verses of James Bayle, sometime Fellow of St Anne's, that 'in Tuscan summers as a general rule, the days are sultry but the nights are cool' (he was no flamboyant poet; he ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... from below. I knew well that we owed the extraordinary obedience of the girls to the magnetic influence of that remarkable woman their chaperon, and how long she could continue to exert the charm which meshed them in the cabin, as Vivien meshed Merlin in the hollow oak, it was impossible to guess. At any instant we might hear a girlish voice calling the name of Lady MacNairne. Even if Tibe—but I dared ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great,— Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft, and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust,— Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of old knew that truth and conducted themselves accordingly. But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence, because, not content to perform their marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin and Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors than Morse and Edison. Man is —and he always has been and will be—something else besides a pure intelligence: and science, in order to become really popular, must ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... all radiant with smiles, a circumstance so uncommon, that Lucy's first idea was, that somebody had been bantering him with an imposition, which had thrown him into this ecstasy. Having sat for some time, rolling his eyes and gaping with his mouth like the great wooden head at Merlin's exhibition, he at length began— "And what do you ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... My body is so shrunken that I am hardly anything but a voice; and my bed reminds me of the singing grave of the magician Merlin, which lies in the forest of Brozeliand, in Brittany, under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames toward heaven. Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that moves their branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf rustles about my mattress-grave in Paris, where ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... put forth the theory that the government should be in their hands. Consequently they lay hold of it in the Legislative body in ways that are going to turn against them in the Convention. They accept for allies the worst demagogues of the extreme "Left," Chabot, Couthon, Merlin, Baziere, Thuriot, Lecointre, and outside of it, Danton, Robespierre, Marat himself, all the levelers and destroyers whom they think of use to them, but of whom they themselves are the instruments. The motions they make must pass at any cost and, to ensure ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... interested to hear how the family inquiries go. It is now quite certain that we are a second-rate lot, and came out of Cunningham or Clydesdale, therefore BRITISH folk; so that you are Cymry on both sides, and I Cymry and Pict. We may have fought with King Arthur and known Merlin. The first of the family, Stevenson of Stevenson, was quite a great party, and dates back to the wars of Edward First. The last male heir of Stevenson of Stevenson died 1670, 220 pounds, 10s. to the bad, from drink. About the same time the ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... parched; his tongue cleaves to the roof of St. Paul's; but he is undaunted. 'We are surely betrayed if that is really Sargent,' he says. Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic window a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic arms; he feels a twinge. Some Merlin told him he would suffer from ricketts with shannon complications. Seizing Excalibur, he opens the door cautiously. 'Draw, caitiffs,' he cries; 'draw.' 'Perhaps they cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists,' said a raven on the hill; ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... food by robbing ospreys, kites, marsh-harriers and other birds weaker than itself. So bold is it that it frequently swoops down and carries off a dead or wounded duck shot by the sportsman. Another raptorial bird of which the nest is likely to be found in January is the Turumti or red-headed merlin (Aesalon chicquera). The nesting season of this ferocious pigmy extends from January to May, reaching its height during March in the United Provinces and during April ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... quidem ego, as given by Baronius and Binius, in the epistle of Symmachus, Ep. vii. al. vi. (see also Labbe and Cossart, t. iv. p. 1298.), the true reading is Ista quidem nego. How can this be verified? The epistle is not extant either in Crabbe or Merlin. Is the argument {198} of J. B. borne out by any good authority, either in manuscript ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... 358. Richardson's merlin. FALCO RICHARDSONII. Rare summer resident; not uncommon in migration; naturalists not quite sure that it breeds in the State; has been taken in summer at an altitude ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... drawn up, which, with some few alterations and additions, were the same as were agreed upon by Mr. Cobbett and myself at Botley. Before we had finished these, a messenger arrived, to say that an immense number of persons were assembled in the front of the Merlin's Cave public-house, in Spa-fields, and that they were impatient for our arrival. Upon this, the Doctor and myself got into a hackney-coach, and drove immediately to the spot, which was covered by much the largest concourse of people I had ever seen ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Goldmark's opera "Merlin" presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, under ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... December 28. But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted—"in the state it has since appeared." For on August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an appeal for Paine's liberation, wrote as follows: "I deliver to Merlin de Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason], formerly our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding foreigners from the national representation. This book was written by the author in the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... that Louvet pronounced against him that very eloquent harangue, which Madame Roland called the "Robespierreiad." Assisted by his brother and by Danton, Robespierre, in the sitting of November 5th, overpowered the Girondins, and went to the Jacobins to enjoy the fruits of his victory, where Merlin de Thionville declared him an eagle, and a barbarous reptile. From that moment he never ceased to promote the death of Louis XVI., with an asperity and a perseverance almost incredible. In short, until the fatal day of the martyrdom of that amiable and unfortunate ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... a bit for being foolhardy, and said we should hear of his being caught and committed for trial. 'Why, they'll know the dog,' says he, 'and make him give evidence in court. I've known that done before now. Inspector Merlin nailed ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... away by the feeling that there was no ordered scheme to which I must conform. After due consideration, however, I have decided to let it stand as it is, although the reader may find himself somewhat puzzled at the time element. I had best say that however the years may have dealt with Merlin Grainger, I myself was thinking always in the present. It was ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... They took the old regalia out From an open grave that day; From a grave that would not close, Where the first Napoleon lay Expectant, in repose, As still as Merlin, with his conquering face Turned up in its unquenchable appeal To men and heroes of the advancing race,— Prepared to set the seal Of what has been on what shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... highly imaginative. Wace had amplified Geoffrey's chronicle somewhat, but Layamon made much larger additions, derived, no doubt, from legends current on the Welsh border. In particular the story of Arthur grew in his hands into something like fullness. He tells of the enchantments of Merlin, the wizard; of the unfaithfulness of Arthur's queen, Guenever; and the treachery of his nephew, Modred. His narration of the last great battle between Arthur and Modred; of the wounding of the king—"fifteen fiendly ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Brutus, the grandson of AEneas, who, after passing many enchanted isles, at length establishes himself in England, where he finds King Arthur, the chivalric institution of the Round Table, and the enchanter Merlin, one of the most popular personages of the Middle Ages. Out of this legend arose some of the boldest creations of the human fancy. The word "romance," now synonymous with fictitious composition, originally meant only a work in the modern dialect, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... aim of the art, and it was only by the exercise of much patience that the desired resuit was obtained. All birds of prey, when used for sport, received the generic name of falcon; and amongst them were to be found the gerfalcon, the saker-hawk, the lanner, the merlin, and the sparrow-hawk. The male birds were smaller than the females, and were called tiercelet—this name, however, more particularly applied to the gosshawk or the largest kind of male hawk, whereas the males ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... domestic life I would be known and loved; the world beyond Is not for me. But Margaret, sure I think That you should know me well, for you and I Grew up together, and when we look back Upon old times our recollections paint The same familiar faces. Did I wield The wand of Merlin's magic I would make Brave witchcraft. We would have a faery ship, Aye, a new Ark, as in that other flood That cleansed the sons of Anak from the earth, The Sylphs should waft us to some goodly isle Like that where whilome old Apollidon ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... were coined for the first time. This must have been a great boon to the poorer classes, and it evidently was felt to be a matter of great importance, insomuch that it was said to be the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy by the great seer Merlin, who had once foretold in mysterious language, that "there shall be half of the round." In the next century it appears that the want of small change had again made itself felt: for in the 2nd Richard II. we find the Commons setting forth in a petition to the ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... nor all true, all foolishness, nor all sense; so much have the storytellers told, and so much have the makers of fables fabled to embellish their stories that they have made all seem fable." [4] He omits the prophecies of Merlin from his narrative, because he does not understand them. "I am not willing to translate his book, because I do not know how to interpret it. I would say nothing that was not exactly as I said." [5] To this scrupulous regard for the truth, absolutely foreign to the ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... draws down a star from heaven, or darkens the face of the moon. Let us be content to accept the result, when it is forced upon us, without inquiring too minutely into the process. Not with impunity can even the Adepts gain and keep the secrets of their evil Abracadabra. The beard of Merlin is gray before its time; premature wrinkles furrow the brow of Canidia; though the terror of his stony eyes may keep the fiends at bay, the death-sleep of Michael Scott is not untroubled; the pillars of Melrose shake ever and anon as though an earthquake passed by, and the monks cross themselves ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... innocent Brahman is to be put to death;" and this tickled the fish so that he laughed. Mr. Tawney says that Dr. Liebrecht, in "Orient und Occident," vol. i. p. 341, compares this story with one in the old French romance of Merlin. There Merlin laughs because the wife of Julius Caesar had twelve young men disguised as ladies-in-waiting. Benfey, in a note on Liebrecht's article, compares with the story of Merlin one by the Countess d'Aulnois, No. 36 of Basile's "Pentamerone," Straparola, iv. 1, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Methuselah as he approached his ninth centennial, the God-given wisdom engraved on the face of Moses as he came down from Sinai, the mystic power of mighty Merlin as he softly intoned a spell of albamancy, all these seemed to have been blended carefully together and infused into the man who sat behind the typer, composing sentences ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Langbaine in his Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691) ascribes to Shakespeare "about forty-six plays, all which except three are bound in one volume in Fol., printed London, 1685" (p. 454). The three plays not printed in the fourth folio are the Birth of Merlin, or the Child has lost his Father, a tragi-comedy, said by Langbaine to be by Shakespeare and Rowley; John King of England his troublesome Reign; and the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. Langbaine thinks that the last ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... to illustrate this, lest it be said that having been more than just to the father (v. sup.) I am still less than just to the son. Merlin is made to visit Morgane la Fee in the eleventh century. It is quite true that people generally began to hear about Merlin and Morgane at that time. But he had then been for about half a millennium in the sweet prison of the Lady of the Lake—over whom even Morgane ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the force, the authority, of one who could control her future, and dictate her acts, and prescribe her duties, with something like the power of a god. In times past she would have tried to weave her spell around this strong man, in sheer wantonness of conquest, as Vivian threw her enchantments over Merlin; now she was conscious only of a strange willingness to submit to him, to take his yoke, and bow down under it, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... cancelled failed, and as he did not obey it he was struck off the list of employed general officers on the 15th of September 1795, the order of the 'Comite de Salut Public' being signed by Cambaceres, Berber, Merlin, and Boissy. His application to go to Turkey still, however, remained; and it is a curious thing that, on the very day he was struck off the list, the commission which had replaced the Minister of War recommended to the 'Comite de Saint Public' that he and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Merlin had been and gone—and had left two prescriptions; one written, the other verbal. With the written one, Benson, in his chauffeur's livery, was dispatched to the drug store; the verbal one was precisely what Jimmie Dale had expected from the fussy old family ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Montmartre, accompany his brother and watch over him. In former times, when engaged with Abbe Rose in charitable work in the Charonne district, he had learnt that the guillotine could be seen from the house where Mege, the Socialist deputy, resided at the corner of the Rue Merlin. He therefore offered himself as a guide. As the execution was to take place as soon as it should legally be daybreak, that is, about half-past four o'clock, the brothers did not go to bed but sat up in the workroom, feeling somewhat drowsy, and exchanging few words. Then as soon as two o'clock ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... will tell you two, and perhaps three, if you keep very quiet. Listen to me. Once in Wales there was a great wizard named Merlin. Many magic things he could do. He knew how to change one living being into another, iron into silver, and silver into gold. A fine thing that would be if it were mine. And afar from him lived a great witch. Trinali was her name. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Fountain, whom the faery people know, With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow, Whom the boyish South Wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping Rain; Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again: She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew, That could change the dew to glowworms and the glowworms into dew. There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree, With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery; But the Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white, Like ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... country and committed every kind of excess. Jean de Beaumanoir repaired to Ploermel to remonstrate, and it was agreed to settle the dispute by a fight between thirty warriors from each camp. The prophecies of Merlin were consulted, and found to promise victory to the English. The appointed place of meeting was by a large oak, the "Chene de Mi-Voie," on a lande or large plain, half way from each town. The battle began with great fury, at first to the disadvantage of the Bretons, when Bembro' ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... better disposed towards it that it is a long tissue of marvels and fabulous adventures.[174] For the history of Thebes they are obliged to content themselves with Statius, and for that of Rome with Virgil, that same Virgil who became by degrees, in mediaeval legends, an enchanter, the Merlin of the cycle of Rome. He had, they believed, some weird connection with the powers of darkness; for he had visited them and described in his "AEneid" their place of abode: no one was surprised at seeing Dante take ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... as defeated, though he is by no means defeated by halves, but involved in much more sudden and total ruin than the personages of real history usually meet with; yet, if it is thought fit he should be restored, it is done as quickly and completely as if Merlin's rod had been employed. He enters Russia with a prodigious army, which is totally ruined by an unprecedented hard winter; (everything relating to this man is prodigious and unprecedented;) yet in a few months ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... thought I was to pay the piper. Well, but here it is under black and white, signatum, sigillatum, and deliberatum; that as soon as my son Benjamin is arrived, he's to make over to him his right of inheritance. Where's my daughter that is to be?—Hah! old Merlin! body o' me, I'm so glad I'm revenged on ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... the French dub her Heliote) hath set all her heart and her hope on one that is a young lass like herself, and she is full of old soothsayings about a virgin that is to come out of an oak- wood and deliver France—no less! For me, I misdoubt that Merlin, the Welsh prophet on whom they set store, and the rest of the soothsayers, are all in one tale with old Thomas Rhymer, of Ercildoune, whose prophecies our own folk crack about by the ingle on winter nights at home. But be it as it may, this wench of Lorraine ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... sometime he angers me, With telling me of the Moldwarpe and the Ant, Of the Dreamer Merlin, and his Prophecies; And of a Dragon, and a finne-lesse Fish, A clip-wing'd Griffin, and a moulten Rauen, A couching Lyon, and a ramping Cat, And such a deale of skimble-skamble Stuffe, As puts me from my Faith. I tell you what, He held me last Night, at least, nine howres, In ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in? Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on, And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison? I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true; 'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new: The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne. 20 But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages, With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt-edged ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... it may, perhaps, be interesting to remember two. These are Taliesin, or "Shining Forehead," and Merlin. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of Colmar in Alsace, Rewbel and Hausmann, and a Frenchman, Merlin, all three members of the national convention, came to Mayence for the purpose of conducting the defence of that city. They burned symbolically all the crowns, mitres, and escutcheons of the German empire, but were unable to induce the citizens of Mayence ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... lower qualities. According to some interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty, Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading, through the lightness of one or the treachery of another, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... conceived that such cheap ryming as his own "Bride of Abydos," for instance, which he had written from beginning to end in four days, or even the traveling reflections of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his best,—the drama of "Cain." Of which dedication the virtual significance to Sir Walter might ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... fifty fog-blinded tourists, five-and-twenty dripping ponies, and five hundred empty porter-bottles; wherefrom they returned, as do many, disgusted, and with great colds in their heads. But most they loved to scramble up the crags of Dinas Emrys, and muse over the ruins of the old tower, "where Merlin taught Vortigern the courses of the stars;" till the stars set and rose as they had done for Merlin and his pupil, behind the four great peaks of Aran, Siabod, Cnicht, and Hebog, which point to the four quarters of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Leoena bowed In cloudlike marble, and beside her crouched The tongueless lioness; on the other side, And poising this, the second Sappho stood,— Young Erexcea, with her head discrowned, The anadema on the horn of her lyre: And by the walls there hung in sequence long Merlin himself, and Uterpendragon, With all their mighty deeds, down to the day When all the world seemed lost in wreck and rout, A wrath of crashing steeds and men; and, in The broken battle fighting hopelessly, King Arthur, with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... close of this first season in Rome the Bryants came to town, and the old poet, old in aspect even then, called on us; but he was not a childly man, and we youngsters stood aloof and contemplated with awe his white, Merlin beard and tranquil but chilly eyes. Near the end of May William Story invited us to breakfast with him; the Bryants and Miss Hosmer and some English people were there; and I understood nothing of what passed except the breakfast, which ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... heel, in a spasm of will, From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire With head of a merlin hawk and quill Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech, To say what a deadly poison stuffed The France here laid in her bloody ditch, Through the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Tennyson says that Merlin gave Arthur, when an infant, to sir Anton and his lady to bring up, and they brought him up as their own son. This does not correspond with the History of Prince Arthur, which states that he was committed to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Arthur, Merlin, the famous enchanter, was out on a journey, and stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... Le premier et le second volume de Merlin, qui est le premier livre de la table ronde, avec plusieurs choses moult recreative: aussi les Prophecies de Merlin, qui est le tierce partie et derniere: Lettres Gothiques, 2 tom. 4to., maroq. rouge, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broods Of legend laired.—And, where no sound intrudes Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale, A brook that murmurs to the solitudes, Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound By his own magic to one stony spot; And in the cloud, that looms above the glen,— In which the sun burns like the Table Round,— Might dream he sees the towers ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... saw it in flames, and soon after expired with grief. His queen, Helen, fruitlessly attempting to save his life, abandoned for a while her infant son Lancelot. Returning, she discovered him in the arms of the nymph Vivian, the mistress of Merlin, who on her approach sprung with the child into a deep lake and disappeared. This lake is held by some to be the lake Linius, a wide insular water near the sea-coast, in the regions of Linius or "The ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... I still actually exist? My body is so shrunk that there is hardly anything left of me but my voice, and my bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine like green flames to heaven. Oh, I envy thee those trees, brother Merlin, and their fresh waving. For over my mattress grave here in Paris no green leaves rustle, and early and late I ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... indefinable quality, which we call sincerity, about the score. It was happily described at its production as a clever imitation of good music. The influence of Wagner is strongest in the love music, which owes much to 'Tristan und Isolde,' 'Merlin' (1886), Goldmark's second opera, has not been as successful in Germany as 'Die Koenigin von Saba,' The libretto, which is founded upon the Arthurian legend of Merlin and Vivien, shows many points of resemblance to Wagner's later works, and the music follows his system of guiding themes far more ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Court is landed in a surprising and unknown world. But one of King Arthur's knights brought to life at the court of the present German Emperor aside from steam, electricity, gun powder, telegraph and telephones would find the system as despotic as in the days when the enchanter, Merlin, wove his spells and the sword Excalibur appeared from the depths of the magic lake. But while the system is as royal and as despotic as in King Arthur's day, while the king and his military nobles look down on the merchants and the toilers and ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the hoary [chenu] wood, the old forest.[185] We shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of Merlin the Magician. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... members arrived at six o'clock, too late to do any good. The queen directed their notice to the broken doors, bidding them observe the outrageous way in which the home of the royal family had been violated. She saw signs of emotion in the countenance of Monsieur Merlin de Thionville, and observed upon it. Monsieur Merlin replied that he felt for her as a woman, a wife, and mother, but that she must not suppose that he shed a single tear for the king or the queen; that he ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... Roman ambassadors here received their audience at the court of the great king Arthur; and here also, the archbishop Dubricius ceded his honours to David of Menevia, the metropolitan see being translated from this place to Menevia, according to the prophecy of Merlin Ambrosius. "Menevia pallio urbis Legionum induetur." "Menevia shall be invested with the pall of ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... apparently interpreted the deputy- chamberlain's meaning rather from his action than his words;—"it is of an ancient and liberal pattern, having been made by your mother's father, auld James Stitchell, a master-fashioner of honest repute, in Merlin's Wynd, whom I made a point to employ, as I am now happy to remember, seeing your father thought fit to intermarry ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in those days, and those who had titles used to go to Court. Seven of them were invited to be god-mothers, Queen Titania, Queen Mab, the wise Vivien, trained by Merlin in the arts of enchantment, Melusina, whose history was written by Jean d'Arras, and who became a serpent every Saturday (but the baptism was on a Sunday), Urgele, White Anna of Brittany, and Mourgue who led Ogier the Dane ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... know the grounds of my certitude: God grant that hearing them ye may understand and steadfastly believe the same. My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophesies; but, 1. the plain truth of God's word, 2. the invincible justice of the everlasting God, and 3. the ordinary course of his punishments and plagues from the beginning, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... decided and full of nervous force. "I will bring my hostess to see you on Monday or Tuesday, Master," he announced, as he said good-by. "And prepare yourself to fall at her feet like all the rest of us—Merlin and Vivien, you know. It will be a just punishment for ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... more remarkably certain than the close and constant association in mediaeval lore of the fairies and the fairy-world with the Arthurian cycle of romance;[74] King Arthur's sister was Morgan le Fay, whose son by Ogier was Merlin; and the romance of Huon of Bordeaux, which relates these facts, though strictly belonging to the Charlemagne cycle, contains the account of Oberon's bequest of his realm to King Arthur. Chaucer, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... The Arthurian knight, the Renaissance courtier, the scholar and the wit must admit the twentieth-century artisan to their circle. Piers the ploughman must once more become the hero of song, and Saul Kane, the poacher, must find a place, alongside of Tiresias and Merlin, among the seers and mystics. Let democracy look to William Morris, poet, artist and social democrat, for inspiration and guidance, and take to heart the message of prophecy which he has left us: "If art, which is now sick, is to ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... institution. He will not change the cut of his garments, and he is very careful to have his tailor make his clothes in the same style he dressed when he was young. He is very happy. He thinks that he is the enchanter Merlin, and he listens to Vivian, who makes appointments ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... interpretation "The Idylls" may teach false as well as true lessons of life. Some of the Knights of the Round Table (Galahad and Percivale) were worthy followers of the good and pure King Arthur, and some of them (like Lancelot and Tristram and Merlin) proved unable to live up to the vow of chastity to which Arthur swore all his knights. And on the part of the ladies of Arthur's court, there was purity and devotion and true womanhood in Elaine ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... meant not only pure knights but a regenerate state. Here, however, the externalization of the Divine will in the Holy Grail, and, as in the Christian epic generally, its confusion on the marvellous side with a world of enchantment passing here into the sensuous sphere of Merlin, are felt to be inadequate. The war of "soul with sense" was the subject-matter, as was Spenser's; the method of revolution of its phases was also Spenser's; but the two poems differ in the point that Spenser's knight wins, but Tennyson's king loses, so far as earth ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... days, there lived a famous magician named Merlin, so powerful that he could change his form at will, or even make himself invisible; nor was there any place so remote but that he could reach it at once, merely by wishing himself there. One day, suddenly he stood at Uther's bedside, and said: "Sir King, I know thy ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Assembly, excepting that the persecuted French Presbyterians met in a different place every year. Delegated pastors there gathered from every quarter. From Northern France came men used to live in constant hazard of their lives; from Paris, confessors such as Merlin, the chaplain who, leaving Coligny's bedside, had been hidden for three days in a hayloft, feeding on the eggs that a hen daily laid beside him; army-chaplains were there who had passionately led battle-psalms ere their colleagues charged the foe, and had striven with vain endeavours ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said I, "but I think from its tone and tenor that it was composed by Merddyn, whom my countrymen call Merlin." ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... and all delighted in pastorals. No class of heroes either in history or fiction has uttered so much verse and prose as the keepers of sheep. Neither Ajax son of Telamon, nor the wise king of Ithaca, nor Merlin, Lancelot, or Charlemagne, nor even the inexhaustible Grandison, can bear the least comparison with Tityrus. It is easy to give many reasons for this; but the phenomenon still remains somewhat strange. The best explanation is perhaps that the pastoral is one of the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... sunset or the ragged volcanic crags, he agreed with them. When Flambeau pointed out a rock shaped like a dragon, he looked at it and thought it very like a dragon. When Fanshaw more excitedly indicated a rock that was like Merlin, he looked at it, and signified assent. When Flambeau asked whether this rocky gate of the twisted river was not the gate of Fairyland, he said "Yes." He heard the most important things and the most trivial with the same tasteless absorption. He heard that the coast was death to ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... politics. 365 Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths: Lucifer was the first republican. Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts?] 'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full, Shall sail round the world, and come back again: 370 Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull, And come back again when the moon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of the fairy-haunted land Away the other side of Brittany, Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; 155 Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, deg. deg.156 Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps. For here he came with the fay deg. Vivian, deg.158 One April, when the warm days first began. He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend, 160 On her white palfrey; here he met his end, In these lone ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... had depicted. There could be no others like them. Here Enid rode with Launcelot by her side; on that silvery beach, where the old bleached tree trunk lay as it must have lain for generations, Vivien had sat at Merlin's feet. There, in that space carpeted by wind-flowers and primroses, Queen Guinevere and Launcelot ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... eager mood To feed his hate with bitter food, Before the king's face Merlin stood And heard his tale of ill and good, Of Balen, and the sword achieved, And whence it smote as heaven's red ire That direful dame of doom as dire; And how the king's wrath turned to fire The grief wherewith ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... faces, are to be found in the works of Rabelais, and in the Moyen Parvenir, now generally attributed to him. It is almost needless to say that few of these were however original with the great French humorist. We find them in the Macaronics of Merlin Coccaius, and in scores of older authorities. Still it must be borne in mind that a similarity does not always establish an identity. There are few persons who cannot cite some droll instance of a sharper or greedy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... believe (see Jeffrey of Monmouth, l. viii. c. 9-12) that Stonehenge is their monument, which the giants had formerly transported from Africa to Ireland, and which was removed to Britain by the order of Ambrosius, and the art of Merlin. * Note: Sir f. Palgrave (Hist. of England, p. 36) is inclined to resolve the whole of these stories, as Niebuhr the older Roman history, into poetry. To the editor they appeared, in early youth, so essentially poetic, as to justify ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... to-night enregistered my name among the goodly company of Love's Lunatics,—as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... "M. Merlin pense avec moi, et c'est quelque chose, que les justes plaintes formees contre l'administration de la bibliotheque royale [de France] cesseront des l'instant ou l'on aura redige et publie le catalogue general des livres imprimes."—Paulin ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... Isle of Man, there is said to be a room which has never been opened in the memory of man. Various explanations have been assigned to account for this circumstance, one being that the old place was once inhabited by giants, who were dislodged by Merlin, and such as were not driven away remain spellbound beneath the castle. Waldron, in his "Description of the Isle of Man," has given a curious tradition respecting this strange room, in which the supernatural element holds a prominent place, and which is a good sample of other ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... also no doubt who taught you of magic Mexic things in keeping with the fairy Melissa of Charlemagne's day, and Merlin the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... them you could see great castles lifting slow and splendid on arches of moonshine, with maidens waving their hands at the windows, which all turned into roaring rivers; and then would come the darkness of his own young heart wiping out the whole slateful. But boy's Magic doesn't trouble me—or Merlin's either for that matter. I followed the Boy by the flashes and the whirling wildfire of his discontent, and oh, but I grieved for him! Oh, but I grieved for him! He pounded back and forth like a bullock in a strange pasture—sometimes alone—sometimes waist-deep among ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... rose to retire. Taking in his hand a golden cup to pledge his guests, he was about to drink, when a shudder passed through his frame, and he cast the goblet away, exclaiming, 'It is not wine, but blood! My father Merlin is among us, and there is evil in the coming days. Break we up our court, my peers! It is no time for feasting, but rather for fasting and ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... above all things, for having bestowed the name of Arthur on his eldest son, who, this injudicious and over-hasty prophet forsees, will restore the glory of his great ancestor of the same name. Had Henry christened his second 'son Merlin, I do not doubt but poor Rous would have had still more divine visions about Henry the Eighth, though born to shake half the pillars ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... flesh in part, and the thought of Raimbaut would never trouble Guillaume de Baux any more. In addition there was a fire of juniper wood and frankincense upon the hearth, and the room smelt too cloyingly of be-drugging sweetness. Then on the walls were tapestries which depicted Merlin's Dream, so that everywhere recoiling women smiled with bold eyes; and here their wantonness ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the mavis flew, And the "ouzel-cock so black of hue;" And the "throstle," with his "note so true" (You remember what Shakespeare says—HE knew); And the soaring lark, that kept dropping through Like a bucket spilling in wells of blue; And the merlin—seen on heraldic panes— With legs as vague as the Queen ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... to a fortnight. Amongst his country neighbours he arrogates as much honour for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles and imitating Merlin's prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan's one old controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life or quality ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... stirring the people of Caermarthen into rebellion and pressing the siege of Abergavenny; nor could the presence of English troops save Shropshire from pillage. Everywhere the Welshmen rose for their "Prince"; the Bards declared his victories to have been foretold by Merlin; even the Welsh scholars at Oxford left the University in a body and joined his standard. The castles of Ruthin, Hawarden, and Flint fell into his hands, and with his capture of Conway gave him command of North Wales. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... enough his paunch, Then are we well!" saide the emerlon;* *merlin "Thou murd'rer of the heggsugg,* on the branch *hedge-sparrow That brought thee forth, thou most rueful glutton, Live thou solain, worme's corruption! *For no force is to lack of thy nature;* *the loss of a bird of your Go! lewed be thou, while the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... put any question to Montesinos, he, seeing me gazing at the tomb in amazement, said to me, 'This is my friend Durandarte, flower and mirror of the true lovers and valiant knights of his time. He is held enchanted here, as I myself and many others are, by that French enchanter Merlin, who, they say, was the devil's son; but my belief is, not that he was the devil's son, but that he knew, as the saying is, a point more than the devil. How or why he enchanted us, no one knows, but time will tell, and I suspect that time is not far off. What I marvel ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... please you to learn that at the end of each day, as the shadows begin to crowd down upon the world, I keep a tryst with you beneath the old Merlin oak where you first clasped me breathless and terrified in your arms? (Be sure, dear Heart, on this account, he will be the first sage in the forest to wear a green beard of bloom next spring!) And each time the memory of that moment, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... physician. Find out your ignorance, first; admit it frankly, second; be ready to recognize with true honor the next man you meet, third; and then, presto!—although it were needed that the floor of the parlor should open, and a little black-bearded Merlin be shot up like Jack in a box, as you saw in Humpty-Dumpty,—the right person, who knows the right thing, will appear, and your ignorance ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... waked a thousand years old. Romance already whispered through their dismantled, endless aisles. King Arthur's castle of Camelot was not more remote from to-day than College Hall from the twentieth-century March morning. Weeks, months, a little while it stood there, vanishing—like old enchanted Merlin—into the impenetrable prison of the air. There will be other houses on that hilltop, but never one so permanent as the dear house invisible; the double Latin cross, the ten granite columns, the Center ever green with ageless palms, the "steadfast crosses, ever pointing the heavenward ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... country, whose memory was worshipped by the populace. Though the Arthur of romantic and fairy legends—the Arthur of the round table, had been dead for six centuries, they still looked for his second appearance among them, according to the prophecy of Merlin; and now, with fond and short-sighted enthusiasm, fixed their hopes on the young Arthur as one destined to redeem the glory and independence of their oppressed and miserable country. But in the very midst of the rejoicings which ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... otherwise with True Thomas, as it was with Merlin before him, and with all the men, wise and foolish, who have once yielded to the glamourie of the Elfin Queen and others of her type and sex. The Rhymer of Ercildoune was probably only a man more learned and far-seeing than others of his time. His reputation for Second Sight may rest upon ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... shepherds tend their fleecy train, Where echoes oft the pleading strain Of rural lovers. O'er my soul Such varied scenes in vision roll, Whether, O prince of bards, I see The fire of Greece reviv'd in thee, That like a deluge bursts away; Or Taliesin tune the lay; Or thou, wild Merlin, with thy song Pour thy ungovern'd soul along; Or those perchance of later age More artful swell their measur'd rage, Sweet bards whose love-taught numbers suit Soft measures and the Lesbian lute; Whether, ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... he became a great magician, or, as we in our age would call him, a man of science and wisdom, named Merlin. He lived long on the mountain, but when he went away with a friend, he placed all his treasures in a golden cauldron and hid them in a cave. He rolled a great stone over its mouth. Then with sod and earth he covered it all over so as to hide it from view. His purpose was to leave this ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... "History of the Opera"; Fetis's "Biographie des Musiciens"; Ebers's "Seven Years of the King's Theatre"; Lumley's "Reminiscences"; Charles Hervey's "Theatres of Paris"; Arsene Houssaye's "Galerie de Portraits"; Countess de Merlin's "Memoires de Madame Malibran"; Ox-berry's "Dramatic Biography and Histrionic Anecdotes"; Crowest's "Musical Anecdotes" and Mrs. Clayton's "Queens ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... on this lady's raven-black hair, and so rich and broad and vigorous is the painting of a Japanese scarf she is wearing. Then as we turn to the east wall of the gallery we see the three great pictures of Burne-Jones, the Beguiling of Merlin, the Days of Creation, and the Mirror of Venus. The version of the legend of Merlin's Beguiling that Mr. Burne-Jones has followed differs from Mr. Tennyson's and from the account in the Morte d'Arthur. It is taken from the Romance of Merlin, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... into the fabric of Peregrine's life, and he belonged to them as exclusively as the grouse or mountain linnet. He knew every rock upon their crests and every runnel of water that fretted its channel through the peat; he could mark down the merlin's nest among the heather and the falcon's eyrie in the cleft of the scar. If he started a brooding grouse and the young birds scattered themselves in all directions, he could gather them all around him by imitating ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... knights. Along with those whom I have named came King Ban of Gomeret, and he had in his company only young men, beardless as yet on chin and lip. A numerous and gay band he brought two hundred of them in his suite; and there was none, whoever he be, but had a falcon or tercel, a merlin or a sparrow-hawk, or some precious pigeon-hawk, golden or mewed. Kerrin, the old King of Riel, brought no youth, but rather three hundred companions of whom the youngest was seven score years old. Because of their great ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... given us a remarkable series of portraits. He is recognized as one of the finest and most distinguished poets of our time. His successive volumes are: "Children of the Night", 1897; "Captain Craig", 1902; "The Town Down the River", 1910; "The Man Against the Sky", 1916; "Merlin", 1917; and "Launcelot", 1920. The last-named volume was awarded a prize of five hundred dollars, given by The Lyric Society for the best book manuscript offered to it in 1919. In addition to his work in poetry, Mr. Robinson has written two prose plays, "Van Zorn", and "The Porcupine". ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... various writers. Henry of Huntingdon (1150) calls it Stanhenges, and terms it the second wonder of England, but professes entire ignorance of its purpose and marvels at the method of its construction. Geoffrey of Monmouth (1150) ascribes its origin to the magic of Merlin who, at the instance of Aurelius Ambrosius, directed the invasion of Ireland under Uther Pendragon to obtain possession of the standing stones called the "Giants' Dance at Killaraus." Victory being with the invaders, the stones were taken and transported across the seas with the greatest ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... conqueror, King Arthur, and containeth 28 chapters. The second book treateth of Balyn the noble knight, and containeth 19 chapters. The third book treateth of the marriage of King Arthur to Queen Guinevere, with other matters, and containeth 15 chapters. The fourth book how Merlin was assotted, and of war made to King Arthur, and containeth 29 chapters. The fifth book treateth of the conquest of Lucius the emperor, and containeth 12 chapters. The sixth book treateth of Sir Lancelot and Sir Lionel, and marvellous adventures, and containeth 18 chapters. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... still fairies in those days, and those who had titles used to go to Court. Seven of them were invited to be god-mothers, Queen Titania, Queen Mab, the wise Vivien, trained by Merlin in the arts of enchantment, Melusina, whose history was written by Jean d'Arras, and who became a serpent every Saturday (but the baptism was on a Sunday), Urgele, White Anna of Brittany, and Mourgue who led Ogier the Dane into the ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made— Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more; but, let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm That without help ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... "Hath he not said so? Hath he not spoken of wagons without horses, ships without sails? And is not all this what every dissour and jongleur tells us of in his stories of Merlin? Gentle maiden," he added earnestly, drawing nearer to her, and whispering in a voice of much simple pathos, "thou art young, and I owe thee much. Take care of thyself. Such wonders and derring-do are too ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Alexander the Great, said to have been the son of Olympias and a serpent; Scipio Africanus, Aristomenes of Messina, Julius Caesar, Porphyry, the Emperor Julian, who re-established the oath of fire abolished by Constantine the Apostate, Merlin the enchanter, child of a Sylph and a nun daughter of Charlemagne; Saint Thomas Aquinas, Paracelsus and, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... highly popular, had fallen into disrepute so far as "society" was concerned. Bagnigge Wells, Merlin's Cave, the London Spa, Marylebone Gardens, Cromwell's Gardens, Jenny's Whim, were all tea-gardens, with recesses, and avenues, and alcoves for love-making and tea-drinking, where an orchestra discoursed sweet music or an organ served as a substitute. An intelligent foreigner, who ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... insulting towards me, and sometimes she treats me with a sweet frankness which has something sisterly in it. One day, for instance, she came to my window and asked me if I would go for a walk with her. "Bring your sketch-book, Monsieur Odiot," she called out gaily, "and I will take you to Merlin's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of Charlemagne, Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure, Mingled together in his brain With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur, Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour, Sir Guy, Sir ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... fugitive king saw it in flames, and soon after expired with grief. His queen, Helen, fruitlessly attempting to save his life, abandoned for a while her infant son Lancelot. Returning, she discovered him in the arms of the nymph Vivian, the mistress of Merlin, who on her approach sprung with the child into a deep lake and disappeared. This lake is held by some to be the lake Linius, a wide insular water near the sea-coast, in the regions of Linius or "The Lake;" now called Martin Mere or Mar-tain-moir, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... tribes, the larger number of individuals, as might be supposed, are common to the northern portions of the three continents. Among these are the golden eagle, the white-headed or sea eagle, the osprey, the peregrine falcon, the gyrfalcon, the merlin goshawk, the common buzzard, rough-legged buzzard, hen-harrier, long-eared owl, short-eared owl, great snowy owl, and Tengmalm's owl. Nearly all the ducks and other swimming families, as might be expected, are also identical, as they can make their way with ease round the Circle, and find ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... of this famous art, I have thought fit to present the world with the following prophecy. The original is said to be of the famous Merlin, who lived about a thousand years ago; and the following translation is two hundred years old, for it seems to be written near the end of Henry the Seventh's reign. I found it in an old edition of Merlin's ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... had a little glass with the sapper Merlin, sergeant, who was on duty last night at the general's quarters, and he said ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... not be positive," said I, "but I think from its tone and tenor that it was composed by Merddyn, whom my countrymen call Merlin." ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... cast in bronze, the figure of a man on his hands and knees, bestridden by another figure holding a bridle and a whip; it is Aristotle, symbol of masculine wisdom, bridled and driven by woman. Six hundred years afterwards, Tennyson revived the same motive in Merlin, enslaved not for a time but forever. In both cases the satire justly punished the man. Another version of the same story—perhaps the original—was the Mystery of Adam, one of the earliest Church plays. Gaston Paris says "it ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... to the left, she bent her steps towards a footbridge spanning a gap in the cliff side and, pausing at the bridge, let her eyes rest musingly on the great, mysterious opening picturesquely known as Merlin's Cave. The tide was coming in fast, and she could hear the waves boom hollowly as they slid over its stony floor, only to meet and fight the opposing rush of other waves from the further end—since what had once been the magician's cave was now a subterranean passage, piercing right through ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... those that Christianity found most difficulty in rooting out. Thence Celtic Messianism, that belief in a future avenger who shall restore Cambria, and deliver her out of the hands of her oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok promised by Merlin, the Lez- Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur of the Welsh. [Footnote: M. Augustin Thierry has finely remarked that the renown attaching to Welsh prophecies in the Middle Ages was due to their steadfastness in affirming the future of their race. (Histoire de la Conquete d'Angleterre.)] ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... again called, but do not find at home the chief secretary, M. Merlin.... I shall miss the packet of the 24th, but I am told she is a slow ship and that I shall probably find the letters reach home quite as soon by the next. I will leave this open to add if anything occurs between this and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time,' he says, in winding up that knotted skein of prophecy, which he leaves for Merlin to disentangle, for 'he lives before his time,' as he takes that opportunity ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Thomas, as it was with Merlin before him, and with all the men, wise and foolish, who have once yielded to the glamourie of the Elfin Queen and others of her type and sex. The Rhymer of Ercildoune was probably only a man more learned and far-seeing than others of his time. His reputation for Second Sight ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... They have been practised in the cool air and under the grey skies of Europe. There is a fountain called Barenton, of romantic fame, in those "wild woods of Broceliande," where, if legend be true, the wizard Merlin still sleeps his magic slumber in the hawthorn shade. Thither the Breton peasants used to resort when they needed rain. They caught some of the water in a tankard and threw it on a slab near the spring. On Snowdon there is a lonely tarn called ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Rydderch, surnamed Hael, i.e. The Liberal, who vanquished his enemies and rivals in war, especially by the great victory of Arderyth, in 577.[1] He was a religious and deserving prince, and his magnificence, generosity, and other virtues, are extolled by the ancient author of the Triades, by Merlin, Taliessin, the old laws of the Britons, and the authors of the lives of St. Kentigern and St. Asaph. This prince, however, was afterwards obliged by rebellious subjects, under Morcant Mawr, and Aeddon, surnamed Uraydog, or The ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and for a long time we have been mournful, for we have lost our Queen, our beautiful Queen. She loved a mortal, and on this account she was banished from Fairyland, nor may she ever revisit the haunt and the kingdom that were hers. But Merlin, the oldest and the wisest of the wizards, told us we should find another Queen, and that we should know her by the poppies in her hair, the whiteness of her brow, and the stillness of her eyes, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... to heel, in a spasm of will, From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire With head of a merlin hawk and quill Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech, To say what a deadly poison stuffed The France here laid in her bloody ditch, Through the Legend passing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you will. And Jo can stop at Mrs. Merlin's and take her to Top Hill. She always presides in my absence. She is a good housekeeper and is never disagreeable ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... get the order cancelled failed, and as he did not obey it he was struck off the list of employed general officers on the 15th of September 1795, the order of the 'Comite de Salut Public' being signed by Cambaceres, Berber, Merlin, and Boissy. His application to go to Turkey still, however, remained; and it is a curious thing that, on the very day he was struck off the list, the commission which had replaced the Minister of War recommended to the 'Comite de Saint Public' that he and his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he is;—whom a sad chance has paralysed in the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to a comatose condition Miss Chandos reverted to No. 1, and by attractive passes got him on his legs and made him follow her up and down the limited space at her disposal. She looked then like a pretty Vivien manipulating a youthful Merlin; and I was not at all surprised at the effect of her "woven paces and her waving hands." She asked him his name, and he told her. It was W——. "No," she said, "it's Jones. Mary Jones. What's your name?" But the youth was not quite so far gone as to rebaptize himself ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... "Merlin" in our handbook in the Referee at the time, thus disposed of some of the points just ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... handmarks of the Roman; and an antiquity older perhaps than any, and still living and active—a complete Celtic nomenclature and a scarce-mingled Celtic population. These rugged and grey hills were once included in the boundaries of the Caledonian Forest. Merlin sat here below his apple-tree and lamented Gwendolen; here spoke with Kentigern; here fell into his enchanted trance. And the legend of his slumber seems to body forth the story of that Celtic race, deprived for so many centuries of their authentic speech, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... habits in unusual abundance. The visitors to Tenby find great diversion in these and the other caves on the coast: in fact, the whole coast as far as Milford Haven is one succession of natural curiosities and antiquities. One cavern bears the name of Merlin's Cave, and is hallowed by a legend of the enchanter, who was born at Carmarthen in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... also a third party, headed by Chabot, Bazin, and Merlin, which was supported by the clubs of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers. The great oracles of the Jacobins were Robespierre, Varennes, and Collot d'Herbois; while the leaders of the Cordeliers were Danton and Desmoulins. Robespierre was excluded, as were others of the last assembly, from the new ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... mediocre the man, the better his chance of getting on among mediocrities; he can play the toad-eater, put up with any treatment, and flatter all the little base passions of the sultans of literature. There is Hector Merlin, who came from Limoges a short time ago; he is writing political articles already for a Right Centre daily, and he is at work on our little paper as well. I have seen an editor drop his hat and Merlin pick it up. The fellow ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in? Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on, And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison? I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true; 'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new: The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne. 20 But, though men may not travel now, as in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the fabric of Peregrine's life, and he belonged to them as exclusively as the grouse or mountain linnet. He knew every rock upon their crests and every runnel of water that fretted its channel through the peat; he could mark down the merlin's nest among the heather and the falcon's eyrie in the cleft of the scar. If he started a brooding grouse and the young birds scattered themselves in all directions, he could gather them all around him by imitating the mother's ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... "Why, sir, that's Mr. Merlin. Summer folks, you might say. He bought one of the old mansions. This is his second ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... first season in Rome the Bryants came to town, and the old poet, old in aspect even then, called on us; but he was not a childly man, and we youngsters stood aloof and contemplated with awe his white, Merlin beard and tranquil but chilly eyes. Near the end of May William Story invited us to breakfast with him; the Bryants and Miss Hosmer and some English people were there; and I understood nothing of what ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Douai), Minister of Justice under the quintette, really ruled France for nearly five years. This was Merlin, author of the 'Law of the Suspects,' which Mr. Carlyle, though obviously in the dark as to its real genesis and objects, finds himself constrained to stigmatize as the 'frightfullest law that ever ruled in a nation of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Unknown had already hurled himself, weaponless, upon the seeming victor and seizing him about the waist with mighty strength, hurled him to the ground. And even as the fallen knight, much shaken, prepared to arise, lo, Merlin the Wizard appeared and cast him into ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... not another deputy, Jean Debry, proposed the formation of a body of 1,200 volunteers, who "will sacrifice themselves," as formerly the assassins of the Old Man of the Mountain, in "attacking tyrants, hand to hand, individually," as well as generals?[3132] Have we not seen Merlin de Thionville insisting that "the wives and children of the emigres should be kept as hostages," and declared responsible, or, in other words, ready for slaughter if ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... doubt not but that Angling is an art. Is it not an art to deceive a Trout with an artificial fly?—a Trout that is more sharp-sighted than any Hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled Merlin is bold. And yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast." ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... was now informed that the vacancy would only be filled on the day of doom. He was also told that a similar table would be constructed by Merlin. Here the grandson of Brons would honorably occupy the vacant place, which is designated in the legend as the "Siege Perilous," because it proved fatal to all for whom it was ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... he writes. It is a "spirit" which broods over many a song, but is incarnate, so to speak, in the elegy which immortalises the tomb of his lost friend. For Tennyson, the spirit of poetry is the spirit of religion—a blowing to music of the deepest thoughts of the philosopher. In "Merlin and the Gleam" we may read this as ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... be trying, my reader, to steer a middle course between John the Baptist and Herodias. Now you resolve to get free of her guilty charms, and break the spell that fascinates you. Merlin will emancipate himself from Vivien, before she learn his secret, and dance with it down the wood, leaving him dishonoured and ashamed. But, within an hour, the Syren is again singing her dulcet notes, and drawing the ship closer and closer to the rocks, with their black teeth, waiting to grind ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... prophecy of Merlin's, more than eight hundred years old, was called to mind, which said that in a far future time France would be lost by a woman and restored by a woman. France was now, for the first time, lost—and by a woman, Isabel of Bavaria, her base Queen; doubtless ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... of the river; but after carrying the outer-works they were repulsed, and their commander, Count Dunnop, with four hundred of his men, were slain. At the same time two sloops-of-war, the Augusta and Merlin, which were sent to aid in the assault, ran aground while they endeavoured to avoid the chevaux-de-frise and were burnt. Preparations, however, being made for attacking the fort on the marshy island, which was the chief defense of the river, an attack was made, and a breach was soon effected ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... true from false, dream from deed. So quiet was I that a robin came and perched close to me on a bramble, whose last leaves were the colour of the bird's red breast, and there it sang a little, so that I roused to life with the sound. Then swooped down a merlin with flash of gray wings on the robin and took it, and that angered me so that I rose on my elbow to fray it away; and with that the last cloud left my mind and I knew where I was. Then, too, from where he waited my waking came Vig, my great Danish dog, who had been tied at the thane's ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... Sir Isaac was a great magician, and had been used to raise spirits by his arts, and finally was himself carried up to heaven one night, while he was gazing at the moon; and that this event had been foretold by Merlin:—it would surely be the height of absurdity to dilate on the truth of the Newtonian theory as "the moral evidence" of the truth of the miracles and prophecy. Yet this is what those do, who adduce the excellence of the precepts and spirituality of the general doctrine of the New ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... that bygone pleasure, Sit down together at our Merlin's feet, Drink from one cup the overflowing measure, And find, in sharing ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... only stunned by the fall, however, and soon awoke, to find herself at the entrance of a cave, which was the tomb of Merlin. Melissa, the prophetess maid, welcomed her, assured her that Rogero should be her spouse, and showed her their phantom descendants, brave princes and beautiful princesses of the house of Este. She then told her that Brunello, a knight of King Agramant, was hastening ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Queen Igraine grew daily nearer the time when the child Arthur should be born, Merlin, by whose counsel the king had taken her to wife, came to the king and said: "Sir, you must provide for the nourishing of your child. I know a lord of yours that is a passing true man, and faithful, and he shall ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... still held by the French King—namely, that although France would be lost by a woman, a maiden should save it. Any hope to the people in those distressful days was eagerly seized on; and although the first prophecy dated from the mythical times of Merlin, it stirred the people, especially when, later on, Joan of Arc appeared among them, and her story ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... neighbours he arrogates as much honour for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles and imitating Merlin's prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan's one old controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life or quality for itself, but for ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... has, sure enough, squoire," replied Peter, regarding the animal with an approving eye, as Nicholas enumerated his merits. "Boh, if ey might choose betwixt him an yunk Mester Ruchot Assheton's grey gelding, Merlin, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... flew, And the "ouzel-cock so black of hue;" And the "throstle," with his "note so true" (You remember what Shakespeare says—HE knew); And the soaring lark, that kept dropping through Like a bucket spilling in wells of blue; And the merlin—seen on heraldic panes— With legs as vague as the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... story of Dinas Emrys father told me," he added with relish. "King Vortigern was building a castle on Snowdon, and every night whatever they had built in the daytime fell down. After awhile they sent for old Merlin to see what the matter was. And it was two great serpents in a pool away down under the foundation. One was white and one was red, and they fought all the time. First the white one had the best of it, but the red one beat him at last, and chased him out of the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... merlin. FALCO RICHARDSONII. Rare summer resident; not uncommon in migration; naturalists not quite sure that it breeds in the State; has been taken in summer at ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... the French and the English, have differed in a multitude of points, but they have one and all delighted in pastorals. No class of heroes either in history or fiction has uttered so much verse and prose as the keepers of sheep. Neither Ajax son of Telamon, nor the wise king of Ithaca, nor Merlin, Lancelot, or Charlemagne, nor even the inexhaustible Grandison, can bear the least comparison with Tityrus. It is easy to give many reasons for this; but the phenomenon still remains somewhat strange. The best explanation is perhaps that the pastoral is one of the most convenient pretexts existing ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Presbyterians met in a different place every year. Delegated pastors there gathered from every quarter. From Northern France came men used to live in constant hazard of their lives; from Paris, confessors such as Merlin, the chaplain who, leaving Coligny's bedside, had been hidden for three days in a hayloft, feeding on the eggs that a hen daily laid beside him; army-chaplains were there who had passionately led battle-psalms ere their colleagues charged the foe, and had striven ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... female, the length of the male being 13 ins., wing 7.7 ins., and that of the female 15.4 ins., wing 9 ins. The male peregrine, known to hawkers as the tiercel, is greatly inferior in size to his mate. The merlin, the osprey, the falcon, the spotted eagle, the golden eagle, the gos-hawk, the harrier, the buzzard, the eagle-owl, and other species of owls are further examples where the female bird is larger than the male. Among many of these families the ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... would be one of the two Directors who were elected in place of Carnot and Barthelemy; but the Councils had no higher opinion of his civic capacity than Bonaparte had formed; and, to his great disgust, Merlin of Douai and Francois of Neufchatel were chosen. The last scenes of the coup d'etat centred around the transportation of the condemned deputies. One of the early memories of the future Duc de Broglie recalled the sight of the "deputes fructidorises travelling in closed carriages, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... other, "I am called Bernlak de Hautdesert, through might of Morgain la Fay, who dwells in my house. Much has she learnt of Merlin, who knows all your knights at home. She brought me to your hall for to essay the prowess of the Round Table. She wrought this wonder to bereave you of your wits, hoping to have grieved Guenever and ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... rubbish, half nonsense half knavery, as "The White King's Prophecy," "Supernatural Light," "The Starry Messenger," and "Annus Tenebrosus, or the Black Year." The rogue's starry mantle descended on his adopted son, a tailor, whom he named Merlin, junior. The credulity of the atheistical times of Charles II. is only equalled by that of our ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... over the early history of Windsor Castle appear the mighty phantoms of the renowned King Arthur and his knights, for whom it is said Merlin reared a magic fortress upon its heights, in a great hall whereof, decorated with trophies of war and of the chase, was placed the famous Round Table. But if the antique tale is now worn out, and no longer part of our faith, it is pleasant at ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his best work, "The Bride" is by no means his worst. Like most of his poems, it is written in an heroic stanza of six lines, and, as is not so common with him, is in dialogue form. The dialogue for the most part is well sustained and sprightly. The story of the birth of Merlin, it is true, seems to have been inserted mainly to fill out the required number of pages; but this digression has an interest of its own, in that the name here given to Merlin's mother, "Lady Adhan," does not appear in the ordinary versions ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... others, who recognized his ability before he had made any impression out of Vienna. Four of his compositions during the past fifteen years, the "Sakuntala" overture, the operas "The Queen of Sheba" and "Merlin," and "Die Iaendliche Hochzeit" (The Country Wedding) symphony have made a permanent reputation for him. The overture and operas have been performed several times in this country. Besides these he has written ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... stable, would, no doubt, be a Herculean labour. For that purpose, Merlin (of Douay), when Minister of the police, proposed to the Directory to convert the whole of the buildings of the ci-devant Palais Royal into barracks. This was certainly striking at the root of the evil; but, probably, so bold a project was rejected, lest its execution, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Hall, Carnarvonshire. One of the Wynns, the 3rd Baron Newborough, was, at his wish, buried here. The archaeology and history of the isle are voluminous. Lady Guest's Mabinogion translation (i. p. 115, ed. of 1838) gives an account of the (legendary) Bardsey House of Glass, into which Merlin (Myrddin) took a magic ring, originally kept ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... anything more than a melodramatic incident characteristic of medieval romances. It reminds one of the following statement by Wilbur L. Cross, which, with the omission of the reference to "giants" and "Merlin," characterizes the Hrlfssaga quite accurately and shows how it harmonizes with the spirit of medieval literature of its kind, "It is true that they [i.e., the Arthurian romances] sought to interest, and did interest, by a free employment of the marvellous, fierce encounters of knights, ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... in Paris as American minister, literally as well as morally, with open arms, in that memorable scene when, in the presence and amid the cheers of the National Convention, the president, Merlin de Douai, imprinted upon his cheeks, in the name of France, the kiss of fraternity. Till he was recalled in the latter days of Washington's administration, Monroe was the representative not so much of the government to which he owed allegiance as of the faction to which he ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... It was her Majesty's own gift," replied the earl, still gazing into the depths of the gem. "She took it from her finger, and told me, with a smile, that it was an heirloom from her Tudor ancestors, and had once been the property of Merlin, the British wizard, who gave it to the lady of his love. His art had made this diamond the abiding-place of a spirit, which, though of fiendish nature, was bound to work only good, so long as the ring was ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... loosened shadowy hair that he so ardently loved, there the sweet maidenhood of 'The Golden Stair,' the blossom-like mouth and weary loveliness of the 'Laus Amoris,' the passion-pale face of Andromeda, the thin hands and lithe beauty of the Vivian in 'Merlin's Dream.' And it has always been so. A great artist invents a type, and Life tries to copy it, to reproduce it in a popular form, like an enterprising publisher. Neither Holbein nor Vandyck found in England ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... tell me it is [1]whisper'd in the books Of all our sages, that this mighty hero, By Merlin's art begot, hath not a bone Within his skin, but ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... old books called Welsh Triads, in which all things are classed by threes, there is a description of three men called "The Three Generous Heroes of the Isle of Britain." One of these—named Nud or Nodens, and later called Merlin—was first brought from the sea, it is stated, with a herd of cattle consisting of 21,000 milch cows, which are supposed to mean those waves of the sea that the poets often describe as White Horses. He grew up to be a ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... field of vanquished foes; Say, have ye lost each wild majestic close That erst the choir of Bards or Druids flung, What time their hymn of victory arose, And Cattraeth's glens with voice of triumph rung, And mystic Merlin harped, and ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... in the obscure studies to which I have referred were not so much due to any natural liking for the life of a recluse as to the shattering of certain matrimonial designs. I had learned of the wreck of my hopes upon reading a press paragraph which announced the engagement of Isobel Merlin to Eric Coverly. And it was as much to conceal my disappointment from the world as for any better reason that I had slunk into retirement; for if I am slow to come to a decision in such a matter, once come to, it is ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... still actually exist? My body is so shrunk that there is hardly anything left of me but my voice, and my bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine like green flames to heaven. Oh, I envy thee those trees, brother Merlin, and their fresh waving. For over my mattress grave here in Paris no green leaves rustle, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a grey stone castle with moat and drawbridge upon which through the day armored knights on prancing steeds rode from castle to village, always on missions of good to the towns and hamlets. Never did Donald tire of reading about Arthur, Galahad, Merlin and the others, but Launcelot, the Bold, was his favorite knight. As he read of their deeds his black eyes flashed, his nervous slim body quivered, the deep rich red flooded his brown cheeks. He was one of them, took part in their tournaments, rescued the lovely ladies and overcame wicked monsters ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... product, bequeath'd to the moderns, bequeath'd to America as studies. For the men, Yudishtura, Rama, Arjuna, Solomon, most of the Old and New Testament characters; Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus, Prometheus, Hercules, Aeneas, Plutarch's heroes; the Merlin of Celtic bards; the Cid, Arthur and his knights, Siegfried and Hagen in the Nibelungen; Roland and Oliver; Roustam in the Shah-Nemah; and so on to Milton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shakspere's Hamlet, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... "The Mirror of Venus" are among the works planned and completed, or carried far towards completion, during these years. At last, in May 1877, the day of recognition came, with the opening of the first exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, when the "Days of Creation," the "Beguiling of Merlin," and the "Mirror of Venus" were all shown. Burne-Jones followed up the signal success of these pictures with "Laus Veneris," the "Chant d'Amour," "Pan and Psyche," and other works, exhibited in 1878. Most of these pictures are painted in gay and brilliant ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... purpose—but it seems certain that many of the characters are intended to symbolize higher and lower qualities. According to some interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty, Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading, through the lightness of one or the treachery ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... inclined, Saith Merlin,[16] who bamboozled are. The word, though rather unrefined, Has yet an energy we ill can spare; So by its aid I introduce my tale. A well-fed rat, rotund and hale, Not knowing either Fast or Lent, Disporting ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the crown for himself. The country was like to fare ill when laws were broken on every side, and the corn which was to give the poor bread was trodden underfoot, and there was none to bring the evildoer to justice. Then, when things were at their worst, came forth Merlin the magician, and fast he rode to the place where the Archbishop of Canterbury had his dwelling. And they took counsel together, and agreed that all the lords and gentlemen of Britain should ride to London and meet on Christmas Day, now at hand, in the Great Church. So ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... a flaming dragon stretching his jaws behind my back.' Papa was deeply shocked at my levity. Was it for me, an artist (bless the mark!), to baulk the high aims of art? Besides it was vaguely hinted that, to reward me, certain afternoon-parties were to be got up; and then, when I had got out of Merlin-land, and assured myself I was human by eating lunch, I was to meet a goodly company of distinguished folk—great poets, and one or two more mystic painters, a dilettante duke, and the nameless crowd ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... a universal shout They took the old regalia out From an open grave that day; From a grave that would not close, Where the first Napoleon lay Expectant, in repose, As still as Merlin, with his conquering face Turned up in its unquenchable appeal To men and heroes of the advancing race,— Prepared to set the seal Of what has been on what shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... here in the country, where the sage bard, the great Merlin, or Myrdhyn, lived, induce the belief that this mysterious stone represents the Druid lover of the fatal Viviana;—may this not be the very stone brought from Brociliande, within, or under, which he is in durance; ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... bread. 25. The King asks of the convention some Latin books, that he may instruct his son himself. 26. Address from Finisterre to the convention, denouncing the deputies Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Chabot, Barire, and Merlin. Buzot supports the accusation. 27. Kersaint proposes to the convention to make a descent upon England with one hundred thousand men, and to sign an immortal treaty upon the Tower of London, which shall ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... about ten million square feet of decks and bulkheads, and air-and-water system, hydroponic tanks and carniculture vats, astrogation and robo-pilot equipment, about which I know very little, a hyperspace pilot system, about which I know nothing at all.... Conn, why don't you just build a new Merlin? It ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... the edge of the wave. One is left by the receding tide, and a nearer view shows it to be a jelly-like globe, clearer than the crystal of Merlin. Dropped softly into a vessel of water, at first it lies quiescent and almost invisible upon the bottom. A moment after, it rises in quick undulations, flashing prismatic tints with every motion. Again it rests, and we see that it is banded by eight meridians, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... halves, but involved in much more sudden and total ruin than the personages of real history usually meet with; yet, if it is thought fit he should be restored, it is done as quickly and completely as if Merlin's rod had been employed. He enters Russia with a prodigious army, which is totally ruined by an unprecedented hard winter; (everything relating to this man is prodigious and unprecedented;) yet in a few months ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... attack of the british fleet the fort set fire to the Augusta, of 64 guns, and she shortly after blew up; and the Merlin sloop was so roughly handled, that she was hastily evacuated. The british admiral then procured a pilot, who carried two men of war, cut down for that purpose, on the Pennsylvania side of the island; a manoeuvre the Americans deemed impracticable. The works of the fort were now ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... the lines, 'Trust me not at all, or all in all?'" I continued to torture him. "It was Tennyson who made Vivien say those words to Merlin. She was deceiving him, and meant to ruin him when she'd wormed out his secret; for that reason, it isn't a very appropriate quotation. But, otherwise, it's particularly so. If you trusted me for yourself, you'd trust me for others, too. It's the same thing—or else it's nothing. I'm not like ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... life I never saw the man that brought as much to paper in a summer's day as young master here has done in one half hour; he beats the parson and 'torney Williams all to nothing. But I see how it is: they say Merlin wrote the History of Wales down to the day of judgment upon these very rocks that lie right a-head: and sure, if he did, there's somebody must come to read it: and that must be young master here. For you see he cocks his eye at the rocks, as if he had some ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Geographie comparee of Charles Tissot (1884). Trained scholars were sent there annually by the French government: Cagnat, Saladin, Poinssot, La Blanchere, S. Reinach, E. Babelon, Carton, Audollent, Steph. Gsell, J. Toutain, Esperandieu, Gauckler, Merlin, Homo and many others, to say nothing of German scholars, such as Willmans and Schulten, and especially of a great number of enthusiastic officers of the army of occupation, who explored all the ancient sites, and in many cases excavated with great success (for their results see the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... deposit their quadrants in places of safety. The dog all the time stood with his feet firmly planted on the deck, watching the captain, as if he fully understood what was going on. Captain Davenport, as he turned, patted him on the head. "You are a wise dog, Merlin," he observed; "but you cannot take an observation yet." Merlin wagged his tail as if he had received a compliment, or, at all events, well pleased at the notice taken ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... that in the days of the famed Prince Arthur, who was king of Britain, in the year 516, there lived a great magician, called Merlin, the most learned and skilful enchanter in the world ...
— The History of Tom Thumb, and Others • Anonymous
... state. Here, however, the externalization of the Divine will in the Holy Grail, and, as in the Christian epic generally, its confusion on the marvellous side with a world of enchantment passing here into the sensuous sphere of Merlin, are felt to be inadequate. The war of "soul with sense" was the subject-matter, as was Spenser's; the method of revolution of its phases was also Spenser's; but the two poems differ in the point that Spenser's knight wins, but Tennyson's king loses, so far as ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... King Arthur, Merlin, the famous enchanter, was out on a journey, and stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread on a ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... takes 'Any and 'Arriet, and without question allows them to achieve deeds; nor does he hesitate to pass them into the realms of the supernatural. Such violation of the first principles of narration is never to be met with in the elder writers. Achilles stands as tall as Troy, Merlin is as old and as wise as the world. Rhythm and poetical expression are essential attributes of dramatic genius, but the original sign of race and mission is an instinctive modulation of man with the deeds he attempts or achieves. The man and the deed must be cognate and equal, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the ship for sea, and not an hour was lost after that was accomplished, in getting under weigh, when we stood to the southward. We were not sorry to have the chance of seeing some active service. On the 8th we spoke HMS Merlin, with two transports bound for Halifax, on the 12th the Milford and Lively, on a cruise. On the same day we anchored in Nantucket Roads, Boston, where we found lying the Renown, wearing the broad pennant of Commodore Banks, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the changes which she wished to introduce. The clergy were, of course, nearly unanimous in opposition.[319] She was, however, vigorously and wisely seconded in her efforts by the eminent reformed pastor, Merlin, formerly almoner of Admiral Coligny, whom Calvin had sent from Geneva at her request.[320] But when, contrary to his advice, the Queen of Navarre had summoned a meeting of the estates of her small ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... has never been reckoned adequate. Vivien was first composed as Merlin and Nimue, and then Geraint and Enid was adapted from the Mabinogion, the Welsh collection of Marchen and legends, things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, or Brythonic, now amplifications made under the influence of mediaeval ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... premier et le second volume de Merlin, qui est le premier livre de la table ronde, avec plusieurs choses moult recreative: aussi les Prophecies de Merlin, qui est le tierce partie et derniere: Lettres Gothiques, 2 tom. 4to., maroq. rouge, Paris, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... ancestor of all around him: which fact the Indian Vedas express, when they say, "He that can discriminate is the father of his father." And in our old British legends of Arthur and the Round-Table, his friend and counsellor, Merlin the Wise, is a babe found exposed in a basket by the river-side, and, though an infant of only a few days, he speaks to those who discover him, tells his name and history, and presently foretells the fate of the by-standers. Wherever there is power, there is age. Don't be deceived ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... lived in Merlin's cave. Bradamant gave her the enchanted ring to take to Roge'ro; so, under the form of Atlant[^e]s, she went to Alc[i]na's isle, delivered Rog[e]ro, and disenchanted all the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Meanwhile, they were waited upon by various persons, who represented that, in order to effect a settlement of the differences between the two countries, it would be necessary to place a sum of money at the disposal of Talleyrand as a douceur for the ministers (except Merlin, the minister of justice, who was already obtaining enough from the condemnation of vessels), and also to make a loan of money to the government. The plenipotentiaries, though they at first repulsed these suggestions, at length offered to send one ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Edwards's "History of the Opera"; Fetis's "Biographie des Musiciens"; Ebers's "Seven Years of the King's Theatre"; Lumley's "Reminiscences"; Charles Hervey's "Theatres of Paris"; Arsene Houssaye's "Galerie de Portraits"; Countess de Merlin's "Memoires de Madame Malibran"; Ox-berry's "Dramatic Biography and Histrionic Anecdotes"; Crowest's "Musical Anecdotes" and ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... gentlemen, who had come down from the room where Coligny was lying. "He suffered atrociously in the hands of the surgeon, for he had come without his instruments, and amputated Coligny's fingers with a dagger so blunt that it was only on the third attempt that he succeeded. Merlin, his minister, was by his side, with several of his most intimate friends. We were in tears at the sight of our noble chief thus traitorously struck down. He turned to us ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the most exalted ideas of the true poetic function, as this passage from "Merlin" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... men of the planet didn't believe him. They couldn't, for the search for Merlin had become their abiding obsession. Merlin meant everything to them: ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... does not tell us that this Shrubsall, in throwing down the Mincamber, i.e. the Menamber, acted very like the old missionaries in felling the sacred oaks in Germany. Merlin, it was believed, had proclaimed that this stone should stand until England had no king; and as Cornwall was a stronghold of the Stuarts, the destruction of this loyal stone may have seemed a matter ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... instead of Ista quidem ego, as given by Baronius and Binius, in the epistle of Symmachus, Ep. vii. al. vi. (see also Labbe and Cossart, t. iv. p. 1298.), the true reading is Ista quidem nego. How can this be verified? The epistle is not extant either in Crabbe or Merlin. Is the argument {198} of J. B. borne out by any good authority, either ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... wasn't yet exhausted. No more of wandering by night, to be sure, upon moor or fell, gun in hand, chasing the merlin or the polecat to its hidden lair; no more of long watching after the snowy owl or the long-tailed titmouse among the frozen winter woods; but there remained one almost untried field on which Edward could expend his remaining ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... eldest brother went to the Warlock Merlin and told him all the case, and asked him if he knew where Burd Ellen was. "The fair Burd Ellen," said the Warlock Merlin, "must have been carried off by the fairies, because she went round the church 'wider shins'—the opposite way to the sun. She is now in the Dark Tower of the King ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... I will tell you two, and perhaps three, if you keep very quiet. Listen to me. Once in Wales there was a great wizard named Merlin. Many magic things he could do. He knew how to change one living being into another, iron into silver, and silver into gold. A fine thing that would be if it were mine. And afar from him lived a great witch. Trinali was her name. A great witch was Trinali. Many men did she ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Dramatick Poets (1691) ascribes to Shakespeare "about forty-six plays, all which except three are bound in one volume in Fol., printed London, 1685" (p. 454). The three plays not printed in the fourth folio are the Birth of Merlin, or the Child has lost his Father, a tragi-comedy, said by Langbaine to be by Shakespeare and Rowley; John King of England his troublesome Reign; and the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. Langbaine thinks that the last two "were ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... land a wise magician named Merlin. He was so old that his beard was as white as snow, but his eyes were as clear as a little child's. He was very sorry to see all the fighting that was going on, because he feared that it would do ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... you to learn that at the end of each day, as the shadows begin to crowd down upon the world, I keep a tryst with you beneath the old Merlin oak where you first clasped me breathless and terrified in your arms? (Be sure, dear Heart, on this account, he will be the first sage in the forest to wear a green beard of bloom next spring!) And each time the memory of that moment, which began in such fright for me, and ended in such rapture ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... him that M. Merlin, aprs bien de gestes menaans,(43) had held a pistol, in the midst of the Assembly. His father was a mad republican, and never satisfied with the rational spirit of patriotism that animated M. Girardin; who, witnessing the distress of all the friends he ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... saw mage Merlin, whose vast wit And hundred winters are but as the hands Of loyal vassals toiling for ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... and was some time a member of Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge. There are no particulars on record concerning this poet. He was beloved, says Langbaine, by Shakespear, Johnson, and Fletcher, and writ with the former the British Merlin, besides what he joined in writing with poets of the third class, as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... attribute my actions to any such motives. As for the ignorant people of the kingdom, they do not appal me, although they evidently imagine that I have imbibed, during my residence in England, something of the spirit of the enchanter Merlin, that, by signs and cabalistic words alone, I am thought ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... blood-cells of various Vertebrates (equally magnified). 1. of man, 2. camel, 3. dove, 4. proteus, 5. water-salamander (Triton), 6. frog, 7. merlin (Cobitis), 8. lamprey (Petromyzon). a surface-view, b edge-view. ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... tomb in amazement, said to me, 'This is my friend Durandarte, flower and mirror of the true lovers and valiant knights of his time. He is held enchanted here, as I myself and many others are, by that French enchanter Merlin, who, they say, was the devil's son; but my belief is, not that he was the devil's son, but that he knew, as the saying is, a point more than the devil. How or why he enchanted us, no one knows, but time will tell, and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... up from below. I knew well that we owed the extraordinary obedience of the girls to the magnetic influence of that remarkable woman their chaperon, and how long she could continue to exert the charm which meshed them in the cabin, as Vivien meshed Merlin in the hollow oak, it was impossible to guess. At any instant we might hear a girlish voice calling the name of Lady MacNairne. Even if Tibe—but I dared not ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Abydos," for instance, which he had written from beginning to end in four days, or even the traveling reflections of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his best,—the drama of "Cain." Of which dedication the virtual significance to Sir Walter might be translated ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in the list of birds that the change is most striking. Eagles are gone: if one is seen it is a stray from Scotland or Wales; and so are the buzzards, except from the moors. Falcons are equally rare: the little merlin comes down from the north now and then, but the peregrine falcon as a resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the barn-owl has ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Though the Arthur of romantic and fairy legends—the Arthur of the round table, had been dead for six centuries, they still looked for his second appearance among them, according to the prophecy of Merlin; and now, with fond and short-sighted enthusiasm, fixed their hopes on the young Arthur as one destined to redeem the glory and independence of their oppressed and miserable country. But in the very midst of the rejoicings which succeeded the birth of the prince, his grandfather, Henry II., demanded ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Suresnes during the summer; and her friend the Duchess de Duras' causeries were frequented by such men as Cuvier, Humboldt, Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele, Chateaubriand, and Villemain. Other circles existed in the houses of the Dukes Pasquier and de Broglie, the countess Merlin, and Madame ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... yard in the city of Saginaw are some Washington walnuts growing today. Following this distribution to the schools we had still several bushels of the nuts, and one bushel was presented to what is known as Merlin Grotto, a branch or division of the Masonic Order. As General Washington was a member of that organization it seemed fitting that that society should have some of the nuts. So in the beautiful ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... names of a male deer, from hind calf, year by year, through brocket and spayed, and staggard and stag, till his sixth year, when he is truly a hart and has his rights of brow, bay, and tray antlers. I am skilled in the uses of falcon-gentle, gerfalcon, saker, lanner, merlin, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... published after Christmas Day; I like it mightily: I don't know how it will pass. You will never understand it at your distance, without help. I believe everybody will guess it to be mine, because it is somewhat in the same manner with that of "Merlin"(8) in the Miscellanies. My Lord Privy Seal set out this day for Holland: he'll have a cold journey. I gave Patrick half a crown for his Christmas box, on condition he would be good, and he came home drunk at midnight. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... of Arthur; The Round Table; Gareth and Lynette; Marriage of Geraint; Geraint and Enid; Balin and Balan; Merlin and Vivien; Lancelot and Elaine, The Holy Grail; Pelleas and Ettarre; The last tournament; Guinevere; The passing of Arthur. Portions of the Arthur legends told ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... The Merlin's chair used by the king, not being suited to Napoleon, whose limbs and health were in full strength and vigour, was banished to the back closet. Some person being found sitting in it, when the Emperor passed through unexpectedly, he gave him an angry look, and the chair ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... idealized Methuselah as he approached his ninth centennial, the God-given wisdom engraved on the face of Moses as he came down from Sinai, the mystic power of mighty Merlin as he softly intoned a spell of albamancy, all these seemed to have been blended carefully together and infused into the man who sat behind the typer, composing sentences in ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... connections appear in the metrical romances of the twelfth or thirteenth century, as well as in those early Anglo-Norman chroniclers or fabulists, who have been at the pains to inform us of the pre-historic events of their country. The author of the romance-poem of the well-known Merlin—so famous in British prophecy—in introducing his hero, enters upon a long dissertation on the origin of the infernal arts. He informs us on the authority of 'David the prophet, and of Moses,' that the greater part of the angels who rebelled under the leadership ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... eloquent harangue, which Madame Roland called the "Robespierreiad." Assisted by his brother and by Danton, Robespierre, in the sitting of November 5th, overpowered the Girondins, and went to the Jacobins to enjoy the fruits of his victory, where Merlin de Thionville declared him an eagle, and a barbarous reptile. From that moment he never ceased to promote the death of Louis XVI., with an asperity and a perseverance almost incredible. In short, until the fatal day of the martyrdom of that amiable and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... rode, and all the broods Of legend laired.—And, where no sound intrudes Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale, A brook that murmurs to the solitudes, Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound By his own magic to one stony spot; And in the cloud, that looms above the glen,— In which the sun burns like the Table Round,— Might dream he sees the towers ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... enemies in the field, And I pray'd God to grant what He had will'd. There were they vanquish'd, and betook themselves Unto the bitter passages of flight. I mark'd the hunt, and waxing out of bounds In gladness, lifted up my shameless brow, And like the merlin cheated by a gleam, Cried, "It is over. Heav'n! I fear thee not." Upon my verge of life I wish'd for peace With God; nor repentance had supplied What I did lack of duty, were it not The hermit Piero, touch'd with charity, In his devout orisons thought on me. But who art thou that ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... we have prudent men of business able to add two and two together, and justice may be out of hand distinguished from injustice by an impanelment of the nearest twelve fools. Here we have many Helmases a-cackling wisely under a goose-feather. But yonder are Cato and Nestor and Merlin and Socrates, Abelard sits with Aristotle there, and the seven sages confer with the major prophets, and yonder is all that was ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Welsh poets it may, perhaps, be interesting to remember two. These are Taliesin, or "Shining Forehead," and Merlin. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... echoes oft the pleading strain Of rural lovers. O'er my soul Such varied scenes in vision roll, Whether, O prince of bards, I see The fire of Greece reviv'd in thee, That like a deluge bursts away; Or Taliesin tune the lay; Or thou, wild Merlin, with thy song Pour thy ungovern'd soul along; Or those perchance of later age More artful swell their measur'd rage, Sweet bards whose love-taught numbers suit Soft measures and the Lesbian lute; Whether, Iolo, mirtle-crown'd, Thy ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... falconers, especially for its great powers and tractable disposition. The gyr falcon is less than the Icelander, but much larger than the slight falcon. These powerful birds are flown at herons and hares, and are the only hawks that are fully a match for the fork-tailed kite. The merlin and hobby are both small hawks and fit only for small birds, as the blackbird, &c. The sparrow-hawk may be also trained to hunt; his flight is rapid for a short distance, kills partridges well in the early season, and is the best of all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... ("The Triads of the Isle of Britain"). It contains the traditions from the ancient times until the seventh century. Among the famous triads of this book are: The three bards who bore the cloth of gold, Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin, son of Morvryn, and Taleisin, chief of the bards. There were three principles of song: Composition of poetry, execution upon the harp, and erudition. In the sixth century we see the bards playing the harp and singing their stirring songs with inspiring ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... the ground; their lances lying by their sides, their shields hanging on the trees which overshadowed them; their very horses reposing idly on the grass on which they cared not to browse. All seemed under the influence of a spell as powerful as that under which Merlin had bound the pitiless daughter of Arthur; but the moment that Marie Antoinette passed within the gates the enchantment was dissolved; the pages sprung to their feet, and brought the easily roused steeds to their awakened masters. Twenty-five challengers, with scarfs ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
Copyright © 2025 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
