"Songless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in what moans of bitter lamentation do I dwell, in the songs of a songless strain unfit for the lyre, alas! alas! in funereal griefs for the ills which befall me, bemoaning my brother, what a vision have I seen in the night whose darkness has passed away![28] I am undone, undone. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... are the pleasures that spring from his woes, And which souls that are songless can never enjoy; They know not his joy, for each sweet strain that flows Twines a wreath round his name time can never destroy. Sing on, then, sweet bard! though thus lonely ye stray, Yet ages unborn, thy name shall revere; While the names that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... strung with intent less Of sound than of words, In lands where bright blossoms are scentless, And songless bright birds; Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses, Insatiable summer oppresses Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses, And ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... not often or greatly inspire the rhymers of to-day, it cannot, certainly, be described as songless. On the contrary, it has received from the poets more magnificent and more frequent eulogium than any of its compeers. If one goes back even so far as Spenser, one finds that writer picturing it in one poem as 'noble Thamis'—a 'lovely bridegroom,' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... be the songless spirit of this age Has slain the ancient music, or that ears Have harsher thresholds? Only this I know: The streets grow more discordant with the years; And that which bids the huckster sing no more, Will drive the flower-woman from ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... Olympus, or Arcadia, or Latium ever bred; and at length it had a nervous effect upon the old gentleman's system, and, for the first evening after it, he put all his good things from him, and went to bed supperless and songless. What had been Juba's motive in the exploit which so unpleasantly affected his uncle, it is of course quite impossible to say. Whether his mention of Callista's name was intended to be for the benefit of her soul, or the ruin of Agellius's, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... dwelling-place under the mould, Narrow your frozen bed, songless and cold; Never morn shalt thou see, till the day of God's doom, When awakened, O hero, thou'lt ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... What songless tongueless ghost of sin crept through the curtains of the night, And saw my taper burning bright, and knocked, and bade ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... so, but the ol' nigger swears to it, an' ef you dispute it with him an' ask him how it come thet nobody else didn't hear it, why he says that's because them thet live in houses an' eat flesh ain't got the love o' Grod in their hearts, an' can't expect to hear the songs of the songless ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... discovered some small, sour ground blackberries, which they gallantly presented to us in their caps. Their feelings were so deeply wounded by our attempts to refuse this delicacy that we accepted and actually ate them, to the great satisfaction of the songless ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... low-lying fields of sleep To dim dream shores girt with dim spectre-trees, Swayed ever by the sweep of unseen wings, Slow-stirring palms and arabesques of ferns And fields of sombre bloom and scentless flowers Not of their wonted hue, but dimly gray, Where songless birds like shades of shadows flit, And silent winds from poppied meadows blow— And here dear presences to us denied By sterner Day, approach to cry us hail; And here a little do we taste the joy Of kisses dreamed ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... Sprang her hounds, labouring at the leash, and slipped, And plashed ear-deep with plunging feet; but she Saying, Speed it as I send it for thy sake, Goddess, drew bow and loosed, the sudden string Rang, and sprang inward, and the waterish air Hissed, and the moist plumes of the songless reeds Moved as a wave which the wind moves no more. But the boar heaved half out of ooze and slime His tense flank trembling round the barbed wound, Hateful, and fiery with invasive eyes And bristling with intolerable hair Plunged, and the hounds clung, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... from our eyes away, Laconia's hills shall mourn for many a day— The Arcadian hunter shall forget his chase, And turn aside to think upon that face; While many an hour Apollo's songless shrine Shall wait in silence for a ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... that on the grass Let their vague shadows dreamlike trail and pass; The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young pine-trees, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... gem stored away for future years. Long after she had outgrown the little rural school scraps of poetry returned to her to rewaken the enthusiasm of childhood and to teach her again to "hear the lark within the songless egg and find the fountain where ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the flowers of this fair land are devoid of fragrance—that its birds, though brightly plumed, are songless? ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone—but Beauty still is here. States fall, hearts fade—but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... universe with never silent waves,— Him will I thank that this brief breath of mine Has caught one cadence of the song divine; And these frail fingers learned to rise and fall In time with that great tune which throbs thro' all; And these poor lips have lent a lilt of joy To songless men whom weary tasks employ! My life has had its music, and my heart In harmony has borne a little part, And now I come with quiet, grateful breast To Death's dim hall of silence and ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... their strength, and spoke softly with the voice of loving women. And not a soul had spoken to me so in my far and weary songless passage from the Atlantic States to the Pacific Coast. Long-repressed emotions rose in me as the hair of one brushed my cheek, as the hand of another lay upon my shoulder and mutely bade me rise; as another called me, as another beckoned. I looked round like ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts |
