"Sceptred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... costumes, wrote Churchill's friend, Robert Lloyd, in his poem of "The Actor," 1762. And something he might have added touching the absurd old fashion of robing the queens of tragedy invariably in black, for it seemed agreed generally that "the sceptred pall of gorgeous tragedy" should be taken very literally, and should "sweep by" in the funereal fashion of sable velvet. "Empresses and queens," writes Mrs. Bellamy, the actress, in 1785, "always appeared in black velvet, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the iron-sceptred Skeleton, Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres, 10 To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form, Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, whose azure veins Steal like dark streams along a field of snow, 15 Whose ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Deluge, stood in glory and in might, But now is lightning-riven, and the night Is clambering up its sides, and chasms lie strewn, Like coffins, here and there: 'tis rent! the throne Where passions, in their awful anarchy, Stood sceptred! There was heard an inward sigh, That took the being, on its troubled wings, Far to the land ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... a gift frae 'boon the lift, That maks us mair than princes; A sceptred hand, a king's command, Is in her darting glances; The man in arms 'gainst female charms Even he her willing slave is, He hugs his chain, and owns the reign Of ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... truer life within his life, The fountain of his spirit's prophecy, Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop, 210 In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears. He in the palace-aisles of untrod woods Doth walk a king; for him the pent-up cell Widens beyond the circles of the stars, And all the sceptred spirits of the past Come thronging in to greet him as their peer; But in the market-place's glare and throng He sits apart, an exile, and his brow Aches with the mocking memory of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... has suffered from considerations of dignity and propriety. The writers of the Hume and Robertson school of history, in their stately minuet with the historical muse, have been careful to exclude everything that seemed beneath the dignity of the sceptred pall; biographers have as consciously studied the proprieties. 'The Muse of history,' says Thackeray, 'wears the mask and speaks to measure; she too in our age busies herself with the affairs only of kings. I wonder ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... pleased in chanting a blithe strain, Saddens his voice again and yet again. Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes; Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true Ye winds of ocean and the midland sea, Wafting your charge to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... muttered "Bosh!" while two piebald ponies, drawing the drummers and trumpeters in fantastic raiment, preceded an elephant shrouded in scarlet and gold trappings, with two or three figures making contortions on his back, and followed by a crowned and sceptred dame in blue, white, and gold, perched aloft on a car drawn by four steeds ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mary then arose, And did rigorous laws impose; A mighty tyrant she! Long, alas! should I have been Under that iron-sceptred queen, Had not ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... bore The shuddering Hebrew seer before, O'erwrit alike, without, within, With all the woes which follow sin; But, bitterest of the ills beneath Whose load man totters down to death, Is that which plucks the regal crown Of Freedom from his forehead down, And snatches from his powerless hand The sceptred sign of self-command, Effacing with the chain and rod The image and the seal of God; Till from his nature, day by day, The manly virtues fall away, And leave him naked, blind and mute, The godlike merging in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
