"Orpheus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cheered, death comforted; the house Of sorrow smiles to listen. Once again - O thou, Orpheus and Heracles, the bard And the deliverer, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... white body of love and delight Orpheus arose in the terrible storm of his grief, With quivering up-clutched hands, deadly and white, And his whole soul wavered and shook ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... from Dante's "Purgatorio" and subjects from the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid are treated here in the same key; but the latter, since they engaged Signorelli's fancy upon Greek mythology, are the more important for our purpose. Two from the legend of "Orpheus" and two from that of "Proserpine" might be chosen as typical of the whole series. Mediaeval intensity, curiously at variance with antique feeling, is discernible throughout. The satellites of Hades are gaunt and sinewy devils, eager to do violence to Eurydice. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Fair fell good Orpheus, that would rather be King of a molehill than a keisar's slave: Better it is 'mongst fiddlers to be chief, Than at [a] player's trencher beg relief. But is't not strange, this mimic ape should prize Unhappy scholars at a hireling rate? Vile world, that lifts them up to high degree, And ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... ultimate reference to dining; not only had they different dining-rooms for winter and summer, but dinner was served in the picture-gallery, in the fruit-chamber, in the aviary, or on a platform erected in the deer-park, around which, when the bespoken "Orpheus" appeared in theatrical costume and blew his flourish, the duly-trained roes and wild boars congregated. Such was the care bestowed on decoration; but amidst all this the reality was by no means forgotten. Not only was the cook a graduate in gastronomy, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of our isle, Thou far, far more than mortal man, whose style Struck more men dumb to hearken to thy song Than Orpheus' harp, or Tully's golden tongue. To him, as right, for wit's deep quintessence, For honor, valor, virtue, excellence, Be all the garlands, crown his tomb with bay, Who spake as much as e'er our tongue can say. Britannia's Pastorals, Bk. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... labour, and be so conscious that reformations are requisite in their manners, that they must be ready to adopt, with joy, every plan of improvement, and to receive every plausible proposal with implicit compliance. And we are thus inclined to believe, that the harp of Orpheus could effect, in one age, what the eloquence of Plato could not produce in another. We mistake, however, the characteristic of simple ages: mankind then appear to feel the fewest defects, and are then least desirous to enter ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... to indulge his fancy, and we have found him adapting themes derived from these sources to the decoration of cassoni, or marriage chests. Another typical example of this practice is afforded by his "Orpheus and Eurydice," in the gallery at Bergamo, a splendid little panel, probably, like the "Apollo and Daphne" in the Seminario at Venice, intended as a decorative piece of applied art. Although bearing Giorgione's name by tradition, modern critics have passed ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... have been consumed there. They address themselves, in the part of the song which Homer gives, not to the passions of Ulysses, but to his vanity, and the only man who ever came within hearing of them, and escaped untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the vain imaginations by singing the praises ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was not yet easy to imagine the cause. Lucy's requests were laws to me, and Neb was ordered to sheer down on the quarter of this second sloop, as we had done on that of the first. As we drew near, her stern told us that she was called the "Orpheus of Sing-Sing," a combination of names that proved some wag had been connected with the christening. Her decks had also a party of both sexes on them, though neither carriage nor horses. All this time, Lucy stood quite near me, as if reluctant to move, and when we were sufficiently near ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing; To his music plants and flowers Ever sprung, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Everything that ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... effect of fire," the Man of the New World was represented, and in him came forth with proven strength. The same significance would not attach to all feats of endurance, even where equally representative. Here are Hercules and Orpheus in one,—the organization of a poet, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... eyes pursue the bells of foam Wash'd, eddying, from this bank, their home. Those gipsies, so your thoughts I scan, Are less, the poet more, than man. They feel not, though they move and see; Deeper the poet feels; but he Breathes, when he will, immortal air, Where Orpheus and where Homer are. In the day's life, whose iron round Hems us all in, he is not bound; He leaves his kind, o'erleaps their pen, And flees the common life of men. He escapes thence, but we abide— Not deep ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... extensive acquaintance. My amusement was, to make some comparison between the two countries, which I knew would immediately bring on the conflict I desired; and not without danger, for I sometimes expected, in the ardour of their patriotism, to meet with the fate of Orpheus. ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the origin of the Mysteries. The oldest were those celebrated in the island of Samothrace, near the coast of Asia Minor. Here Orpheus is reputed to have come and founded the Bacchic Mysteries; while another legend reports him to have been killed by the Bacchantes for wishing to substitute the worship of Apollo for that of Dionysos. This latter story, taken in connection with the civilizing ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... to stroke Each goblin shank of hoary sage. Then pomp of gloom breaks into bloom, The Temple's arch cracks as we sigh, A clashing sound above that spoke Blind wrath unto each Wizard's rage, Revealed the chasm of stark Doom. Unto the peaks and gables black, Syrian airs like Orpheus Lull sequestered afrites to sleep, A witch smites her high biforous— A symbol of king Typhon's wrack! Where crystal lamps shine most glorious, Twin legions lie in cajons bleak,— Tokens of Hell invidious! Then fades the burnished light on high; Magicians stave their ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... Derby horses. All that the ordinary casual better knows about Spion Kop is that he is the son of Spearmint, which won the Derby in 1906. This, however, would not alone make him an obviously better horse than Orpheus, whose sire, Orby, won the Derby in 1907. The student of breeding must be a feminist, who pays as much attention to the female as to the male line. It was by the study of the female line that the most cunning of the sporting journalists were able to eliminate Tetratema ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... anxious to make itself felt by others. With some unfixed, though real, place in the general scheme of Greek religion, this phase of the worship of Dionysus had its special development in the Orphic literature and mysteries. Obscure as are those followers of the mystical Orpheus, we yet certainly see them, moving, and playing their part, in the later ages of Greek religion. Old friends with new faces, though they had, as Plato witnesses, their less worthy aspect, in certain appeals ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Parliament to sit till a Protector turned it out of doors. He was, therefore, only acting upon his own theory, and he seems to us to have been acting wisely as well as courageously, when he consented to become a humble but necessary wheel of the machinery of administration, the Orpheus among the Argonauts of ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... Woman at the Crossways"; and "The Man on the Moor," though its origin is far from their origins, is also a reweaving. In certain of his writing of this time Sharp passes over virtually into criticism or comparative mythology, as in "Queens of Beauty" and "Orpheus and Oisin," and in many of the papers of "Where the Forest Murmurs." These all have interest; but some smell much of the lamp; and none of them are to be compared to the best of his "Seanchas," to "The Harping of Cravetheen," or "Enya of the Dark Eyes," or "Silk o' the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... used by Pausanias, the Spartan commander;[53] or the [Greek: nekyomanteion], the oracle of the dead, by the River Acheron, in Threspotia, to which Periander, the famous tyrant of Corinth, had recourse;[54] and it was here, according to Pausanias, that Orpheus went down to the lower ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... oldest inhabitant, we have engaged to oversee the criticism of the "Atlantic," has a prodigiously long memory,—almost as long as one of Dickens's descriptive passages,—he remembers perfectly well all the promising young fellows from Orpheus down, and has made a notch on the stalk of a devil's-apron for every one who ever came to anything that was of more consequence to the world than to himself. His tally has not yet mounted to a baker's dozen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... each other's life, I trow, Would cordially delight them! As Orpheus' lyre the beasts, so now The bagpipe ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the floor; the lower part being first discovered, there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket, from which issued Orpheus. At the back part of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and some of them even identified him with the Hyperborean Apollo. He himself is said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods." (Hist. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... China (and other countries) it is practiced, where, according to Herrera, one great market is supplied with human flesh alone, for the better sort of people; or because cannibalism was universal before the days of Orpheus. I almost fear lest the emancipationists, by adopting cannibalism as right, with such high authorities and precedents to support their position, may endeavor to palliate African cannibalism on the ground that it is not a monopoly, and ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... fellow who could only be expressed in fractions, and vulgar fractions, too? How on earth could you pull yourself together when Nature had deliberately cut you into little pieces? Never since poor Orpheus was torn to tatters by the Maenads was there a poet so horribly subdivided. Talk of being dissolute, dissipated! Those adjectives were a poor description of S.K.R. It was more than sowing a mere handful of wild oats, it was a disintegration, a scattering of Rickmans to all the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... showing them, on one hand, sunshine and beauty and joy, and all the pride of life; and on the other, darkness and cruelty, despair, and defiance, and death. It might have been, on the one hand, the music with which Orpheus tamed the beasts; and on the other, that which AEschylus arranged to accompany the last act of his tragedy of "Prometheus Bound." There was, however, no clear distinction between the joyous airs and the sombre: all were wrought ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... more numerous; the things themselves are those of the south. No mosaic, I believe, has ever come to light in the whole of Roman Britain which represents any local subject or contains any unclassical feature. The usual ornamentation consists either of mythological scenes, such as Orpheus charming the animals, or Apollo chasing Daphne, or Actaeon rent by his hounds, or of geometrical devices like the so-called Asiatic shields which are purely of classical origin.[1] Perhaps we may detect in Britain a special fondness for the cable or guilloche pattern, and we may conjecture ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... examinations of 1827, came on, Hector tried again, and this time passed the preliminary test. The task set for the general competition was to write music for Orpheus torn by the Bacchantes. An incompetent pianist, whose duty it was to play over the compositions, for the judges, could seem to make nothing of Hector's score. The six judges, headed by Cherubini, the Director of the Conservatoire, voted against the aspirant, and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... mimeographed and peddled to a receptive public, while painters working with Renascence enthusiasm turned out great canvases as fast as their brushes could spread the oils. We had suddenly become a nation madly devoted to the arts. When Orpheus Crisodd's Devilgrass Symphony was first played in Carnegie Hall an audience three times as great as that admitted had to be accommodated outside with loudspeakers and when the awesome crescendo of horns, drums, and broken crockery ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... and I think you will admit that there is precious little of "der stille" to be found either in ordinary domestic life, or that refuge of the desperate, a garret in Bloomsbury. Picture to yourself Orpheus executing frenzied violin obbligati to the family baby (teething)—or Apollo hastily descending the slopes of Olympus to argue with a tax collector, or irate landlady! Alas! few survive this sort of thing. What I would propose is a Grand National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... close of the season, January 28, Sig. Stigelli was prevailed upon to give a farewell concert in Boston Music Hall, assisted by the Oratorio Society and Orpheus Musical Society. Soloists for the occasion were Mlle. Carlotta Patti, who sang the aria from the Magic Flute, Carl Formes, basso profundi, Signor Stigelli, tenor. It was a gala night and every seat was filled at the exact hour to hear for the last time the famous tenor ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... And at the feaste sat both he and she, With other worthy folk, upon the dais. All full of joy and bliss is the palace, And full of instruments, and of vitaille, * *victuals, food The moste dainteous* of all Itale. *delicate Before them stood such instruments of soun', That Orpheus, nor of Thebes Amphioun, Ne made never such a melody. At every course came in loud minstrelsy, That never Joab trumped for to hear, Nor he, Theodomas, yet half so clear At Thebes, when the city was in doubt. Bacchus the wine them skinked* ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... realms of Pluto hurled, Her every charm to cruel death a prey; While matrons throw their gorgeous robes away, To mourn a nymph by cold disdain betrayed: To the complaining lyre's enchanting lay I'll sing the praises of this hapless maid, In sweeter notes than Thracian Orpheus ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct ye to a hillside, where I will point ye out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Proud Jason starts, confounded in his might, Leads back his peers, and dares no more the fight. But the sly Priestess brings her opiate spell, Soft charms that hush the triple hound of hell, Bids Orpheus tune his all-enchanting lyre, And join to calm the guardian's sleepless ire. Soon from the tepid ground blue vapors rise, And sounds melodious move along the skies; A settling tremor thro his folds extends, His crest contracts, his rainbow heck unbends, O'er all his hundred ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... the germs of the Italic god of war, Mars, have been discovered. Besides these direct coincidences, some indirect relations have been established between Hermes and S a r a m e y a, Dionysos and D y u n i s y a, Prometheus and p r a m a n t h a, Orpheus and R i b h u, Erinnys and S a r a n y u, Pan and P a v ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... was done with an equal contempt of convenience within and architectural regularity without, the whole bore the appearance of a hamlet which had suddenly stood still when in the act of leading down one of Amphion's, or Orpheus's, country dances. It was surrounded by tall clipped hedges of yew and holly, some of which still exhibited the skill of the topiarian artist,* and presented curious arm-chairs, towers, and the figures of Saint George and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... "Don't trouble the ashes of the dead; let the grave at least put an end to your unjust hatreds. Reflect that even Kings make peace after long battling; cannot you ever make it? I think you would be capable, like Orpheus, of descending to Hell, not to soften Pluto and bring back your beautiful Emilie, but to pursue into that Abode of Woe an enemy whom your wrath has only too much persecuted in the world: for shame!" [OEuvres de Frederic, xxiii. 61-65 ("Wilsdruf, 17th ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... have a hope in Christ that a gap will be opened again for us.... The day is not far off, the Gall will be stretched without anyone to cry after them; but with us there will be a bonfire lighted up on high.... The music of the world entirely, and Orpheus playing along with it. I'd sooner than all that, the Sassanach ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... press—abound in advertisements of horses of the "true Narragansett breed," yet it is said that in the year 1800 but one full-blooded Narragansett Pacer was known to be living. In the War of 1812 the British man-of-war Orpheus cruised the waters of Narragansett Bay, and her captain endeavored through agents to obtain a Narragansett Pacer as a gift for his wife, but in vain—not a horse of the true ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and eek the woful goost ther-inne 785 Biquethe I, with your spirit to compleyne Eternally, for they shal never twinne. For though in erthe y-twinned be we tweyne, Yet in the feld of pitee, out of peyne, That hight Elysos, shul we been y-fere, 790 As Orpheus and Erudice, his fere. ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... may have been in the States, Josh Billings was by no means the favourite or leading American humorist. If phonetic spelling were universal, much of his fun would disappear. His place was nearer that of Orpheus C. Kerr than of Artemus Ward, or of Mark Twain. It has long been the English habit to look for most of our broad fun across the Atlantic. Americans say we are not a funny people. A chivalrous and mediaeval French ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... maruell, how that I Into a Frenchmans powre should light In prison here to lie: Giue now attentiue heede, a straunge tale gin I tell, How I this yeare haue bene besteede, scaping the gates of hell, More harde I thinke truly, in more daunger of life, Than olde Orpheus did when he through hell did seeke his wife, Whose musike so did sounde in pleasant play of string, That Cerberus that hellish hounde (who as the poets sing Hauing three huge heads great, which doe continually Still breath out firy flames of heate most horrible to see) Did giue him leaue to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... filled me with a restless pain. That cry of "Eurydice!" "Eurydice!" so beseeching, so passionate, so exhausted by longing, drew me with an irresistible power. Gluck certainly achieved the effect he attempted, and showed us what the fabled power of Orpheus was. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... soldier. Next appeared a cluster of tobacco-pipes, consisting of Sir Walter Raleigh's, the earliest on record, Dr. Parr's, Charles Lamb's, and the first calumet of peace which was ever smoked between a European and an Indian. Among other musical instruments, I noticed the lyre of Orpheus and those of Homer and Sappho, Dr. Franklin's famous whistle, the trumpet of Anthony Van Corlear, and the flute which Goldsmith played upon in his rambles through the French provinces. The staff of Peter the Hermit stood in a corner with ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a long, oblong sala with a banquette running all round it. Upon this the dancers seated themselves, drew out their husk cigarettes, chatted, and smoked, during the intervals of the dance. In one corner half a dozen sons of Orpheus twanged away upon harp, guitar, and bandolin; occasionally helping out the music with a shrill half-Indian chant. In another angle of the apartment, puros, and Taos whisky were dealt out to the thirsty mountaineers, who made the sala ring with their wild ejaculations. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Orpheus, we learn from Ovid and Lempriere, Led all wild beasts but Women by the ear; And had he fiddled at the present hour, We'd seen the Lions waltzing in the Tower; [64] And old Amphion, such were minstrels then, Had built St. Paul's without the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... over the sentinel's head, Roman d'Eneas, l. 8807, sq.), Polynices, Tydeus, and Eteocles; Apollonius of Tyre; Alexander; Hero and Leander; Cadmus of Thebes; Jason and the sleepless Dragon; Hercules; Demophoon and Phyllis (a hard passage); Narcissus; Pluto and the wife of Orpheus ("Sir Orfeo"); David and Goliath; Samson and Dalila; Judas Maccabeus; Julius Caesar; the Round Table, and how the king had an answer for all who sought him; Gawain and Yvain ("of the lion that was companion of the knight whom Lunete rescued"[91]); of the British ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Death and disgrace have seized them all Save one—how long shall he go free? Each day I listen greedily, And joy to hear how they have died, How fell these glorious sons of Greece, The robber-band that fought their way Back from far Colchis. Thracian maids Rent limb from limb sweet Orpheus' frame; And Hylas found a watery grave; Pirithoues and Theseus pierced Even to Hades' darksome realm To rob that mighty lord of shades Of his radiant spouse, Persephone; But then he seized, and holds them there For aye in chains ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... legend which relates how the body of the Sakti was cut into pieces and scattered over Assam and Bengal. This story has an uncouth and barbarous air and seems out of place even in Puranic mythology. It recalls the tales told of Osiris, Orpheus and Halfdan the Black[724] and may be ultimately traceable to the idea that the dismemberment of a deity or a human representative ensures fertility. Until recently the Khonds of Bengal used to hack human victims in pieces as a sacrifice ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the loss of friends. Witness his Ode to Virgil on the death of Quintilius. He tells his illustrious friend simply that his calamity is without hope, irretrievable and eternal; that it is idle to implore the gods to restore the dead; and that, although his lyre may be more sweet than that of Orpheus, he cannot reanimate the shadow of his friend nor persuade 'the ghost-compelling god' to unbar the gates of death. He urges patience as the sole resource. He alludes not unfrequently to his own death in the same despairing tone. In the Ode to Torquatus,—one ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... order of battle in which the illustrious commander ranked his troops at Blenheim; but the ground covered is so extensive, and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is not disagreeably conscious of their standing in military array, as if Orpheus had summoned them together by beat of drum. The effect must have been very formal a hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so,—although the trees, I presume, have kept their ranks with even more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... way one should love everything that is worth loving. I am delighted, for we make here a troupe of fanatical melomaniacs, as you will presently perceive. As for myself, I scrape wildly on the violin, as a simple country amateur—'Orpheus in silvis'. Do not imagine, however, Monsieur le Comte, that we let the worship of this sweet art absorb all our faculties—all our time-certainly not. When you take part in our little reunions, which of course you will do, you will find we ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... thou can'st all, nor Hecate for naught Hath set thee o'er Avernus' groves to reign. If Orpheus from the shades his bride up-brought, Trusting his Thracian harp and sounding strain, If Pollux could from Pluto's drear domain His brother by alternate death reclaim, And tread the road to Hades o'er again Oft and so oft—why great Alcides name? Why Theseus? I, as they, Jove's ancestry ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... rightly," replied the praetor. "But when Orpheus sings the trees dance, the Muse can turn dull, motionless stones into a Bacchante, and when Balbilla appears Timon is at once transformed into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of receiving the paper containing this new serial, which promises to be the best ever written by ORPHEUS C. KERR, should subscribe now, to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... July. The poems in it were written at various times. In the manuscript, Hafbur and Signy is dated February 4, 1870; Hildebrand and Hillilel, March 1, 1871; and Love's Reward, Kelmscott, April 21, 1871. Meeting in Winter is a song from The Story of Orpheus, an unpublished poem intended for The Earthly Paradise. The last poem in the book, Goldilocks and Goldilocks, was written on May 20, 1891, for the purpose of adding to the bulk of the volume, which was then being prepared. A few of the vellum covers were stained ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... Yea, he it was who bade me wend, a suppliant, to thy door, And seek thee out: O holy one, cast thou thy pity o'er Father and son! All things thou canst, nor yet hath Hecate Set thee to rule Avernus' woods an empty Queen to be. Yea, Orpheus wrought with Thracian harp and strings of tuneful might To draw away his perished love from midmost of the night. 120 Yea, Pollux, dying turn for turn, his brother borrowed well, And went and came the road full oft—Of Theseus shall I tell? ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... who ascribe this Invention to Orpheus, and look upon the Cat-call to be one of those Instruments which that famous Musician made use of to draw the Beasts about him. It is certain, that the Roasting of a Cat does not call together a greater Audience of that Species than this Instrument, if ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... in all Haarlem, in all Holland, who did not yield the palm at fiddle-playing to Castero. That one man was no other than Frederick Katwingen, the son of a rich brewer, whom his admirers—more numerous than those of his rival—had called the Dutch Orpheus. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... capable of being moulded into any form? Then if she should awake! But how to awake her? A kiss awoke the Sleeping Beauty! a kiss cannot reach her through the incrusting alabaster." I kneeled, however, and kissed the pale coffin; but she slept on. I bethought me of Orpheus, and the following stones—that trees should follow his music seemed nothing surprising now. Might not a song awake this form, that the glory of motion might for a time displace the loveliness of rest? Sweet sounds can go where kisses may not ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... walk, cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, And winds shall waft it to the powers above. But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, The wondering forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call, And headlong streams hang, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... before my sight; Enjoin'd to seek, below, his holy shade; Conducted there by your unerring aid. But you, if pious minds by pray'rs are won, Oblige the father, and protect the son. Yours is the pow'r; nor Proserpine in vain Has made you priestess of her nightly reign. If Orpheus, arm'd with his enchanting lyre, The ruthless king with pity could inspire, And from the shades below redeem his wife; If Pollux, off'ring his alternate life, Could free his brother, and can daily go By turns aloft, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... make its laws." This was, in our opinion, a speech of considerable boldness; and if Fletcher really made it, he must have had a high estimate of his own poetical powers. Why then, in the name of Orpheus, did he not set about it incontinently? We presume that there was nothing whatever to have prevented him from concocting as many ballads as he chose; or from engaging, as engines of popular promulgation, the ancestors of those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... a fourth lover, tripping modestly among the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by veiled glances, full of coquetry and attack!—Parbleu, if Monsieur de Viel-Castel should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and they should tear his eyes out, and send the fashionable Orpheus floating by the Seine, his slaughter might almost be considered as ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining are ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and Hesiod, our most ancient authorities for Greek cosmogonic myths are probably the so-called Orphic fragments. Concerning the dates and the manner of growth of these poems volumes of erudition have been compiled. As Homer is silent about Orpheus (in spite of the position which the mythical Thracian bard acquired as the inventor of letters and magic and the father of the mysteries), it has been usual to regard the Orphic ideas as of late introduction. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... I) people go through the world very well, and carry on the business of life to good advantage, without learning.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that may be true in cases where learning cannot possibly be of any use; for instance, this boy rows us as well without learning, as if he could sing the song of Orpheus to the Argonauts, who were the first sailors.' He then called to the boy, 'What would you give, my lad, to know about the Argonauts?' 'Sir, (said the boy,) I would give what I have.' Johnson was much pleased ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... I went to church I sang Orpheus' Hymn to my viall. After that to Mr. Gunning's, an excellent sermon upon charity. Then to my mother to dinner, where my wife and the maid were come. After dinner we three to Mr. Messum's where we met Mons. L'Impertinent, who got us a seat and told me a ridiculous ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bountyhood, And show how liberal a lord I serve? Music and poetry, my two last crimes, Are those two exercises of delight, Wherewith long labours I do weary out. The dying swan is not forbid to sing: The waves of Hebrus[46] play'd on Orpheus' strings, When he (sweet music's trophy) was destroy'd. And as for poetry, words'[47] eloquence (Dead Phaeton's three sisters' funeral tears That by the gods were to Electrum turn'd), Not flint or rock, of icy cinders flam'd, Deny the force[48] of silver-falling streams. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... still, glaring at the soldiers with big yellow eyes. The men were so astonished at the sight that they stole away without capturing an animal or saying a word to Saint Blaise, for they thought he must be Orpheus or some heathen god who charmed wild beasts. They went to the Governor and told him what they ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... famous both as a composer and Violist, was represented in 1608. The opera in those times differed essentially from that of modern days. Particular instruments were selected to accompany each character; for instance, ten Treble Viols to accompany Eurydice, two Bass Viols to Orpheus, and so on. No mention is made of Violins further than that two small Violins (duoi Violini piccoli alla Francese) are to accompany the character of Hope, from which it is inferred that a band of Violins was ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... 219. This, which is now called the Balkan range, was a lofty chain of mountains running through Thrace. Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus and Calliope, was there torn in pieces by the Maenades, or Bacchanalian women, whence the mountain obtained ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... tenderest sympathies of humanity: in peace soothing the ferocious spirit of discord among his countrymen into harmony and union; and giving to that very sword, now presented to his country, a charm more potent than that attributed in ancient times to the lyre of Orpheus. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... from afar,—where a nation is striving for independent existence, and a government representing the people. Crawford here in Rome has had the just feeling to join the Guard, and it is a real sacrifice for an artist to spend time on the exercises; but it well becomes the sculptor of Orpheus,—of him who had such faith, such music of divine thought, that he made the stones move, turned the beasts from their accustomed haunts, and shamed hell itself into sympathy with the grief of love. I do not deny that such a spirit is wanted here in Italy; it is everywhere, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... soul in her countenance glistening, Eurydice stood—like a beacon unfired, Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired— And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve the need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love Hears these words oft repeated—'beyond ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... the men of mirth, a clouding over the day, and no trout swim in the river. Orpheus on the harp, he lifted up everyone out of their habits; and he that stole what Argus was watching the time he took away Io; Apollo, as we read, gave them teaching, and Daly was better ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. He admired Aeschylus and Pindar; but, when some one was commending them, he said that "Aeschylus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no good one. They ought not to have moved trees, but to have chanted to the gods such a hymn as would have sung all their old ideas out of their heads, and new ones in." His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... beautiful shepherdess named Dido with a Great Shepherd called Lobbin, or when the verse requires it, Lobb. And not merely the speakers in the dialogue are shepherds; every one is in their view a shepherd. Chaucer is the "god of shepherds," and Orpheus is a— ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... oh! what art can teach, What human voice can reach The sacred organ's praise? Notes inspiring holy love, Notes that wing their heavenly ways To mend the choirs above. Orpheus could lead the savage race, And trees uprooted left their place Sequacious of the lyre: But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher: When to her Organ vocal breath was given An angel heard, and straight appear'd— ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... his century really believes the fable of Orpheus, and has not apparently heard either the beautiful music of Italy, or even that of France, which in truth does not charm snakes, but does ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... lover here first wore the bays, Eurotas' secret streams heard all his lays, And holy Orpheus, Nature's busy child, By headlong Hebrus his deep hymns compil'd; Soft Petrarch—thaw'd by Laura's flames—did weep On Tiber's banks, when she—proud fair!—could sleep; Mosella boasts Ausonius, and the Thames Doth murmur Sidney's Stella to her streams; While ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... other, and each fled in terror with all speed to Harrisburg. This alone was asserted to be the basis of the great panic which had alarmed Pennsylvania and the country. The President," continues Mr. Welles, "was in excellent humor. He said this flight would be a capital joke for Orpheus C. Kerr[D] to get hold of. He could give scope to his imagination over the terror of broken squads of panic-stricken teamsters, frightened at each other and alarming all Pennsylvania. General Meigs, who was present, inquired with great simplicity who this person ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... entertained by the peasantry whom he had delighted with his playing on the flute. It is quite probable that Goldsmith, whose imagination had been captivated by the story of how Baron von Holberg had as a young man really passed through France, Germany, and Holland in this Orpheus-like manner, may have put a flute in his pocket when he left Leyden; but it is far from safe to assume, as is generally done, that Goldsmith was himself the hero of the adventures described in Chapter XX. of the Vicar of Wakefield. ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... chorus of critical dissent. Commenting on my assertion that there are no stories of romantic love in Greek literature, an editorial writer in the London Daily News exclaimed: "Why, it would be less wild to remark that the Greeks had nothing but love-stories." After referring to the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, Meleager and Atalanta, Alcyone and Ceyx, Cephalus and Procris, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... persons were picked people of her own choice—brilliant persons in their various capacities, each bringing a store of wit or some accomplishment to swell the general gaiety. Artists, dilettanti noblemen, epicures, and persons who would have accompanied Orpheus in all his explorations for the music he ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... have we a more poetical account of the launching of a ship for distant lands: "Then they have stored her well with food and water, and pulled the ladder up on board, and settled themselves each man to his oar and kept time to Orpheus' harp; and away across the bay they rowed southward, while the people lined the cliffs; and the women wept while the men shouted at the starting of that gallant crew." They chose a captain, and the choice fell on Jason, "because he was ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the orchestra had already begun the programme of the day with Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony. The house was crowded to excess; numbers of people were standing, apparently willing to endure a whole afternoon's fatigue, rather than miss hearing the Orpheus of Andalusia,—the "Endymion out of Spain," as one of our latest and best poets has aptly called him. Only a languidly tolerant interest was shown in the orchestral performance,—the "Italian" Symphony is not ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... He was not roused. He regretted the affair; but hoped that time, and a more correct estimate of interest, would produce justice in the Dey's mind; and he seemed to believe that the majesty of pure reason, more potent than the music of Orpheus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... before San Francisco had begun to lose her unique and delightful individuality—now gone forever. Among the contributors to this once famous weekly were Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Prentice Mulford, Joaquin Miller, Dan de Quille, Orpheus C. Kerr, C. H. Webb, "John Paul," Ada Clare, Ada Isaacs Menken, Ina Coolbrith, and hosts of others. Fitz Hugh Ludlow wrote for it a series of brilliant descriptive letters recounting his adventures during a ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... elements took the place of the old simplicity, whose multifariousness was almost wholly pictorial. Instead of a landscape as a tapestry background to a Holy Family, and having no pertinence but an artistic one, we have Corot's "Orpheus." ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... music, but to my ear the discord was terrific,—to the ears of better informed amateurs it seemed ravishing. All were spellbound; even Mrs. Poyntz paused from her knitting, as the Fates paused from their web at the lyre of Orpheus. To this breathless delight, however, soon succeeded a general desire for movement. To my amazement, I beheld these formal matrons and sober fathers of families forming themselves into a dance, turbulent as a children's ball at Christmas; and ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unfortunate negro. Had the wolves caught up to old Dick in this moment of fury, he might have appealed in vain to his fiddle. By running he had destroyed the charm, and the coyotes would not have stopped to listen to him even had he played like Orpheus in the olden times, or Ole ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... declared that he did not wish for any further prophecy, but that he had obtained from her the response which he wished for. While he was preparing for his expedition, among many other portents, the statue of Orpheus at Loibethra, which is made of cypress-wood, was observed to be covered with sweat. All were alarmed at this omen, but Aristander bade them take courage, as it portended that Alexander should perform many famous acts, which would cause poets much ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Sweet Orpheus, lord of minstrelsy, For this with flute and pipe came nigh The danger of the dog's heads three That ravening at hell's door doth lie; Fain was Narcissus, fair and shy, For love's love lightly lost and won, In a deep well to drown ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... most conclusively that Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod,[160] who are usually designated "the theologians" of Greece, but who were in fact the depravers and corrupters of pagan theology, do not teach the existence of a multitude of unmade, self-existent, and independent deities. Even they ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Nuremberg, in 1494, he ventured to exhibit his works to the public, which immediately attracted great attention. His first work was a piece of the Three Graces, represented by as many female figures, with a globe over their heads. He soon after executed one of his masterpieces, a drawing of Orpheus. About this time, to please his father, as it is said, he married the daughter of Hans Fritz, a celebrated mechanic, who proved a fierce Xantippe, and embittered, and some say shortened his life. In 1506, he went to Venice to improve himself, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Cambridge, who, in the vacancy of the abbot, was now in charge of the house, was a man skilled in all the arts of his day. In sweetness of voice, in knowledge of sacred song, his eulogists pronounced him the superior of Orpheus, of Nero, of one yet more illustrious but, save in the Bury cloisters, more obscure, the Breton Belgabred. He was a man "industrious and subtle;" and subtlety and industry found their scope in suit after suit with the farmers and burgesses around. "Faithfully he ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... rarely saw Falloden—except in connection either with Otto's health, or with the "Orpheus," as to which Falloden was in constant communication with the inventor, one Auguste Chaumart, living in a garret on the heights of Montmartre; while Constance herself was carrying on an eager correspondence with friends of her ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... birth of the sun and the moon forms a part, namely, the visit of Izanagi to hades in search of Izanami, is an obvious reproduction of the Babylonian myth of Ishtar's journey to the underworld in search of Du'uzu, which formed the basis of the Grecian legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Moreover, Izanami's objection to return, on the ground of having already eaten of the food of the underworld, is a feature of many ancient myths, among which may be mentioned the Indian story of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... which I cannot say is absolutely on words—for the thought turns with them—is in the fourth Georgic of Virgil, where Orpheus is to receive his wife from hell on express condition not to look on her till she was come ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Argonaut must be mentioned, namely, the minstrel Orpheus. He was the son of the muse Calliope, and was looked on as the first of the many glorious singers of Greece, who taught the noblest and best lessons. His music, when he played on the lyre, was so sweet, that all the animals, both fierce and gentle, came round to hear it; ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feel that the potion which is to be given you shall not have done its work, and the memory of this existence which you are leaving endeavours vainly to return; we say in such a moment, when you clutch at the dream but it eludes your grasp, and you watch it, as Orpheus watched Eurydice, gliding back again into the twilight kingdom, fly—fly—if you can remember the advice—to the haven of your present and immediate duty, taking shelter incessantly in the work which you have in hand. This much you may ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... of salutations and the episcopal benediction the suffragan began with a voice so mild that I never heard a sweeter, so that if head and heart had only been in unison, Orpheus and Apollo would have been obliged to yield to him in grace, and Demosthenes and the Gracchi in eloquence. In vain would I attempt to communicate to you the discourse entire. It was confused and much too long. Meanwhile I had noted down the chief points in my tablets. It is greatly to be deplored—said ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... in them all, and sometimes there was playing on instruments between the acts. In a play written by Damiano and printed at Siena, 1519, according to Crescimbeni, at the beginning of every act there was an octave stanza, which was sung to the sound of the lyra viol by a personage called Orpheus, who was solely retained for that purpose; at other times a madrigal was sung between the acts, after the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... cats and ibises to Turkish yataghans and Zulu assegais, surrounded the place in riotous disorder. Beyond doubt this was the apartment of Sir Lionel Barton. A lamp burned upon a table near to the disordered bed, and a discolored Greek statuette of Orpheus lay overturned on the carpet ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... combined. Four years later, at the age of twenty-one, she published her second volume, "Admetus and Other Poems," which at once took rank as literature both in America and England, and challenged comparison with the work of established writers. Of classic themes we have "Admetus" and "Orpheus," and of romantic the legend of Tannhauser and of the saintly Lohengrin. All are treated with an artistic finish that shows perfect mastery of her craft, without detracting from the freshness and flow of her inspiration. While sounding no absolutely new note in the world, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... seen there constantly, with his wife Lady Carbury, and poor old Booker of the "Literary Chronicle." City men can make a budget popular or the reverse, and therefore the Mills Happertons of the day were welcome. Rising barristers might be wanted to become Solicitors-General. The pet Orpheus of the hour, the young tragic actor who was thought to have a real Hamlet within him, the old painter who was growing rich on his reputation, and the young painter who was still strong with hope, even the little trilling poet, though ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... philosopher Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, and others were represented on the stage dressed in imitation of Christ Himself, and the Emperor Alexander Severus [A.D. 222-235] placed the figure of Christ in his lararium alongside of those of Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius. There we have the modern Indians who fully recognise Christ alongside of their own avatars. The whole parallel is complete.[105] In spite of the feebleness and, it may be, unworthiness of His Church, ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... was lying at the school house door, where it learned a great deal listening to the recitations, the teacher read aloud the story of Orpheus, who could tame wild animals with his lyre, and then went on to say that she had heard of music by which animals might be changed into persons. Frolic's white ears were pricked up, and every word was treasured, ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... the most famous legislators as men, who, enriched with useful knowledge they had gleaned in the bosom of polished nations, carried to savages without industry, needing assistance, those arts, of which, until then, these rude people were ignorant: such were the Bacchus's, the Orpheus's, the Triptolemus's, the Numa's, the Zamolixis's; in short, all those who first gave to nations their gods—their worship—the rudiments of agriculture, of science, of superstition, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... vengeance on St. James for the wounds he had inflicted on her vanity, by aspersing and slandering the innocent Rosalie. He left her in indignation and disgust, and wandered without guide or compass, like another Orpheus in search of the lost Eurydice. Had he known Peggy's native place, he might have turned in the right direction, but he was ignorant of every thing but her name and virtues. At length, weary and desponding, he resolved to seek in foreign lands, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Italian score were also made by Gluck in the later French version. Here is an example; being the recitative immediately preceding the great air of Orpheus in the ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... first bells were swung on trees, and sounded through the forest beyond the plantations of the white man. But to-day I like best the echo amid these cliffs and woods. It is no feeble imitation, but rather its original, or as if some rural Orpheus played over the strain again to show ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the Pegasus Panel, indicating inspiration in the arts. Ahead, marches Music with his lyre, who, like a sort of Orpheus, is stilling even ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing like Orpheus. Behold the sorrow of this world! Once a miss has bereaved me of all. Oh! glory, that only shineth in misfortune, what is become of thy assurance? All wounds have scars but that of fantasy: all affections ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... mantle, while her eyes Follow'd his steps, and her neck regal white Turn'd—syllabling thus, "Ah, Lycius bright, And will you leave me on the hills alone? Lycius, look back! and be some pity shown." He did; not with cold wonder fearingly, But Orpheus-like at an Eurydice; For so delicious were the words she sung, It seem'd he had lov'd them a whole summer long: 250 And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up, Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup, And ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... will give, by an obscure observer of our own day and country, to draw some lines of the desired image. It was suggested by seeing the design of Crawford's Orpheus, and connecting with the circumstance of the American, in his garret at Rome, making choice of this subject, that of Americans here at home showing such ambition to represent the character, by calling their prose and verse "Orphic sayings"—"Orphics." ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... are Orpheus, with his lute moving the rocks and stones! I shall work all my conceits into your plan, and am now proceeding to my garden shrine to meditate on it. I will try to make a picture of the VELUVANA, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the lyric muse! For when mankind ran wild in grooves Came holy Orpheus with his songs And turned men's hearts from bestial loves, From brutal force and savage wrongs; Amphion, too, and on his lyre Made such sweet music all the day That rocks, instinct with warm desire, Pursued him in ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... sport if he do," said Colonel Mar, carelessly; "he may term himself a very Orpheus charming the beasts, so that they snatch ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hand, his odd eyes full of quizzical amusement. "I've heard your name before, I think. And I believe I've seen you somewhere too. Ah, yes! It's coming back! You are the Orpheus who plays the flute to the wild beasts at High Shale. I've been wanting to meet you. I listened to you from my car one night, and—on my ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... they scoff at idealism. It's a tendency we shall have to guard against; it leads back to the old order of things, if we do not trim our light. She is waiting for you! Go. You will find me here. And don't forget my instructions. Appoint for the afternoon—not late. Too near night will seem like Orpheus going below, and I hope to meet a living woman, not a ghost—ha! coloured like a lantern in a cavern, good Lord! Covered with lichen! Say three o'clock, not later. The reason is, I want to have it over early and be sure of what I am doing; I'm bothered by it; I shall have to make arrangements ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Orpheus," said the King; "and what is worse, one that is already provided with a Eurydice—She ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the sonnet; translated Anacreon; followed the Neapolitan Sannazaro in his Bergerie of connected prose and verse, where the shepherds are persons of distinction arrayed in a pastoral disguise; and adapted the mediaeval lapidary (with imitations of the pseudo-Orpheus) to the taste of the Renaissance in his Amours et Nouveaux Eschanges des Pierres Precieuses. These little myths and metamorphoses of gems are ingenious and graceful. The delicate feeling for nature which Belleau ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Uffizi: Lucretia. London. Cornelia and her Children. Paris. Venus and Cupid. Rome. Villa Borghese: Toilet of Minerva. Venice. Academy: The Marriage of Cana; Madonna in Glory; Vanity, Orpheus, and Eurydice; Rape of Proserpine; Virgin in Glory. Verona. Man and Woman playing Chess; Triumph of Bacchus. Vienna. Woman ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... imprudent, mother! why, the ladies are going to tear him to pieces—like Orpheus, for you may well believe that he is not in the ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... 52. I quote Baretti, because he speaks with a corresponding enthusiasm. He calls the incident "a very rare proof of the irresistible powers of poetry, and a noble comment on the fables of Orpheus and Amphion," &c. The words "noble comment" might lead us to fancy that Johnson had made some such remark to him while relating the story in Bolt Court. Nor is the former part of the sentence unlike ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... most ordinary poses used to throw me into the deepest ecstasies of admiration. Whenever I gazed at her I fully agreed with Monsieur de Lessay that Jupiter had once reigned as a despot-king over the mountainous regions of Thessaly, and that Orpheus had committed the imprudence of leaving the teaching of philosophy to the clergy. I am not now quite sure whether I was a coward or a hero when I accorded al this to the obstinate ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... must always be the case in poetically suggestive music, the composer trusts to the general intelligence and insight of the listener. For a mere mention of the name Orpheus may well call up the vision of a majestic, godlike youth proclaiming his message of joy and peace to soften the unruly passions of men ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... or rather genius, in whose hand a jews-harp is the lyre of Orpheus, a fiddle the harp of David, a chisel a hewer of heroic forms, a brush or a pen the scepter of souls, and, alas! a nail ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... should place, for charms and chastity, Above that wife who whilom bore her name. Strozza and Tebaldeo — Anthony And Hercules — support the honoured dame: (So says the scroll): for tuneful strain, the pair A very Linus and an Orpheus are. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... borrowed to illustrate Bible truth. Hermes carrying the sheep was the Good Shepherd, Psyche discovering Cupid was the curiosity of Eve, Ulysses closing his ears to the Sirens was the Christian resisting the tempter. The pagan Orpheus charming the animals of the wood was finally adopted as a symbol, or perhaps an ideal likeness of Christ. Then followed more direct representation in classic form and manner, the Old Testament prefiguring and emphasizing the New. Jonah appeared cast into the sea ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... my lord, my monarch of high art, Forgive a tongue held fast and bound by heart. Not Orpheus, Linus, or great Hermes could Find words to make their rapture understood. No Muse, no Phoebus, hath this work inspired, But Jove himself, with heaven's own splendour fired. I see the nursing fingers of the day, And ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... thrilled and held him like the voice of a Circe. They never noticed Amanda's silence. She could lean back in her chair and dream. She remembered the story of Ulysses and his wax-filled ears that saved him from the sirens; the tale of Orpheus, who drowned their alluring voices by playing on his instrument a music sweeter than theirs—ah, that was her only hope! That somewhere, deep in the heart of the man she loved was a music surpassing in sweetness the music of the shallow girl's voice ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Orpheus, with his lute, made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing, To his musick, plants and flowers Ever spring, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. [During this song the body ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... used sixteen ells and a quarter of the same cloth, and it was fashioned on the top like unto a triumphant arch, most gallantly fastened with two enamelled clasps, in each of which was set a great emerald, as big as an orange; for, as says Orpheus, lib. de lapidibus, and Plinius, libro ultimo, it hath an erective virtue and comfortative of the natural member. The exiture, outjecting or outstanding, of his codpiece was of the length of a yard, jagged and pinked, and withal bagging, and strutting out with the blue damask lining, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... humorist. Thus we have seen in rapid succession John Phoenix, Doesticks, Fanny Fern, and Artemus Ward enjoying extraordinary popularity, and then new 'lords of misrule' 'reigning in their stead.' The last popular favorite is 'Orpheus C. Kerr'—a name thinly disguising that of Office Seeker, and which is not indeed too well chosen, since in the volume before us little or nothing relative to the very suggestive subject of office-seeking, on the part of the author at least, is to be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in this hymn to all poets, from Orpheus to Heine, than in "Les Baisers de Pierre"—a clever imitation of De Musset's stories in verse. Love of art and of the masters of art, a passion for the figures of old mythology, which had returned again after their exile in 1830, gaiety, and a revival of the dexterity of Villon ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... The voice of conscience, too, was heard reminding the good man that he was not altogether innocent. (Republic.) To these indistinct longings and fears an expression was given in the mysteries and Orphic poets: a 'heap of books' (Republic), passing under the names of Musaeus and Orpheus in Plato's time, were filled with notions ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... lyric muse! For when mankind ran wild in groves, Came holy Orpheus with his songs And turned men's hearts from bestial loves, From brutal force and savage wrongs; Came Amphion, too, and on his lyre Made such sweet music all the day That rocks, instinct with warm desire, Pursued him in ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... No longer, Orpheus, wilt thou lead the charmed oaks, no longer the rocks nor the lordless herds of the wild beasts; no longer wilt thou lull the roaring of the winds, nor hail and sweep of snowstorms nor dashing sea; for thou perishedst; and the daughters ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned or poured forth since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. de S. are far more formidable than any quantity of verse. They are so, because they sap the principles by reasoning upon the passions; whereas poetry is in itself passion, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse. Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and fascinating ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... itself or all literatures en masse, one will always reach the same result: the lyric poets before the epic poets, the epic poets before the dramatic poets. In France, Malherbe before Chapelain, Chapelain before Corneille; in ancient Greece, Orpheus before Homer, Homer before AEschylus; in the first of all books, Genesis before Kings, Kings before Job; or to come back to that monumental scale of all ages of poetry, which we ran over a moment since, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... one accomplishment, he had a heavenly voice—quite in the rough, to be sure—and he played, on the violin like an angel. He did not know one note from another, but he played in a sweet natural way, just as Orpheus must have played, by ear. The drunker he was the more pathos and humor he wrung from the old violin, his sole piece of personal property. He had a singular fancy for getting up at two or three o'clock in the morning, and playing by an open casement, ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... table was almost full. At the upper end sat Hercules, leaning an arm upon his club; on his right hand were Achilles and Ulysses, and between them AEneas; on his left were Hector, Theseus, and Jason: the lower end had Orpheus, AEsop, Phalaris, and Musaeus. The ushers seemed at a loss for a twelfth man, when, methought, to my great joy and surprise, I heard some at the lower end of the table mention Isaac Bickerstaff; but those of the upper end received it with disdain, and said, "if they must have ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele |
