"Siren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arms of the siren Summer Encircle the earth in their languorous fold. Will vast, deep oceans of sweet emotions Surge through my veins as they surged of old? Canst thou bring back from a day long vanished The leaping pulse and the boundless aim? I ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... oath and he kept it. It was a wonderful story. The queen of the apaches, ruling the Parisian underworld by her fire, her beauty, her courage, accepts German gold to betray her country, and attempts by siren wiles to seduce from the path of duty Capt. Stuyvesant Schuyler of the U. S. A. general staff; almost succeeds too because of his blind passion for this glorious, sinful creature. At the crucial moment, when about to surrender to his Delilah secrets which would destroy the entire Allied ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the masters, has given us but one idea of the mistress, the subtle, calculating siren who delights to prey on the souls of men. The journalism and the moral pamphleteering of the time seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a censorship of life had been established by divinity, and the care of its execution given into the hands of the utterly ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Rabourdin to their coalition; and Madame de Camps was supporting him. At the end of the hour the minister's vanity was greatly tickled; Madame Rabourdin's cleverness pleased him, and she had won his wife, who, delighted with the siren, invited her to come to all her receptions ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... when you really get us, if you ever do—because some don't. Many, indeed! I reckon there never was a woman yet outside of a feeb' home that didn't believe she could be an A. No. 1 siren if she only had the nerve to dress the part; never one that didn't just ache to sway men to her lightest whim, and believe she could—not for any evil purpose, mind you, but just to show her power. Think of the ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... stolen. He roared out at the top of his voice, and stumped over to the wall where he threw the alarm switch. Immediately, a hundred arc lights flashed on, lighting the level brighter than the noon sun, and a tremendously loud siren started wailing its warning ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... the foreground of the grove, and looking as if it borrowed solitude of the deep foliage, in which it is half buried, rises a pretty villa, wherein may be seen, surrounded by luxuries the common herd might well envy, the fair, the beautiful siren, Anna Bonard. In the dingy little back parlor of the old antiquary, grim poverty looking in through every crevasse, sits the artless and pure-minded Maria McArthur. How different are the thoughts, the hopes, the emotions of these two ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... been wounded under your eyes—that duel, for a quarrel at play, in which my second unfortunately killed that young Frenchman, the Viscount St. Remy. Apropos, do you know what has become of that dangerous siren St. Remy brought to Oppenfeld, and whose name was, I think, Cecily David? You will smile with pity, my friend, to see me wander thus among these vague remembrances of the past, instead of proceeding to the grave confessions which I have announced to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... little siren, you would ruin me," said Tito, laughing, and kissing both her cheeks. "I ought to have been in the Via de' Bardi long ago. No! I must go back now; you are in no danger. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... sweet persuasions of a Lally Tollendal, a Mounier, a Malouet, or a Mirabeau could induce a Louis XVI. to cast in his lot with the bourgeoisie, in opposition to the feudalists and the remnants of absolute monarchy, just as little will the siren songs of a Camphausen or a Hansemann convince Friedrich ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... bad habit is formed. "It won't hurt me" is whispered by the siren voice of temptation, because the consequences of the transgression are not felt or seen immediately, a second offence seems less serious than the first. Soon habit steps in and stamps the process on mind and body and before the author is conscious of it, ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... her, a directness, that comes from years of association with things I haven't had. Before I came here, I thought money could buy anything. But it can't. Mary Ballard couldn't be anything else. And I—I can be anything from a siren to a soubrette, but I can't be a lady—not the kind that ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... for example, W. H. Auden's "Academic Graffiti," in Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelsohn (London: Faber and Faber, 976), 510-18. Such a verse as the following is more clever than most raffiti, but like ordinary graffiti it remains essentially "unpoetic": Lord Byron / Once succumbed to a Siren. / His flesh was ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadys were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick
... without and the responding traitor within. One reason why religion is so unsatisfactory to some people is that they persist in walking on the low level where doubts often spoil their worship and the allurements of the world pull very hard, and its siren song makes discord in their hallelujahs. It is, of course, possible to backslide from any level; but, believe me, the prospect of stability is infinitely greater if you get a clean heart, and determine to walk in the ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... affair, nor ever spoke again of Malpas and the siren who presided there. And meanwhile the autumn faded into winter, and with the coming of stormy weather Sir Oliver and Rosamund had fewer opportunities of meeting. To Godolphin Court he would not go since she did not desire it; and himself he deemed it best to remain away since otherwise he ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... fog seemed to deepen, and the moisture dripped from everything, and the very air seemed hard to breathe. The darkness began to come and all our lights were burning, while the siren continued to moan. Several times, in answer to it, we faintly heard mournful sounds of fishermen's horns, and once we blindly swerved just in time to avoid ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... painted scenes with figures in colours, two spaces, high and narrow, being on either side, and one square in shape in the middle; and in the latter he painted a Corinthian column planted with its base in the sea, with a Siren on the right hand, holding the column upright, and a nude Neptune on the left supporting it on the other side; while above the capital of the column there is a Cardinal's hat, the device, so it is said, of Pompeo Colonna, who was much the friend of the owners of that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... but finally went on, like the seamen of Ulysses, deafening myself to the siren-voice. And though I had hesitated, I might not have been lost; but returning by the same route, I saw a neighboring druggist rush into that store bareheaded, as I now suppose to change a bill. Need I say that I then thought he had come for my chair? Need I say that I then and there ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the hush of a rain-splashed night, when the fire in the grate dozed and dreamed and a boat siren somewhere out on the inky La Plata wailed and moaned through the black night, my heart flew back over those gray-green waves to a little town that I knew in the U. S. A. And to ease my longing I wrote ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... she sat and looked at the funnels and masts swarming the placid Hoogli, turned her head as a far-away siren announced the arrival of a liner, gave a little sigh as she looked up at a kite sailing care-free overhead, and came back to earth ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... up the cheering wine, And never taste the siren cup, But oh, thou woman, nymph divine, I can not, will ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... came from the great steamship's siren, and a long sigh went up from the crowd upon the quay. Someone raised a cheer that was quickly drowned in the noise of escaping steam. Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, the vessel began ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the line at teas," she said. "He says that from seven o'clock on, until as late as I like, he's—game, you know—willing to do whatever I like. But until seven, there are no—well, he says, siren songs for him." ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... suffocated with it. She, upon her part, perceiving his emotions, responded with extreme good-nature and complacency, so that had our hero been older, and the voyage proved longer, he might have become entirely enmeshed in the toils of his fair siren. For all this while, you are to understand, the pirates were making sail straight for Jamaica, which they reached upon the ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... nosed her way directly toward the cliff. Sounds from shore began to grow audible Afar, an auto siren shrieked. A dog barked, irritatingly. A ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... and I Will take the rudder and thy room supply." To whom the yawning pilot, half asleep: "Me dost thou bid to trust the treach'rous deep, The harlot smiles of her dissembling face, And to her faith commit the Trojan race? Shall I believe the Siren South again, And, oft betray'd, not know the monster main?" He said: his fasten'd hands the rudder keep, And, fix'd on heav'n, his eyes repel invading sleep. The god was wroth, and at his temples threw A branch in Lethe dipp'd, and drunk with Stygian ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the Italian Commedia had not seized on all minds. It would have been an evil thing for Italian, perhaps for European, literature if the siren tales of the Decameron had not been the first to occupy the ears with the charms of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to die, If fate so blest a death for me design." But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven, It holds my spirit back to earth as well. And thus I live: and thus is loosed and wound The thread of life which unto me was given By this sole Siren who with ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... heads and tails entirely? When some women come to be dragged, it is a marvel what will be found in the depths of them. Cavete, canes! Have a care how ye lap that water. What do they want with us, the mischievous siren sluts? A green-eyed Naiad never rests until she has inveigled a fellow under the water; she sings after him, she dances after him; she winds round him, glittering tortuously; she warbles and whispers dainty secrets at his cheek, she kisses his feet, she leers at him from out ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gave an impatient little gesture as a lumbering power boat, outward bound seemed inclined to cut across her course. "What ails that blunderbuss? I have the right of way. Why doesn't he head inshore?" and she signalled sharply on her siren to the landlubber evidently bent upon running down everything in sight, and wrecking the tub he was navigating. Then with a quick motion she flicked over her wheel and rushed by, making as pretty a circle around him as the coxswain himself could ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... intoxicate your minds with solid history, revel in the too-attractive luxury of the lecture-room, sink under the soft temptation of classes for mutual instruction! How many potent, grave and reverent tongues discourse to the popular ear in these siren strains, and how obediently and resignedly this same weary popular ear listens! What if a bold man spring up one day, crying aloud in our social wilderness, "Play, for Heaven's sake, or you will work yourselves into a nation of automatons! Shake a loose leg to a lively fiddle! Women ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... while—the siren shrieked, the bells jangled loudly in the wet air, another day had come. Could she face it—even the murky grey light of this that revealed the ashes and litter of the back yard under the downpour? The act of dressing brought a slight relief; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an hour after midnight, Muggles found himself sitting bolt upright in bed. Outside, filling the air of the wilderness, bellowed and roared the deep tones of the steam siren. Then came a babel of voices ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... wax against the siren appeal of his seceding chief John Henry Newman and refused at first to read the Essay on Development. When at last he was drawn into the controversy he constructed for his own satisfaction and that of other waverers who looked up to him for support and guidance an argument founded on the Butlerian ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... ship of pearl which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea maids rise to sun ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... a tone that sounded through the quiet village like a siren horn. "Ernie! You and ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... blood? After a time his drumming grew less frequent, and finally, in the middle of April, ceased entirely. Had some accident befallen him, or had he wandered away to fresh fields, following some siren of his species? Probably the latter. Another bird that I had under observation also left his winter-quarters in the spring. This, then, appears to be the usual custom. The wrens and the nuthatches and chickadees succeed to these abandoned cavities, and often have amusing disputes over them. ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... dwellings and modes of life or forms of worship where every thing is reduced to cold, naked utility? I think not. The instinct to adorn and beautify is from him; it likens us to him, and if rightly understood, instead of being a siren to beguile our hearts away, it will ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "Stop!" And, as he turned back reluctantly, she went on with her explanation: "No, it isn't the lure of some siren in a Paquin dress—or undress: it's the lure of the game—the great, horrid, hideous business game, which has got you, just as it's got most of the American husbands who are worth having. That's the lure ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... o'clock, Mr. McGuffey was horrified to see his steam gauge drop half a pound as the Maggie's siren sounded. Mr. Gibney stuck his ingenious head out of the pilot house and listened, but no answering echo reached his ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... over to the window, her eyes wide with horror. "Billie, that's the signal to the life-savers. And there goes the siren," she groaned, clapping her hands over her ears as the moan of the siren rose wailingly into the ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... it is true, of her conscious guilt, still I did not trust her entirely. "Do not wear them on your return," she had said and that was odd; although I could not yet believe that she was such a siren as Father Pierre had warned us of, telling tales from old poets. Yet I doubted, shuddering as I did so. Her companionship with that vile priest, her strange eagerness to secure Pavannes' return, her mysterious directions to me, her anxiety to take ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... fight your fight. The little imps pluck at you: the big giant assails you: the seductions of the soft-mouthed siren are not wanting. Slacken the knot an instant, and they will all have play. And the worst is, that you may be wrong, and they may be right! For is it, can it be proper for you to stain the silvery whiteness of your skin by plunging headlong into yonder pitch-bath? Consider the defilement! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is the most formidable power ever loosed upon earth," he declared one evening. "Thrones totter before it. Captains of industry forget their millions in its presence. Cherchez la femme! This terrible power is possessed by every dark-eyed siren in a Second Avenue boarding house, by every languishing, red-lipped blonde earning eighteen dollars a week in a department store. And she knows it! Others have vast earthly possessions, stores of science, palaces of art, knowledge without end—she has a tresor that makes baubles of these—she ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... it stood. And Mildred knew her cue, all right. She trains them front row eyes of hers on him, opens up with a few lines of lively chatter, and inside of half an hour she has him sittin' picturesque at her feet, callin' him Hermes of the Lobster Pots, and otherwise workin' the siren spell. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... sets no value on logic, nor much on physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. His great idea is the purification of the soul. He believes in the severest self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that they are evil. He condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the Stoics. He would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would not injure his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamore, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more, Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... to make the Sally,' says the Cap'n. I stepped on the tread of the siren and kept her blattin' now and then and, after some minutes, we heard a splashin' alongside and there was a man swimming ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... with an angel's face By Love ordain'd for joy, Seems of the Siren's cruel race, To charm ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... of the sentence was lost in the wild shriek of a siren, shriek after shriek succeeding each other as a big car, with far-reaching acetylene lamps, roared down upon them. Like a mighty whirlwind it swept by them, careening perilously on the sloping edge of the road. Suddenly the grinding of brakes assailed the ears of the ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... soliciting her for a "few notes, a suspiration, a soupcon"—of, as Elnathan observed, "one of the most delicious voices which had ever crossed the Pyrenees," and the Jew had all the habitual connoisseurship of his nation. At last the siren consented, and a harp was brought and placed before her, with the same homage which might have attended an offering to the Queen of Cyprus, in her own island, three thousand years ago; and rather letting her hand drop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Aziz, it was not mine to fold you Against my heart for any length of days. I had no loveliness, alas, to hold you, No siren voice, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... with sprightly dance, Beneath thy morning star advance, Pleasure with her siren air May delude the thoughtless pair; Let Prudence bless Enjoyment's cup, Then raptur'd sip, and sip ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... still more, and became increasingly absent-minded, when a few minutes later he heard her rich, full tones in his favourite song, "Loving, yet leaving." Mr. Charrington noticed it at last. "The siren is too much for you, Mr. Herrick," he said pleasantly; "we will resume our discussion another time," and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually together.—"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a single note; the eight ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the library was extensive, and Hill's attack was magnificently sustained. He saturated himself with the fluent numbers of Longfellow and Tennyson, and fortified himself with Shakespeare; found a kindred soul in Pope, and a master in Shelley, and heard and fled the siren voices of Eliza Cook and Mrs. Hemans. But he read no more Browning, because he hoped for the loan of other volumes from Miss Haysman ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... I don't wish you to visit her." This remark is rich in meanings. Madame Firmiani! dangerous woman! a siren! dresses well, has taste; gives other women sleepless nights. Your informant ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... true," she wondered, "that a simple and loving heart is not all-sufficient to an artist; that to balance the weight of these powerful souls they need a union with feminine souls of a strength equal to their own? If I had been brought up like this siren, our weapons at least might have been equal in the ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... lives on earth. As they hurried on they urged themselves to diligence by cries of "In haste the mountains blessed Mary won!" "Caesar flew to Spain!" "Haste! Grace grows best in those who ardor feel!" As the poet meditated on their words, he lapsed into a dream in which he saw the Siren who drew brave mariners from their courses; and even as he listened to her melodious song, he beheld her exposed by a saint-like lady, Lucia, or Illuminating Grace. Day dawned, the Angel fanned the fourth "P" from his forehead, and the poet ascended to the fifth terrace, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... relics of former luxury; on the very grass of the promontory, brown and withered, and trodden into the earth for many a yard; on the horrible grave of the maiden who had watched her own image in the crystal pools, lilted her siren songs to the break of the waves, woven at once chains for her adorers and the web of that destiny which buried her there, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... But, Lydia, this is tedious; we shall never get through at this rate. Besides," with a mock-sentimental air, "you have not been here long enough to know the melancholy history,—to count the wrecks that are strewn along the coast, where the Siren resorts. Let me take up the list. Corning, who really loved me, (six,) and went to sea to cure the heart-ache. I heard of him in State Street a month ago,—with a blue shirt and leather belt, and chewing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... a place for children? A little flourish of imagination, and we see them,—Silas, who beats the drum, and Columbia, who carries the flag, manifest leaders of the wild little company, mermen and mermaids all; and the music is fit for the Siren, and the beauty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... came to me today, And oh, I felt that I must stray Down primrose paths, forgetting all.... The city's fevered, siren call Spoke to my soul, its whispered cry Said, "Live, for ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... the departing siren was sounding. Friends and relatives of the passengers were crowding the exit incline. The deck was clearing. I had not seen George Prince come aboard. And then I thought I saw him down on the landing ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... A siren's dry shriek as the Sheriff's gasoline buggy made its way through the crowded street outside. Cummings raised his brows at me, got my nod of permission, and shot his first question at ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Solons would have softened and thrown open their doors as readily as their hearts." It seems an ungracious thing to say; but it is the truth. The woman who wins her way with the majority of these men is the siren of the gallery and the anteroom, who sends in her card and her invitation to the senator at his desk. She never talks of "rights." She cares for no "cause" but her own cause of ease and pelf. She shakes her tresses, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the room and dashed to the nearest telephone. He called the receiving hospital, telling the attendant to rush the ambulance at top speed. He waited at the street entrance to the rooming house until the ambulance arrived, its shrill siren whistle clearing a pathway for it through the traffic. Slowly, gently, they lifted Murphy from the floor and, placing him on a stretcher, carried him down the stairs to the ambulance. A morbid crowd, attracted by the sight of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... children there were no nihilists among us; but as soon as you took the education of our children into your hands, behold the result." The foundations of religion were undermined. Parental authority was disregarded. Youths and maidens were lured by the enchanting voice of the siren of assimilation. The naive words which Turgenief put into the mouth of Samuel Abraham, the Lithuanian Jew, might have been, indeed, were, spoken by many others in actual life. "Our children," he complains, "have no longer our beliefs; they do not say our prayers, nor have they your beliefs; ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Spring! O June fulfilling after! If Autumns sigh, when Summers die, 'Tis drowned in Winter's laughter. O maiden dawns, O wifely noons, O siren sweet, sweet nights, I'd want no heaven could earth be given Again with its delights ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Donald. "I won't hear of such a thing as your being one of these 'new women.' You're a siren out of the olden days of mystic legend, and I have kept my ears stopped up against your witching song, which I was afraid to hear. But now I want to hear it, day and night, through eternity. Wait, not yet. First ... Smiles, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the divisions of time on the job by the shrill note of the little whistle on the hoisting engine boiler, and there was not a man but started at the screaming crescendo of the big siren on top of the power house. Men in the streets, in the straggling boarding houses over across the flats, on the wharves along the river, men who had been forbidden to come to the elevator till they were needed lest they should be in the way, had been waiting ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... nature's most alluring bits of music, fell upon my ear for the first time one memorable morning in June. It was a true siren-strain. We forgot, my comrade and I, what we were seeking in the woods. The junco family, in their snug cave among the roots, so interesting to us but now, might all fly away; the oven-bird, in the little hollow beside the path, might finish her lace-lined domicile, and the shy tanager conclude ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... pushing out to the tidal periphery of their continent, with no maritime history behind them, build their fishing villages on protected lagoons, and, unless the shadowy form of some outlying island lure them farther, there they tarry, deaf to the siren song of the sea. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... and skies serene Had tempted on the treacherous deep, So he thy perfidy shall weep Who now enjoys thee fair and kind, But dreams not of the shifting wind. Thrice wretched they, deluded and betrayed, Who trust thy glittering smile and Siren tongue! I have escaped the shipwreck, and have hung In Neptune's fane my dripping vest displayed With votive tablet on his altar laid, Thanking the sea-god for ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... was Murray. She wanted him to approve of Anne. If Amy had thought in a less limited circle she might have worked the thing out that if Maxwell married Anne it would narrow Murray's choice down to herself and Ethel. But there was always that vague fear of some outside siren who would capture Murray. If he had Anne, he would then ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... from employment, under its warm roof. To what purpose was it to stow Plato upon Menander? Eupolis, Archilochus? For what end did you bring abroad such companions? What? are you setting about appeasing envy by deserting virtue? Wretch, you will be despised. That guilty Siren, Sloth, must be avoided; or whatever acquisitions you have made in the better part of your life, must with equanimity be given up. May the gods and godnesses, O Damasippus, present you with a barber for your sound advice! But by what means did you get so well acquainted with me? Since all ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Chinese—enticing siren, Pekoe! the Muse hath said in praise of thee, "That cheers but not inebriates"; and Byron Hath called thy sister "Queen of Tears", Bohea! And he, Anacreon of Rome's age of iron, Says, how untruly "Quis non potius te." While coffee, thou—bill-plastered gables say, Art ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... ordinary marks of the Elzevirs were the sphere, the old hermit, the Athena, the eagle, and the burning faggot. But all little old books marked with spheres are not Elzevirs, as many booksellers suppose. Other printers also stole the designs for the tops of chapters, the Aegipan, the Siren, the head of Medusa, the crossed sceptres, and the rest. In some cases the Elzevirs published their books, especially when they were piracies, anonymously. When they published for the Jansenists, they allowed their clients to put fantastic pseudonyms on the title pages. ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... its tale, for the Duke died in 1787, at the early age of thirty-three. Though having the most beautiful wife in England, his affections wandered, and tales are told of his attachment to that siren singer, Mrs. Billington. The Duchess's manner had somewhat of levity and much coquetry in it, though she could not be classed with that company who have not time to be virtuous. At the time of her lord's death, she was living ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... "Yone" Willoughby, in The Amber Gods. He has super-refined and poetical tastes; delights and revels in beauty, and until he met Yone had admired her gentle sister. The siren, Yone, sets herself to win him and succeeds. Marriage disenchants him and the knowledge of this maddens her into something akin to hatred. Yet she dies begging him to kiss her. "I am your Yone! I forgot a little while,—but I ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a Siren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but I had no notion then that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the colony of Maryland in 1632 down to the Revolutionary War, there is no record left us that any effort was ever made to cure the most glaring evils of slavery. For the Negro this was one long, starless night of oppression and outrage. No siren's voice whispered to him of a distant future, propitious and gracious to hearts almost insensible to a throb of joy, to minds unconscious of the feeblest rays of light. Being absolute property, it was the right of the master to say how much food, or what quantity of clothing, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... after a somewhat smart action, and was sent to America, but was recaptured on the way. The victory was not remarkable, but the place of capture was very significant, and it happened July 12 only a fortnight after Blakely captured the 'Reindeer' farther westward. The 'Siren' was but one of many privateers in those waters. The 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off, and in the pauses Harvey heard the muffled shriek of a liner's siren, and he knew enough of the Banks to know what that meant. It came to him, with horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherry-coloured jersey—he despised fancy blazers now with all a fisher-man's contempt—how an ignorant, rowdy boy ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and to listen to the song of the siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men engaged in the great and arduous struggle for 5 liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... The siren!—All the beauteous witcheries that ever yet were said or sung do not equal her!—Circe, Calypso, Morgana, fairy or goddess, mortal or immortal, knew not to mix the magic cup with so ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... red emergency lights on the bow and stern began to blink and from the special transmitter in the hull a radio siren wail raced ahead of the car to be picked up by the emergency receptor antennas ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... I speak the winged galley flies, And lo! the Siren shores like mists arise. Sunk were at once the winds; the air above, And waves below, at once forgot to move; Some demon calm'd the air and smooth'd the deep, Hush'd the loud winds, and charm'd the waves to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... cases cured by us by these methods attest the truth of our statements; while those who failed to understand the simple reasoning of the Nature Cure philosophy or lacked will power to withstand the arguments of friends and physicians followed the siren call of the operating table and have been sorry for ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Twenty-one days of rest. Three glorious weeks of smooth sailing over calm waters. Three weeks of warmth and sunshine by day, and of poetry and starlight by night. Three weeks of drifting in the romance which surrounds the name of that great sorceress, that wonderful siren, that consummate coquette, that most fascinating woman the world has ever known. Three weeks of steeping one's soul in the oldest, most complete and satisfactory ruins on the face of the earth. Here, in delving into the past, we would have no ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... A fog-siren somewhere on the invisible shore was sending out its unearthly blasts. Then a whistle seemed to cut the gloom right ahead, and a big black shape loomed through the murk. The Merry Seas sounded her warning, and the helm was jammed hard a-starboard. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... after a few minutes at the keyboard. "All set. If they put a detector on us, I've got a force set to make a noise like a New York City fire siren. If pressed, I'd reluctantly admit that in my opinion we're carrying caution to a point ten thousand degrees below the absolute zero of sanity. I'll bet my shirt that we don't hear a yip out of them before we touch ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... sinners. The conviction grows on me that Christians have too little faith in the gospel. They do not trust it enough in popular reforms. They realize that evil is a tremendous power, alike to be feared, whether it wear the armor of Goliath, or sing its sweet seductions in the form of a siren; and their instinct of preservation extends beyond themselves to the truth itself. They regard truth as a tender stripling, to be rolled up in mufflers, and suffered to walk out only in charge of certain staid nurses of theory; and not as a man ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... drawing-room, and Rosa Blondelle, beautifully dressed, seated herself at the grand piano, and began to sing and play some of the impassioned songs from the Italian operas; and Lyon Berners, a very great enthusiast in music, hung over the siren, doubly entranced by her beauty and her voice. Sybil, too, stood with the little group at the piano; but she stood back in the shade, where the expression of her agonized face could not be seen by the other two, even if they had been at leisure to ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... her shoulders, and long gold earrings in her ears, came hurrying up to sell post-cards, and offered to show the party the quickest way into the hotel. As every one was very tired and hungry Miss Morley succumbed to the voice of this siren, and permitted her to escort them by what she assured them would be a short cut and would save many steps. But alas for Italian veracity! Their suave and smiling guide led them down a path at the back of the hotel to a shabby and dirty little restaurant of her own, where she ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... speechless agony. Jeames received the tickets bowing his powdered head. The varnished doors closed upon him. The beloved object was as far as ever from him, though so near. He thought he heard the tones of a piano and of a siren singing, coming from the drawing-room and sweeping over the balcony-shrubbery of geraniums. He would have liked to stop and listen, but it might not be. "Drive to Tattersall's," he said to the groom, in a voice smothered with emotion—"And bring my ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wail that suddenly smites the stillness as with a blow? It seems like the wailing of all the lost souls of the war. It sounds like the crying of the more than five million sorrowing women there are left comfortless in Europe. It is the siren. An air-raid is on. The "alert" is sounding. The bombs begin to fall. The Boches have gotten over even before the barrage is up. Hell breaks loose for an hour. No battle on the front ever heard more terrific cannonading than the next hour. The barrage was the heaviest ever sent ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... White Queen, a lily rare, With her sweet song, the Siren's lay? Where's Bertha Broad-foot, Beatrice fair? Alys and Ermengarde, where are they? Good Joan, whom English did betray In Rouen town, and burned her? No, Maiden and Queen, no man may say; Nay, but where is the last ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... but stood There on the threshold, following thy voice Away, away through mazy lengths of dreams. Music—low music from the lips we love, Is the true siren that still lures the soul From cares of ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... an outrageous uproar, the grisly scream of a siren and the cannonade of a powerful exhaust, as a great white touring-car swung round us from behind at a speed that sickened me to see, and, snorting thunder, passed us "as if we ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... and Good, But never to be understood; Fickle as the Wind, still changing, After every Female ranging, Panting, trembling, sighing, dying, But addicted much to Lying: When the Siren Songs repeats, Equal Measures still it beats; Who-e'er shall wear it, it will smart her, And who-e'er ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... was absent; how in all difficulties or dangers the thought of her would be a polar star, high up in the heavens, and so on, and so on; for with all a lover's quickness of imagination and triteness of fancy, he called her a star, a flower, a nymph, a witch, an angel, or a mermaid, a nightingale, a siren, as one or another of her attributes rose up ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of them. He knew that he must become a prey, but was there any choice left to him as to which siren should have him? He had been quite aware in his more gallant days, before he had been knocked about on that Charybdis rock, that he might sip, and taste, and choose between the sweets. He had come to think ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope |
