"Lyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... climbed the slopes of solitude, and there Life met a god, who challenged her and said: "Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed, And in my live flank dug a finger-hole, And wrung new music ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... back is quite loose," again exclaimed Rose-Pompon. And she spoke the truth; for the chair-back, which was made in the form of a lyre, remained in the hands of Mdlle. de Cardoville, who said, as she replaced it discreetly in its former position: "I think, miss, that we can ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... spirit of song,—midst the zephyrs at play In bowers of beauty,—I bend to thy lay, And woo, while I worship in deep sylvan spot, The Muses' soft echoes to kindle the grot. Wake chords of my lyre, with musical kiss, To vibrate and ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... man sat serene, And well I knew that thoughtful mien Of him whose early lyre had thrown O'er mouldering walls the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... might be written on the reputation of painters,' says Mr. Croker in a note to his edition of Boswell; 'Horace Walpole talked at one time of Ramsay as of equal fame with Reynolds; and Hayley dedicated his lyre (such as it was) to Romney. What is a picture of Ramsay or ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... a louder and a loftier strain,' And, pray, what follows from his boiling brain? He sinks to S * *'s level in a trice, Whose epic mountains never fail in mice! Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire The tempered warblings of his master lyre; Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute, 'Of man's first disobedience and the fruit' He speaks; but, as his subject swells along, Earth, Heaven, and Hades, echo with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sails; but thee, fair, gentle maid, whom Mnesis, happy nymph, first on the banks of Hebrus did produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charmed, and who, on that fair hill which overlooks the proud metropolis of Britain, sat'st, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the heroic lyre; fill my ravished fancy with the hopes of charming ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which once existed in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... value of music has long been known. For ages warriors have been led to battle to the sounds of martial strains. David charmed away Saul's evil spirit with his harp. Horace in his 32d Ode Book 1, concludes his address to the lyre:— ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... for some sadly dying note, Upon this silent hour to float, Where, from the bustling world remote, The lyre might wake its melody! One feeble strain is all can swell. From mine almost deserted shell, In mournful accents yet to tell That slumbers ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... up to the dining-room, and while Madame Bayard, sitting under a barometer in the shape of a lyre, served the thick soup, Bayard, tucking his napkin in his vest and regarding his wife with ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... been said and sung about the beauteous scenes of nature in every clime. Scott has lovingly depicted his native heaths, mountains, lochs and glens. Moore draws deep inspiration amid scenes of the Emerald Isle, and strikes his lyre to chords of awakening love, light and song. Cowper, Southey and Wordsworth raised their voices in tuneful and harmonious lays, echoing love of native home. Our beloved American poet has wreathed in song the love of nature's wooing in his immortal Hiawatha. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... him, as a slave ministering to a great lord, the Kiowa brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter, and food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs fanned him mildly; mocking-birds at morn and eve competed with but scarce equalled the sweet melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness seemed to fill all his world. While old man Ellison was pottering among his flocks of sheep on his mile-an-hour pony, and while the Kiowa took his siesta in the burning sunshine at the end of the ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... al day till the setting of the sun; nor was their soul aught stinted of the fair banquet, nor of the beauteous lyre that Apollo held, and the Muses ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... these subterranean pictures, of a symbolic representation of the Saviour, drawn, not from Scripture, but from a heathen original. It is that of Orpheus playing upon his lyre, and drawing all creatures to him by the sweetness of his strains. It was a fiction widely spread soon after the introduction of Christianity among the Gentiles, that Orpheus, like the Sibyls and some other of the characters of mythology, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... like the first, with a symbol, such as may sum up my meaning, and point it out in the process of my expounding it. The symbol is contained in the saying of the Abbot Joachim of Flora, one of the great precursors of St. Francis, to wit: "He that is a true monk considers nothing his own except a lyre—nihil reputat esse suum nisi citharam." Yes; ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... lyric poetry flourished. Lyric comes from the Greek word lura, a lyre, and all lyric poetry was at one time meant to be sung. Now we use the word for any short poem whether meant to be sung or not. In the times of James and Charles there were many lyric poets. Especially in the time of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... bide with me. I will thy every wish divine: breathe softly As e'er thou wilt, yet I will be the lyre To answer every breath with harmony, Until thou weary and ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... street a flock of geese in charge of a diminutive maiden of ten was slowly waddling down toward the stream, shaking their grey and white feathers under the hot kiss of the sun, and behind them, in slow majesty, a herd of cows and oxen—snow-white, with graceful, tall horns, lyre-shaped ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... debase held her rule in the City of the Violet Crown, and gathered about her Phidias the divine, haughty and eloquent Antipho, the gay Crates, the subtle Protagorus, Cratinus so acrid and yet so jovial, Damon of the silver lyre, and the great poets who are poets for all time. Author and artist, noble and soldier, court the Zu-Zu order now; but it must be confessed that the Hellenic idols were of a more exalted type than ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... shadows of pine. And it divides itself, like the Oberland, into three regions: first, the region of rock and snow, sacred to Mercury and Apollo, in which Mercury's birth on Cyllene, his construction of the lyre, and his stealing the oxen of Apollo, are all expressions of the enchantments of cloud and sound, mingling with the sunshine, on the cliffs ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the service of the Gonzaga family of Milan, being, according to one statement, chosen for the office which he was to fill, as the first singer in improvisatore of his time (among his other inventions he devised a peculiar kind of lyre). He showed no want of confidence in asserting his claims to be elected, for after declaring the various works he would undertake, he added with regard to painting—'I can do what can be done, as well as any man, be he who he may.' He received from the Duke a salary of five hundred crowns ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... time and oft have I felt his abtrusest thoughts steal rhythmically on my soul, when chanted forth by him! Nay, how often have I fancied I heard rise up in answer to his gentle touch, an interpreting music of my own, as from the passive strings of some wind-smitten lyre! ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... doffed forever here, Within these lowly walls. And we were born Amid a glad creation!—-then why hear we ne'er The silver shout, filling the unmeasured heaven?—— Why catch we e'er the rich plume's rustle soft, Or sweep of passing lyre! Our tearful home Hung 'mid a gay, rejoicing universe, And ne'er a glimpse adown its golden paths?—— Oh are there eyes, soft eyes upon us, In the dark and in the day, shining unseen, And everlasting smiles, brightening unfelt On all our tears: News sweet ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... For the old gods are not dead. Though they be forgotten and the voice of Jesus full of sorrowful promises has beguiled the world, still every morning is Aphrodite new born in the spume of the sea, and in many an isle forsaken you may catch the notes of Apollo's lyre, while Dionysus, in the mysterious heat of midday when the husbandman is sleeping, still steals among the grapes, and Demeter even yet in the sunset seeks Persephone among the sheaves of corn. If Jesus wanders ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... her head, and upward cast Wild looks from homeless eyes, whose liquid light Gleamed out between deep folds of blue-black hair, As gleam twin lakes between the purple peaks Of deep Parnassus, at the mournful moon. Beside her lay a lyre. She snatched the shell, And waked wild music from its silver strings; Then tossed it sadly by,—'Ah, hush!' she cries, 'Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine! Why mock my discords with thine ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... beneath the transparent upper current of meaning an under or suggestive one'? To this 'mystic or secondary impression' he attributes 'the vast force of an accompaniment in music.... With each note of the lyre is heard a ghostly, and not always a distinct, but an august soul-exalting echo.' Has anything that has been said since on that conception of poetry without which no writer of verse would, I suppose, venture to write verse, been said more subtly ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... where the wild birds fare, My song would sweep the windy lyre Of Heaven's choir, Pulsing desire For starry fire, Abashing chilling vagues of air With throbbing of warm breasts ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... amid clouds to stand? And wouldst be my companion Where I gaze, and still shall gaze, Through tempering nights and flashing days, When forests fall, and man is gone, Over tribes and over times, At the burning Lyre, Nearing me, With its stars of northern fire, In ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with bread, which had just fallen beside him, was the first object he discovered. A few paces beyond the negro reposed a beautiful boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, still sleeping by the side of his lyre; and farther yet, stretched in an uneasy slumber on a silken couch, lay the identical object of the freedman's search—the illustrious ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... hair (which proved magnificent) half-down before the performance was over. Then she declaimed several short poems by Victor Hugo, selected among many hundred by Mrs. Rooth, as the good lady was careful to make known. After this she jumped to the American lyre, regaling the company with specimens, both familiar and fresh, of Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, and of two or three poetesses now revealed to Sherringham for the first time. She flowed so copiously, keeping the floor and rejoicing visibly in her luck, that her host was mainly occupied with ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... and then goes to those of Orpheus; but with a bad omen, as Eurydice dies soon after, and cannot be brought to life. In his sorrow, Orpheus repairs to the solitudes of the mountains, where the trees flock around him at the sound of his lyre; and, among others, the pine, into which Atys has been changed; and the cypress, produced from the transformation of Cyparissus. Orpheus sings of the rape of Ganymede; of the change of Hyacinthus, who was beloved and slain by Apollo, into a flower; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... grassy mound Where calm the Douglas chieftains lie, Who, living, quiet never found, I straightway learnt a lesson high: And well I knew that thoughtful mien Of him whose early lyre had thrown Over these mouldering walls the magic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... correspondence, and more hasty oratory than in his calmer moments he cared to think upon, it occurred to him, as it had occurred to many of his fellows in Parliament, that a tour to India would enable him to sweep a larger lyre and address himself to the problems of Imperial administration with a firmer hand. Accepting, therefore, a general invitation extended to him by Orde some years before, Pagett bad taken ship to Karachi, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow'rs attend, Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend; But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling'ring jest, ...
— English Satires • Various
... the pleasing note of lute and lyre, The lily's purple, the red rose's glow; It wonders at the witchery of the fire, And marvels at the ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... sumptuously illustrated edition got up by friends and admirers brought him 80,000 francs, with which he purchased a villa, christened Carcassonne, at Nice, therein spending sunny and sunny-tempered days and dispensing large-hearted hospitality. To luckless brethren of the lyre he held out an ungrudgeful hand, alas! meeting with scant return. The one bitterness of his life, indeed, was due to ingratitude. Among his papers after death was found ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the preparation of flour since the time of Homer in the proportion of 1:144; in the production of cotton during the last 70 years in the proportion of 1:320. Aristotle predicted, long ago, that "when the shuttle would move of itself, and plectra of themselves strike the lyre, we should need no more slaves." Polit., 2, 5. Every step of true progress brings us nearer the fulfillment ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... concurrence of opposite tendencies and efforts in the motions of this ever-living fire, out of which results the most beautiful harmony. This harmony of the world is one of conflicting impulses, like the lyre and the bow. The strife between opposite tendencies is the parent of all things. All life is change, and change ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... ushers in the morn, And golden beams th' impurpled skies adorn: Wak'd by the gentle murmur of the floods, Or the soft music of the waving woods; Rising from sleep with the melodious quire, To solemn sounds I'd tune the hallow'd lyre. Thy name, O GOD! should tremble on my tongue, Till ev'ry grove prov'd vocal to my song: (Delightful task! with dawning light to sing, Triumphant hymns to heav'n's eternal king.) Some courteous angel should my breast inspire, Attune ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... and bold; and there, as in many other parts of Turkey, the dalesman was often the prey of the mountaineer. It was in the mountain districts where were preserved the recollections of Scander Beg, and where the manners of ancient Laconia prevailed, the deeds of the brave soldier were sung on the lyre, and the skilful robber quoted as an example to the children by the father of the family. Village feasts were held on the booty taken from strangers; and the favourite dish was always a stolen sheep. Every man was esteemed in proportion to his skill ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... my love, to pleasure thee. There sound enchanting symphonies; The clear high notes of flutes arise; A singing girl and artful boy Are chanting for thee strains of joy; He touches with his quill the wire, She tunes her note unto the lyre: The servants carry to and fro Dishes and cups of ruddy glow; But these delights, I will confess, Than pleasant converse charm me less; Nor is the feast so sweet ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... them. Behind the priestess is a woman carrying over her shoulders a yoke, from which hang two vessels, while behind her, again, comes a man dressed in a long robe, and playing upon a seven-stringed lyre. On the opposite side of the sarcophagus, the painting, much defaced, shows another priestess before an altar, with a Double Axe standing beside it, a man playing on a flute, and five women moving in procession. On the ends of the sarcophagus are pictures, in one case of a chariot ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... and by his side were placed several of the beautiful painted vases that I have described, which were perhaps supposed to be full of provisions. The little chamber was crowded with mourners, and with musicians playing on an instrument resembling a lyre, while near the foot of the corpse stood a man holding a sheet, with which he was preparing to cover ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... love music; not as you love it, my friend, with intelligence, discrimination, and delicacy, but in a dull, woodeny way, as the "gouty oaks" loved it, when they felt in their fibrous frames the stir of Amphion's lyre, and "floundered into hornpipes"; as the gray, stupid rocks loved it, when they came rolling heavily to his feet to listen; in a great, coarse, clumsy, ichthyosaurian way, as the rivers loved sad Orpheus's wailing tones, stopping in their mighty courses, and the thick-hided hippopotamus ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... keeping close to the river, which wound in and out, fringed with a thick belt of scrub, amongst which rose tall red-gum trees. Flights of cockatoos screamed over their heads, and magpies gurgled in the thick shades by the water. Occasionally came the clear whistle of a lyre bird or the peal of a laughing jackass. Jim knew all the bird-notes, as well as the signs of bush game, and pointed them out as they rode. Once a big wallaby showed for an instant, and there was a general outcry and ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... lazy languor—motionless, We lie and dream of nothingness; For visions come From Poppydom Direct at our command: Or, delicate alternative, In open idleness we live, With lyre and lute And silver flute, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... a trophy stood, and round that trophy, forty years before, Sophocles the author of Antigone, then sixteen years of age, the loveliest and most cultivated lad in Athens, undraped like a faun, with lyre in hand, was leading the Chorus of Athenian youths, and singing to Athene, the tutelary goddess, a hymn of triumph for a glorious victory,—the very symbol of Greece and Athens, springing up into a joyous second ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... fling, And way-worn pilgrims seek the scanty spring? Where now thy pomp, which kings with envy viewed? Where now thy might which all those kings subdued? No martial myriads muster in thy gate; No suppliant nations in thy temple wait; No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among, Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song: But lawless force and meagre want are there, And the quick-darting eye of restless fear, While cold oblivion, 'mid thy ruins laid, Folds its dank wing beneath the ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... provident care to all the equipage of rank and ostentation. Flattery, we may safely assert, will never offer its incense in a more seductive form, than when it borrowed the pencil of Holbein and the lyre of Spenser. Yet these persons were the same who trode upon floors strewn with rushes, and deemed it a point of nicety and refinement if these were changed sufficiently often to prevent the soiling of their clothes. They are the same ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Tradition's days, Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine; Which leaves no record to the skeptic eye, But yields young history all to harmony; A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave, Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, Hath greater ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of Epaminondas, who, in my opinion, was the greatest man among the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute; and Themistocles, some years before, was deemed ignorant because at an entertainment he declined the lyre when it was offered to him. For this reason musicians flourished in Greece; music was a general study; and whoever was unacquainted with it was not considered as fully instructed in learning. Geometry was in high esteem with ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Of royal singing robes, were his, confest, By slowly growing certitude of fame, Since first, a youth, he found fresh-opening portals To Beauty's Pleasure-House. Ranked with acclaim Amidst the true Immortals, The amaranth fields with native ease he trod, Authentic son of the lyre-bearing god. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... the diners with interesting passages of poetry or prose; before others there might be a performance of scenes from a comedy. At times vocal and instrumental music was discoursed by the domestic minstrels; or persons, generally women, were hired to play upon the harp, lyre, or double flageolet. Such performances would also be carried on during the carousal which often followed deep into the night, and to these may be added posture-dances by girls from Cadiz, juggling and acrobatic feats, and other forms of "variety" ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... about injustice between man and God. If there ever was a fair and square purchase of anything, then Christ purchased us. He paid for us, not in shekels, not in ancient coins inscribed with effigies of Hercules, or AEgina's tortoise, or lyre of Mitylene, but in two kinds of coin—one red, the other glittering—blood and tears! If anything is purchased and paid for, ought not the goods to be delivered? If you have bought property and given the money, do you not want ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tunable, and the great improvements of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... spark of true poetic fire Beamed at my birth, or on my cradle fell, Though rude my numbers, and untuned my lyre, I will not leave thee ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Poetry? It is the oldest kind of poetry, and was originally intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... are they? But what art thou, My Country? On thy fertile shore The heroic lyre is tuneless now; To scheme for dividends, dig for ore, These are the things we hold divine, Not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which was at first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round the Pole; then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptile on which the strings of the lyre are mounted. See an excellent memoir of M. Dupuis sur ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... in the still air, and no sound was heard over the spacious plain save the dreamy music. Then the bard struck another key, and a gentle sorrow possessed the hearts of his hearers, and unbidden tears gathered to their eyes. Then, with bolder hand, he swept his fingers across his lyre, and all hearts were moved to joy and pleasant laughter, and eyes that had been dimmed by tears sparkled as brightly as running waters dancing in the sun. When the last notes had died away a cheer arose, loud as the voice of ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... fact it is not so; and that the aberrations of our vernacular tongue have proceeded solely from the licentious use made of it by those whom we are taught to reverence as the fathers of the Sock and Lyre." ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... that are sure to break one by one, like other bubbles, as you draw in your breath, ... as I see by the law of my own star, my own particular star, the star I was born under, the star Wormwood, ... on the opposite side of the heavens from the constellations of 'the Lyre and the Crown.' In the meantime, it is difficult to thank you, or not to thank you, for all your kindnesses—[Greek: algos de sigan]. Only Mrs. Jameson told me of Lady Byron's saying 'that she knows she is burnt every day in effigy by half the world, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... present: and with thee Let Fiction come, upon her vagrant wings Wafting ten thousand colours through the air, Which, by the glances of her magic eye, She blends and shifts at will, through countless forms, Her wild creation. Goddess of the lyre, Which rules the accents of the moving sphere, Wilt thou, eternal Harmony, descend 20 And join this festive train? for with thee comes The guide, the guardian of their lovely sports, Majestic Truth; and where Truth deigns to come, Her sister Liberty will not be far. Be present ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... were inseparable. The poet of his time recited his lines with lyre in hand, striking upon it in the measure he thought best suited to his song. Doubtless the poems of Anacreon were delivered in this way. His themes were simple,—wine, love, and the glorification of youth and poetry; but his imagination and poetic invention so animated every theme that it is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "I, like you, 'keep his covenant,'" he cried; and then without a lyre, for his was still in David's hands, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... hither, all ye syllables of woe, From the deep throat of sad Melpomene! Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go, And touch the strings into a mystery; Sound mournfully upon the winds and low; For simple Isabel is soon to be Among the dead: She withers, like a palm Cut by an ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... made a lyre-lay out of it? Now, however, do I lie here, still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with mine ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the picking of the strings produced. He set to work to make a musical instrument, using the shell of a tortoise for the body and placing strings across it. In substantiation of this legend we find in examining the lyre of the ancient Greeks that almost every one was ornamented with a tortoise. We find also in the records of the Hindus, the Chinese, the Persians, and the Hebrews that these people had stringed musical instruments at a very early date and that the most common among ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme; He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders; The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march to the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than his might swell From my lyre within the sky! ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... of the warden-angels, who stood on its watch-towers, were slowly folded together, and back rolled the massive gates from the walls of jasper; and with the great "Godlight" streaming outward, and amid the sound of archangel's harp and seraph's lyre, the ministering angels came forth. They did not ask the child-spirits there, if their earthly homes had been among the high and the honourable; they did not ask them if broad lands had been their heritage, and sparkling coffers their portion; if their paths had lain by pleasant waters, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... morning breeze. The story went that he was born early in the morning in a cave, and after he had slept a little while in his cradle, he came forth, and, finding the shell of a tortoise with some strings of the inwards stretched across it, he at once began to play on it, and thus formed the first lyre. He was so swift that he was the messenger of Jupiter, and he is always represented with wings on his cap and sandals; but as the wind not only makes music, but blows things away unawares, so Mercury came to be viewed not only as the god of fair speech, but ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proscenium of the opera-house at Lisbon is a large clock placed rather in advance, whose dexter supporter is old Time with his scythe, and the sinister, one of the Muses playing on a lyre. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... of our thoughts where angels step, But sleep ourselves at the foot!" [The History of the Lyre, by L. E. L.] ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stationed with his lyre Supreme among the Elysian quire, Is, for the dwellers upon earth, Mute as ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... gloomy ways; No such law to me was given, Nor, I trust, shall I deplore me, Faring like my friends before me; Nor an holier place desire Than Timoleon's arms acquire, And Tully's curule chair, and Milton's golden lyre. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... well as here on earth? For sure the milder planets did combine On thy auspicious horoscope to shine, And even the most malicious were in trine. Thy brother-angels at thy birth Strung each his lyre, and tun'd it high, That all the people of the sky Might know a poetess was born on earth; And then, if ever, mortal ears Had heard the music of the spheres. And if no clust'ring swarm of bees On thy sweet mouth distill'd their golden dew, 'Twas that such vulgar miracles Heaven ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the laurels that decked the fair throng, And Dante moved by with his lyre, While Montaigne and Pascal stood rapt by his song, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... I only had the luck To feel the grand Olympic fire That thrilled the Greater when they struck The lyre! ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... frequent pilgrim at thy sacred shrine; Mine with true sighs thy absence to bemoan, And grave with faithful epitaphs thy stone. If e'er from me thy loved memorial part, May shame afflict this alienated heart; Of thee forgetful if I form a song, My lyre be broken, and untuned my tongue, My griefs be doubled from thy image free, And mirth a ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... moment and of vital importance. Invariably she is firm and steady in all her pursuits and aims. There is required a combination of forces and extreme opposition to drive her from her position; she takes her stand, not to be moved by the sound of Apollo's lyre or the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... remained faithful to her Emperor, and the Emperor was successful against his son. But he soon died in disappointment and despair. With him the star of the Swabian dynasty had set, and the sweet sounds of the Swabian lyre died away with the last breath of Corradino, the last of the Hohenstaufen, on the scaffold at Naples, in 1268. Germany was breaking down under heavy burdens. It was visited by the papal interdict, by ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Dante's very self was more alien or more free than Shakespeare; but there was nothing of the dry Tyrtaean twang, the dull mechanic resonance as of wooden echoes from a platform, in the great historic chord of his lyre. "He is very English, too English, even," says the Master on whom his enemies alone—assuredly not his most loving, most reverent, and most thankful disciples—might possibly and plausibly retort that he was "very ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the great principles of human harmony and social order. Societies were founded, cities built, and countries cultivated by Orpheus and Amphion, and men of analogous fame, who wielded at will this mythic power, and made all the susceptibilities of nature "sequacious of the lyre." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... female figure studying a papyrus roll represents Science, and the adjacent female figure, resting one arm on the figure representing Science, and the other, on a lyre, represents Literature ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... resembling those of the Eolian lyre, are produced by playing the notes with the air-blast alone, without the aid of percussion. But the louder sostenuto notes depend upon the added atmospheric resistance offered by a strong current of air to those movements of the wire which have been originally set up by ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... be ascending, while the flowers are in full bloom. Through the fields be swiftly passing, the fleeting hours of noon. I shall gather while praising on the lyre, a few wreaths are strewn. That I shall rest through the evening, for the ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... virtues, and throws a mystic veil over our many faults. It is this feeling, this immutable law, which controls the destiny of the race. From its influence empires have fallen, scepters have been lost. Literature owes to Love its choicest gems. The poet's lay is sweeter when Cupid tunes the lyre. The artist's brush is truer when guided by Love. Greece was the cradle of letters and art. Her daughters were queens of beauty, fitted to inspire the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... by name, originally Sarah Samuel. From her, Kalimann would get his novels and classical literature; these he bound in pale blues and greens and brilliant scarlets, ornamenting them with a golden lyre, surmounted with an arrow-pierced heart. He worked upon these bindings con amore, and, transported by his love of the aesthetic, would occasionally give vent to his enthusiasm, and venture observations ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... away. Each stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva's aegis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, and did not fail to beset Ambrose. The more lively looked at his Lincoln-green and shouted verses of ballads at him, fluttering ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Basin's brink. And Bindon Burton Alton, who Has vanished from terrestial view; The poet with the flashing eye— The true born son of minstrelsy! Who sang so sweetly, memory still Trembles with the undying thrill. Which throbbed in melting tones of fire From Bindon Burton Alton's lyre, Alas! alas! that such a soul Should sink a victim to the bowl. Thomas MacKay, who's worthy name Is well known even to modern fame. The worth which honest men revere Deserves a fitting record here. With mighty ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre, or any pleasant instrument of music; for truly he has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged, not in the Ionian, or in the Phrygian mode, nor yet in the Lydian, but in the true Hellenic mode, which is the Dorian, and no other. Such an one makes me merry with the sound of his ...
— Laches • Plato
... is an intensity here, a note of passion beyond the deepest of Herrick's. This tone (whether from temperament or circumstance or scheme of art), is wanting to the HESPERIDES and NOBLE NUMBERS: nor does Herrick's lyre, sweet and varied as it is, own that purple chord, that more inwoven harmony, possessed by poets of greater depth and splendour,—by Shakespeare and Milton often, by Spenser more rarely. But if we put aside these 'greater gods' of song, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... of Horace, a little of Prior, A sketch of a Milkmaid, a lay of the Squire— These, these are 'on draught' 'At the Sign of the Lyre!' ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... thine aid afford to me, Inspire my Ideality; Thou who, benign, in days of yore, Didst heavenly inspiration pour On him, who luckily for us Sang Propria Quae Maribus; Teach me to sound on quiv'ring lyre, Prosodial strains in notes of fire; Words' ends shall be my theme sublime, Now first descanted on in rhyme. Come, little boys, attention lend, All words are long in a that end: (In proof of which I'll bet a quart,) Excepting those which must be short— ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... canoes loaded with oysters, buttermilk and cabbages. They are great astrologers, predicting the different changes of weather almost as accurately as an almanac; they are, moreover, exquisite performers on three-stringed fiddles; in whistling they almost boast the far-famed powers of Orpheus' lyre, for not a horse nor an ox in the place, when at the plough or before the wagon, will budge a foot until he hears the well known whistle of his black driver and companion. And from their amazing skill at casting up accounts upon their fingers they are regarded with as much ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... hunger cannot prey On everlasting high desert, Nor can Oblivion steal away Its record graven on the heart; Lodge but an arrow, Virtue, on the bow That binds my lyre, and death shall ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. "Aid us Mars, Bacchus, Apollo," cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. "Accourez, chastes nymphes de Parnasse," says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. "Des sons que ma lyre enfante, marquez-en bien la cadence, et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de Louis!" Schoolboys' themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... versi latini fu interotto da un pastore nunciatore della morte di Euridice." The name of the actor of Orfeo is mentioned as Baccio Ugolino. This stage "business" in English reads: "Orpheus singing on the hill to his lyre the following Latin verses is interrupted by a shepherd announcing the death of Euridice." Thirteen verses of the song are given before the entrance of the shepherd, and immediately after the announcement ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... roamed about almost wherever Shanter led them. Now it would be down some lovely creek, overhung by wide-spreading ferns, in search of fish; now to hunt out and slay dangerous serpents, or capture the carpet-snake, which the black looked upon as a delicacy. Twice over they came across the lyre-tailed pheasant; but the birds escaped uninjured, so that they did not secure the wonderful tail-feathers for ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... plants in the balcony, does not extinguish his musical ardour. "A gentle shower from the sweet eyes of my Isabelle, moved to tears by this plaintive melody," says he, "for it is universally conceded that I excel in music as in arms, and wield the lyre ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... with glib emphasis. "The glory of Solomon, the sword of Caesar, the beauty of Adonis, the lyre of Orpheus, the strength of Hercules, the grace of Apollo, the sum of all possibilities—God-man, or man-God, what shall our poor lips call you?" He made the monarch a profound obeisance, too profound to permit Robert to see the mockery ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... believe her the habitant of some bright planet, such as she pointed out to us in the Bay of Naples—a seraph with a golden lyre—and shrouded in a white cymar! No, no!" would he continue, turning his footsteps towards the adjacent room, where the suffering pangs of Apollo's high priest are painfully told in marble, "let let me rather contemplate the Laocoon! His ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... given, A man divine, and chosen friend of heaven) To grace those nuptials, from the bright abode Yourselves were present; where this minstrel-god, Well pleased to share the feast, amid the quire Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre." ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... robins, and all our song birds are members of an exceedingly numerous "order" "Paseres." In it are included the crows (with those gaily-decorated crows, the Birds of Paradise, found only in New Guinea and the Moluccas), the bower birds and the lyre bird of Australia; the flycatchers, the pittas (or ground thrushes), the water-ouzel, the weaver birds, the wrens, the tits, the creepers, the honey-eaters, those African gems, the sun birds, and also ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Grecian muse unrivall'd reigns; To Britain let the nations homage pay: She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray. ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the soul; Baudelaire on a mediaeval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... by myself, and assign'd by myself for the consort of Peleus, Whom above all of his kindred the love of Immortals exalted. And ye were witnesses, Gods! Thou, too, at the feast of the Bridal, Thou, with the lyre in thy hand, ever-treacherous, friend of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... between the generations to which I refer. I remember having exactly the same experience the only time I ever talked to Swinburne. I had regarded (and resisted) him in my boyhood as a sort of Antichrist in purple, like Nero holding his lyre, and I found him more like a very well-read Victorian old maid, almost entirely a laudator temporis acti disposed to say that none of the young men would ever come up to Tennyson—which may be quite true for all ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... young and the brilliant aspire To sing what I gaze on in vain, For sorrow has torn from my lyre The string which ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... lyre and brought a new kind of music into the world. He soon tired of his lyre and went back to his ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... the chiefs of Troy and of Carthage, with the god of love seated beside her on her golden couch. A hundred maids and as many pages attended upon the guests. After the viands were removed, I-o'pas, the Tyrian minstrel and poet, played upon his gilded lyre, and sang about the wondrous things in the heavens and ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... most exquisite moods has shared the same fate at the hands of Civilised Man. If there is anything anywhere in the world that is rare and wild and wonderful, singular in the perfection of its beauty, Civilised Man sweeps it out of existence. It is the fate everywhere of lyre-birds, of humming-birds, of birds of Paradise, marvellous things that Man may destroy and can never create. They make poor parlour ornaments and but ugly adornments for silly women. The world is the poorer and we none the richer. The same fate is overtaking all the loveliest spots on the earth. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... calls her feather'd quire, 70 And tunes to softer notes her laughing lyre; Bids her gay hours on purple pinions move, And arms her Zephyrs with the shafts of Love, Pleased GNOMES, ascending from their earthy beds, Play round her graceful footsteps, as she treads; 75 Gay SYLPHS attendant beat the fragrant air On winnowing wings, and waft her golden hair; Blue NYMPHS emerging ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... fertility of invention, truth, fluency and vivacity of description, copious learning, and a pure, amiable and heart-ennobling morality shall be prized among the students of English verse, was now tuning his enchanting lyre; and the ear of Raleigh was the first to catch its strains. This eminent person was probably of obscure parentage and slender means, for it was as a sizer, the lowest order of students, that he was entered at Cambridge; but that his humble merit early attracted the notice of men of learning and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Virgil was familiar to the Gallic youth. Their ears were astonished by the harsh and unknown sounds of the Germanic dialect, and they ingeniously lamented that the trembling muses fled from the harmony of a Burgundian lyre. The Gauls were endowed with all the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend them, they were justly condemned to obey, and even to flatter, the victorious Barbarians, by whose clemency they held their precarious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... either side the idealists struggle to hold back the materialists, here conceived as centaurs, who would trample upon Art. In another, Bellerophon is about to mount Pegasus. Orpheus walks ahead with his lyre, followed by a lion, representing the brutish beasts over whom music hath power. Back in the procession come Genius, holding aloft the lamp, and another figure bearing in one hand the pine cones of immortality, in the other a carved statue which she holds forward ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... frondage" and a "bosky dirge;" Grant me but these, and add a regal flush Of "sundered hearts upreared upon a byre;" Throw in some yearnings and a "darksome hush," And—asking nothing more—I'll smite th' lyre. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various |
