"Parnassus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... island between the two arms of the Seine lay the main part of the town with the temple of Jupiter; but the Imperial Palace and the Amphitheatre stood on the slope of Mount Parnassus, on the left bank of the river. For three hundred years from the time of Julius Caesar, the Emperors had stayed here at intervals. The two last occupants had been Constantine ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... principles which seem to be essential in making any selection either of verse or prose which shall possess broader and more enduring qualities than that of being a mere exhibition of the editor's personal taste. To illustrate my meaning: Emerson's "Parnassus" is extremely interesting as an exposition of the tastes and preferences of a remarkable man of great and original genius. As an anthology it is a failure, for it is of awkward size, is ill arranged and contains selections made without system, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... a new plant in her hand]. This is the grass of Parnassus. It makes a good hair-ointment.—Pretty is the ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... satirical writer famous in Italy for his fine criticism and bold satire. Cardinals Borghese and Cajetan were his patrons. His Ragguagli di Parnasso and la Secretaria di Parnasso, in which Apollo heard the complaints of the world, and dispensed justice in his court on Parnassus, were received with delight. Afterwards, in his Pietra di Parangone, he satirized the Court of Spain, and, fearing consequences, retired to Venice, where in 1613 he was attacked in his bed by four ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... We have spent much toil and privation to reach here, and now, after two weeks' rambling and musing among the mighty relics of past glory, we turn our faces homeward. The thrilling hope I cherished during the whole pilgrimage—to climb Parnassus and drink from Castaly, under the blue heaven of Greece (both far easier than the steep hill and hidden fount of poesy, I worship afar off)—to sigh for fallen art, beneath the broken friezes of the Parthenon, and look ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... and the greenest laurels. If we may believe the Longinuses; and Aristotles of our newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to render a place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of attainment or its seclusion. The highest peak of our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen, by far the most thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which must make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical temperament, if love of solitude be, as immemorial tradition asserts, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... they gave no more, Since Sidney had exhausted all their store. They took from me the Scribling pen I had, I to be eas'd of such a task was glad Then to reveng this wrong, themselves engage, And drove me from Parnassus in a rage. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... struggle with; he must unite the most harmonious sound with the finest thought. In Italian very often the natural harmony of the language and the music of the sound conceal the poverty of the thought; besides Italian poetry has innumerable licenses which make it easy to figure in the Tuscan Parnassus, and where anyone who can string together rime or versi sciolti is dignified with the appellation of a poet; whereas from French poetry, a mediocrity is and must be of necessity banished. Neither is it sufficient ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... left in the ink-stand. Spain, in Cervantes' day, had passed the chivalric age, though many relics of it still remained in its legends, songs, and proverbs. Cervantes becomes his own critic in his "Supplement to a Journey to Parnassus," and speaking of his dramas, says: "I should declare them worthy the favor they have received were they not my own." Unfortunately, his comedy of "La Confusa" is among the lost ones. He alludes to it as a good one ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... not enough to constitute a great poet but enough to make him what he was, a diverting and acute satirist, an agreeable moralist and critic in verse—which his master Horace had been so often—expert, dexterous, and possessing much authority. His Poetic Art for long was the tables of the law of Parnassus, and even now can be read not only with pleasure but ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... creep, 70 How do your tuneful echoes languish, Mute, but to the voice of anguish! Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breath'd around; Every shade and hallow'd fountain 75 Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour, Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 80 When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O Albion! next ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words [3]. Lute, harp, and lyre, Muse, Muses, and inspirations, Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hippocrene were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... That in my thoughts I of that sacred realm Could store, shall now be matter of my song. Benign Apollo! this last labour aid, And make me such a vessel of thy worth, As thy own laurel claims of me belov'd. Thus far hath one of steep Parnassus' brows Suffic'd me; henceforth there is need of both For my remaining enterprise Do thou Enter into my bosom, and there breathe So, as when Marsyas by thy hand was dragg'd Forth from his limbs unsheath'd. O power divine! If thou to me of ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... she could not wait to see what I might live to do for her. She married—oh! so genteelly!—a young man, very well born, who had wooed her before my father died. He had the villany to remain constant when she had not a farthing, and he was dependent on distant relations, and his own domains in Parnassus. The wretch was a poet! So they married. They spent their honeymoon genteelly, I dare say. His relations cut him. Parnassus paid no rents. He went abroad. Such heart-rending letters from her. They were destitute. How I worked! how I raged! But how could I maintain her and her husband too, mere ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Highlands' swelling blue 280 Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue, Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his Mind's embrace. Long have I roamed through lands which are not mine, Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine, Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep: But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall; The infant rapture still survived the boy, 290 And Loch-na-gar with Ida looked o'er Troy,[388] Mixed Celtic memories ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Yea, but now flashed forth the summons from Parnassus' snowy peak, "Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!" Now like a sullen bull he roves Through forest brakes and upland groves, And vainly seeks to fly The doom that ever nigh Flits o'er his head, Still by the avenging Phoebus sped, The voice divine, From Earth's mid shrine. ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... to-day. We have, as has been constantly observed, no literary capital, like London or Paris, to serve as the seat of centralized authority; no code of literary procedure and conduct; no "lawgivers of Parnassus"; no supreme court of letters, whose judgments are recognized and obeyed. American public opinion asserts itself with singular unanimity and promptness in the field of politics. In literary matters we remain in the stage of anarchic individualism, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Street she was met by the children of the city schools; and at the corner of Gracechurch Street a masterpiece had been prepared of the pseudo-classic art, then so fashionable, by the merchants of the Styll Yard. A Mount Parnassus had been constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into a basin with four jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope at his feet, and on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or harps, and singing each of them some "posy" ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... middle.—Ver. 168. Delphi, situated on a ridge of Parnassus, was styled the navel of the world, as it was supposed to be situate in the middle of the earth. The story was, that Jupiter, having let go two eagles, or pigeons, at the opposite extremities of the earth, with the view of ascertaining ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the reign of Charles I. but of whose birth and life we can recover no particulars. He was highly esteemed by some wits in that reign, as appears from a Poem called Steps to Parnassus, which pays him the following well ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... since he is familiar with facts which only occur at a height of ten thousand feet or more above the sea—mountain-sickness and its accompaniments—of which his imaginary comrade Solinus tries to cure him with a sponge dipped in essence. The ascents of Parnassus and Olympus, of which he speaks, are ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is the new Athens! Here Lodovico holds his Parnassus; here rare and excellent artists flock as bees to seek honey from the flowers; here, chief among them all, is the new Apelles whom he has brought from Florence." In the volume of Bellincioni's Sonnets, published soon after his death by the priest Francesco ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... of the living light eternal! Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus Has grown so pale, or drunk so ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... to have preserved. He says, that the sea joined its waters to those falling from heaven. The words of Scripture are (Genesis, vii. 11), 'All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.' In speaking of the top of Parnassus alone being left uncovered, the tradition here followed by Ovid probably referred to Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark rested. Noah and his family are represented by Deucalion and Pyrrha. Both Noah and Deucalion were saved for their virtuous conduct; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of public attention;" Cowper was dead, and had not left an extensive popularity; "Burns, whose genius our southern neighbours could hardly yet comprehend, had long confined himself to song-writing; and the realms of Parnassus seemed to lie open to the first bold invader." The gradual introduction of German literature into this country during such a dearth of native talent, now led Sir Walter to the study of the German language. He also became acquainted with Mr. G. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" of the best songs and lyrical poems in the English language was edited with the advice and collaboration of Tennyson. His "Children's Treasury" of lyrical poetry is most attractive. Emerson's Parnassus, and Whittier's "Three Centuries of Song" are excellent collections of the most famous poems of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia, Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts, That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and AEneas', Odysseus' wanderings, Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus, Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on jaffa's gate and on Mount Moriah, The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles, and Italian collections, For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... it there, that scar? It had been made long ago when a boar's tusk had ripped up the flesh of his foot. Odysseus was then a youth, and he had gone to the mountain Parnassus to visit there ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... smyrna, chios, colophon, salamis, rhodes, argos, athens, or whatever place—has, by the help of lycurgus, solon, pisistratus, and other learned ancients, been made up of many poets or homers, and set so far aloft and aloof on old parnassus, as to become a god in the eyes of all greece, a wonder ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... grow cloyed to surfeiting With lyric draughts o'ersweet, from rills that rise On Hybla not Parnassus mountain: come With beakers rinsed of the dulcifluous wave Hither, and see a magic miracle Of happiest science, the bland Attic skies True-mirrored by an English well;—no stream Whose heaven-belying surface makes the stars Reel, with its restless idiosyncrasy; But well ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... will think, have we disposed of this one definition: but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of Parnassus carve urns of agate and of onyx; but inside the urns what is there?—Ashes. Their work lacks feeling, seriousness, sincerity, and pathos—in a word, soul and moral life. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with such a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all those whose but little known work has only been familiar to men for whom French literature does not begin the day when "Malherbe came," Francois Villon has had the honor of being the most pillaged, even by the big-wigs of modern Parnassus. They threw themselves upon the poor man's field and coined glory from his humble treasure. There are ballads scribbled under a penthouse at the street corner on a cold day by the Bohemian rhapsodist, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... connection existing between all the parts of dream thoughts, the dream is able to embody this matter into a single scene. It upholds a logical connection as approximation in time and space, just as the painter, who groups all the poets for his picture of Parnassus who, though they have never been all together on a mountain peak, yet form ideally a community. The dream continues this method of presentation in individual dreams, and often when it displays two elements ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... late, if heeded yet, The voice that chides thy mute repose, And bids thee pay at last the debt Thy genius to Parnassus owes. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... work quoted as Gammer Gurton in the Arundines Cami, is the collection of Nursery Rhymes first formed by Ritson, and of which an enlarged edition was published by Triphook in 1810, under the title of Gammer Gurton's Garland, or The Nursery Parnassus, &c. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... literally verifying its name by the brilliance of their sunshiny rich grass, where "God had showered the landscape;" to a fantastic fancy, giving the idea of the quivering of the richest leaf gold on a ground of emerald. The humbler Welsh Parnassus of the painter poet, Grongar Hill, towered also in distance. We traced the pastoral yet noble river, winding away in long meanders, up-flashing silver, through a broad mountain valley, dotted with white ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks, and ships, and warehouses, and bales, and anchors; and after descanting upon the abject times, when "his noble waves, inglorious, Mersey rolled," the poet breaks forth like all Parnassus with:— ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... divinity that should have hedged their author, Heine was very caustic about this royal assault upon Parnassus. Ludwig riposted by banishing him from the capital. Still, if he disapproved of this one, he added to his library the output of other bards, not necessarily German. But, while Browning was there, Tennyson had no ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... boulders; streams are open, go smoothly about the glacier slips and make deep bluish pools for trout. Pines raise statelier shafts and give themselves room to grow,—gentians, shinleaf, and little grass of Parnassus in their golden checkered shadows; the meadow is white with violets and all outdoors keeps the clock. For example, when the ripples at the ford of the creek raise a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... positive influence for achievement. It is merely a negative blessing. With good health you may hope to reach your highest mental and spiritual development free from the harassment of soul-racking pain. But without good health men have reached the summit of Parnassus and have dragged their tortured bodies ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... in Denver's life, when he had stood upon Parnassus and beheld everything that was good and beautiful; but in the morning he put on his old digging clothes again and went to work in the mine. He had seen her and it was enough; now to break out the ore and win her for his own. For he was poor, and ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... Joseph disturbed the banquet only by entering with new triumphs of Art. Last came a climax-pie, —contents unknown. And when that dish, fit to set before a king, was opened, the poem of our supper was complete. J. B. sailed to the Parnassus where Ude and Vattel feast, forever cooking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Berlin for a few days, at heavy expense. He had even then impressed the King as a jester, but Frederick felt nevertheless an infinite respect for the talent of the man. Voltaire was to him the greatest poet of all times, the master of ceremonies of Parnassus, where the King himself was so anxious to play a part. Frederick's desire to have this man in his train became stronger and stronger. He regarded himself as his pupil; he wished to have all his verses approved by the master; among his Brandenburg officials he pined for the wit and spirit of the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Parnassus and 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 Pentelicus, renowned ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... sciences, has for its object the progress of the nation and general usefulness. This Society is developing day by day, and will soon become one of the most active and serviceable agents of the literary education and the scientific movement of the country. The Parnassus pursues this aim by the reading during its sessions of articles and memoirs, by the collecting of documents and materials relating to the language, songs, and popular legends, as well as by the publication of these works in a Review which appears under the title of [Greek: Neoellenika ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... there will be near three thin Albemarle, or two thick volumes of all sorts of my Muses. I mean to plunge thick, too, into the contest upon Pope, and to lay about me like a dragon till I make manure of * * * for the top of Parnassus. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... to admire in Morris's Songs than in the writings of any other American poet.' Willis also tells us, as proof of the General's popularity with those shrewd dollar-loving men, the publishers, that 'he can, at any time, obtain fifty dollars for a song unread, when the whole remainder of the American Parnassus could not sell one to the same buyer for a single shilling!' He is the best-known poet of the country by ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... no stigma, whether one derives it from Parnassus or the Bourse," continued Tricotrin. "Hold! Who is that I see, slouching over there? As I live, it's Pitou, the composer, whose ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the fountain of Lisieux, decorated with a bas-relief representing Parnassus, with Apollo, the Muses, and Pegasus, is most frequently pointed out to strangers; a wretched specimen of wretched taste. Infinitely more interesting to us are the Gothic fountains or conduits, which are now wholly wanting in England. Such is the fountain de ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... And then Parnassus would be left to me, And Pegasus should bear me up it gaily, Nor down a steep place run into the sea, As now he must be tempted to ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... ground; With inward trembling earth received the wound, And rising streams a ready passage found. Now seas and earth were in confusion lost,— A world of waters, and without a coast. A mountain of tremendous height there stands Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands: Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise Mounts through the clouds, and mates the lofty skies. High on the summit of this dubious cliff, Deucalion, wafting, moored his little skiff: He, with his wife, were only left behind Of perished man; they two were human ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and Peele, led very disorderly lives, and it is singular that all four died prematurely, the oldest of them probably not being forty years of age. It is certain that Nash was not living at the time when the "Return from Parnassus" was produced, which, though not printed until 1606, was written before the end of the reign of Elizabeth: his ashes are there spoken of as at rest, but the mention of him as dead, nearest to the probable date of that event, is to be found in [Fitzgeoffrey's "Affaniae," 1601, where an epitaph ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... youth.(19) The literary revolution took place; but it yielded in the first instance with rare exceptions only premature or unripe fruits. The number of the "new-fashioned poets" was legion, but poetry was rare and Apollo was compelled, as always when so many throng towards Parnassus, to make very short work. The long poems never were worth anything, the short ones seldom. Even in this literary age the poetry of the day had become a public nuisance; it sometimes happened that one's friend would send home to him by way ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... can I ask what charms in thee are found; I, who have drunk from thine ethereal rill, And tasted all the pleasures that abound Upon Parnassus' loved Aonian hill? I, through whose soul the Muse's strains aye thrill! Oh! I do feel the spell with which I'm tied; And though our annals fearful stories tell, How Savage languish'd, and how Otway died, Yet must I persevere, let whate'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Annees Litteraires," this animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which Mandeville could never make ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... of life, love, Were the living! Just to cease from strife, love, And from grieving; Let the swift world pass us, You and me, Stilled from all aspiring,— Sinai nor Parnassus Longer worth desiring, ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... palate is parched with Pierian thirst, Away to Parnassus I'm beckoned." I sing of the glories of Fire King the First! (Who's fit to be Fire King ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... on me— Who raised it up. It has no terrors, dear. And I shall never lay it while I live. You write to me. You think I have the power To shield the fame of Newton from a lie. Poor little ghost! You think I hold the keys Not only of Parnassus, then, but hell. ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... to vengeance wake, Call the dread storms to darken round their towers, Hurl down the rocks, and bid the thunders break; Till far around, with deep and fearful clang, Sounds of unearthly war through wild Parnassus rang. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... risen to positions of greater dignity, if only his pen had been a little less active and his satire less severe. He wrote a book entitled Ragguagli di Parnasso (1612), which was most successful. In this work he represents Apollo as judge of Parnassus, who cites before him kings, authors, warriors, statesmen, and other mighty personages, minutely examines their faults and crimes, and passes judgment upon them. Inasmuch as these people whom Apollo condemned were his contemporaries, it may be imagined that the book created no small stir, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... as unmistakable as the brisk pungency of the gibe. The stately and scholarly Boston of Channing, Dana, Everett, and Ticknor might indeed have looked askance at the literary claims of such lines as these "Thoughts in Dejection" of a poet wondering if the path to Parnassus lay over ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... he associated with Harvey, Selden, and Cowley. He talked and wrangled with the wise men of half Europe. He had sat at Richelieu's table and been loaded with honours by Cosmo de Medici. The laurels Hobbes won in the schools he lost on Parnassus. His translation of Homer is tasteless and contemptible. In mathematics, too, he was dismounted by Wallis and others. Personally he had weaknesses. He was afraid of apparitions, he dreaded assassination, and had a fear that Burnet and the bishops would burn him as a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... softly shot the sparkle of the twisting water, and you might dream things half-fulfilled. Knots of fern were about, but the tops of the mounds were firm grass, evidently well rolled, and with an eye to airy feet. Olympus one eminence was called, Parnassus the other. Olympus a little overlooked Parnassus, but Parnassus was broader and altogether better adapted for the games of the Muses. Round the edges of both there was a well-trimmed bush of laurel, obscuring only the feet of the dancers from the observing gods. For on Olympus the elders ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Hon. H . S. Conway, Jan. 15.-Party-men. Lord George Germain. Mr. Burke. Lord Chatham. Marquis of Rockingham. Operations of the Bostonians. General Gage. New Parnassus at Batheaston. Bouts-rim'es. Lines on a buttered muffin, by the Duchess of Northumberland. Lord Palmerston's poem on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... round the burning sacrifice they set up a broad dancing-ring, singing, "All hail, fair god of healing, Phoebus, all hail," and with them Oeagrus' goodly son began a clear lay on his Bistonian lyre; how once beneath the rocky ridge of Parnassus he slew with his bow the monster Delphyne, he, still young and beardless, still rejoicing in his long tresses. Mayst thou be gracious! Ever, O king, be thy locks unshorn, ever unravaged; for so is it right. And none but Leto, daughter of Coeus, strokes them with her dear hands. And often the ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... last!—who, with the tip of her slipper sends all the painted, laureled, cothurned, lyre-carrying Muses—that, from Monselet to Renan, have roused the aspirations of classes in Rhetoric—rolling, from the top to the bottom of Parnassus. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... outlines seen from Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the Greeks for mountain ruggedness, their placing the shrine of Apollo under the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnassus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that they themselves attributed the best part of their intellectual inspiration to the power of the hills. Nor would it be difficult to show that every great writer of either of those nations, however little definite ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Saturday Salon, for although a youthful minor poet, he was modest and lovable. Perhaps his Oxford tutorship was sobering. At any rate his head remained unturned by his precocious fame, and to meet these other young men and women—his reverend seniors on the slopes of Parnassus—gave him more pleasure than the receipt of 'royalties'. Not that his publisher afforded him much opportunity of contrasting the two pleasures. The profits of the Muse went to provide this room of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... there were the religious and heroic poems of the bards, who were, for the most part, natives of that portion of the country which surrounds the mountains of Helicon and Parnassus, distinguished as the home of the Muses. Among the bards devoted to the worship of Apollo and other deities, were Marsyas, the inventor of the flute, Musaeus and Orpheus. Many names of these ancient poets are recorded, but of their ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... command of his father, Deucalion built a ship, in which he and his wife took refuge during the deluge, which lasted for nine days. When the waters abated the ship rested on Mount Othrys in Thessaly, or according to some on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and his wife now consulted the oracle of Themis as to how the human race might be restored. The answer was, that they were to cover their heads, and throw the bones of their mother behind them. For some time they were perplexed as ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... qualify a young gentleman to address an enlightened British jury, we have no authority for deciding. He was certainly not the first, nor the last, young Templar who has quitted special pleading on a crusade to the heights of Parnassus, and he began early to try the nib of his pen and the colour of his ink in a novel. Eheu! how many a novel has issued from the dull, dirty chambers of that same Temple! The waters of the Thames ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... blood. There is the Burney family. There is no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits, scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in 'numbers numberless.' The name is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it are free of Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was himself an historian and a musician, but more of a courtier and man of the world than either. The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in the following passage, where, in alluding to three eminent performers ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... brilliant Burgundy and sparkling Hock no longer mantle in our glass; but Barclay's beer—nectar of gods and coalheavers—mixed with hippocrene—the Muses' "cold without"—is at present our only beverage. The grouse are by us undisturbed in their bloomy mountain covert. We are now content to climb Parnassus and our garret stairs. The Albany, that sanctuary of erring bachelors, with its guardian beadle, are to us but memories, for we have become the denizens of a roomy attic (ring the top bell twice), and are only saluted by an Hebe of all-work and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... he found himself engrossed in the task of proving to the British electorate that England need not always remain the same; on the other, he wrote a Life of Sir Henry Wotton, a volume of very graceful and beautiful short stories about Oxford ("The Youth of Parnassus") and a valuable little book on the history and habits of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... James Stevenson, one of the prominent physicians of Baltimore. Dr. Stevenson had come over formerly as a surgeon in the British army. He had married in England Miss Anne Henry, of Hampton. Settling in Baltimore, he acquired a large estate, then on the outskirts, now in the center of Baltimore. On Parnassus Hill he built a very spacious and handsome residence. During the Revolutionary War Dr. Stevenson remained loyal to his British training and was an outspoken Tory. The populace of Baltimore were so incensed against him that they mobbed his residence, threatening ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... something to say about all; and yet I felt that no light had been thrown upon anything. A lady of high rank gave me her views upon the writing of English prose, with the air of one speaking condescendingly from Olympus, which, as we know, was above even Parnassus. In the middle I caught the eye of the great man, who was opposite me; he gave me a mournful smile, and I read his thoughts. When the ladies had withdrawn, my host, with a determined air as of a man ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to the effect. In 1848 Lowell wrote A Fable for Critics, something after the style of Sir John Suckling's Session of the Poets; a piece of rollicking doggerel in which he surveyed the American Parnassus, scattering about headlong fun, sharp satire, and sound criticism in equal proportion. Never an industrious workman, like Longfellow, at the poetic craft, but preferring to wait for the mood to seize him, he allowed eighteen years to go by, from 1850 to 1868, before publishing another volume of ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Englands Parnassus: or The choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets, with their Poeticall comparisons. Descriptions of Bewties, Personages, Castles, Pallaces, Mountaines, Groues, Seas, Springs, Riuers, &c. Whereunto are annexed other various discourses, ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... set o' dull, conceited hashes Confuse their brains in college classes! They gang in sticks and come out asses, Plain truth to speak, And syne they think to climb Parnassus By dint ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... current. To the childless wife, he was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce inspiration, when he would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... of vice. This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains of valuable thoughts" ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets; and 'though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland,' he has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... who would have thought the sunrise tedious. If we may believe his biographer, Wordsworth might have said that he awoke and found himself in-famous, for the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" undoubtedly raised him to the distinction of being the least popular poet in England. Parnassus has two peaks; the one where improvising poets cluster; the other where the singer of deep secrets sits alone,—a peak veiled sometimes from the whole morning of a generation by earth-born mists and smoke of kitchen fires, only to glow the more consciously at sunset, and after nightfall ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... few. There are delightful libraries in cells redolent of aromatics—there flourishing greenhouses of all sorts of volumes: there academic meads trembling with the earthquake of Athenian peripatetics pacing up and down: there the promontories of Parnassus and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... press your lips until they mix With my poor quality their richer wine: Be my Parnassus now, and grow more green Each upward step towards your ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... by right supreme, With frosted locks adrift, and eyes a-dream, With quick short footfalls, and an arm a-swing, As to some cosmic rhythm heard to ring From Putney to Parnassus, a brief bard. (In stature, not in song!) Though passion-scarred, Porphyrogenitus at least he looks; Haughty as one who rivalry scarce brooks; Unreminiscent now of youthful rage, Almost "respectable," and well-nigh sage, Dame GRUNDY owns her once redoubted foe, Whose polished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... short, a vivid complexion, rather fair than dark, somewhat stooped in the shoulders, and not very lightfooted: this, I say, is the author of 'Galatea,' 'Don Quixote de la Mancha,' 'The Journey to Parnassus,' which he wrote in imitation of Cesare Caporali Perusino, and other works which are current among the public, and perhaps without the author's name. He is commonly called MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... same time a very severe master.—I learnt from him that Poetry, even that of the loftiest and wildest odes, had a logic of its own as severe as that of science.—Lute, harp, and lyre; muse, muses, and inspirations; Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hippocrene; were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and Ink! Boy you mean! Muse! boy! Muse! your Nurse's daughter you mean! Pierian Spring! ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... this day, who can afford a good dinner every day, do not look forward to it as any particular subject of exultation: the poor peasant, who can only contrive to treat himself to a joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it as an event in the week. So, in the old Cambridge comedy of the Return from Parnassus, we find this indignant description of the progress of luxury in those days, put into the mouth of one ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... with tapestry, sat Apollo, attended by the Nine Muses, all in classical costume; at the helm stood Neptune with his trident. The Muses executed some beautiful concerted pieces; Apollo twanged his lute. Having reached the landing-place, this deputation from Parnassus stepped on shore, and stood awaiting the arrival of the procession. Each professor, as he advanced, was gravely embraced and kissed by Apollo and all the Nine Muses in turn, who greeted their arrival besides with the recitation of an elegant Latin poem. This classical ceremony terminated, the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... legendary king of Phythia in Thessaly. According to the legend, a deluge having been sent by Zeus, Deucalion, by advice of his father, built a wooden chest in which he and his wife were saved, landing after nine days on Mt. Parnassus. By them the human race, destroyed in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... song was ended, all three broke out into a dance, wild, insensate, furious, delirious, paroxysmatical. No Orphic festivals on Mount Cithaeron ever raged more wildly. No Bacchic revels on Mount Parnassus were ever more corybantic. Diana, demented by the maddening example, joined in the orgie, howling and barking frantically in her turn, and wildly jumping as high as the ceiling of the Projectile. Then came new accessions to the infernal din. Wings suddenly ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... turned the thousand leaves of the chaparral. Under the wind one caught at times the slow deep chuckle of the water. Greenhow should have been warned by that. In just such tones the ancient Greeks had heard the great god Pan laughing in the woods under Parnassus,—which was Greek indeed ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... cried at her hero's sudden lapse—from Parnassus to the scullery, from love to the commonplaces of living; but she had schooled herself to bear with him, since patience is a woman's part. Yet her honest blue eyes were not adapted to concealment and, furtively taking note of her distress, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... exasperating elements of a forced recantation. Moreover, he had not come prepared to view with awe the ancient city of Corinth nor to view with admiration the limpid beauties of the gulf of that name with its olive grove shore. He was not stirred by Parnassus, a far-away snow-field high on the black shoulders of the mountains across the gulf. No; he wished to go to Nikopolis. He passed over the graves of an ancient race the gleam of whose mighty minds shot, hardly dimmed, through ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... things thought and the great things done, and the great things wrought and the great things won by man, you will see that they have been always wrought and won and done and thought upon the heights. The Muses live upon Parnassus, the Deities upon Olympus. Jehovah has his abiding place on Zion. David says, "I look unto the hills, whence cometh my help." Not unto the meadows, or the streams, or by the forests, or the cities, or the seas, but "unto the hills, whence cometh my ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... pet production, which I deemed Sufficient to advance me to the highest peak Of difficult Parnassus, goal of which I've dreamed For many a weary year, came back to me last week. The Editor I cursed, that he should stand between My dear ambition and my scarcely dearer self; Whose unappreciation forced to blush unseen My one dear ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... Magnesia, east of Thessaly, on the coast, comprised within it the two ranges of Ossa and Pelion. Central Greece contained eleven states. Malis had on its eastern edge the pass of Thermopylae. In Phocis, on the southern slope of Mount Parnassus, was Delphi. Boeotia was distinguished for the number and size of its cities, the chief of which was Thebes. Attica projected from Boeotia to the south-east, its length being seventy miles, and its greatest width thirty miles. Its area ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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 Mimas, and Dindyma, and Mycale, and Cithron, created for the sacred rites. Nor does its cold avail even Scythia; Caucasus is ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... in pursuit of sport and adventure. After Shelley's death he went to Greece with Byron, joined the rebel chief Odysseus, married his sister Tersitza, and was nearly killed in defending a cave on Mount Parnassus. Through the subsequent years, which included wanderings in America, and a narrow escape from drowning in trying to swim Niagara, he kept pressing Shelley's widow to marry him. Perhaps because he was piqued by Mary's refusal, he has left a rather unflattering portrait ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... dance to the sound of the bagpipe; but the spot was sacred from the old times: even its name reminded of this, for it was called Delphi! The dark solemn mountains were all covered with snow; the highest, which gleamed the longest in the red light of evening, was Parnassus; the brook which rolled from it near our house was once sacred also. Now the ass sullies it with its feet, but the stream rolls on and on, and becomes clear again. How I can remember every spot in the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... country of Phocis still raised two peaks above the surrounding waters. It was the great Mount Parnassus. Toward this floated a boat containing Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, and his wife Pyrrha. No man, no woman, had ever been found who surpassed these in righteousness and piety. When, therefore, Jupiter, looking down from heaven upon the earth, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... rocks that look boldly up the loch the heather and the saxifrage reflect themselves in the still water. To reach it Winsome led Ralph among the scented gall-bushes and bog myrtle, where in the marshy meadows the lonely grass of Parnassus was growing. Pure white petals, veined green, with spikelets of green set in the angles within, five-lobed broidery of daintiest gold stitching, it shone with so clear a presage of hope that Ralph stooped to pick it that he might ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett |
