"Orpheus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Orpheus was torn to pieces by some justly indignant Thracian ladies for belonging to an Harmonic Lodge. 'Let him go back to Eurydice,' they said, 'whom he is pretending to regret so.' But the history is given in Dr. Lempriere's ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 and die; Good luck ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... generation, from abundant wanderings," and reach true Being, "to the uniform and simple energy of the period of sameness, instead of the abundantly wandering motion of the period which is characterised by difference." This is the life sought by those initiated by Orpheus into the Mysteries of Bacchus and Proserpine, and this is the result of the practice of the purificatory, or ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... to exemplify this, let us suppose that Orpheus, the son of Apollo, so renowned for his extraordinary musical powers, had existed at the present day. We should no doubt have ranked him among the greatest of our musicians, and honoured him as such; but the Greeks, with their vivid imagination and poetic license, exaggerated his remarkable ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Arezzo, and set himself, in order to pass the time, to paint on canvas the scene of the death of Orpheus, killed by the Bacchantes: he set himself, I say, to paint this scene in chiaroscuro of the colour of bronze, after the manner in which he had seen Perino paint the picture mentioned above, and when the work was finished it brought him no little ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... these great fathers as regards chronology is especially reflected from the tables of Eusebius. In these, Moses, Joshua, and Bacchus,—Deborah, Orpheus, and the Amazons,—Abimelech, the Sphinx, and Oedipus, appear together as personages equally real, and their positions in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... with a gentle Tune, and chearful Glass) grew into an harmonious Body, not alone for the Improvement of the charming Art of Music, but for the effectual Relief also of successive Thousands, from Misery, Famine, and Confinement: Concordia res parvae crescunt. ORPHEUS, we are told, built the Walls of Thebes, by the irresistible Powers of Harmony: Be this true or fabulous; how many Iron Gates have we not seen open, to the persuasive Charities of this tuneful Society! how many gloomy Cells vacated by their Charms! ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... the skill of an Orpheus to soften the brute; With the fire of Prometheus to kindle mankind; Even Tyranny, listening, sate melted or mute, And Corruption shrunk scorched from the glance ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... most distinguished Grecian heroes came to Jason's aid, while Argus, the son of Phrixus, under the guidance of Athena, built the ship, inserting in the prow, for prophetic advice and furtherance, a piece of the famous talking oak of Dodona. Tiphys was the steersman, and Orpheus joined the crew to enliven the weariness of their sea-life ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... virtue, and be firm while he was forbearing. He loved virtue, but he did not accept the faith, and would only look upon our Blessed Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His statue with that of Abraham, Orpheus, and all whom he thought great teachers of mankind, in a private temple of his own, as if they were all on a level. He never came any nearer to the faith, and after thirteen years of good and firm government he was killed in a mutiny of the ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... himself steadfastly to understand and observe her laws, and her mighty energies hasten to wait upon him, as docile to his hand as the lion to the eye and voice of Lady Una. So that we may not unfairly apply to Prospero what Bacon so finely interprets of Orpheus, as "a wonderful and divine person skilled in all kinds of harmony, subduing and drawing all things after him by sweet and gentle methods ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... "Orpheus, son of Oeagrus and Calliope, having lost his wife, Eurydice, followed her to Hades, where, by the charm of his music, he received permission to conduct her back to earth, on condition that he should not look behind him during the journey. This condition he broke before Eurydice ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... really afforded men so little of it from first to last; the various consoling images it had thrown off, of succour, of regeneration, of escape from the grave—Hercules wrestling with Death for possession of Alcestis, Orpheus taming the wild beasts, the Shepherd with his sheep, the Shepherd carrying the sick lamb upon his shoulders. Yet these imageries after all, it must be confessed, formed but a slight contribution to the dominant effect of tranquil hope there—a kind of heroic cheerfulness ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... it Orpheus that his sire Was more than man; for though his songs restrain The wolves of Ismara, his love-lorn lyre Wails in the wildwood ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... 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
... ghosts, rejoice! For never has such soothing voice 35 Been to your shadowy world convey'd, Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade Heard the clear song of Orpheus deg. come deg.38 Through Hades, and the mournful gloom. Wordsworth has gone from us—and ye, 40 Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen—on this iron time Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears. He found us when the age had bound 45 Our souls in its benumbing ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... Titans. The origin and development of the various elements and powers of nature, Chaos, Eros, Uranus, Gaea, the Giants, Styx, Erebus, Hemera, AEther, &c, became, with the poets and philosophers after Homer, matters of speculation, of which the theogonies of Hesiod, Orpheus, Pherecydes, and others ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... Daphne's 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 ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... 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
... monument referring to Revolutionary times and personages; and with these were intermixed some ideal statues or groups,—a naked boy playing marbles, very beautiful; a girl with flowers; the cast of his Orpheus, of which I long ago saw the marble statue; Adam and Eve; Flora,—all with a good deal of merit, no doubt, but not a single one that justifies Crawford's reputation, or that satisfies me of his genius. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... BEFORE. There was not a soul but thought she had followed me to England; whereas she was only flying me. Vain hope!—a man of my resolution was not thus to be balked in pursuit. Had she fled to the antipodes, I would have been there: ay, and would have followed her as far as Orpheus ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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[3] to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... is ridiculous of me, but I have heard the signals and the music more than once and wondered. I did not know"—he smiled the smile of the flaneur—"I did not know it was, let me say, Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus with his lyre restored from among the constellations, and forgetting something of its old wonder. Madame, I hope Orpheus will not en-rheum himself ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... as one of the inventors of medicine, botany, and chirurgery, who, when eighty-eight years of age, formed the constellations for the use of the Argonauts; Linus, the preceptor of Hercules, who added a string to the lyre, and is said to be the inventor of rhythm and melody; Orpheus, who also extended the scale of the lyre, and was the inventor and propagator of many arts and doctrines among the Greeks; and Musus, the priest of Ceres, are all remembered as musicians, as well as poets, historians, and philosophers; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... reference is to Orpheus, (or' fuse,) an ancient poet and musician of Greece. The skill of Orpheus on the lyre, was fabled to have been such as to move the very trees and rocks, and to assemble the beasts around him as he touched ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... as well as make verses, do you not—you, whose music opened the gates even of Valmy? Indeed, I heard you just now. You are another Orpheus, and Valmy a very similar interior. You don't like me to say so? Very well, my lute is in your hand, and I am waiting. Did they teach you in Poitou ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the words, old man, that lead to tears! Thou hast an opposite to Orpheus' tongue, Who chained all things with his enchanting song, For thy mad noise will put the chains on thee. Enough! Once mastered thou shalt ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... my happy verse, The strong built trophies to her living fame, Ever henceforth my bosom be your hearse, Wherein the world shall now entomb her name. Enclose my music, you poor senseless walls, Sith she is deaf and will not hear my moans; Soften yourselves with every tear that falls, Whilst I like Orpheus sing to trees and stones, Which with my plaint seem yet with pity moved, Kinder than she whom ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... 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. of Greece, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... There is no more humorous reading, or more typical, than the ups and downs of office-seekers. Sometimes it is that of William the "Innocent," and often that of William the "Croker." The trials of "an unsuccessful," a prototype of "Orpheus C. Kerr," the nom de plume of that prince of writers, on ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... take it seriously, an outrage upon our understandings which common sense alone enables us to brook; granted that it carries with it a distinctly miraculous element which should vitiate the whole process ab initio, still, if we have faith we can so work these miracles as Orpheus-like to charm denizens of the unseen world into the seen again—provided we do not look back, and provided also we do not try to charm half a dozen Eurydices at a time. To think is to fuse and diffuse ideas, and ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Arion's music calm'd the floods And Orpheus ever drew the dancing woods! Why do not British trees and forest throng To hear the sweeter notes of Handel's song? This does the falsehood of the fable prove— Or seas and woods when Handel ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... expects those hymns for shrimp and prawn, Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, Who looked the gold sun in the eye While garden mists grew thin, And intoned ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... were ye playing on the steep, Where your old bards, the famous druids, lie, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream— Ay me! I fondly dream, Had ye been there; for what could that have done? What could the muse herself that Orpheus bore, The muse herself for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament, When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of him, straining their necks forward entranced. There, in the old quarry, the young sun "glintin" on his face, and resting on his pack, which had been his pillow, was our Wandering Willie, playing and singing like an angel—"an Orpheus; an Orpheus." What a picture! When reproved for wasting his health and time by the prosaic farmer, the poor fellow said: "Me and this quarry are lang acquant, and I've mair pleasure in pipin to thae daft cowts, than if the best ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... which, in the words of a classical contemporary, seemed as "bloody a rencontre as that between Duke Miltiades of Athens and King Darius upon the plains of Attics." The procession entered the Louvain gate, through a splendid triumphal arch, filled with a band of invisible musicians. "I believe that Orpheus had never played so melodiously on his harp," says the same authority, "nor Apollo on his lyre, nor Pan on his lute, as the city waits then performed." On entering the gates, Matthias was at once delivered over ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... realm of conjecture. Professor Kittredge has attempted to show that in Syr Orfeo, upon which the poet drew for portions of the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Irish story of Etain and Mider was fused with the medieval form of the classical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Direct influence is entirely wanting, and it is difficult to see how ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... 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 ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... human proofs of the dignity of learning, we find that among the heathen the inventors of new arts, such as Ceres, Bacchus, and Apollo, were consecrated among the gods themselves by apotheosis. The fable of Orpheus, wherein quarrelsome beasts stood sociably listening to the harp, aptly described the nature of men among whom peace is maintained so long as they give ear to precepts, laws, and religion. It has been said that ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... his toll, and then a pause for a minute, then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight minutes, and then another toll, and so on. Acteon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white campanero. He is never seen to feed with the other cotingas, nor is it known in what part of Guiana he ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... that instead of being obnoxious to the country boy it 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 which now seemed ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Strip what I write, or what Lucilius wrote, Of cadence and succession, time and note, Reverse the order, put those words behind That went before, no poetry you'll find: But break up this, "When Battle's brazen door Blood-boltered Discord from its fastenings tore," 'Tis Orpheus mangled by the Maenads: still The bard remains, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... 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 ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... waltzes; Judith insisted that Richard Strauss was incomparable; but Linda developed an overwhelming preference for Gluck. The older girl insisted that this was an affectation; for a while she tried to confuse Linda's knowledge; but finally, playing the airs of "Orpheus and Eurydice," she admitted that the latter ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Being, that distinguishes and elevates man, and lifts him to a degree of social morality to which the beast is powerless to attain. Hercules destroying the monsters and punishing brigands for the safety of Greece, Orpheus teaching the rough and wild Pelasgians,—neither of them putting a price upon their services,—there we see the noblest creations of poetry, the loftiest expression of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... resources on the side of my inclinations, I foolishly determined to consider music as my principal dependence; and ideas of harmony rising in my brain, I imagined, that if placed in a proper situation to profit by them, I should acquire celebrity, and presently become a modern Orpheus, whose mystic sounds would attract ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and Brett, Barker, and Hogsflesh, where be they? Brett, of all bowlers fleetest yet That drove the bails in disarray? And Small that would, like Orpheus, play Till wild bulls followed his minstrelsy? {2} Booker, and Quiddington, and May? Beneath the daisies, ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... many a courteous lord with him. The fair company gave ear to the Lay of Alys, sweetly sung by a minstrel from Ireland, to the music of his rote. When his story was ended, forthwith he commenced another, and related the Lay of Orpheus; none being so bold as to disturb the singer, or to let his mind wander from the song. Afterwards the knights spoke together amongst themselves. They told of adventures which in ancient days had chanced to many, and were ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... 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 of Mnemosyne wept sore for thee, and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... trouble of long cogitation, an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined. There was a gentleman of the court, celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity; my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six weeks after her confinement, she put this rock into motion,—they eloped. Poor gentleman! it must have been a severe trial of patience to a man never known before to transgress the very ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... observed, that, even by the suffrages of their own sex, those ladies are accounted wisest, who do not yet disdain to be taught; and, therefore, I shall offer a few hints for the completion of the bracelet, without any dread of the fate of Orpheus. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... 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 to ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... worth the giving my life to accomplish. That such a thing may be is possible. Surely the old myths were not absolute inventions; they must have had a basis somewhere in fact. May not the world-old story of Orpheus and Eurydice have been based on some deep-lying principle or power of human nature? There is not one of us but has wished at some time to bring back the dead. Ay, and who has not felt that in himself or herself was power in the deep love for our dead to make them quick again, did we ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... chaunter[obs3], chauntress[obs3], songstress; cantatrice[obs3]. choir, quire, chorister; chorus, chorus singer; liedertafel[Ger]. nightingale, philomel[obs3], thrush; siren; bulbul, mavis; Pierides; sacred nine; Orpheus, Apollo[obs3], the Muses Erato, Euterpe, Terpsichore; tuneful nine, tuneful quire. composer &c. 413. performance, execution, touch, expression, solmization[obs3]. V. play, pipe, strike up, sweep the chords, tweedle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Faubourg Saint-Honore and give him two or three thimblefuls of brandy to make him tipsy; otherwise he could not play. Then they would stand up together in front of the smart people sitting on the chairs, and one of the greatest geniuses of the time, the unrecognized Orpheus of Modern Music, would perform passages from his operas—pieces so remarkable that they would extract a few half-pence from Parisian supineness. When some dilettante of comic operas happened to be sitting there ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... much of Vaeinaemoeinen's playing and singing in the Kalevala, especially in Runo 46, where he charms all nature by his playing and singing, like Orpheus. In Runo 50 he is described as leaving Finland on account of his authority departing at the coming of Christ; though it is said by an old writer that the favourite deities of the Finns in his time were Vaeinaemoeinen and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Atramenti, was not begun until 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 ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... in the grasp of Robespierre, and by the prospect of advantage for religion from his recent policy. They loaded him with adulation, and said that when he marched in the procession, with his blue coat and nosegay, he reminded them of Orpheus. They even thought it desirable that he should live to clear off a few more of the most detestable men in France, the very men who were making advances to them. They believed that time was on their ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... having related the story of Orpheus, who, when he had recovered his wife from the dominions of death, lost her again by looking back upon her in the confines of light, concludes with a very elegant and forcible application. "Whoever you ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the cold 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 ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... young author of this mischief been the only sufferer from the sugary torrent; but, alas! nearly a dozen innocent victims were splashed and spattered by the disastrous accident,—among them four or five bacchantes, who were furious at seeing their toilets injured, and would fain have made an Orpheus of the clumsy infant. While he was being rescued with great difficulty from their clutches by the German governess, a voice was heard amid the hubbub,—that of a pretty little blonde, saying to a small Scottish youth with whom she had danced ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... the Uffizzi marbles. But who are the several heroes of the AEginetan pediment, and what was the subject of the Pheidian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three graceful figures of a basrelief which exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani, represent Orpheus, Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two sons? Was the winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus column meant for a genius of Death or a genius ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 670-703. We have already seen (above, vol. ii. p. 41, n.) that Cowper had read Emilius, and the mocking reference to the Deist as "an Orpheus and omnipotent in song," coincides with Rousseau's comparison of the Savoyard Vicar to "the divine Orpheus singing the first hymn" ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... and the stars sang, that was the day of musicians! But the triumph of Phoebus Apollo himself was not so wonderful as the triumph of a mortal man who lived on earth, though some say that he came of divine lineage. This was Orpheus, that best of harpers, who went with the Grecian heroes of the great ship Argo in search of the ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... imposition must be done, and must be done at a certain time, without appeal, and causa indicta. Mr Paton was as deaf as Pluto to all excuses, and as inexorable as Rhadamanthus in his retributive dispensations. Neither Orpheus nor Amphion would have moved him. Orpheus might have made all the desks and forms dance round as they listened to his song, but he could never have got Mr Paton to let off fifty lines; and Amphion would have ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... be beloved, and gave to the king, as it were by a miracle, two millions more of submissive and Christian subjects. These were the legislators of the barbarous hordes who inhabited the islands of this immense Archipelago, realizing, by their mild persuasion, the allegorical prodigies of Amphion and Orpheus. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... of our wandering artists, who, with flute, violin, harp, or brazen tube of various shape and designation, make the brick-walls of the busy city responsive with the echoes of harmony. Many a time and oft have we lingered entranced by the witchery of some street Orpheus, forgetful, not merely of all the troubles of existence, but of existence itself, until the strain had ceased, and silence aroused us to the matter-of-fact world of business. One blind fiddler, we know him well, with face upturned towards the sky, has stood a public benefactor ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... and joyless wines, And Luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow'rs attend, Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend; But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling'ring ...
— English Satires • Various
... classical work, the "Demonstratio Evangelica," he attempted to prove that the whole theology of the heathen nations was borrowed from Moses, whom he identified not only with ancient law-givers, like Zoroaster and Orpheus, but with gods and demi-gods, such as ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... would, or could, or should have sung, The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, Yet in these times he might have done much worse: His strain display'd some feeling—right or wrong; And feeling, in a poet, is the source Of others' feeling; but they are such liars, And take all ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... on the table; perhaps they have lain there undisturbed since the reader's dimming eyes grew nerveless. A parliamentary manual, a Thesaurus, and two books of humor, "Orpheus C. Kerr," and "Artemus Ward." These last were read by Mr. Lincoln in the pauses of his hard day's labor. Their tenure here bears out the popular verdict of his partiality for a good joke; and, through the window, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... squirrels on a tree And orioles flashed in and out . . . The yellow outline of Eurydice Waited for Orpheus ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... so many tears that they were swollen and unrecognisable. He shunned the occasions when there was an assembly, buried himself in his private apartments or in his groves, and resembled, in every trait, Orpheus weeping for his fair Eurydice, and refusing to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... sophistry his profession. A train of listeners followed him; the greater part of them appeared to be foreigners, whom Protagoras had brought with him out of the various cities visited by him in his journeys, he, like Orpheus, attracting them his voice, and they following (Compare Rep.). I should mention also that there were some Athenians in the company. Nothing delighted me more than the precision of their movements: they never got into his way at all; but ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... interest in the daughter of her former husband. She went still further, and wreaked her 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, and in devotion to his art, oblivion of his ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... soul she loved society, and all these 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 ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... with much delight, remembering the tale of how the music of Orpheus had charmed the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the Immortal labor. His yearnings, his sorrows were the links that united him to the unseen world; he went there, armed with his love, to seek his mother; realizing thus, with the sublime harmonies of ecstasy, the symbolic enterprise of Orpheus. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... dear Orpheus, surely Navarre may,' said Henry good-humouredly; 'only may the priest not be more adamantine than Minos. Where lies Nissard? On the Sable d'Olonne? Then you may go thither with safety while we lie here, and I shall wait for my sister, or for ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... number are probably classed with the arts and true opinions, because they proceed from hypotheses (compare Republic). (4) The sixth class, if a sixth class is to be added, is playfully set aside by a quotation from Orpheus: Plato means to say that a sixth class, if there be such a class, is not worth considering, because pleasure, having only gained the fifth place in the scale of goods, is ...
— Philebus • Plato
... Orpheus giebt schon besser Kauff,[3] 25 Hrt er dieses Mannes Seiten, Unser Maro horchet auff, Sagt: Was sol mir das bedeuten? Wird der Weisen Lieder-Ruhm ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... Expedition is told with many variations in the legends of the Greeks. Jason, a prince of Thessaly, with fifty companion heroes, among whom were Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus, the latter a musician of superhuman skill, the music of whose lyre moved brutes and stones, set sail in "a fifty-oared galley," called the Argo (hence the name Argonauts, given to the heroes), in search of a "golden ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... antidote to such representation might be found in the stories of Hector and Andromache, Siegfried and Brunnehilde, Dido and Aeneas, Orpheus and Eurydice, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... from the first 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 last act: ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... whether just or unjust, at a small charge; with magic arts and incantations binding the will of heaven, as they say, to do their work.... And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus, who were children of the Moon and the Muses—that is what they say—according to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals, but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... 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 ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... ode are from the fictitious theology of Orpheus and Museus to the elegance and grace of Anacreon, Horace, and Sappho. It is mainly Horace whom Ogilvie has in view as the exemplar of the lyric poet, though "a professed imitator both of Anacreon and Pindar" (p. xxx). We can distinguish, therefore, several different criteria which contribute ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... clamour subsided—The wise Dog again, Resumed his harangue, in a tedious strain;— Spoke of Theseus's hounds, of the true Spartan breed;— And the hounds of Actaeon, so famed for their speed— Of three-headed Cerberus, Guardian of Hell, Whom Orpheus subdued with his musical spell. How Hecuba changed, seeing dead Polydore, And became—Vide Ovid—(here he heard the Dogs snore) "Your patience my friends, I no longer will tire, But brief make excuses, at the earnest desire Of those friends ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... informs us, are sensible to the charms of music. This may serve as an instance:—An officer was confined in the Bastile; he begged the governor to permit him the use of his lute, to soften, by the harmonies of his instrument, the rigours of his prison. At the end of a few days, this modern Orpheus, playing on his lute, was greatly astonished to see frisking out of their holes great numbers of mice, and descending from their woven habitations crowds of spiders, who formed a circle about him, while he continued breathing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to charm wild beasts!" answered the doctor; "I have little faith in the enchantment of Orpheus; besides, bears and wolves wouldn't come up to us like ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... upon the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart: Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears 75 Moist it again; and frame some feeling line That may discover such integrity: For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews; Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans 80 Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands. After your dire-lamenting elegies, Visit ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... A confused notice in Suidas mentions three persons of the name: the first, the inventor of the alphabet; the second, the son of Pandion, "according to some" the first prose writer, a little later than Orpheus, author of a history of the Foundation of Miletus and of Ionia generally, in four books; the third, the son of Archelaus, of later date, author of a history of Attica in fourteen books, and of some poems of an erotic character. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... captive thing, is fettered with chains; for were his heroes to soar to the height the real hero would gain, their weapons would fall to the ground, and the drama itself become peace—the peace of enlightenment. It is only in the Passion of Christ, the Phaedo, Prometheus, the murder of Orpheus, the sacrifice of Antigone—it is only in these that we find the drama of the sage, the solitary drama of wisdom. But elsewhere it is rarely indeed that tragic poets will allow a sage to appear on the scene, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... complexity of moral 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
... those gates through which so long ago Orpheus descended to the realms below To seek his lost one? Little daughter, I Would find that path and pass that ford whereby The grim-faced boatman ferries pallid shades And drives them forth to joyless cypress glades. But do thou not desert me, lovely lute! Be thou ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... honourable mention of one who had fallen under his displeasure; and, to his lasting disgrace, he ordered Virgil to erase his work. The poet weakly consented, and filled up the gap by the story, beautiful, it is true, but singularly inappropriate, of Aristacus and Orpheus and Eurydice. This epic sketch, Alexandrine in form but abounding in touches of the richest native genius, [36] must have revealed to Rome something of the loftiness of which Virgil's muse was capable. With a felicity and exuberance scarcely inferior to Ovid, it united a power of awakening ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... notes, with many a winding bout Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out, 140 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that ty The hidden soul of harmony. That Orpheus self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear Such streins as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half regain'd Eurydice. 150 These delights, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... imposed a stupendous bridge of boats, for the purpose of transporting into Europe a hundred and seventy myriads of barbarians. A sea contracted within such narrow limits may seem but ill to deserve the singular epithet of broad, which Homer, as well as Orpheus, has frequently bestowed on the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness are of a relative nature: the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed along the Hellespont, who pursued the windings of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... extreme; even the tenants do not seem so satisfied as they ought to be. Not to have to pay any rent is very delightful, certainly, but they scarcely dare believe in such good fortune. Thus when Orpheus, trying to rescue Eurydice from "the infernal regions," interrupts with "his harmonious strains" the tortures of eternal punishment, Prometheus did not doubtless show as much delight as he ought to have done, on discovering that the beak of the vulture was no longer gnawing at his ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... their way, Proclaim him all the God of Day. Nay, learned sir, his dirty plight More fit beseems the God of Night. Besides, I cannot well divine How mud like this can ever shine.— Then look at that a little higher.— I see 'tis Orpheus, by his lyre. The beasts that listening stand around, Do well declare the force of sound: But why the fiction thus reverse, And make the power of song a curse? The ancient Orpheus soften'd rocks, Yours changes living things to blocks.— Well, this you'll sure acknowledge fine, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... States sloop of war "Frolic," named after the vessel taken by the "Wasp," was captured by the frigate "Orpheus," April ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... 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 ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... part of the back wall is represented, in the same precious stones, and in a graceful attitude, a European in a kind of Spanish costume, playing upon his guitar, and in the character of Orpheus charming the birds and beasts which he first taught the people of India so well to represent in this manner. This I have no doubt was intended by Austin de Bordeaux for himself. The man from Shiraz, Amanat Khan, who designed all ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... where in mankind is the ecstasy of light and dark together, the supreme transcendence of the afterglow, day hovering in the embrace of the coming night like two angels embracing in the heavens, like Eurydice in the arms of Orpheus, or ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... Piper of Hamelin, who could attract all living creatures by his music, is like Orpheus or Amphion, whose lyres had the same power; and Odin, as leader of the dead, is the counterpart of Mercury Psychopompus, both being personifications of the wind, on whose wings disembodied souls were thought to be wafted from ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 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 ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to 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 of artificial fire played about the house of Prometheus—a bright and transparent cloud, reaching ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... vermilion!" said Sir Patrick; "though I never thought of it before, I dare say she will suit me as well as another; but then you must persuade the ould Orpheus to draw out a few notes of rather a more magical description than those he is so fond of scraping ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... the North Wind; King Neptune and Winds and Waters; Echo, the Air Maiden; Iris, the Rainbow Queen; Tennyson's Lullaby; Orpheus, Myth of the South Wind; The Bag that was a Balloon; Hail, or the Bird with Arrow Feathers; Phaeton, Myth of the Sun; ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 37, July 22, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... heliacal rising of the dog-star. In the second and in the sixth year we find on the coins the remarkable word aion, the age or period, and an ibis with a glory of rays round its head, meant for the bird phoenix. In the seventh year we see Orpheus playing on his lyre while all the animals of the forest are listening, thus pointing out the return of the golden age. In the eighth year we have the head of Serapis circled by the seven planets, and the whole within the twelve signs of the zodiac; and on another ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Florence that have an ear for sweet sounds are all talking of; the poet whose name no man knows, whose rhymes are on all men's lips; the fellow that praises fair ladies as never fair ladies were praised before since Orpheus carolled ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and poets. Adopting the unprincipled methods of their persecutors, they expanded the original writings of such historians as Hecataeus, who had spoken in a commendatory way of the Jews. They even went so far as to insert long passages into the writings of the famous Greek poets, such as Orpheus, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Menander, so as to transform them into ardent champions of the persecuted race. The culmination of this illegitimate form of defence was to insert in the famous Sibylline Books (III) a long passage describing the glories of the Jewish race and voicing the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... Pelasgians is conjectured to have been from—(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from some (b) mariners—from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy," the "dark-skinned;" represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their "Divine Image." Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have been Turanians, Semites or Aryans. That they ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... 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 to vulgar, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... airs, Married to immortal verse; Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regain'd Eurydice. These delights if thou canst give, Mirth, with ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... cut, from the Catacomb of S. Domitilla, has in the centre the pagan god Orpheus playing his lyre, while in the alternate compartments of the border are the following Christian subjects: 1, David with the Sling; 2, Moses Striking the Rock; 3, Daniel in the Lion's Den; 4, The Raising of Lazarus. The other small divisions have pictures of sacrificial ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... 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 charm ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... he introduced airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those who listened. The names of his pieces will probably suggest their nature. I find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles: "The Feast of the Harpies," "The Witches at Benevento," "The Descent of Orpheus into Hades," "The Evil Eye," "The Eumenides," and many others that evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful and supernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy with passages of exquisite ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... still able to add something to his style, with the aid of such masters as Fleury. English critics, who expected The Triumph of Music to sustain the reputation won by Cimabue's Madonna, were disappointed—partly because Orpheus was represented as playing a violin, in place of the traditional lyre. To those who will examine and compare them more carefully, there is no such discrepancy. The Triumph of Music: Orpheus by the power of his Art redeems his wife from Hades, which is every ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... among Greek and other ancient writers have mentioned the scarabaeus, mostly in connection with Egypt. Orpheus, Theophrastus, Aristophanes, Pliny, Plutarch, AElian, Clement of Alexandria, Porphyry, Horapollon, Diogenes Laertius, who cites as works in which it was mentioned, the Natural Philosophy by Manetho (circa 286-247 B.C.,) ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... 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 ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... only instance in which ballads appear to have distilled the spirit and blended names and stories out of both Celtic and Teutonic legend. Thus Glasgerion, which in the best-known Scottish version has become Glenkindie, has been translated as Glas-keraint—Geraint, the Blue Bard—an Orpheus among the Brythons, whose chief legendary sites, according to Mr. Skene, Professor Rhys, and other authorities, are to be sought in Scotland and its borderlands. The fame of this harper, who, like Glenkindie, could 'wile the fish from the flood,' came down to the times of Chaucer and Gavin Douglas, ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... such a park near Laurentum, fifty jugera enclosed in a ring-fence, and full of wild beasts of all sorts and kinds. Varro tells us that the great orator would take his guests to a seat on an eminence in this park, and summon his "Orpheus" thither to sing and play: at the sound of the music a multitude of stags, boars, and other animals would make their appearance—having doubtless been trained to do so by expectation of food prepared for them.[393] Such was the taste of the great master of "Asiatic" eloquence. ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... Christ. The most remarkable example of this confusion in religion was given by Alexander Severus, a devout emperor, mild and conscientious: he had in his palace a chapel where he adored the benefactors of humanity—Abraham, Orpheus, Jesus, and Apollonius ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... history of exploration 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 the wisest of them all"; ...
— 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 |
