"Helicon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bow, and hollow quiver full of arrows, and set forth; and in my other hand I held my stout club, well balanced, and wrought, with unstripped bark, from a shady wild olive-tree, that I myself had found, under sacred Helicon, and dragged up the whole tree, with the bushy roots. But when I came to the place whereby the lion abode, even then I grasped my bow and slipped the string up to the curved tip, and straightway laid thereon the bitter arrow. Then I cast my eyes on every ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... My father was a reverent man, who feared great Jupiter, and brought the rural deities his offerings of fruits ad flowers. He dwelt among the vine-clad rocks and olive groves at the foot of Helicon. My early life ran quiet as the brook by which I sported. I was taught to prune the vine, to tend the flock; and then, at noon, I gathered my sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute. I had a friend, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... word means "seat of the muses." Translation: "O sea! O shore! my own Helicon, / How many things have you uncovered to me, how many things suggested!" Pliny, Letters, Book ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... with much more elegance invoke a ballad, as some have thought Homer did, or a mug of ale, with the author of Hudibras; which latter may perhaps have inspired much more poetry, as well as prose, than all the liquors of Hippocrene or Helicon. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... view. In the distance gleamed Lake Capais, and the hills beyond; in the west, the snowy top of Parnassus, lifted clear and bright above the morning vapors; and, at last, as we turned a shoulder of the mountain in descending, the streaky top of Helicon appeared on the left, completing the classic features ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... bout Of thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves— With cones and parallelograms and curves I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare To bother me—when you are with me there. 315 And they shall never more sip laudanum, From Helicon or Himeros (1);—well, come, And in despite of God and of the devil, We'll make our friendly philosophic revel Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers 320 Warn the obscure inevitable hours, Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;— ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Helicon, in Central Greece,—beautiful mountains clad with trees and vines and filled with fountains,—were believed to be the favorite haunts of the Muses. Near Athens are Hymettus, praised for its honey, and ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Helicon, and let your song awake To tell what kings awoke to war, what armies for whose sake Filled up the meads; what men of war sweet mother Italy Bore unto flower and fruit as then; what flame of fight ran high: For ye remember, Holy Ones, and ye may tell the tale; But we—a slender breath ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the breath of inspiration which will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of Apollo. No one, surely, whose lips had not tasted of the waters of Helicon, could have uttered such ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... on his first brief, he felt himself a man at last; and the muse who presides over the police romance, a lady presumably of French extraction, fled his neighbourhood, and returned to join the dance round the springs of Helicon, among her Grecian sisters. ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... "Helicon pob ffynnon ffel, Parnassus pob bryn isel: Eu rhyfedd faner hefyd Achuba, orchfyga fyd; O Gressi'r maes hagr asw, I antur lan Waterlw: Ac y diwrnod cadarnwych Bydd y deyrnas addas wych Heb ei bath, ...
— Gwaith Alun • Alun
... see what I can at present have no idea of, and that is, how he will find matter from that event to furnish a hundred or two of blank verses. I should think that no one, but one like our friend John St. J(ohn), who uses Helicon as habitually as others do a cold bath, is equal to it. I only hope, for my part, that the argument will not be illustrated by any dkbordement of the Thames near this house; at present there is no appearance ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... aesthete was all receptiveness, like the flea. His only affair in this world was to feed on its facts and colours, like a parasite upon blood. The ego was the all; and the praise of it was enunciated in madder and madder rhythms by poets whose Helicon was absinthe and whose Pegasus was the nightmare. This diseased pride was not even conscious of a public interest, and would have found all political terms utterly tasteless and insignificant. It was no longer a question of one man one vote, but of ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... itself of the ruthless deed, exacted punishment of the mother, the sword piercing her entrails.[75] If a God had given me a mouth sounding with a hundred tongues, and an enlarged genius, and the whole of Helicon {besides}; {still} I could not enumerate the mournful expressions of his unhappy sisters. Regardless of shame, they beat their livid bosoms, and while the body {still} exists, they embrace it, and embrace it again; they give ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... reading Coleridge's description of England, in his fine Ode on the Departing Year, and I applied it, con amore, to the objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new existence; in the river that winds through it, my spirit was baptised in the waters of Helicon! ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... morning this winged horse appeared at the fountain of the Muses on Mount Helicon. The laughing Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, saw him as she dropped from the sky. Dancing Terpsichore tried to take him by the mane, but the white wings flashed in her face and the wonderful steed was gone before she ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings, From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers, that round them blow, Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... — N. poetry, poetics, poesy, Muse, Calliope, tuneful Nine, Parnassus, Helicon[obs3], Pierides, Pierian spring. versification, rhyming, making verses; prosody, orthometry[obs3]. poem; epic, epic poem; epopee[obs3], epopoea, ode, epode[obs3], idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, bucolic, dithyramb, anacreontic[obs3], sonnet, roundelay, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Cavallo shall make such a font Of poetry in famed Ancona run, As that winged courser on Parnassus' mount; Or was it on the hill of Helicon? 'Tis Beatrice, who next uprears her front, Whereof so speaks the writing on the stone: "Her consort Beatrice, while she has breath, Blesses, and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... of thy book, The witty ancient you enrobe, You make the graceful Horace look As pitiful as Tom M'Lobe.[1] Ye Muses, guard your sacred mount, And Helicon, for if this log Should stumble once into the fount, He'll make ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the gods punished presumption and vanity is seen in the story of the daughters of King Pierus. Proud of the perfection to which they had brought their skill in music, they presumed to challenge the Muses themselves in the art over which they specially presided. The contest took place on Mount Helicon, and it is said that when the mortal maidens commenced their song, the sky became dark and misty, whereas when the Muses raised their heavenly voices, all nature seemed to rejoice, and Mount Helicon itself moved with exultation. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Green was my daddy and mammy. Daddy's overseer was a man named Green, and dey said he was a powerful mean sort of man. I never did know whar it was dey lived when Daddy was borned. Mammy's marster was a lawyer dat dey called Slickhead Mitchell, and he had a plantation at Helicon Springs. Mammy was a house gal and she said dey treated her right good. Now Daddy, he done field work. You know what field work is, hoein', plowin', and things lak dat. When you was a slave you had ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... arising during the celebration of the nuptials, Phineus claims Andromeda, who has been betrothed to him; and together with Proetus, he and Polydectes are turned into stone. Pallas, who has aided Perseus, now leaves him, and goes to Helicon, to see the fountain of Hippocrene. The Muses tell her the story of Pyreneus and the Pierides, who were transformed into magpies after they had repeated various songs on the subjects of the transformation of the Deities into various forms of animals; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... day we passed by the Island of Paris, and the Island of the bankes of Helicon, and the Island called Ditter, where are many boares, and the women bee witches. The same day also wee passed by the Castle of Timo, standing vpon a very high mountaine, and neere vnto it is the Island ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... there is a class of women who are impelled toward knowledge (as still others are impelled toward music or art) and whose success in anything they do will depend upon their state of mind. We ought to assume that the girls who go to college belong to this class, however far from the springs of Helicon they mean to march in the future. It is a terrible thing that we should think of taking one hour of their time while they are in college for any course that does not enrich the intellect and add to the treasury of thoughts and ideas upon which the woman with ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... for your sakes If e'er I suffer'd hunger, cold and watching, Occasion calls on me to crave your bounty. Now through my breast let Helicon his stream Pour copious; and Urania with her choir Arise to aid me: while the verse unfolds Things that do almost ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... their favourite and admired laureate of the north, has been heard to express his admiration of certain nymphs in a certain place; and that the said Hamilton Paul has ungratefully and feloniously neglected to speak with due reverence of the ladies of Helicon; that said Hamilton Paul shall be deprived of all aid in future from these goddesses, and be sent to draw his inspiration from the dry fountain of earthly beauty; and that, furthermore, all the favours taken from the said Hamilton ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... applicable:—'I am not now treating of that poetry which is estimated by the pleasure it affords to the ear—the ear having been corrupted, and the judgment-seat of the perceptions; but of that which proceeds from the intellectual Helicon, that which is dignified, and appertaining to human feelings, and entering into the soul.'—The 13th Sonnet for exquisite delicacy of painting; the 19th for tender simplicity; and the 25th for manly pathos, are compositions of, perhaps, unrivalled merit. Yet while ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... here, Urania's son, Hymen come from Helicon; God that glads the lover's heart, He is here to join and part. So the groomsman quits your side And the bridegroom seeks the bride: Friend and comrade yield you o'er To her ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... quaint, viz. "Tobacco battered, and the Pipes shattered (about their Ears who idly idolize so base and barbarous a Weed; or at least-wise overlove so loathsome a Vanity) by a Volley of holy Shot from Mount Helicon." ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... fuel to the blaze. Why mourn we trifles? Mighty cities fall; Their walls protect them not; their dwellers sink To ashes with them. Woods on mountains flame;— Athos, Cilician Taurus, Tmolus, burn; Oete, and Ide, her pleasant fountains dry; With virgin Helicon, and Haemus high, OEagrius since. Now with redoubled flames Fierce Etna blazes;—Eryx, Othrys too; Cynthus, and fam'd Parnassus' double top, And Rhodope, at length of snow depriv'd: Dindyma, Mimas, and the sacred hill Cythaeron nam'd, and lofty Mycale: Nor aid ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... friend Bran. A simple and unsublimed taste now, like my own, would prefer a jet d'eau at Versailles to this cascade, with all its accompaniments of rock and roar; but this is Flora's Parnassus, Captain Waverley, and that fountain her Helicon. It would be greatly for the benefit of my cellar if she could teach her coadjutor, Mac-Murrough, the value of its influence: he has just drunk a pint of usquebaugh to correct, he said, the coldness of the claret. Let me try its virtues.' He sipped a little water in the hollow of his hand, and ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... who continues to be, just as he was in the early time, nothing more nor less than a "seer." He is always the man who is willing to take the age he lives in on trust, as the very best that ever was. Shakespeare did not sit down and cry for the water of Helicon to turn the wheels of his little private mill at the Bankside. He appears to have gone more quietly about his business than any other playwright in London, to have drawn off what water-power he needed from the great prosy current of affairs that flows alike for all ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... poetry, the first upon record as inventor of verse and measure among the Grecians. There was a solemn custom among the Greeks, of bewailing annually their first poet. Pausanias informs us, that before the yearly sacrifice to the Muses on Mount Helicon, the obsequies of Linus were performed, who had a statue and altar erected to him in that place. In this passage Homer is supposed to allude ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... "St. Stiff's dairy"—some very thin milk, divested of all unctuous quality—that having gone to an epicure Captain, at the Albert Villa. Poor Spohf's talent has not put many talents in his purse—these real racing times run over genius!—they would tunnel Helicon, turn Hippocrene to flush a city's drains,—make Pegasus serve letters by carrying a post-boy, and, in the end, sell the noble beast for feline food:—everything now must be tangible. The little organist, who had spent so many a Merry Christmas with the Browns—he has no pleasure ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Simply regret the profane contumely done to the Muse; Done to the Muse in the person of Me, her patron, that never Licked Ministerial lips, dusted the boots of the Court! Surely I hear through the noisy and nauseous clamour of Carlton Sobs of the sensitive Nine heave upon Helicon's hump! ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... remain hard and cold until their return. Odin's wife, Saga, the goddess of history, who lingered by Sokvabek, "the stream of time and events," taking note of all she saw, is like Clio, the muse of history, whom Apollo sought by the inspiring fount of Helicon. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... had indeed the slightest gift or taste for political life. "Pity," said Mrs. Manley, the authoress of "The New Atlantis," speaking of Addison, "that politics and sordid interest should have carried him out of the road of Helicon and snatched him from the embraces of the Muses." But it seems quite unjust to ascribe Addison's divergence into political ways to any sordid interest. He had political friends who loved him, and he went with them into politics ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... spurs thee on, Raising thy heart to flights of Helicon! If thus in strains of Delphic ecstasy Ascends the short-lived blissful memory Of his bright charms,—Oh, how divine must be His own sweet voice,—his look how heavenly! But why of that great attribute Kronion joys in most, be mute,— The majesty ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was quaffing a gill With his pupils, the Muses, from Helicon's rill, (For all circles of rank in Parnassus agree In preferring cold water to coffee or tea) The discourse turned as usual on critical matters, And the last stirring news from the kingdom of letters. But when poets, and critics, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the Citieans, and was of an admirable temper and lightness. The belt which he also wore in all engagements, was of much richer workmanship than the rest of his armor. It was the work of the ancient Helicon, and had been presented to him by the Rhodians, as a mark of their respect to him. So long as he was engaged in drawing up his men, or riding about to give orders or directions, or to view them, he spared Bucephalas, who was now growing old, and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... at their evening sports, she would steal in among them and captivate their hearts by her tales of charming sadness. She wore on her head a garland, composed of her father's myrtles twisted with her mother's cypress. One day as she sat musing by the waters of Helicon, her tears by chance fell into the spring; and ever since, the muses' spring has tasted of the infusion. Pity was commanded by Jupiter to follow the steps of her mother through the world, dropping balm into the wounds she made, and binding up the hearts she had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... Waterloo in belles-lettres and rhetoric and mathematics and philosophy. Let us see whether the students of Doctors McCosh, or Porter, or Campbell, or Smith are most worthy to wear the belt. About twelve o'clock at noon let the literary flotilla start prow and prow, oar-lock and oar-lock. Let Helicon empty its waters to swell the river of knowledge on which they row. Right foot on right rib of the boat, and left foot on the left rib—bend into it, my hearties, bend!—and our craft come out four ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Copenhagen. Whatever is interesting in these papers will, of course, be published. Mr. Thiele has also discovered in the same cellar the model of a bas-relief by the same great artist, representing the Muses dancing by Helicon. It will be added to the collection of his ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... to look a snake in the eye; but I could see that for the mathematician, if for any one, Time stands still withal; he is winnowed of vanity and sin. French, German, and Latin, and a hasty tincture of Xenophon and Homer (a mere lipwash of Helicon) gave me a zeal for philology and the tongues. I was a member in decent standing of the college classical club, and visions of life as a professor of languages seemed to me far from unhappy. A compulsory course in philosophy convinced me that there was still much to learn; and ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... are his aura or comforter, his anchor or support, and his harbour, to which he retires in times of labour, of agitation, and storm. Hence he cries: "O mountain of Parnassus, where I abide! Muses, with whom I converse! Fountain of Helicon, where I am nourished. Mountain, that affordest me a quiet dwelling-place! Muses, that inspire me with profound doctrines. Fountain, that cleanses me! Mountain, on whose ascent my heart uprises! Muses, that in discourse revive my spirit. Well, whose arbours cool my brows! Change ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings! From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take; The laughing flowers that round them blow Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should 'use it as not abusing it;' and particularly one who piques himself (though indeed at the ripe age of nineteen), of being 'an infant bard,'—('The artless Helicon I boast is youth;')—should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above cited on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages, on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, 'he certainly had no intention ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... hath read Virgil, Ovid, Tully, and all the other noble poets and orators to me unknown. And also he hath read the nine Muses, and understands their musical sciences, and to whom of them each, science is appropred. I suppose he hath drunken of Helicon's well. Then I pray him and such others to correct, add, or minish whereas he or they shall find fault; for I have but followed my copy in French as nigh as to me is possible. And if any word be said therein well, I am glad; and if otherwise, I ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to his oath irrevocable Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless. Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so decreed. They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries. Swift the ripple ripples follow'd, as of aureate Helicon, Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the distances, And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight! Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air! Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory! Chafed the youth with their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... connected with the appellation. Marguerite of Scotland, the Queen of Louis the Eleventh, presented Marguerite Clotilde de Surville, a poetess, with a bouquet of daisies, with this inscription; "Marguerite d'Ecosse a Marguerite (the pearl) d'Helicon." ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... lay: Their numbers every mental storm control, And lull to harmony the afflicted soul; With heavenly balm the tortured breast compose, 370 And soothe the agony of latent woes: The verdant shades that Helicon surround, On rosy gales seraphic tunes resound! Perpetual summers crown the happy hours, Sweet as the breath that fans Elysian flowers: Hence pleasure dances in an endless round, And love and joy, ineffable, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... heaven, now down almost to the earth. The moon saw with astonishment her brother's chariot running beneath her own. The clouds began to smoke. The forest-clad mountains burned,—Athos and Taurus and Tmolus and Oete; Ida, once celebrated for fountains; the Muses' mountain Helicon, and Haemus; Aetna, with fires within and without, and Parnassus, with his two peaks, and Rhodope, forced at last to part with his snowy crown. Her cold climate was no protection to Scythia; Caucasus burned, and Ossa and Pindus, and, greater ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... beaute." Contemporaries did not leave to posterity the care of crowning the great poets of the time. Italy, the mother of art, wished the laurel to encircle the brow of the living, not to be simply the ornament of a tomb. Rome had crowned, in 1341, him who, "cleansing the fount of Helicon from slime and marshy rushes, had restored to the water its pristine limpidity, who had opened Castalia's grotto, obstructed by a network of wild boughs, and destroyed the briers in the laurel grove": the illustrious Francis Petrarch.[478] Though somewhat tardy, the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the lore of antiquity, and the Aubades and Watch-Songs of the old Minnesingers. What do you think of the shoe-maker poets that came after them,—with their guilds and singing-schools? It makes me laugh to think how the great German Helicon, shrunk toa rivulet, goes bubbling and gurgling over the pebbly names of Zwinger, Wurgendrussel, Buchenlin, Hellfire, Old Stoll, Young Stoll, Strong Bopp, Dang Brotscheim, Batt Spiegel, Peter Pfort, and Martin ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... under their feet, rose Mount Helicon, 1,520 feet high, and round about the left rose moderate elevations, enclosing a small portion of the "Sea of Rains," under the name of the Gulf of Iris. The terrestrial atmosphere would have to be one hundred and seventy times more transparent than it is, to allow astronomers ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... after his arrival he breakfasted with Admiral Hornby, who sent him over to Tangier in the "Helicon," giving the Bishop of Gibraltar a passage at the same time. This led him to note down,] "How the naval men love Baxter and all his works." [A letter from Dr. Hooker to Sir John Hay ensured him a most hospitable welcome, though continual rain ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... hunger, cold, or vigils I have endured for you, time occasion spurs me that I claim reward therefor. Now it behoves that Helicon pour forth for me, and Urania aid me with her choir to put in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... cross of Cynthia's way, One of whose names is sacred Trivia. And after penance thus perform'd you pass In like set order, not as Midas did, To wash his gold off into Tagus' stream; But to the Well of knowledge, Helicon; Where, purged of your present maladies, Which are not few, nor slender, you become Such as you fain would seem, and then return, Offering your service to great Cynthia. This is your sentence, if the goddess please To ratify ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... while Ares made love to the goddess of Beauty. The Greek looked at Parnassus, "soaring snow-clad through its native sky," with its Delphic cave and its Castalian fount, or at the neighboring summits of Helicon, where Pegasus struck his hoof and Hippocrene gushed forth, and believed that hidden in these sunny woods might perhaps be found the muses who inspired Herodotus, Homer, Aeschylus, and Pindar. He could go nowhere without ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... a youth, singing in the dawn Of a new freedom, glowing o'er his lyre, Refining, as with great Apollo's fire, His people's gift of song. And thereupon, This Negro singer, come to Helicon Constrained the masters, listening to admire, And roused a race to wonder and aspire, Gazing which way their honest voice was gone, With ebon face uplit of glory's crest. Men marveled at the singer, strong and sweet, Who ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... and yonder close-curled wild thyme are laid before the maidens of Helicon, and the dark-leaved laurels before thee, Pythian Healer, since the Delphic rock made this thine ornament; and this white-horned he-goat shall stain your altar, who nibbles the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... your gown and cap quickly: here, here, your father will be a man of this room presently. Come, nay, nay, nay, nay, be brief. These verses too, a poison on 'em! I cannot abide them, they make me ready to cast, by the banks of Helicon! Nay, look, what a rascally untoward thing this poetry is; I could tear ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... his patrimony and ultimately came to want ("Works and Days", 34 ff.), Hesiod lived a farmer's life until, according to the very early tradition preserved by the author of the "Theogony" (22-23), the Muses met him as he was tending sheep on Mt. Helicon and 'taught him a glorious song'—doubtless the "Works and Days". The only other personal reference is to his victory in a poetical contest at the funeral games of Amphidamas at Chalcis in Euboea, where he won the prize, a tripod, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... in a regimen of admiring a fine woman; and in proportion to the adorability of her charms, in proportion you are delighted with my verses. The lightning of her eye is the godhead of Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile the divinity of Helicon!" ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... but the baptistery was spared by the flames, as it were to justify the saint against his calumniators; for not one of the rich vessels was found wanting. In this senate-house perished the incomparable statues of the muses from Helicon, and other like ornaments, the most valuable then known: so that Zozimus looks upon this conflagration as the greatest misfortune that had ever befallen that city. Palladius ascribes the fire to the anger of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... "withering scorn," no heart "blighted" ere it has safely got into its teens, none of the drawing-room sansculottism which Byron had brought into vogue. All is limpid and serene, with a pleasant dash of the Greek Helicon in it. The melody of the whole, too, is remarkable. It is not of that kind which can be demonstrated arithmetically upon the tips of the fingers. It is of that finer sort which the inner ear alone can estimate. It seems simple, like a Greek column, because of its perfection. In a poem ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... nymphs, that in this blessed brook Do bathe your breast, Forsake your watery bowers and hither look At my request.... And eke you virgins that on Parnass dwell, Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well, Help me to blaze Her worthy praise, Which in ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Muses"—a grove or a temple—and there was such a place on a part of the Acropolis of Athens, the rocky temple-crowned hill around which the city was built. There were other "museums," or seats of the Muses, in ancient Greece; those on the slopes of Mount Helicon and of Mount Olympus were the most famous. In modern times a picture gallery and art collection, that of the Louvre, in Paris, is called "the Musee," whilst "the Museum" (the Latin form of the same word) is the name distinctively applied ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... LXXXVI. Now open Helicon; awake the strain, Ye Muses. Aid me, that the tale be told, What kings were roused, what armies filled the plain, What battles blazed, what men of valiant mould Graced fair Italia in those days of old. Aid ye, for ye are goddesses, and clear Can ye remember, and the tale unfold. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... living worth with jaundiced eyes: While, as for ancient models, take the code Which to the ten wise men our fathers owed, The treaties made 'twixt Gabii's kings and Home's, The pontiffs' books, the bards' forgotten tomes, They'll swear the Muses framed them every one In close divan on Alba's Helicon. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should "use it as not abusing it;" and particularly one who piques himself (though indeed at the ripe age of nineteen) on being "an infant bard,"—("The artless Helicon I boast is youth")—should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above cited, on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages, on the self-same subject, introduced ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me, And with her choir Urania must assist me, To put in ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... loved, and books, and the grave beauty Of England's Helicon, whose eternal light Shines like a lantern on that road of duty, Discerned by ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... days of yore, Ere thou had'st taught the clumsy rocks to soar? How could the muses in their ambient bower, In loftiest lays, anticipate thy power! How could the sparkling Helicon flow free, How durst it ripple, and not wait for thee? No business had the Stagyrite to name The rules of verse; old Homer was to blame, For laying out too soon the Iliad's plan; Homer was nothing but a "blind, old man!" Light, light that Ajax prayed for, now has come, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... the summit of snowy Olympus[31]." These Ladies, he tells us, "came to pay him a visit, and complimented him with a scepter and a branch of laurel, when he was feeding his flock on the mountain of Helicon[32]." Some tale of this kind it was usual with the Poets to invent, that the vulgar in those ages of fiction and ignorance might consider their persons as sacred, and that the offspring of their imaginations might be regarded as the children ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... approaching the prototype, and invented other terms instead thereof that were more cautious and mystical. So Diodorus, speaking to the same purpose, ventures no farther than to say that in the mountains of Helicon there grows a certain weed which bears a flower of so damned a scent as to poison those who offer to smell it. Lucretius gives ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... we may—rest where we will. Eternal London haunts us still. The trash of Almack's or Fleet Ditch— And scarce a pin's head difference which— Mixes, tho' even to Greece we run, With every rill from Helicon! And if this rage for travelling lasts, If Cockneys of all sects and castes, Old maidens, aldermen, and squires, Will leave their puddings and coal fires, To gape at things in foreign lands No soul ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... exactly remember them: it would have been a wonder if he had: but he thought Vivian Grey the most delightful fellow he ever met, and determined to ask him to Helicon Castle for ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... be held on that day and the next,—the sports that drew, in those ancient days, over thirty thousand Greeks from all the country round; from the towns on the shores of the two gulfs and from the mountain-lands of Greece,—from Parnassus and Helicon and Delphi, from Athens and the villages on the slopes of Hymettus and even ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... preside over the liberal Arts and the sciences. They were Calliope (Heroic Poetry), Clio Euterpe (Music), Erato (Love Poetry), Melpomene (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Muse of Singing and Rhetoric), Terpsichore (Dancing), Thalia (Comedy), and Urania (Astronomy). Mount Parnassus, Mount Helicon, and the fountains of Castalia and Aganippe were the sacred places ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Muse's path to tread, And curs'd with Adam's unpoetic head, Who, though that pen he wielded in his hand Ordain'd the Wealth of Nations to command; Yet when on Helicon he dar'd to draw, His draft return'd and unaccepted saw. If thus like him we lay a rune in vain, Like him we'll strive ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... development be omitted in any such history,—'the prince and mirror of all chivalry,' the patron of the young English Muse, whose untimely fate keeps its date for ever green, and fills the air of this new 'Helicon' with immortal lamentations. The shining foundations of that so splendid monument of the later Elizabethan genius, which has paralyzed and confounded all our criticism, were laid here. The extraordinary facilities ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Orchomenians, who formed the left wing of the army of Agesilaus, and penetrated as far as the baggage in the rear. But on the remainder of the line Agesilaus was victorious, and the Thebans now saw themselves cut off from their companions, who had retreated and taken up a position on Mount Helicon. Facing about and forming in deep and compact order, the Thebans sought to rejoin the main body, but they were opposed by Agesilaus and his troops. The shock of the conflicting masses which ensued was one of the most terrible recorded in the annals of Grecian warfare. The shields ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... travail sore Sweet rest sease thee evermore, 50 That to give the world encrease, Shortned hast thy own lives lease; Here besides the sorrowing That thy noble House doth bring, Here be tears of perfect moan Weept for thee in Helicon, And som Flowers, and som Bays, For thy Hears to strew the ways, Sent thee from the banks of Came, Devoted to thy vertuous name; 60 Whilst thou bright Saint high sit'st in glory, Next her much like to thee in story, That fair Syrian Shepherdess, Who after yeers of barrennes, The highly favour'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... just now by whom) incidentally alluded to. However, as it turned out, she had another and a deeper reason for emotion: it seemed she had been engaged to a young poet whose verses, to her untaught and girlish judgment, seemed inspired by draughts of the true Helicon, and whose rhythmical raptures had stirred her maiden heart ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... is worthy consideration. As the newspapers say, it is an "unprecedented opportunity for investment!" For the sole Helicon of the institution shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshipped. It met at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, every Friday; and from seven ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... councils yet unknown, How young Ascanius may ascend the throne, That in despite of all the Muses' laws, He may revenge his injured father's cause, Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go, And view your monarch in the shades below, Who takes not now from Helicon his drink, But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink; Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns, And in a pile of his own labours burns; Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise, Supplied with ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... builded Thebes' towers, Or them which charm'd the dolphins in the main, Or which did call Eurydice again, Thou sung'st away the hours, till from their sphere Stars seem'd to shoot thy melody to hear. The god with golden hair, the sister maids, Did leave their Helicon, and Tempe's shades, To see thine isle, here lost their native tongue, And ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... some lines from Wordsworth embalming May mornings, he began to talk of the older poets who had worshipped nature with the ardor of lovers, and his eyes lighted up with pleasure when I happened to remember some almost forgotten stanza from England's "Helicon." It was an easy transition from the old bards to "Elia," and he soon went on in his fine enthusiastic way to relate several anecdotes of his eccentric friend. As I rose to take leave ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Greece. It is now guarded by a handful of soldiers, two or three neglected cannons thrust their muzzles idly over the rampart, and shepherds with their flocks roam at will within. A sharp wind was sweeping over the summit, and the mountains and islands—Parnassus, Cyllene, Helicon, Pentclicon, Salamis, AEgina—were veiled with a dull, opaque haze. While Basil, with stiff fingers, was sketching the view from the top, I wandered about with my other companion, picking spring flowers, reading the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... and phorminx, mask and cothurn, took the first ship bound to Europe, and quietly sailed away. Their stay was short, but they left their mark. To this day Phoebes are numerous in Connecticut, and nine women to one man has become the customary proportion of the sexes. As Greece had Parnassus, Helicon, and Pindus, Connecticut had New Haven, Hartford, and Litchfield Hill,—halting-places of the illustrious travellers. There they scattered the seeds of poetry,—seeds which fell upon stony places, but, warmed by the genial influence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... dew-impearled flowers; Say thus, fair brook, when thou shalt see thy queen, "Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand'ring years And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft hath been; And here to thee he sacrificed his tears." Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone, And thou, sweet Ankor, art my Helicon! ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers that round them blow Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of Music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign; Now rolling down ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... fortifications, and the flames turn whole nations into ashes; woods, together with mountains, are on fire. Athos burns, and the Cilician Taurus, and Tmolus, and Œta, and Ida, now dry but once most famed for its springs, and Helicon, the resort of the virgin Muses, and Hmus, not yet called Œagrian. tna burns intensely with redoubled flames, and Parnassus, with its two summits, and Eryx, and Cynthus, and Orthrys, and Rhodope, at length to be despoiled of its snows, and ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... Boeotia also: I have rested in the groves of Helicon, and tasted of the fountain Hippocrene. But on every memorable spot in Greece conquest after conquest has set its seal, till there is a confusion of ownership even in ruins, that only close study and comparison could unravel. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and gladness;[195] and all the more when that gift becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of springs. It literally is not possible that any fruitful power of the Muses should be put forth upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less is it possible that any Christian nation should grow up "tanquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum,"[196] which cannot recognize the lesson meant in their being told of the places where Rebekah was met;—where Rachel,—where Zipporah,—and she who was ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... laurel bough from Helicon And now with sword barbarian, thou sweepest; And on the fields of thy great labarum, I see a double ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... Muses, daughters of Jupiter and the Goddess of Memory, after their seats on Helicon, Parnassus, and Olympus were barbarized? Not far away. They hovered like witches around the seething caldron of early Christian Europe, in which, "with bubble, bubble, toil and trouble," a new civilization was forming, mindful of the brilliant lineage of their worshippers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the waters, the sesquipedalian word, the mountains in travail and the birth of the ridiculous mouse, the plunge in medias res, the praiser of the good old times, the exclusion of sane poets from Helicon, the counsellor who himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for genius, the nodding ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman |
