"Grail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... publication, he decided to omit it. Again, in 1869, it was sent to press with a new third part added, and was again withdrawn, the third part only—'The Golden Supper,' founded on a story in Boccaccio's Decameron—being published in the volume, 'The Holy Grail.' In 1866, 1870 and 1875, attempts had been made by Mr Herne Shepherd to publish editions of 'The Lover's Tale,' reprinted from stray proof copies of the 1833 printing. Each of these attempts was repressed by Tennyson, and at last ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Hell Man is redeemed. The Christ is here! The Soul Now claims its own! Nor hope nor fear Nor prayer nor hunger now, for lo! 'tis here, The expected Kingdom—God's and Man's! 'Tis here! Day-dawn has come! The world-wide quest is o'er! The Grail was never lost! 'Twas folded safe Within the petals of my heart, and thou Enchanter wise, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... our finite senses, that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here and the Now; that the Riddle of the Universe is not to be solved by the Intellect but by that method which is employed by those who are earnestly following the "Quest of the Grail"—namely, by realising that our True Personality or Transcendental Ego is an emanation from the Absolute; that we are one-with Him, and that it is by following the old Hellenic command "[Greek: Gnothi seauton]" (Know thyself)—namely, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... Christmas legend and it relates how Joseph of Arimathea—that good man and just, who laid our Lord in his own sepulcher, was persecuted by Pontius Pilate, and how he fled from Jerusalem carrying with him the Holy Grail hidden beneath a cloth ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me; I came with gentleness, with my heart 'twixt my hands like a bowl, Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt it triumphantly And tried to break the vessel, and ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... imperishable. He fitted so precisely into a certain pigeonhole of human kind.—What we had not counted on was the fierceness of the stimulus—like the taste of blood to a carnivore or, to the true knight, a glimpse of the veritable Grail. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and Lynette The Marriage of Geraint Geraint and Enid Balin and Balan Merlin and Vivien Lancelot and Elaine The Holy Grail Pelleas and Ettarre The Last ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... naked children crawling with chains about them in the galleries of coal-mines. Was it really wrong to make children do that? Or was Ruskin only an impossible idealist? They were the happy years, radiant with the certain knowledge of the British that the Holy Grail would be recognized immediately it was seen, for over it would be proudly floating the confirmatory Union Jack. We had not even begun to suspect that our morals, manners, and laws were fairly poor compared ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... concert performances. Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January 21st, but before then Mr. Conried had already announced five ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... chansons de geste. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story—the connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the Grail—complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of my brain that reminds me of a story told me the other day which brings an old legend very prettily to this country. It is said that when Joseph of Arimathea was hounded from place to place by the Jews, he fled to England taking the Grail with him. The spot where he settled he called Avalon. When Lord Baltimore, a devout Catholic, was given a huge tract of land in the south of this little island, he christened it Avalon in commemoration of Joseph of Arimathea's also distant journey. ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... beautiful about it, from the pale-pink granites and brown Spanish tiles without to the St. Gauden lions who guard the great marble staircase within. Sargent's "Religions of the World" is a noble decoration, and Abbey's frieze of the Holy Grail is beautiful, but the panel paintings of Puvis de Chavannes—"The Muses Greeting the Genius of Enlightenment"—are worth while coming from London or Paris to Boston ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... and men called it La Lyonesse. And in the good olden days, when Arthur was king, the Lyonesse had her prince, and on her plains and hills were fair rich cities, and through her forests pricked good knights on the quest of the Holy Grail, [see note 2] that none, save unsinning eyes, might ever see. For of all the four-and-twenty Knights of the Round Table, none ever saw the Holy Grail save one, and that was Sir Galahad, that was pure of heart and clean of life. Howbeit, one night came a mighty tempest. The ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... one summer day To fight the boastful Hun, In khaki clad, as fine a lad As ever carried gun, No braver knight e'er went to fight, In shining coat of mail, In days of old, for love or gold, Or for the Holy Grail. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... cryptic niche I will seek no more; That the holiest Grail is, which Helps the need ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... workman, who for his part had largely at command a seriousness of conception lacking in the old Greek. Within the coffin lay an object of a fresh and brilliant clearness among the ashes of the dead—a flask of lively green glass, like a great emerald. It might have been "the wondrous vessel of the Grail." Only, this object seemed to bring back no ineffable purity, but rather the riotous and earthy heat of old paganism itself. Coated within, and, as some were persuaded, still redolent with the tawny sediment of the Roman wine it had held so long ago, it was set aside for use at the supper which was ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... girl keenly, to know how the picture touched her. Was, then, she thought, this grand, dead Past so shallow to him? These knights, pure, unstained, searching until death for the Holy Grail, could he understand the life-long agony, the triumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live in solitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understand that? Or the dead queen, dead that the man she loved might be free and happy,—why, this WAS life,—this ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... twelfth or thirteenth century, when at latest such a poem would be written, in a language other than French, is so far unknown to us; and although as a matter of fact the central motif of the poem, the representation of a Moor as near akin to the Grail Winner, Sir Perceval, has not been preserved in any known French text, while it does exist in a famous German version, I for one find no difficulty in believing that the tradition existed in French, and that the original version of our poem was a ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... Holy Grail I caught an eagle when I caught that dove, For now you are the queen of all the dames, Even King Constantine, who seldom marks A lady of the court, comes to your side And flatters you with royal courtesies, ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... country newspapers and farm magazines and tell the children stories—and then little by little you begin to get good books circulating in the veins of the nation. It's a great work, mind you! It's like carrying the Holy Grail to some of these way-back farmhouses. And I wish there were a thousand Parnassuses instead of this one. I'd never give it up if it weren't for my book: but I want to write about my ideas in the hope of stirring other folk up, too. I don't suppose there's a publisher in ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... organizations have gone a full step beyond those of the religious type. Societies like the Knights of King Arthur, Knights of the Holy Grail, Modern Knights of St. Paul, and others of such ilk have in symbolism sought to teach and find expression for the religious impulse. The method has been more or less the religious type in disguise—ancient titles, elaborate ritual, ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... prest A bride, in gratitude For service done; and though the quest Of sacred grail subdued His full heart-beat of smothered heat— He loved ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth; so, young and strong And lightsome as a locust leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.—Lowell. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... of God." Limitless life, boundless capacities of power. Shut your eyes to the flesh, shut your ears to the world, shut your heart to fear, shut your soul to hate. Stick to the chase until you get the trophy. Search for the Holy Grail until true love's untiring ministry the cup in your unselfish hand sparkles and flashes in the crimson and sapphire glory of your quest. Burst from your chrysalis of doubt and the Supreme wings of the Spirit shall sweep you forward ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... quite as well; the celestial knight who rescues her—we know him nearly as well. But the details in which "Lohengrin" differs from all other tales of the same order are precisely those that make it the most enchanting tale of them all. Lohengrin, knight of the Grail, redeemer, yet with a touch of tragedy in his fate, drawn down the river in his magic boat by the Swan from a far mysterious land, a land of perpetual freshness and beauty, is an infinitely more poetic notion than the commonplace angel flapping clumsily down from heaven; and even ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of the Holy Grail," one of those exercises in archaic English in which Field took infinite pains as well as delight, and to which, as a production of Judge Cooley's, he paid the passing tribute of saying that it ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... steps were scaled for boon or bale, The book was lifted from its place, And, bowing to the fragrant grail, She drank with pleased and eager face This draught from ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... Home Town, men of the sort to attract women of her spirit and intelligence were scarce—and she was out looking for her own Sir Galahad, as he went up and down the earth searching for the Holy Grail. The war to her, we knew, was a great opportunity to enjoy the new freedom of her sex, to lose her harem veil, to breathe free air as an achieving human creature—but, alas! one's forties are too wise. Pretty as she was, innocent as she was, and eager as her soul ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... period. It was an age of accumulation, of uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshipped by these men, just as the reliques of the Holy Land had been adored by their great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the crusades was revived in this quest of the holy grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of pagan authors were valued like precious gems, revelled in like odoriferous and gorgeous flowers, consulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes of a beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indifferent received ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... with the rising sun. Oh! they would come down to earth soon enough!—let him keep that kiss, those few words, her last smile as she vanished into the wood, like the visible signs of the other world that had, at last, been allowed to him. The vision of the Grail had passed from his eyes, but the memory of it was to be his most ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... lead to certain ends, We seek no Holy Grail, my friends - That dawn should find us every day Some fraction farther ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... centuries' advantage of him: that Balboa was a meddlesome old chap who might better have stayed in Spain and left American oceans to American boys to discover? Oh! the unutterable regret of youthful hearts that the Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail and other high adventures passed before ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... sufferings, the woes, the vision of the prophet of a loving and perfect humanity, the reason of logic—all these and more are to him inspirations, and strengthen him in his great quest. He is a knight of the Holy Grail that is filled from the river ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of salad. Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our tete-a-tete. 'Gracious madam, I agree with you. He who seeks from music more than music gives, is on the quest—how shall I put it?—of the Holy Grail.' 'And what,' I struck in, 'is this minimum or maximum that music gives?' 'Dear young friend,' replied the professor, 'music gives melodies, harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be fashioned. Just as in the case of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... with open arms and wings and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength of it. After that came a series of vexatious delays. The chalice became less and less of a commercial man's chalice, acquired more and more the elusive quality of the Holy Grail, and at last ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... deprive many gluttons for punishment of the opportunity to hear "Parsifal." We remember one lady who was concerned because Dalmores stood for a long time with his back to the audience. "Why does he have to do that?" she asked her companion. "Because," was the answer, "he shot the Holy Grail." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... holier voice was speaking to me. I was absorbed in that. I was thinking how of old time Christ appeared in the breaking of bread to the disciples whose eyes were holden. And to-night, John, as I have been rocking baby to sleep I have been reading Tennyson's Holy Grail, and thinking how often, in our modern life, Calabad and Percivale kneel at the same shrine, and how often what is but a memorial service to the one affords a beatific vision of a living and ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms. In this deep wood lives Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells. There is the castle of the Grail, and as our eyes fall on it, suddenly there comes a hush, and we seem to hear the sublime antiphony, choir answering choir in heavenly melody, as Parsifal raises the cup, and the light from above smites it into sudden glory. We are travelling ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... time at the court of Landgrave Hermann in Thuringia. He speaks of himself as 'ignorant of what the books contain,' which is usually taken to mean that he could not read or write. His great work is Parzival, a blend of Arthurian and Grail romance, which he says he got from a French poet Kyot. Nothing is known of any such poet, and some think him an invention. Certain it is, however, that Wolfram had some other source than Chrestien de Troyes' Conte del Graal, though ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... and tendency of these writings, in order that he may have a comparative view of the continuity of thought and the value of tradition in the world. Some subjects, like the Arthurian Legends, the Nibelungen Lied, the Holy Grail, Provencal Poetry, the Chansons and Romances, and the Gesta Romanorum, receive a similar treatment. Single poems upon which the authors' title to fame mainly rests, familiar and dear hymns, and occasional and modern verse of value, are also grouped together under ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... The legends upon which they were based revolved for the most part round the history of King Arthur and his knights; they told of the strange adventures of Lancelot, of the marvellous quest of the Holy Grail, of the overwhelming and fatal loves of Tristan and Yseult. The stories gained an immense popularity in France, but they did not long retain their original character. In the crucible of the facile and successful CHRETIEN DE TROYES, who wrote towards the close of the twelfth century, they ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... ten because his heart is pure, undertaking "the far-quest after the divine." The American poet Lowell chose Sir Launfal, a less prominent figure in Arthurian romance, for the hero of his version of the search for the Grail, and had him find it in every sympathetic act along the common ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... adaptation, a proper setting for this winged gem,—the body of it composed of a white, felt-like substance, probably the down of some plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the branch on which it sits by minute tree-lichens, woven together by threads as fine and grail as gossamer. From Robin's good looks and musical turn, we might reasonably predict a domicile of him as clean and handsome a nest as the king-bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute. I love his ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. It found expression in the ideal of chivalry, the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a brilliant flame, shed its radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto existed between the sexes, and transfigured it. Woman, the despised, to whom at the Council of Macon a soul had been denied, all at once became a queen, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... a summer day, I learned that I was to pursue beauty like the Holy Grail. And I see it now in everything. I know that, just as there is far more beauty in nature than ugliness, so there is more goodness in humanity than evil. There is more happiness in life than pain. Yes, there is. As Monty used to say, we are given now and then moments of ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... never heard the prayer sung like that before. That look that came in her eyes; it went right out through the back of the roof. Of course, you get an ELSA who can look through walls like that, and visions and Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an abbess, that girl, after LOHENGRIN leaves her. She's made to live with ideas and enthusiasms, not with a husband." Fred folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and began to ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... silence. All at once a little wisp of seaweed—hardly more than a thread—started to beat time upon the sands. And then I knew and saw it to be in its happy beating the pulse that governed the music of the stars. Can the heart conduct the symphony of the body? Tonight the sun set, borne away—a Grail—by angels from the questing Galahad. There was a great silence in my heart as I ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... the siege of the noble prince, Sir Galahad." Straightway the young man seated himself there where none other had ever sat without danger to his life; and all who saw it said, one to another: "Surely this is he that shall achieve the Holy Grail." Now the Holy Grail was the blessed dish from which Our Lord had eaten the Last Supper, and it had been brought to the land of Britain by Joseph of Arimathea; but because of men's sinfulness, it had been withdrawn from human sight, only that, from time ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... United Kingdom joined in the pursuit of improvement and enjoyment, and they were now here on one of their summer outings. They had been invited to a gentleman's place not far from Aberystwyth to view as indubitable a remnant of the Holy Grail as now exists, and it was my very good fortune through the kind offices of that friend of ours to ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... all histories of chivalry. For indeed there was not any house so famous as it saving only the house of King Ban of Benwick, which brought forth those two peerless knights beyond all compare:—to wit, Sir Launcelot of the Lake and Sir Galahad, who achieved the quest of the San Grail. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... manifestation of human energy was a thrilling spectacle, and who felt forever the desire to resolve his experience of life into a literary form. On this matter of the passion for form,—the attempt at perfection, the quest for which was to his mind the real search for the holy grail,—he said the most interesting, the most inspiring things. He mixed with them a thousand illustrations from his own life, from other lives that he had known, from history and fiction, and above all from the annals of the ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... renaissance of old thought. The modern quest of the Grail is not for the crystal cup that held the holy elements, but for the divine life itself, the principle that inspires men to action. The philosopher of our day is not a hermit, theorizing about vague abstractions, but vitally alive to the problems ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... This was in September, 1868. Instead of constituting a Republic at once, in harmony with those popular rights which had been proclaimed, the half-hearted leaders proceeded to look about for a King; and from that time till now they have been in this quest, as if it were the Holy Grail, or happiness on earth. The royal family of Spain was declared incompetent. Therefore a king must be found outside,——and so the quest was continued in other lands. One day the throne is offered to a prince of Portugal, then to a prince of Italy, but declined by each,——how wisely ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... 'twould be to ride in mail A weary quest for the Holy Grail; Wield Saxon steel 'gainst Saracen sword Around the sepulcher of our Lord; See Cross and Crescent and mailed hand All plashed with blood in that sacred land, Than doubt that heaven e'er shed its light Deep into this world's long troublous night; That God hears our prayers, knows all our pains, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... witch or wizard, drawing the subject in charmed circles nearer and nearer to his royal or ruinous destiny,—strange spells cast upon bewitched houses or places, that could be removed only by the one hand appointed by Fate. So I pored over the misty legends of the San Grail, and the sweet story of "The Sleeping Beauty," as my first literature; and as the rough years of practical boyhood trooped up to elbow my dreaming childhood out of existence, I fed the same hunger for the hidden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... accustomed to coarser viands. There must exist somewhere sinless women who could eat these berries without being reminded of the lost purity and delicacy of the primeval senses. Every year I doubt not this stainless berry ripens here, and is unplucked by any knight of the Holy Grail who is worthy to eat it, and keeps alive, in the prodigality of nature, the tradition of the unperverted conditions of taste before the fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, with a sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had been a sort of shew-bread of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not be owing to me, if you fail in the former," said I. "As for the latter, naturally it will depend upon yourself. What shall you call it—'A Chiel takkin' Notes' or 'In Search of the Grail'?" ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the pictures are a mine of subjects for description. The pictures themselves may be described, and many of them will suggest other subjects for similar tasks. For instance, in Volume V, on page 219, is a picture of Sir Galahad when the Holy Grail appears to him. Some of the topics for description ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... oh, a lot more about what they did; I haven't thought that out—but anyway she married the red duke Wolfang who spurned her task and took her by night with his retainers away from the tower, saying her love was his Holy Grail and to get her was the object of his pilgrimage. Oh, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... DU GRAIL DE LA VILLETTE, better known by the name of Charles de Bernard, was born in Besancon, February 24, 1804. He came from a very ancient family of the Vivarais, was educated at the college of his native city, and studied for ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... put our business ventures there as Abbey has his Sir Galahad do in the Vigil panel of "The Search for the Holy Grail," in Boston Library; and when we have learned to put our homes, and our children, and our souls "In the hollow of God's palm," there will be peace on the journey of life. Yes, ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... shining eyes, blown-back hair and face on fire, holding out her heart from the threshold, stretching it out at arms' length, crying, 'Who will take this? To whom may I give it?' A vision here of Heaven's core of light. I have seen it. I, Senhouse, have seen the Holy Grail. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... men entered with enormous dignity bearing plates of oysters as if offering the Holy Grail and the head of Saint John the Baptist on a charger. Impossible to associate class-consciousness with beings who looked as impersonal as fate, and would have regarded a fork out of alignment as a stain on their private 'scutcheon. They performed the rite ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... ancient tomes and tables of magic characters, muttered prayers in a strange tongue that sounded like INDEXERRORPARALLAXREFRACTION, made cabalistic signs on paper, added and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the Grail—I mean the Chart—he placed his finger on a certain space conspicuous for its blankness and said, "Here we are." When we looked at the blank space and asked, "And where is that?" he answered in the cipher-code of the higher priesthood, "31-15-47 north, 133-5-30 ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... already mentioned of the characters and conclusion of this act, I determined to try to make it the very pivot of the whole opera. I wished to do this, if only for the sake of the musical motive appearing in the story of the Holy Grail; but in other respects the plan struck me ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 'The Holy Grail', the concluding thirty-two verses, beginning: "And spake I not too truly, O my Knights", and ending "ye have seen that ye ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... one sick," she thought. "We tell our children the tales of the Red Branch Knights—of King Arthur and the Knights of the Grail—and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints—simple men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the Holy Book—the tales of Christ with his ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... America on a quest solely for military glory. The Jacobin clubs, first by fair promises and then by the demand for his life blood, had sought to force him from liberty to license, from real freedom to debauched freedom. But like Sir Galahad, the Knight of the Holy Grail, he had stood true to his quest, true to his ideal, true to the inward light that unerringly marked the real from the false, true to genuine democracy in its fight against autocracy. And now, greater than all these lures and tests, stood ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... Buddha. The History of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat; a Christianised version thereof. 3. High Estimate of Buddha's Character. 4. Curious Parallel Passages. 5. Pilgrimages to the Peak. 6. The Patra of Buddha, and the Tooth-Relic. 7. Miraculous endowments of the Patra; it is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in the morning it will be much nearer; and as for the third day, it will be realised in some great festival of delight. There is, too, a subtle selfishness in this quest after the ideal—the Holy Grail of the imagination. The artist keeps the secret from his brother artists until he can startle them with some gracious surprise. He almost pities them, as he thinks of the revelation that is about to dawn upon unsuspecting and slumberous ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... older heroism is beginning to stir men's breasts, and that the passion for justice and for liberty, which thrilled through the veins of the world's greatest in the past, and woke our pulses to responsive throb, has not yet died wholly out of the hearts of men. Still the quest of the Holy Grail exercises its deathless fascination, but the seekers no longer raise eyes to heaven, nor search over land and sea, for they know that it waits them in the suffering at their doors, that the consecration of the holiest is on the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... in them that Bryce did not quite understand. It was the animation of newly-resurrected hope, such a light as might have shone in the eyes of the men who rode to find the Holy Grail. Bryce knew nothing of him or his history, and his only thought was that in some queer way the man had a vital interest in the Grampians. It must be remembered that, as far as known facts were concerned, Bryce knew nothing more than the police records had ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... not her weak life become one flame of love—a cup of the Holy Grail, beating and pulsing with ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Opera in London. I make no doubt that if it were possible for Wagner to obtain from the directors a tour of performances in the course of the year for a new work ("Lohengrin," the subject of which, having reference to the Knights of the Round Table who went to search for the Holy Grail, is of the most poetic interest) he would make a great sensation and large receipts by it. As soon as he tells me the news of his arrival in Paris, allow me to induce him to write to you direct if his plans do ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... was the rich possessor of twenty-six volumes, eight of which were romances of chivalry, wherein valiant knights did all kinds of impossibilities at the behest of fair damsels, rescued enchanted princesses, slew two-headed giants, or wandered for months over land and sea in quest of the Holy Grail, which few of them were sufficiently good even to see, and none to bring back to Arthur's Court. But Mr Benden found that the adventures of Sir Isumbras, or the woes of the Lady Blanchefleur, were quite incapable of making him forget the very disagreeable present. Then he ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... currency. Of these the most famous were the Veronica, a cloth on which Christ, on His way to Calvary, was supposed to have left the impress of His face, and a vessel of a green colour which was identified with the holy grail, the cup which our Lord used at the Last Supper. Of garments purporting to be the seamless coat of Christ there were a considerable number shown in different places; but the most famous to this day remains the Holy Coat of Treves, which, in Dr. Robertson's caustic ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... Dorfling just as he had previously done on Wilhelm, giving them in fact turn and turn about, had the bad taste to make jokes continually about the book, at one time calling it the Holy Grail, another time comparing it to the diamond country of Sindbad's tale, and in a hundred ways making vulgar and sceptical jokes. On one of his outbreaks of dissipation he had disappeared far longer than usual, and on his ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... property and morals that were not unfamiliar to their elder comrades of the quest and the joust, and the merry wars. These modern lads, pilgrims seeking their olden, golden comrade Danger, sallied forth upon the highroads of our civilization, and as the grail was found, and the lands were bounded and the journeys over and the trumpets seemed to be forever muffled, these hereditary pilgrims of the vast pretense, still looking for Danger, played blithely at seeking justice. It was a fine game and they found their danger in fighting for ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't a seeking for the grail it may be ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... whose Arthur's Seat overhangs Edinburgh, whose presence haunts the Lakes, and Wales, and Cornwall, and the forests of Brittany; the race that held up for us the image of the Holy Grail—that race can claim no small share in the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... of those that delicately sunder Corruptions of contentment from the breast As with rare steel. Like music I unveil Last things, till, weary of earthen cups and rest, You seek Montsalvat and the burning Grail. Ah! blindly, blindly, wounded with the roses, I bear my spice ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... inscription, "In case of death, send unopened to Jane Mathers, Boston, Massachusetts," on the back, committed to a cause as crazy and as serious as anything since the Pilgrimages, or the Quest of the Knights for the Grail. It also looks slightly like trying to produce a modern Don Quixote, feminine edition, and my cheeks are flaming so that I wouldn't look at them for worlds. And to write it all, too! I have always had my opinion of women who spill their souls ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the crown of Kay Khusraw, the sceptre of Anushirwan, "The holy grail of high Jamshid, Afrasiyab's ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... his De Nugis Curialium he chattered over the manners of his contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took a principal part in spreading a knowledge of the legend of the high-souled King Arthur and of the quest of the Holy Grail. Giraldus Cambrensis again, or Gerald of Wales, wrote on all sorts of subjects with ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... returned, in the list of these superstitious works, "eight grailes, seven antiphoners of parchment and bound." Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, vol. ii., 276. At page 115, ante, the reader will find a definition of the word "Antiphoner." He is here informed that a "gradale" or "grail," is a book which ought to have in it "the office of sprinkling holy water: the beginnings of the masses, or the offices of Kyrie, with the verses of gloria in excelsis; the gradales, or what is gradually sung after the epistles; the hallelujah and tracts, the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... allowed, however, that Titurel the Chief had grown extremely aged, but it was not allowed that he could die in the presence of the Sangrail. He seemed to have been laid in a kind of trance, resting in an open tomb beneath the altar of the Grail; and whenever the cup was uncovered his voice might be heard joining in the celebration. Meanwhile, Amfortas, his son, ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... comparatively little singing, and much emphasis was to be laid upon the orchestral commentary; the action was to be carried on by a combination of pantomime and tableaux, and the scenic element was to be conspicuous—a suggestion which he got in part from E.A. Abbey's Holy Grail frescoes in the Boston Public Library. But he had determined to write his own text: and the prospective labour of this, made more formidable by his restricted leisure, finally discouraged him, and he abandoned ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the potency of the Christian idea is added the magic of an incomparable embodiment in human life. The story of Jesus bears the idea which it enshrines eternally through the world. It is to the idea as the vessel of the Grail. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 1726, a deputation from Guyenne, Royergue, and Poitou, appeared before the Languedoc synod, requesting preachers and pastors to be sent to them. The synod agreed to send Maroger as preacher. Betrine (the first of the Lausanne students) and Grail were afterwards sent to join him. Protestantism was also reawakening in Saintonge and Picardy, and pastors from Languedoc journeyed there to administer the sacrament. Preachers were afterwards sent to join them, to awaken the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... his volume of 1848 and the collected edition of his poems, in two volumes, issued in 1850. These also included his most ambitious narrative poem, the Vision of Sir Launfal, an allegorical and spiritual treatment of one of the legends of the Holy Grail. Lowell's genius was not epical, but lyric and didactic. The merit of Sir Launfal is not in the telling of the story, but in the beautiful descriptive ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... by God's grace, the free— Thy woe is transient; joy shall come to thee; It cannot fail. The darkest night gives way to rosy dawn, And thou, perchance, shalt see on Easter morn, The Holy Grail. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought it part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that tells of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the maimed King Pelles, and only revealed to the pure in heart and life. Stead had fully confided to him the secret of the cave, in case he should be the one left to deliver up the charge; and, in some strange way, the boy connected ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the nervous and unreasonable quickness of city men, they soon arrived at Mrs. Grail's. The good lady was sitting at one of her front windows, sewing. As she looked into the street, her face was seen to have a sad and thoughtful expression. She came to the door in response to a sharp ring by Wesley Tiffles, who was tentative of bellpulls. Mrs. Crull kept two servants, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Mr. Povey and then for Mrs. Baines, she rose, and seizing the object nearest to her, which happened to be a pair of scissors, she hurried towards the showroom stairs as though the scissors had been a grail, passionately sought and to be jealously hidden away. She wanted to stop and turn round, but something prevented her. She was at the end of the counter, under the curving stairs, when one of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the Knight of the Swan, of the Ring of the Nibelungen, the Search for the Grail, of Lohengrin and of Parsifal, are among the richest and deepest of the great mediaeval stories. They are pre-eminently the natural food for children of imagination, and in this volume these stories are retold in ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... Sadly, heartily, earnestly, Salle, room, Samite, silk stuff with gold or silver threads, Sangreal, Holy Grail, Sarps, girdles, Saw, proverb, Scathes, harms, hurts, icripture, writing, Search, probe wounds, Selar, canopy, Semblable, like, Semblant, semblance, Sendal, fine cloth, Sennight, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... contains strong matter, too—both of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and the picture of his lover, Madame de Vigerie. And there is something of the inspiration of the Holy Grail in that "Vision Splendid" which heartens Tristram Hungerford to make sacrifice of his passion that he may give his soul unshared to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... centuries: the tales best known to us in the colourless respectability of the collection made in the reign of Edward IV. by Sir Thomas Malory, and called by him the "Morte d'Arthur"—of the ladies and knights of Arthur's court; of the quest of the Grail by spotless knights who were bastards and fathers of bastards; of the intrigues of Tristram of Lyoness and Queen Yseult; of Launcelot and Guenevere; the tales which Francesca and Paolo read together. We must look, above all, at the lyric ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... flowers above, and the worn slabs beneath that record the dim names of the forgotten dead"; and there "amid the faint streaks of the early dawn, the faithful, kneeling round the oaken railing, took into their hands the worn silver of the Grail— ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... than in the famous romances of Chrestien of Troyes or any of his imitators, though they have all the wonders of the Isle of Britain at their command, though they have the very story of Tristram and the very mystery of the Grail to quicken them and call them out. Elegance, fluency, sentiment, romantic adventures are common, but for words like those of Hervor at the grave of her father, or of the parting between Brynhild and Sigurd, or of Helgi and Sigrun, it would be vain to search in the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Grail" of selfhood and in the light of our higher understanding we look downward and outward and upward, and the length and the breadth and the height are equal. We pass from the old race thought of limitation and live ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... on the most characteristic spiritual product of the Middle Ages, the literature of Romance and the spirit of chivalry, from the Celtic folk-tales of the present day. Mr. Alfred Nutt has already shown this to be true of a special section of Romance literature, that connected with the Holy Grail, and it seems probable that further study will extend the field of application of ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... heart is strongly stirred By clink of plate or flight of bird, He has a plumy tail; At night he treads on stealthy pad As merry as Sir Galahad A-seeking of the Grail. ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... sense of the beloved as of something secret and far and scarcely to be attained, like the Holy Grail, is the dominant theme of the poems, even in The Song of Wandering Aengus, that poem of almost playful beauty, which tells of the "little silver ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... marvellous exotic loveliness to Simone Martini's frescoes at Assisi and his Annunciation of the Florentine Gallery; this, and the feeling for wonderful gold woven and embroidered stuffs, like that white cloth of gold of the kneeling angel, fit, in its purity and splendour, for the robe of Grail king. The want of mechanical dexterity, however, prevented the Giottesques from doing very much in the decorative line except in conjunction with the art—perhaps quite separate from that of the painter, and exercised by a different individual—of ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... stared into woods where a cool light lay on moss and fern. He did not need to remember Ruth's kisses. For each breath of hilltop air, each emerald of moss, each shining mahogany surface in the room, repeated to him that he had found the Grail, whose other name ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... man, one Gilbert Grail, was spending an hour of his Saturday afternoon in Westminster Abbey. At five o'clock the sky still pulsed with heat; black shadows were sharp edged upon the yellow pavement. Between the bridges of Westminster and Lambeth the river was a colourless gleam; but in the Sanctuary evening had ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... World's Fair by Thomas, is a "Processional of the Holy Grail." It is scored elaborately, but is rather brilliant than large. It complimentarily introduces a hint or two ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... a soldier in a poet's frame, Heart of a hero in a body frail; Thine was the courage clear that did not quail Before the giant champions of shame Who wrought dishonour to the city's name; And thine the vision of the Holy Grail Of Love, revealed through Music's lucid veil, Filling thy life ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... and there the four heroic virtues are troubled by the abstract virtues of the cloister. Every now and then some noble knight builds himself a cell upon the hill-side, or leaves kind women and joyful knights to seek the vision of the Grail in lonely adventures. But when Oisin or some kingly forerunner—Bran, son of Febal, or the like—rides or sails in an enchanted ship to some divine country, he but looks for a more delighted companionship, or to be in love with faces that will never ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... spring—for three long centuries throughout the world a dreary green monotony of spring all over France, Provence, Italy, Spain, Germany, England; spring, spring, nothing but spring even in the mysterious countries governed by the Grail King, by the Fairy Morgana, by Queen Proserpine, by Prester John; nay, in the new Jerusalem, in the kingdom of Heaven itself, nothing but spring; till one longs for a bare twig, for a yellow leaf, for a frozen gutter, as for a draught of water ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... many countries, with the swan as symbol and token of all that is strange and beautiful where it has its source. It is less a theme capable of purely musical development to form pattern after pattern of entrancing beauty, like the Grail or Montsalvat theme, than the equivalent in music of tender colour. It never sings out from the orchestra without carrying the imagination for a moment from the scene before one's eyes to the fernem Land. It blends the actual with the dream, and imbues all the drama ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... and an interchange of books; but the two drifted apart in spirit—perhaps they had never been very near. Tennyson's theology was that of Maurice, whom Hawker came to regard as an arch-enemy of Catholic truth. On one ground they both met in later life—when they chose the subject of the Holy Grail for poetic treatment; and on this ground the lesser poet beat the greater, as Tennyson himself frankly acknowledged. Yet both in their different ways lived near to the spirit that is typified by the Grail; but the one abode in solitude ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... very touching in the boyish declaration. Ann looked up and saw his face in the moonlight, white and rather stern. It made her think of the face of some young knight of bygone days taking a sacred vow before he set forth to seek and find the Holy Grail. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... know! He had lived in a glow since that wonderful night—and this letter provided another. He rode like a proud young crusader of old, with his head in a region of sunshine and gold, his vision transfixed by a face. Her love had become his holy grail—and for that he would ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... play, they reappeared in beauty. They attuned the harp and instrument of the musician and the troubadour, and these sang the gospel in all lands, north and south, while telling the stories of Adam, and of Abraham, of Bethlehem, and of the cross, of the Holy Grail, and of Arthur and his Knights. All the precious lore of the Celtic race became transfigured, to illustrate and enforce Christian truth. The symbolical bowl, the Celtic caldron of abundance, became the cup of the Eucharist and the Grail the symbol ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... mainly such persons as believe in 'the march of intellect,' and think meanly of each successive stage as soon as it is left behind. The spokesman of this party is Mark Twain, who wrote a burlesque of the Holy Grail, and who in his Life on the Mississippi makes Scott responsible for the vanities and superstitions of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... early printing at the altar of ancient poetry, is really one of the most interesting books in the world. Yet this Homer is less valued than the tiny octavo which contains the ballades and huitains of the scamp Francois Villon (1533). 'The History of the Holy Grail' (L'Hystoire du Sainct Greaal: Paris, 1523), in a binding stamped with the four crowns of Louis XIV., is valued at about 500 pounds. A chivalric romance of the old days, which was treasured even in the time of the grand monarque, when old French literature was so much ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... our errant knight reached Philip's court, where he was received with the highest honors. Then to his paternal castle he wended his way, to be welcomed by his proud parents as gladly as if he had won the Holy Grail. Dancing and rejoicing followed, in which all the neighboring noble families participated, and many a fair damsel shed her smiles—in vain it seems—on the famous ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... let in the set pieces naturally: of the old forced operatic business of sending out or bringing in characters as seems advisable there is not a sign. The story is on the whole simpler than that of Tannhaeuser. Lohengrin is son of Parsifal, head of the mystic Montsalvat monastery where the Holy Grail is kept; where the monks never seem precisely to die; and where, without marriage and even without women, children are somehow born to the favoured ones. He comes in a magic boat drawn by a swan to aid Elsa against Telramund and his wife, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... conflict between sensuality and love fought out in the arena of Tannhaeuser's mind; the cosmic glories of the Ring with the resplendent figures of Siegfried and Brunhilde; the self-dedication of Parsifal, the Sir Percival of our Arthurian legends, whom "The sweet vision of the Holy Grail drew from all vain-glories, rivalries and earthly heats." Into the glowing music of Wagner my son read lessons in renunciation, the sordidness of the lust for gold, the sublimity of pure human love, the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. The occasional voluptuousness of the music ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Andreas, a story of St. Andrew combining religious instruction with extraordinary adventure; Elene, which describes the search for the cross on which Christ died, and which is a prototype of the search for the Holy Grail; and other poems of the same general kind. [Footnote: There is little agreement among scholars as to who wrote most of these poems. The only works to which Cynewulf signs his name are The Christ, Elene, Juliana and Fates of the Apostles. All others are doubtful, and our biography ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... cycles of legend,—(1) the Arthur, Guinevere, and Merlin cycle, (2) the Round Table cycle, (3) the Holy Grail cycle, (4) the Launcelot cycle, (5) the Tristan cycle,—which at first developed independently, were, in the latter half of the twelfth century, merged together into a body of legend whose bond of unity was the idealized Celtic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the idea of generally applicable regions is a mare's nest, as was the search for the Holy Grail, what is the object of the study of geographical distribution? It is nothing less than the history of the evolution of life in space and time in the widest sense. The attempt to account for the present distribution of any ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... sublimer vocation for men of action than to extend the boundary of human knowledge in the face of perils and obstacles more formidable and more mysterious than those encountered by the knights of old in the cause of the Lord's sepulchre or the holy grail—they have thus embodied in a form which will ever awaken enthusiasm in imaginative natures, the noble impulses of our latter civilization. To win the favour of that noblest of mistresses, Science; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... warrior, and conquering king, Of Knights of the Holy Grail, Of wonders of winter, and glories of spring, Always and ever the poets sing; But the great God-Force, in a lowly thing, I sing, in my song ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of course. Prose romances also appeared, vast formless compilations, which gathered up into themselves story after story, according to the fancy of each successive editor. Greatest of the additions to the substance of the cycle was the story of the Holy Grail, originally an altogether independent legend. Important changes necessarily developed. Arthur himself, in many of the romances, was degraded from his position of the bravest knight to be the inactive ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... whom all readers know in Malory, and some in his originals. I do not know that it would be more surprising if Borrow had found Sir Ozana dying at the chapel in Lyonesse, or had seen the full function of the Grail, though I fear he would have protested against that as popish. Without any apparent art, certainly without the elaborate apparatus which most prose tellers of fantastic tales use, and generally fail in using, Borrow spirits his readers at once away from mere reality. If ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... part of the building that was open to the public. I spent rapt hours studying the Abbey pictures. I repeated to myself lines from Tennyson's poem before the glowing scenes of the Holy Grail. Before the "Prophets" in the gallery above I was mute, but echoes of the Hebrew Psalms I had long forgotten throbbed somewhere in the depths of my consciousness. The Chavannes series around the main staircase I did not enjoy for years. I thought the pictures looked ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... lonely mountain meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board: no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the Holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And starlike mingles ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... as Mr. Skene puts it, to the "full-blown Arthurian romance." Chretien de Troies, the most famous of the old French trouveres in the latter part of the twelfth century, made the Arthur legend the subject for his "Romans" and "Contes," as well as for two epics on Tristan; the Holy Grail, Peredur, etc., belonging to the same cycle. Early in the same century the Arthurian metrical romance became known in Germany, and there assumed a more animated and artistic form in the "Parzival" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Holy Grail lures errants pale Through the wastes of yonder star? What fables sway the Milky Way? In Mars, ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis |
