"Paean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lie In the waters of wide agony: To such a one this morn was led My bark, by soft winds piloted. —'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the paean With which the legion'd rooks did hail The Sun's uprise majestical: Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then,—as clouds of even Fleck'd with fire and azure, lie In the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... "cherished, served, and laboured to maintain." And who will doubt the claim by this made good To neighbouring NELSON, and our COLLINGWOOD? His country holds her loyal son's remains; But here, whilst WREN'S huge dome rolls back the strains Of the great organ's golden mouths, or while Paean or requiem sounds along the aisle Sacred to mighty memories, DALLEY'S name Inscribed amongst our home-born heirs of fame Shall stand, and show to all our Island brood Australia's love, ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... An excuse for non-attendance at a social function. Occasionally, an expression of sorrow; usually, a paean of ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... her own! All her proud joys, her glad imaginings, her delighted hopes, arose amain and anew, tuned to this cumulative paean as a nourish of trumpets at the climax of a proclamation. She was intoxicated on ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... veteran Eurybiades was on the left. The rowers were resting on their oars, or just using them enough to keep the ships in position. As the Persians came sweeping into the straits the Greeks began to chant the Paean, their battle hymn. The crash of the encounter between the two navies was ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... of the day was headed: "The Napoleon of the Air; a Character Sketch," and the leader, signed by Lord Cholme himself, was a paean, in stilted journalese, in praise of the Morning's enterprise in ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... danger soft for us as silk. We welcome back our bravest and our best;— Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 240 And will not please the ear: I sweep them for a paean, but they wane Again and yet again Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain: Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past is unforgiving; I with uncovered ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... suffering, and of the deepest questionings issuing in childlike trust in God. For an anonymous writer composes (say, in 550 B.C.) the great bulk of the magnificent chapters forty to fifty-five of our Book of Isaiah—a paean of spiritual exultation over the Jews' proximate deliverance from exile by the Persian King Cyrus. In 538 B.C. Cyrus issues the edict for the restoration to Judaea, and in 516 the Second Temple is dedicated. Within this great Consolation stand (xlii. 1-4; ...
— Progress and History • Various
... To give his victor the better grace. Orodes falls, equal fight oppress'd: Mezentius fix'd his foot upon his breast, And rested lance; and thus aloud he cries: "Lo! here the champion of my rebels lies!" The fields around with Io Paean! ring; And peals of shouts applaud the conqu'ring king. At this the vanquish'd, with his dying breath, Thus faintly spoke, and prophesied in death: "Nor thou, proud man, unpunish'd shalt remain: Like death attends thee on this fatal plain." Then, sourly smiling, thus the king replied: "For what ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... on his feet again," or to give a fainting comrade care; or to guide or assist a feeble woman? Has he lost who halts before the throne when duty calls, or sorrow, or distress? Is there no one to sing the paean of the conquered who fell in the battle of life? of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife? of the low and humble, the weary and broken-hearted, who strove and who failed, in the eyes of men, but who did their duty as God gave ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... wrong in asserting that his remains were brought back to Antioch: it is unerringly right in having raised the Epistle to the Romans—'his paean prophetic of his coming victory'—to be the martyr's ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... belles whose shades furnish theme for paean and lighten the pages of history, none is more colorful than Sally Cary. This girl, only seventeen, with head of red-brown hair, great intelligent eyes shaded by long, thick lashes, long rounded throat and beautifully modelled hands, arms and ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... answer to the suggestion, and resumed her dinner in silence, while Conway sang his usual paean of praise. After a little she turned ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the room, and placed pencil and paper on the tables; yet there would be nothing for them to write for a long time. They were only to tell the story of how the candidate took it, after the story itself was told. Their business was with either a paean or a dirge. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... such times one desires to taste life to the full, and so to live that the ancient rocks shall smile, and the sea's white horses prance the higher, as one's mouth acclaims the earth in such a paean that, intoxicated with the laudation, it shall unfold its riches with added bountifulness and display more and more manifest beauty under the spur of the love expressed by one of its creatures, expressed by a human being ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... a loud paean of praise, which was promptly taken up by the entire people, standing, during the singing of which a priest appeared, bearing a torch kindled at the sacred fire, which was kept alight throughout the year. This torch he presented to Harry, who, at Motahuana's prompting, and with several qualms ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Next followed the native paean. The beaters crowded round the fallen beast in a chorus of congratulation. Many of the villagers also ran out, with prayers and ejaculations, to swell our triumph. It was all like a dream. They hustled ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... tea, yet he saw Abdul bringing it. Perhaps the joy of life had waked him, too, perhaps he also was eager to get up and greet the morn. What a wonderful morning it was! All pure, cool, clear sunlight. Michael's heart, a throbbing organ of praise, sent forth a paean to the pagan skies. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... of Goethe's called, simply, Die Natur. It comes among those tracts on Natural Science in which the poet and philosopher turned his restless mind to problems of light and colour, of leaf and flower, of bony skull and kindred vertebra; and it sounds like a prose-poem, a noble paean, eulogizing the love and glorifying the study of Nature. Some twenty-five hundred years before, Anaximander had written a book with the same title, Concerning Nature, περι φυσεως {peri physeôs}: but its subject was not the same. It was a ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... gathered and gone by together; Doubtless they marvelled to witness such things, were astonished, and so forth. Victory! Victory! Victory!—Ah, but it is, believe me, Easier, easier far, to intone the chant of the martyr Than to indite any paean of any victory. Death may Sometimes be noble; but life, at the best, will appear an illusion. While the great pain is upon us, it is great; when it is over, Why, it is over. The smoke of the sacrifice rises to heaven, Of a sweet savour, no doubt, to Somebody; but on ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the paean of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... look'd I back unto the times hence flown To praise those Muses and dislike our own— Or did I walk those Paean-gardens through, To kick the flowers and scorn their odours too— I might, and justly, be reputed here One nicely mad or peevishly severe. But by Apollo! as I worship wit, Where I have cause to burn perfumes to it; So, I confess, 'tis somewhat ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... have it! He would go. And his body would fight for it, or die. The thought gave him an atrocious satisfaction. He was filled with a sudden contempt for himself. If Father Roland had known, he would have uttered a paean ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... fathers hear the cries of children, and brothers the cries of sisters? Will the terrors of insurrection sweep over the South, and no Northern and Western blood be shed? Will the slaves be cut down, in such a strife, when they raise the same paean song of liberty and human rights, that was the watchword of our redemption from far less dreadful tyranny, and which is now thrilling the nations and shaking monarchs on their thrones—will this be heard, and none of the sons of liberty be found to appear on their side? This is no picture ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... in the name of Pan and Apollo," he asked, "have you been singing this deceitful paean ...
— Options • O. Henry
... spirit. He first musters his facts in battalions, and charges upon the enemy to crush and overpower without mercy. For Milton hates injustice and, because it is an enemy of his people, he cannot and will not spare it. When the victory is won, he exults in a paean of victory as soul-stirring as the Song of Deborah. He is the poet again, spite of himself, and his mind fills with magnificent images. Even with a subject so dull, so barren of the bare possibilities of poetry, as his "Animadversions upon the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the other hand, he would be discreetly silent as to the adventure. He wondered next where that adventure would end. He had no reason to suppose his servant a man of refined sensibilities. Remembering his eloquence on the road to Madrid, the paean he blew upon the fairness of Valencian women, he laughed. "Here's a muddy wash upon my blood-boltered pastoral," he said aloud. "Here's an ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... circling the point where I was; because it is as much beyond our wont as the motion of the heaven which outspeeds all the rest is swifter than the movement of the Chiana.[5] There was sung riot Bacchus, not Paean, but three Persons in a divine nature, and it and the human in one Person. The singing and the revolving completed each its measure, and those holy lights gave attention to us, making themselves ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... your sons a double paean sound, A Treatise of Humility is found. 'Tis found, but better it had ne'er been sought, 330 Than thus in Protestant procession brought. The famed original through Spain is known, Rodriguez' work, my celebrated son, Which yours, by ill-translating, made his own; Conceal'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... coming to fetch his old daddy home," replied John Cardigan. "That thing he's howling is an Indian war-song or paean of triumph—something his nurse taught him when he wore pinafores. If you'll excuse me, Miss Shirley Sumner, I'll leave you now. I generally contrive to meet him on ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... danger, the loss, the gall of defeat. Possessed solely by the inordinate and unparalleled passion of the collector, he strode up and down the little deck, clasping to his breast with one hand the paragon of a flag. He snapped his fingers triumphantly toward the east. He shouted the paean to his prize in trumpet tones, as though he would make old Grunitz hear in his musty den ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... been said was actually spoken; the greater part was unexpressed, perhaps unexpressible. But to the young astronomer, Nature herself, never wholly mute, was full of interpretative music. If the wind was ever a paean of victory, it was such to him as they emerged from the shelter of the Hall and received the full force of its robust and joyful blast; if the familiar stars ever sang in their courses, they sang to him now. From time ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... excuses them in others. Of course, that an accused person should defend the naked deed as it is described in the criminal law is not likely for conceivable reasons—since certainly no robbery-suspect will sing a paean about robbers, but certainly almost anybody who has a better or a better-appearing motive for his crime, will protect those who have been guided by a similar motive in other cases. Every experiment shows this to be the case ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... general exclamation of pleasure on the recovery of the day from the apprehension of the night, a mutual recognition, an interchange of matutinal compliments. Those who take part in it may be jealous rivals in a few minutes, but the first impulse of each new day is a universal paean, not loud and vaunting, but mellow, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the Lombards and their liberators. He received with flattering distinction the chief artists and men of letters, and also sought to quicken the activity of the University of Pavia. Political clubs and newspapers multiplied throughout Lombardy; and actors, authors, and editors joined in a paean of courtly or fawning praise, to the new Scipio, Caesar, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... heard his wings, but not espied The heavy flight. Slow, slow the orb was filled With light, and with the light his heart was thrilled With opening music, faint, expectant, sharp As the first chords one picks out from the harp To prelude paean. Venturing all, he lift His eyes, and there encurtained in a drift Of sea-blue mantle close-drawn, he espies Helen above him watching, her grave eyes Upon him fixt, blue homes of mystery Unfathomable, eternal as the sea, And as unresting. So in that still place, In that still hour ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... legal minds who thought that they detected a false note in this paean. Was this a necessary implication from the Dred Scott decision? Was it the intention of the Court to leave the principle of popular sovereignty standing upright? Was not the decision rather fatal to the great doctrine—the shibboleth ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... paean of rejoicing. The roads are free; Joaquin is slain at last. Butcher bravos tire of revenging past deeds of blood. They slay the helpless Indians, or assassinate the frightened native Californians. This rude ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... inquiries are descried, Mean faction reigns where knowledge should preside, Feuds are increased, and learning laid aside. Thus synods oft concern for faith conceal, And for important nothings show a zeal: The drooping sciences neglected pine, And Paean's beams with fading lustre shine. No readers here with hectic looks are found, Nor eyes in rheum, through midnight watching, drowned; The lonely edifice in sweats complains That nothing there ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... they narrowed the number of the spirits of just men made perfect; and confined the Paean which should go up from the human race on All Saints' Day, till a "saint" has too often meant with them only a person who has gone through certain emotional experiences, and assented to certain subjective formulas, neither of which, according to the opinion of some of the soundest ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... not ambition's paean Some power within your hearts to wake anew To deeds of higher emprise—worthier you, Ye monkish men, Than may be reaped from fields? Do ye not rue The drone-like course of life ye ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... that book, into which he poured the ecstatic dreams of the little boy from the south as, for the first time, he saw the forestclad northern mountains bathing their feet in the ocean and their crowns in the light of a never-setting sun. It is a wonderful paean to untamed nature and to the forces let loose by it ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... bard awoke his lays, Love and wine alike to praise. So, illustrious Pidding, thou Inspire thy tea-urn votary now, Whilst the tea-pot circles round— Whilst the toast is being brown'd— Let me, ere I quaff my tea, Sing a paean unto thee, IO PIDDING! who foretold, Chinamen would keep their gold; Who foresaw our ships would be Homeward bound, yet wanting tea; Who, to cheer the mourning land, Said, "I've Howqua still on hand!" Who, my Pidding, who but thee? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was a mechanical device. Port was left, and starboard only the right hand. The chiming of the ship's bell was not an old sweet ceremony but a fallible thing, not exact as the ticking of a cheap watch. And "The lights are burning bright, sir," was not a paean of comfort, but a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... came home later, I was trembling lest he should utter a sound out of tune with the triumphant paean which was still ringing in my ears, lest his fanaticism for truth should lead him to express disapproval of anything that had been said that afternoon. For then I should have openly defied and humiliated ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... when the new career had first been opened to him; that had hewn a way for him in this fresh existence against colossal odds. The indomitable force that had trampled out Chilcote's footmarks in public life, in private life—in love. It was a triumphant paean that clamored in his ears, something persistent and prophetic with an undernote of menace. The cry of the human soul that has ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Meliboeus, and also in the same year a translation of the piece into English. The latter is considerably shorter than the original, but still of tedious length. The usual transition from the dirge to the paean is managed with more than the usual lack of effect. The eclogue contains a good deal beyond its immediate subject; for instance, a lament for Astrophel, a passage in praise of Spenser, and a ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... took his harp and sang a paean, till the heroes' hearts rose high again; and they rowed on stoutly and steadfastly, away into the darkness ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... extended species of lyric the transition is easy to the Ode. In the Victorian age, the ode, in its full Pindaric sense, has not been very frequently used. We have specimens by Mr. Swinburne in which the Dorian laws are closely adhered to. But the ode, in a more or less irregular form, whether paean or threnody, has been the instrument of several of our leading lyrists. The genius of Mr. Swinburne, even to a greater degree than that of Shelley, is essentially dithyrambic, and is never happier than when it spreads its wings as wide ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... triumph and the truth Wrought into these walls of rugged stone. They are a miracle of patient hands, They are a victory of suffering, a paean of pain; All pangs of death, all cries of birth, Are in the mute, moss-covered stones; They are eloquent to my hands. O beautiful, blind stones, inarticulate and dumb! In the deep gloom of their hearts there is a gleam Of the primeval sun which looked upon them When they were begotten. ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... in gladness meadow, garden, grove: Haste with thy harvest, then, my softened heart, Awake thy better hopes of better days, Bring in thy fruits and flowers of thanks and praise, And in creation's paean take ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... bull, in two strides, catching him up on his horns like a bundle of hay, tossed him high in the air, amidst the screams and shouts of Cissy and Liz and all the village boys commingled, the triumphant roar of the animal overtopping them all as it bellowed forth a paean of victory. ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... something very soon," Katherine assured her, and, having dressed her hair while talking, she now flew away to her own room to complete her toilet, a paean of praise thrilling her heart for the recent safe and triumphant passage through the Red Sea of human fear and error, whose waves had so threatened to engulf her patient the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... herded close, and a simultaneous wild yell arose from their lips. The outburst was at once a dirge, an apology, an epitaph, and a paean of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body of a fallen, comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... well perfectly understood the causes of his extravagance. 'Twas thus that he sang his song of triumph over Mr. Slope. This was his paean, his hymn of thanksgiving, his loud oration. He had girded himself with his sword and gone forth to the war; now he was returning from the field laden with the spoils of the foe. The cob and the cameos, the violoncello and the pianoforte, were all as it were trophies ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... For by this time, in spite of lordly patronage, pugilism was doomed, and the more harmless boxing had taken its place. 'Pity that corruption should have crept in amongst them,' sighed Lavengro in a memorable passage, in which he also has his paean of praise for the bruisers ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... gone—that there had not been a man killed amiss in Kentucky since the war; that where one had been killed two should have been; and, amid roars of laughter which gave me time to frame some fresh absurdity, I delivered a prose paean to murder. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... mustered anew, and sailed against the Corcyraeans, who on their part advanced to meet them with all their ships that were fit for service and remaining to them, accompanied by the Athenian vessels, fearing that they might attempt a landing in their territory. It was by this time getting late, and the paean had been sung for the attack, when the Corinthians suddenly began to back water. They had observed twenty Athenian ships sailing up, which had been sent out afterwards to reinforce the ten vessels by the Athenians, who feared, as it turned out justly, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... for the unseen band to strike up a grand triumphant "Io paean," though, had the "Rogue's March" been a popular melody in those times, it would have suited the procession much more admirably. The queen and the dwarf went first, and a vivid contrast they were—she so young, so beautiful, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... was glad. He knew too much to stir up loyal reactions in mother's conscience. He simply wove a dance of intricate mazes about her, as she sat in her chair, and his inner mind was one paean of thanksgiving to God, not the spurious gods who had been his father and sister, but the mysterious Deity who had, for obscure purposes, called them into being, because now John had at last full swing and could let mother out ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown |
