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AEolian   Listen
adjective
AEolian  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to AEolia or AEolis, in Asia Minor, colonized by the Greeks, or to its inhabitants; aeolic; as, the AEolian dialect.
2.
Pertaining to AEolus, the mythic god of the winds; aerial. "Viewless forms the aeolian organ play."
3.
Relating to or caused by wind; as, aeolian erosion.
AEolian attachment, a contrivance often attached to a pianoforte, which prolongs the vibrations, increases the volume of sound, etc., by forcing a stream of air upon the strings.
AEolian harp, AEolian lyre, a musical instrument consisting of a box, on or in which are stretched strings, on which the wind acts to produce the notes; usually placed at an open window.
AEolian mode (Mus.), one of the ancient Greek and early ecclesiastical modes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"AEolian" Quotes from Famous Books



... are hung two little AEolian harps, which at the least ruffle of the breeze running through their blades of grass, emit a gentle tinkling sound, like the harmonious murmur of a brook; outside, to the very furthest limits of the distance, the cicalas continue their great and everlasting concert; ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... thankful for the blessings of good health and strong nerves, but I sometimes wish I could cry more easily. I should not like to be like poor Mrs. Rampant, whose head or back is always aching, and whose nerves make me think of the strings of an AEolian harp, on which Mr. Rampant, like rude Boreas, is perpetually playing with the tones of his voice, the creak of his boots, and the bang of his doors. But her tears do relieve, if they exhaust her, and back-ache cannot be as bad as heart-ache—hot, dry heart-ache, or cold, hard heart-ache. ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... to make an immense Aeolian harp by stretching wires from tower to tower of his castle. When he finished the harp it was silent; but when the breezes began to blow he heard faint strains like the murmuring of distant music. At last a tempest arose and swept with fury over his castle, and then rich and grand music came ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... spluttering, and did not answer. Then Torrini lay silent a long while, apparently listening to the hum of the telegraph wires attached to one end of the roof. At odd intervals the freshening breeze swept these wires, and awoke a low aeolian murmur. The moon rose in the mean time, and painted on the uncarpeted floor the shape of the cherry bough that stretched across the window. It was two o'clock; Richard sat with his head bent forward, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... misfortunes. St. John is inclined to explain the mysterious phenomenon by a probably peculiar form of the mouth of the vessel, in passing over which the air-draught is thrown into resonant verberations, like the Aeolian harp. The vessel is generally enveloped in gold brocade, and is uncovered only when it is to be consulted; and hence, of course, it happens that it speaks only on solemn occasions. St. John states further that the Bisayans used formerly to bring presents to the sultan; ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... not bound to give our lives for the cause of truth and beauty?" asked Amelia, in that low voice which sounds like an Aeolian harp. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... plunging through a hailstorm. There was a mighty buzzing in his ears, and every stay and wire on the big craft sang its own song, as the wind rushed through them as if the Golden Eagle had been converted into a monster Aeolian harp. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... floor, murmuring like a dying zephyr among the chords of an AEolian harp, 'Farewell, mother dear. Farewell, my lover true. I cannot meet you to-mortarn at the FALLEN TREE' (here Hemstead glanced at Lottie, whose face was instantly suffused); and she bowed her bead upon her brother's shoulder, and ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... could be rendered only by sylphs moving to "soft recorders" in the humour of wildness, languor, bewitching caprices, giving a new sense to melody. How I wish you had been with me to hear him! It was the most AEolian thing ever caught from a night-breeze by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was the answer that came sad, sweet, and low as the wail of an Aeolian harp swept by the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... and banishing those bewitching glances that sometimes lightened on his face, made him cautious, and restrained his eagerness; while excessive consciousness kept her cheeks dyed with blushes, and her nerves vibrating sweet, wild music, like the strings of some aeolian harp when swept by the swift ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... as I pleased, only just throwing in argument enough to keep me well going. He would have been the last man on earth to throw down such a marvellous fairy castle, goblin-built and elfin-tenanted, from whose windows rang AEolian harps, and which was lit by night with undying Rosicrucian lamps, to erect on its ruin a plain brick, Old School Presbyterian slated chapel. I was far more amusing as I was, and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... achievement show him in the Capitol, a general adorned with the Delian laurel, on account of his having quashed the proud threats of kings: but such waters as flow through the fertile Tiber, and the dense leaves of the groves, shall make him distinguished by the Aeolian verse. The sons of Rome, the queen of cities, deign to rank me among the amiable band of poets; and now I am less carped at by the tooth of envy. O muse, regulating the harmony of the gilded shell! O thou, who canst immediately bestow, if thou please, the notes of the swan upon the mute ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... Oceanides, Jove's warders of the island trees, The tufted pillars tall and stout, And all the bosky camp about, Maintain our lives in sounding shades Of old aeolian colonnades; But post about the neighbor land In woof of insubstantial wear: Our ways are on the water sand, Our joy is in the desert air. The very best of our delights Are by the moon of summer nights. Darkness to us is holiday: ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... as I have seen an orang-utan weave in a few minutes in the swaying crotch of a tree. At any rate, the hammock is not dependent upon four walls, upon rooms and houses, and it partakes altogether of the wilderness. Its movement is aeolian—yielding to every breath of air. It has even its own weird harmony—for I have often heard a low, whistling hum as the air rushed through the cordage mesh. In a sudden tropical gale every taut strand of my hamaca has seemed a separate, melodious, orchestral note, while I ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... that neither sheep-dogs or cattle which have fallen in, or been drawn within reach of its power, have ever been seen again. When the tempest rages here, the wind, rushing into the holes and fissures, produces a kind of moaning AEolian noise, and this with the cries of the owls and the rooks when the mistral blows and they have the rheumatism, produces, and no wonder, a superstitious feeling of awe in the mind ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... when it was under repair; and, because he did not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and break his neck, it was reported that he had been shown over the building by an angel. He had also made a harp that was said to play of itself—which it very likely did, as AEolian Harps, which are played by the wind, and are understood now, always do. For these wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies, who were jealous of his favour with the late King Athelstan, as a magician; and he ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... chiming over the serried rooftops, and under the solitary moon. It was not like the artful song of man, for it was defective in the methodical harmony of tune; it was not like the song of the wild-bird, for it had no monotony in its sweetness: it was wandering and various as the sounds from an AEolian harp. But it affected the senses to a powerful degree, as in remote lands and in vast solitudes I have since found the note of the mocking-bird, suddenly heard, affects the listener half with delight, half with awe, as if some demon creature of the desert were mimicking ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... asked—Is there not in the regions of Poetry an aeolian harp, found in the cave of AEolus, on which the winds of heaven played many a celestial symphony, without the skill or touch of human hand? Grant all that the Poetic Muse assumes, and then we ask—Who made the harp? And whence directed came the musing sylvan Zephyrus and his choir? Came they ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers that round them blow Drink life and fragrance ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... long. A bigger kind there is of them called with us hobgoblins, and Robin Goodfellows, that would in those superstitious times grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work. They would mend old irons in those Aeolian isles of Lipari, in former ages, and have been often seen and heard. [1199]Tholosanus calls them trullos and Getulos, and saith, that in his days they were common in many places of France. Dithmarus Bleskenius, in his description of Iceland, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... tom-toms, tambourines, united with the deep voices of the singers, formed a strange harmony. Added to this were the strains of an aerial orchestra, composed of a dozen kites, which, fastened by strings to their centers, resounded in the breeze like AEolian harps. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... caught this vast AEolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fullness of life, the pomps and glory of the heavens outside, and, turning, when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... were sitting had gone to sleep on its quiet bosom. The air was full of the chirrup of innumerable insects; two frogs, creeping up from the water, adding a sonorous bass, and the long, slender pine-leaves chimed into this evening lullaby with their sad, sweet, AEolian notes. ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... faculties, as the Hindus play upon the vina, that strange, sensitive, oriental harp with a dozen strings, of which the musician touches but one. The other strings through sympathetic vibration furnish an undertone almost like an aeolian harmony. You must listen in a still place to catch the mystic accompaniment. So it was in Bedient's mind. Beth Truba played upon the single string, and the others glorified her with their shadings. And the plaint ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... will on the mighty organ, his audience, of which human souls are the keys. He must have knowledge, wit, wisdom, fancy, imagination, courage, nobleness, sincerity, grace, a heart of fire. He must himself respond to every emotion as an AEolian harp to the breeze. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... bridge. The shock of each separate pulsation, in its complex form, is received by the bridge, and communicated to such undamped strings as may, by their lengths, be sensitive to them; thus producing the AEolian tone commonly known as sympathetic, an eminently attractive charm in the tone ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... that he is a careless versifier and rhymer, we must still recognize that there is something in his verse which belongs, indissolubly, sacredly, to his thought. Who would decant the wine of his poetry from its quaint and antique-looking lagena?—Read his poem to the Aeolian harp ("The Harp") ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... well-skilled man, having yourself been able to attain to that high and abstruse study". Then follow a string of reflections on the soothing power of music, a description of the five "modes" [97] (Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian, Ionian, and Lydian) and of the diapason; instances of the power of music drawn from the Scriptures and from heathen mythology, a discussion on the harmony of the spheres, and a doubt whether the enjoyment of this "astral music" be rightly placed among the delights of heaven. At length the marvellous ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... elegists. Music developed in connection with lyric poetry. The Greeks at first used the four-stringed lyre. Terpander made an epoch (660 B.C.) by adding three strings. Olympus and Thaletas made further improvements. Greek lyric poetry flourished, especially from 670 to 440 B.C. The Aeolian lyrists of Lesbos founded a school of their own. The two great representatives are Alcaus, who sang of war and of love, and Sappho, who sang of love. "Probably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... imitated at first the older Roman satirists; here by Maecenas' advice he copied from Greek models, from Alcaeus and Sappho, claiming ever afterwards with pride that he was the first amongst Roman poets to wed Aeolian lays to notes of Italy (Od. III, xxx, 13). He spent seven years in composing the first three Books of the Odes, which appeared in a single volume about B.C. 23. More than any of his poems they ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught; Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound The hundred wakeful ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various

... the non so che, distils itself through Clorinda's voice into Tancredi's being. Afterwards it thrills there like moaning winds in an Aeolian lyre, reducing him to despair upon his bed of sickness, and reasserting its lyrical charm in the vision which he has of Clorinda among the trees of the enchanted forest. He stands before the cypress where the soul of his dead lady seems to his misguided fancy ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... plants; that at times the foam reveals their shapely forms, whiter than the foam itself, and that when night descends completely they begin their divine sports, playing mysterious airs like those of AEolian harps. But let us turn to our young people and listen to the end of their conversation. Ibarra ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... that the old astrologers thought that men's whole lives were influenced by the stars. Every vegetable life, from the meanest flower that blows to the largest tree, has its whole existence shaped by the sun. Doubtless man's body was meant to be an Aeolian (how the vowels and liquids flow into the very name!) harp of a thousand strings over which a thousand delicate influences might breathe. Soul was meant to be sensitive to the influences of the Spirit. This capability has been somewhat lost in our deterioration. ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... threshold of their burrows. And then the fine sand, soft to the touch, easily tunnelled, easily excavated or built into tiny huts which we thatch with moss and surmount with the end of a reed for a chimney; and the delicious meal of apples, and the sound of the aeolian harps which softly whisper among the boughs of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... tears fell upon her face, and awakened her failing senses. She spoke again, and the melody of her voice was like the faint notes of an AEolian harp. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... peaceful, for the repetitions of the worshippers in the open air are not disturbing; and from far overhead comes a little tinkling from the light AEolian bells moved by the breeze high up on the Hte. If you look up you see the Hte against the blue. It is an elaborate piece of metal work on the tip top of the pagoda; you cannot make out its details but you can see it is made of diminishing hoops with little pendant bells hung from these, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... heavily during the lulls as the seas rose, and when the squalls came, flattening them to a level, she would lie down like a tired animal, while the aeolian song aloft prevented orders being heard unless shouted near by. Captain Swarth went below and smashed the glass of an aneroid barometer (newly invented and lately acquired from an outward-bound Englishman), in which he had not much confidence, but which might tell him roughly of the air-density. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... of a busy day, the watchful care of a guardian angel throws some flowers of joy in the thorny way of man, he gathers them up with thanks: a cheerful thrill quivers through his heart, like the melody of an Aeolian harp; but the earnest duties of life soon claim his attention and his cares. The melodious thrill dies away, and on he must go; on he goes, joyless, cheerless, and cold, every fibre of his heart bent to the earnest duties ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... AEolian, was by settlement a Boeotian. He lived and farmed his own land on the slopes of Helikon, under the governance of the lords of Thespiae, whoever they were. I have been to Thespiae, and certify that there are no lords there now. I saw little but ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... the shadows deepen; and I see My dead dreams in a phantom band draw near. And dim AEolian strains fall on my ear, like some wild mystic requiem's ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... frogs; the two choruses were attuned into two great accords: one thundered fortissimo, the other gently warbled; one seemed to complain, the other only sighed; thus the two ponds conversed together across the fields, like two AEolian harps that ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... reason. But Christian art, because of the faith upon which it is built, suffers under no such drawbacks, for that faith is as personal and vigorous now as ever it was at its origin—every motion and principle of our being moves to it like a singing harmony;—it is the breath which brings out of us, aeolian-harp-like, our most penetrating and heavenly music—the river of the water of life, which searches all our dry parts and nourishes them, causing them to spring up and bear abundantly the happy seed which shall enrich and make fat the earth to ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... the air was filled with a singular harmony. It seemed to be a concert of Aeolian harps. In the air were a hundred kites of different forms, made of sheets of palm-leaf, and having at their upper end a sort of bow of light wood with a thin slip of bamboo beneath. In the breath of the wind these slips, with all their notes varied like those of a harmonicon, ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... The sound of music came to her ears, and she stopped to listen. The music was faint and sweet, with the sighful quality of an AEolian harp. Now it seemed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... in my unfriended, yet resolute career. Is it to consider the matter too curiously, to conceive that the laws of nature affect the mind? or that the spirit of man resembles an instrument, after all—an Aeolian harp, which owes all its pulses to the gusts that pass across its strings, and in which it simply depends upon the stronger or the feebler breeze, whether it shall smile with joyous and triumphant chords, or sink into throbs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study, which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an AEolian harp, and an old sofa, half-bed, etc.; and all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren. What a night! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons (good people ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... charming poetess must be like an AEolian harp, that every sighing wind awakes to music, but to grave and chastened melody, the full charm of which can only be truly appreciated by those who have sorrowed, and who look beyond this earth for repose. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... Sappho, whose heart and mind were both of the finest. Her life is involved in obscurity, but it is probable that she was a strong advocate of woman's rights in her own land; and as she found men falling in love with other men, so she took special pains to win the affections of the young AEolian ladies, to train them in all the accomplishments suited to woman's nature, and to initiate them into the art of poetry,—that art without which, she says, a woman's memory would be for ever forgotten, and she would go to the house of Hades, to dwell with the shadowy dead, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... radiant heat of Branchspell he found to affect every part of his body with unequal intensities. His ears awakened; the atmosphere was full of murmurs, the sands hummed, even the sun's rays had a sound of their own—a kind of faint Aeolian harp. Subtle, puzzling perfumes assailed his nostrils. His palate lingered over the memory of the gnawl water. All the pores of his skin were tickled and soothed by hitherto unperceived currents of air. His poigns ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... quickly. They are not in the least slow to comprehend with the heart; in fact, it often seems as though that organ were constructed with as much delicacy as is the Aeolian harp, which quivers and utters sounds when the air just stirs about it. The most of you are very emotional; and that quality of emotion, when it is pure, is your blessing, and a part of the womanhood in you: it is the necessary expression of your soul. I know the word emotional ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... below! How she caught the contagion I cannot tell.... Indeed I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an AEolian harp; and especially why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... ages. According to Penck the "Older Loess" was formed in the period of warm and dry climate that intervened between the third and fourth glacial episodes, while the "Younger Loess" is post-glacial. Both divisions are for the most part aeolian deposits, formed by the redistribution of fine glacial mud originally laid down in water and carried by the wind often to considerable heights. A part, however, of the so-called Loess of northern France, e.g. in the valley of the Somme, is rain-wash, similar in character ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... hour Drunk in the largeness of the utterance Of Love; but how should earthly measure mete The heavenly unmeasured or unlimited Love, Which scarce can tune his high majestic sense Unto the thunder-song that wheels the spheres; Scarce living in the Aeolian harmony, And flowing odour of the spacious air; Scarce housed in the circle of this earth: Be cabin'd up in words and syllables, Which waste with the breath that made 'em. Sooner earth Might go round heaven, and the straight girth of Time ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... lent wonderful flexibility to the organ and has allowed of instruments being introduced in buildings where it would otherwise have been impossible to locate an organ. Almost all leading builders have done work of this kind, but the Aeolian Company has been quickest to seize the advantage of division in adapting the pipe organ for use in ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... Whilst all other deities in Greece are more or less local and tribal gods, Zeus was known in every village and to every clan. "He is at home on Ida,[176] on Olympus, at Dodona.[177] While Poseidon drew to himself the AEolian family, Apollo the Dorian, Athene the Ionian, there was one powerful God for all the sons of Hellen—Dorians, AEolians, Ionians, Achaeans, viz., the Panhellenic Zeus."[178] Zeus was the name invoked in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... hears a military band play on the field at night, and he has kings and queens and famous chivalry palpably before him. He hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the Notch Mountains, for example, which converts the mountains into an Aeolian harp,—and this supernatural tiralira restores to him the Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, and all divine hunters and huntresses. Can a musical note be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! To the poor young poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society; ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the winds, which he keeps imprisoned in a cave in the AEolian Islands, and lets free as he wishes ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... able to do this by demanding, acquiring, and employing as the servants of the people, men who are experts in human nature, masters in not treating men alike—Crowbars, lemonade-straws, chisels, and marshmallows, powerhouses and AEolian harps by the people, for the people, and of the people, will be rated for what they are and will be used ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... this is the oldest of the three forms (being derived from the old Greek Aeolian scale), but because of the absence of a "leading tone" it is suitable for the simplest one-part music only, and is therefore ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... Awake, Aeolian lyre! awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings; From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take; The laughing flowers, that round them blow, Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... Quintilian gives elaborate rules for making a proper use of it. At this time originality consisted in introducing some new form of Greek song. Virgil made Theocritus and Hesiod speak in Latin. Horace had brought over the old Aeolian bards; Propertius, too, must make his boast of having enticed ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... suffering. If you feel, you are at the mercy of all things. Every wind that blows uses you as an AEolian harp." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... I am fit for rivalship with your clocks, papa having given me an Aeolian harp for the purpose. Do you know the music of an Aeolian harp, and that nothing below the spherical harmonies is so sweet and soft and mournfully wild? The amusing part of it is (after the poetical) that Flushie is jealous and thinks it is alive, and takes it as very ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... of "Pon-Pon," who had posed for the "Phillida," and a little shiver ran over her nerves like a sudden wind playing on the chords of an AEolian harp. Gently she withdrew herself from ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... passage "Ionic"), though even into this the late Ionian bearbeiter (a spectral figure), has introduced his Ionian notions. But the Twenty-fourth Book itself is late and Ionian, Helbig says, not genuine early Aeolian epic poetry. [Footnote: Helbig, Zu den Homerischen Bestattungsgebrauchen. Aus den Sitzungsberichten der philos. philol. und histor. Classe der Kgl. bayer. Academie der Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft. ii. pp. 199-299.] The burial of Patroclus, then, save for Ionian late interpolations, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... it would have been literature. He was urged to write these things. But Leamy had not readily the will or the power to compel his spirit when the favoured moment had passed. He was mostly passive, like an AEolian harp, under the visitation. Ill-health, too, extreme and distressing, burdened him. He bore his trials cheerfully, and strove manfully to write, especially in his later days when the power and the will seemed to come to him just as illness tightened its hold. But he was sustained by ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... Plumper! Ah, Adolphus, there is not a fibre in our bodies or souls—and why should not souls have fibres?—that does not vibrate in harmony! We are like AEolian harps that make the same music to the same airs of the affections, while electrically our brains respond sympathetically to the same wave-current of idea. Emotionally, intellectually, we are one. Why should I allow an absurd custom of conventional ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... tube, no Attic shell, No lyre Aeolian I awake; 'Tis liberty's bold note I swell, Thy harp, Columbia, let me take! See gathering thousands, while I sing, A broken chain exulting bring, And dash it in a tyrant's face, And dare him to his very beard, And tell him he no ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... deep bow-window where Laura used to sit and watch us, sometimes, when we put off in the boat. Her aeolian harp was in the casement, breaking its heart in music. A delicate handkerchief was lodged between the cushions of the window-seat,—the very handkerchief she used to wave, in summer days long gone. The ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... flames that white and scarlet glow, All joys and passions that Mankind may know By you were nobly felt and nobly sung. Because Mankind's heart every day is wrung By Fate's wild hands that twist and tear it so, Therefore you echoed Man's undying woe, A harp Aeolian ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... are strange harps in a fir grove, and who shall say what fingers sweep them? Mighty and sonorous was the music above our heads as the winds of the night stirred the great boughs tossing athwart the starlit sky. Perhaps it was that aeolian harmony which recalled to the Story Girl a legend of ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... eld, In that bright vision I beheld Greater and deeper mysteries. I saw, with its celestial keys, Its chords of air, its frets of fire, The Samian's great Aeolian lyre, Rising through all its sevenfold bars, From earth unto the fixed stars. And through the dewy atmosphere, Not only could I see, but hear, Its wondrous and harmonious strings, In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere, From Dian's circle light and near, Onward to vaster ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... this haughty brave, Who whipt the winds, and made the sea his slave? (Though Neptune took unkindly to be bound And Eurus never such hard usage found In his AEolian prison under ground).' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... as the marble statue of Psyche that adorned the recess in which she stood. Then the lips moved and the words "Put your trust in God," came forth soft and bewitching as the strain of an aeolian harp, and leaving, as it were, a holy hushed spell, subduing the soul of ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... could not dance with her he retired to the loggia, and thought about her. She was not only the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, but the most adorably responsive. He likened her poetically to an AEolian harp ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... on Argos' utmost bound, (Argos the fair, for warlike steeds renown'd,) Aeolian Sisyphus, with wisdom bless'd, In ancient time the happy wall possess'd, Then call'd Ephyre: Glaucus was his son; Great Glaucus, father of Bellerophon, Who o'er the sons of men in beauty shined, Loved for that valour which ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... problem. "It doesn't follow," he said, "that because a man is a bad character he's not to be trusted in matters where character—as we commonly use the word—doesn't come in. These sensitives, these—would you mind if I were to call myself an Aeolian Harp?—these Aeolian Harps; they can't help responding to the winds of heaven. Well,—listen to them. Don't follow them, don't worship them, don't even honour them, but listen to them. Don't let anyone stop them from saying and painting and writing and singing what they want to. Freedom, canvas ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... fingers on the aeolian wire, As a core of fire Is laid upon the blast To kindle and glow and fill the purple ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... one morning due east from here about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman's tavern in Hampstead toward Haverhill, when I reached the railroad in Plaistow, I heard at some distance a faint music in the air like an Aeolian harp, which I immediately suspected to proceed from the cord of the telegraph vibrating in the just awakening morning wind, and applying my ear to one of the posts I was convinced that it was so. It was the telegraph harp singing its message through the country, its message sent not ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... lifeless, and ghostly. Thus splendid was the scene, and yet it gave you a prevailing and unconquerable impression of gloom and lifelessness. In the House of Commons, the member addressing the assembly is like the wind which passes through an AEolian harp. You cannot utter a word which does not produce its full and immediate response. You say a thing which has the remotest approach to an absurdity in it, and the whole House laughs consumedly and ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... when we feel it, and more miserable still when it is gone!" He strung a number of copper wires at different degrees of tension between two trees, and listened to the wind as it ranged up and down on this improvised AEolian harp. It gradually ran into a regular refrain, which became more and more like words. Ayrault was puzzled, and then amazed. There could be no doubt about it. "You should be happy," it kept repeating—"you should be happy," in soft musical tones. "I ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... the proposition: thirdly, that he announced himself as a hoveller.) 'All of a sudden Mr. Clocker and me stood rooted to the spot, by hearing a sound come through the stillness, right over the sea, LIKE A GREAT SORROWFUL FLUTE OR AEOLIAN HARP. We didn't in the least know what it was, and judge of our surprise when we saw the hovellers, to a man, leap into the boats and tear about to hoist sail and get off, as if they had every one of 'em gone, in a moment, raving mad! But THEY knew it ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... night long in the North region, where the light does not leave the sky, I looked out at the strange beauty of the white night and felt all the desolateness of the world, all the exiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. The Aeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music, and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me and played unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lost family, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... classic Greece, Beaming love and breathing peace, With her pure, sweet smiling face, The glory of the Aeolian race, Beauteous Sappho, violet-crowned, Shedding joy and rapture round: In her hand a harp she bears, Parent of celestial airs, Love leaps trembling from each wire, Every chord a string of fire:— How the poet's heart doth beat, How his lips the notes repeat, Till in rapture ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... would reach the heart. He added presently a great Aeolian orchestrelle, with a variety of music for his different moods. Sometimes he played it himself, though oftener his secretary played to him. He went out little that winter—seeing only a few old and intimate friends. His writing, ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... of Asia Minor was settled, mainly, by Aeolian emigrants from Boeotia. The neighboring island of Lesbos became the home and centre of AEolian culture ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... harsh jargon from a thousand lungs. **** Dire was the din—as when in caverns pent, Hoarse Boreas storms and Eurus works for vent, The aeolian brethren heave the labouring earth, And roar with ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... bedlam there occasionally emerged a splinter of tune, like a plank thrown up by the sea. Stannum could discern no melody, though he grasped its beginnings; double flutes gave him the modes, Dorian, Phrygian, AEolian, Lydian and Ionian; after Sappho and her Mixolydian mode, he longed for ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... For three days I never even saw my pretty passenger, though I heard her low, sweet voice occasionally when I laid out something for her to eat in the adjoining cabin. She sang, too, some little sad songs with a voice which vibrated upon my ear like the notes of an Aeolian harp sighing in the night wind. Dios! how I regretted then and afterward that I did not have a ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was AEolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... halberds, pitch their tents and take them down again; the watch-fires blazed, and the soldiers sang and slept under the sheltering branches of the tree. It beheld lovers meet in the soft moonlight, and cut their names—that first letter—upon its olive-green bark. Guitars and AEolian harps were again—but there were very many years between them—hung up on the boughs of the tree by gay travelling swains, and again their sweet sounds broke on the stillness around. The wood-pigeons cooed, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... interests affected all the great poets of this age. Although Keats was cut off while he was making an Aeolian response to the beauty of the world, yet even he, in his brief life, heard something of the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... seen four years sooner. But how much his soul had since been changed! Instead of the tumult and falsehood which rent his heart and filled it with darkness, the serene light of Truth, and deeper than the sea's peace, the great appeasement of Grace. Augustin dreamed. Far off the AEolian isles were gloomed in the impending shadows, the smoky crater of Stromboli was no more than a black point circled by the double blue of waves and sky. So the remembrance of his passions, of all that ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... of summer, and produce a soft, delicious twilight. My favorite resting place is upon a mossy bank, near which flows a crystal brook whose dancing waters murmur with a melody almost as sweet as the low breathings of an Aeolian harp.—Here, with a volume of philosophic Cowper or fascinating Scott, I sometimes linger until twilight begins to deepen into darkness, and then return to meet with smiles the playful chidings of my husband, for my protracted absence—an offence ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... imagine some music-loving sylph attempting to guide the wind among the strings of an Aeolian harp, every now and then for a moment succeeding, and then again for a while the wind having its own way, he will gain, I think, something like a dream-notion of the man's playing. Mary tried hard to get hold of some clew to the combinations and sequences, but the motive of them she could not find. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... that stain the spokes with mire; Thick folds of ebon night on loch and law; The moan of breezes wailing through the shaw Like the weird plaints of an AEolian lyre: And intermittently through the clouds, the fire Of lightning streaks the night with glitter and awe, And lapses swiftly in the dismal maw Of darkness, 'mid the din of thunder dire. But to relieve the sad night's sullenness, And clear the heavens for the timid moon, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... of her pocket a bunch of little keys and unlocked an ingeniously made cupboard with a curved, sloping lid. When the lid was raised the cupboard emitted a plaintive note which made the lieutenant think of an AEolian harp. Susanna picked out another key and ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... satisfying his hunger and again quenching his thirst at the stream, he sat down to rest; a stupor came over him, as the gentle breeze fanned the mountain-side and whispered among the lofty branches of the forest trees, like the AEolian harp of ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... say with me that a day of such hazy, dreamy enjoyment is worth a great deal. We cannot tell why it is, or what it is, but one feels like an AEolian breathed on and touched by ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of bustle and weariness that followed Hugh's death less sad, perhaps, for the weariness and the bustle. There was little time for musing no time for lingering regrets. If thought and feeling played their Aeolian measures on Fleda's harpstrings, they were listened to only by snatches, and she rarely sat down and cried ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... swains and lead their steps divergent at an angle of something like thirty degrees?' I have reason to believe that some such tender complaints have made themselves audible, and it is painful to me to suffer the imputation of lack of feeling, even from an Aeolian harp. Yet I have suffered it, awaiting the moment to ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the air. The telegraph wires that ran along on high poles past the house of Tom Swift sung a song like that of an Aeolian harp. The very ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton

... Satyrane. Under this disguise he looked upon himself as the spokesman of the Idea of the Omnipresence of the Deity. In order to appreciate the following beautiful letter, one of the finest Coleridge ever wrote, the reader should peruse Coleridge's "Aeolian Harp", "Lines written on leaving a Place of Retirement", "The Lime-Tree Bower", and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". Wordsworth's sonnet, "It is a beauteous evening", and Coleridge's own "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni", also belong to the same ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... Ponting always manages to work in detail concerning the manners and customs of the peoples in the countries of his travels; on Friday he told us of Chinese farms and industries, of hawking and other sports, most curious of all, of the pretty amusement of flying pigeons with aeolian whistling pipes attached ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... for hours chatting, telling stories, singing in a monotonous tone, or blowing this flute. I have often listened with real pleasure to the simple music of this rude instrument; its low and sweet tones are singularly Aeolian, as are the airs usually played, which fall by octaves: it seems to harmonize with the solitude of their primaeval forests, and he must have a dull ear who cannot draw from it the indication of a contented mind, whether he may relish its soft musical notes or not. Though always equipped ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... the longing for the spiritual life, or the beauties of the world without their doors, or the pleasure of association with old and trusted friends. I read some scrolls the other day, and it was as though "aeolian harps had caught some strayed wind from an unknown world and brought its messages to me." It is only by the men of other days that poetry is appreciated, who take the time to look around them, to whom the quiet life, the ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... lyral chords of each rising thought Are swept by a hand unseen; And I glide, and glide, With my music bride, Where few spiritless souls have been; And I soar afar on wings of sound, With my fair AEolian Queen. ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... John Kemble. Farther, Master Betty's acting was a singular phenomenon, but it was also as beautiful as it was singular. I saw him in the part of Douglas, and he seemed almost like 'some gay creature of the element,' moving about gracefully, with all the flexibility of youth, and murmuring AEolian sounds with plaintive tenderness. I shall never forget the way in which he repeated the line in which young Norval says, speaking of the fate ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... for a time regarded as a poetic fiction, is now believed by many scholars to be an actual historical event which took place about the time of the AEolian migration. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... an occult workshop, of good or bad wood, skilfully or unskilfully made, of this shape or the other; every thing in his life, no matter what we call it, plays upon him, and the instrument sounds for good or evil, as it is well or ill made. You are an AEolian harp—the sound is delightful, whatever breath of fate may touch it; I am a weather-cock—I turn whichever way the wind blows, and try to point right, but at the same time I creak, so that it hurts my own ears and those of other people. I am content if now and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was the work of O'Connell, who was described during many years as the one obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death was made the subject of no little congratulation, as though Irish discontent had perished with its organ. It was as if, the AEolian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the folly of such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a little more than seventy years have passed since the Union, but famine ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... laid on the heart-strings is followed by a strong stroke on conscience. The heart vibrates most readily in answer to gentle touches: the conscience, in answer to heavier, as the breath that wakes the chords of an Aeolian harp would pass silent through the brass of a trumpet. 'Wherefore art thou come?'—if to be taken as a question at all, which, as I have said, seems most natural, is either, 'What hast thou come to do?'—or, 'Why hast thou come to do it?' Perhaps it maybe fairly taken as including both. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... it will," Verrian said, but a glance at the gray sky did not confirm him in his prophetic venture. The snow was sodden under foot; a breath from the south stirred the pines to an Aeolian response and moved the stiff, dry leaves of the scrub-oaks. A sapsucker was marking an accurate circle of dots round the throat of a tall young maple, and enjoying his work in a low, guttural soliloquy, seemingly, yet, dismayingly, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... been one of the highways, and of spectacular display. That of 1917 was of the byways, of quiet, intensive work reaching every group of citizens. The campaign was launched at a meeting in Aeolian Hall, March 29, where the addresses of Mrs. Catt and Miss Hay aroused true campaign fervor, the former saying: "Some foreign countries have given the franchise to women for their war work; we ask it that our women may feel they have been recognized as assets of the nation ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... of low sweet music, as if the south wind were murmuring through the strings of many Aeolian harps. And chiming in with the music came the far-off roar of the ocean. Then a flood of sunshine fell over the earth, and the roses burst into bloom, so did the eglantine, that had been hiding away till ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... his courtship had never grown tired of hearing her mother sing. The tears ran in streams down Krespel's cheeks; even Angela he had never heard sing like that. Antonia's voice was of a very remarkable and altogether peculiar timbre, at one time it was like the sighing of an AEolian harp, at another like the warbled gush of the nightingale. It seemed as if there was not room for such notes in the human breast. Antonia, blushing with joy and happiness, sang on and on—all her most beautiful songs, B—— playing between whiles as only enthusiasm that is intoxicated ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... no noise here; just the sweet music of falling water, and the aeolian lullaby made by the breeze ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... 300,000 were thus employed. As they never feed after sunset, it is necessary, when journeying, to allow them to graze for several hours during the day. They utter a peculiar low sound, which at a distance resembles, when the herd is large, the tone of numerous Aeolian harps. On seeing any strange object which excites their fears, they immediately scatter in every direction, and are with difficulty reunited. The Indians treat them kindly, ornamenting their ears ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... such a freight of imperishable literature, revealing a learning positively prodigious, a style that flows with a sonorous majesty and crashes with a vitriolic and destroying power, a lavish richness in figurative language, a beauty of Aeolian harps, of sapphire seas, of the flushed and ardent splendor ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... AEolian island of Lesbos was the hearth and home of the earlier lyric poets. Among the earliest of the Lesbian singers was the poetess Sappho, whom the Greeks exalted to a place next to Homer. Plato calls her the Tenth Muse. Although ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... had advanced to their "great system" of the double octave. Through all which changes there of course arose a greater heterogeneity of melody. Simultaneously there came into use the different modes—Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian, AEolian, and Lydian—answering to our keys; and of these there were ultimately fifteen. As yet, however, there was but little heterogeneity in the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... through despair, echoed in its every line, and love, unending love, hovered over the glorious notes—nay, possessed them like a spirit, and made them his. Up! up! rang her wild sweet voice, thrilling his nerves till they answered to the music as an Aeolian harp answers to the winds. On went the song with a divine sweep, like the sweep of rushing pinions; higher, yet higher it soared, lifting up the listener's heart far above the world on the trembling wings of sound—ay, even higher, till the music hung at heaven's gate, and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard



Words linked to "AEolian" :   people, Eolian, Greek, Hellene, Aeolus



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