"Harpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with wandering about, and famished for want of food, he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet, and then, just as they were going to eat, he appeared visible before them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, and the feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amazement, this seeming harpy spoke to them, reminding them of their cruelty in driving Prospero from his dukedom, and leaving him and his infant daughter to perish in the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... culture, and Xanthus, their capital, as may be judged from the beauty of its ruins, managed to have a considerable portion in Greek art, though infusing it [273] with a certain Asiatic colour. The frugally designed frieze of the Harpy Tomb, in the lowest possible relief, might fairly be placed between the monuments of Assyria and those primitive Greek works among which it now actually stands. The stiffly ranged figures in any other than strictly archaic work would seem affected. But what an undercurrent ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... manuscript, I was caught by the name Charpillon, which every reader of the Memoirs will remember as the name of the harpy by whom Casanova suffered so much in London, in 1763-4. This manuscript begins by saying: 'I have been in London for six months and have been to see them (that is, the mother and daughter) in their own house,' where he finds nothing but 'swindlers, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wealth and gorgeousness of the torrid zone; now the ice-fields of the North rose into view; anon a pine-forest; then a wild seashore; but always the same three flying figures; always the horrible three-formed harpy pursuing the enchanter, and beside her the evil spirit with the dragonfly wings. At last this succession of images ceased, and I beheld a desolate region, in the midst of which sat the woman with the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... putting his hand into his side pocket and pulling out coppers. He drips coppers all day in an unending stream. You enter a French theatre. You buy a programme, fifty centimes, and ten more to the man who sells it. You hand your coat and cane to an aged harpy, who presides over what is called the vestiaire, pay her twenty-five centimes and give her ten. You are shown to your seat by another old fairy in dingy black (she has a French name, but I forget it) and give ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... experience, he believed, is what makes women old. As to the family, the suborder to which she belonged, he was at an utter loss to decide. For instance, she accepted her present situation with a sang-froid equaling that of a camp harpy, a few of whom Pierce had seen; then, too, she was, or had been, married to a no-account foreigner to whom she referred with a calloused and most unwifely flippancy; moreover, she bore herself with a freedom, a boldness, quite irreconcilable to the modesty of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... 'But he, following lightly on his feet, cast the first apple [1713]: and, swiftly as a Harpy, she turned back and snatched it. Then he cast the second to the ground with his hand. And now fair, swift-footed Atalanta had two apples and was near the goal; but Hippomenes cast the third apple to the ground, and therewith escaped death and black fate. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... modeled of the right length and right section, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened together. You know, children, I don't think much of my own drawing; but take my proud word for once, that when I go to the Zoological Gardens, and happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, and the Gray Harpy will sit, without screwing his head round, for thirty seconds,—I can do a better thing of him in that time than the three years' work of this industrious firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my object,—not myself; and during the three years, the firm's object, in every fiber of ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... when a gloomy band Of vile excisemen threatened all the land, Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe The cheerful bottle and the social pipe. O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl, Still unexcised, rejoice thy honest soul! May still the best in Christendom for this Cleave to thy stopper, and compleat ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... circumstances could do to push her down into the mire was done; yet she was not pushed down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in their natures an uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike Barbara Villiers or Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither a harpy ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... me," said Berry, "I know what's coming. I had it last night until I fell asleep. Then that harpy"—he nodded at Daphne—"dared to rouse me out of a most refreshing slumber to ask me whether I thought 'the Chinese did both sides at once or one after the other.' With my mind running on baths, I said they probably began on their ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... rabbits, and has been known to plant its claws in a young lamb with success. In this vicinity are also the Indian Pondicherry eagle, sacred to the Brahmins; the Egyptian booted eagle; the Brazilian eagle; the South American harpy eagle; the European Jean le Blanc eagle; the marine eagle of the Indian Archipelago; the South American crested goshawk; the varieties of the osprey; and the short-tailed falcon from the Cape of Good Hope. Next after the eagles, are ranged the Kites and Buzzards (18-24). These include ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... there in the organ loft, she would point her gold trumpet at him, and puff him out of existence! I laughed to myself over this conceit, which, at the time, I thought very amusing, and sat and chaffed myself and everything else, from the old harpy outside the railing, who had made me pay ten centimes for my chair, before she would let me in (she was more like a basilisk, I told myself, than was my organist with the anaemic complexion): from ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... land You must (like Oberon) be dwelling! Your notion's lovely, winning, grand, The fiscal cat most bravely belling; Guileless NATHANIEL, too, affects World-hardened hearts—almost to weeping, Volunteer taxes who expects To draw from Mammon's harpy keeping. Go, lure the tomtit from the twig, Go, coax the tiger from his quarry, The toper from his thirsty swig, The swindler from his schemings sorry: "Persuade" the Sweater to be just, The 'cute Monopolist ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and bony talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;—so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the blackness of the night miles on miles of landscape. That look of Mrs. Ellersly's—stern disapproval at her daughter, stern command that she be more civil, that she unbend—showed me the old woman's soul. And I say that no old harpy presiding over a dive is more full of the venom of the hideous calculations of the market for flesh and blood than is a woman whose life is wrapped up ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... on to describe her ecstasy, but Marie Louise broke in: "It's Fraeulein's work, is it? I might have known that! Oh, the fiend, the harpy!" ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... soar ye ne'er so high, I have the jesses that will pull you down; And AEque tandem shall that canker cry Unto the proudest peer of Britainy. Thou that compar'st him to a flying-fish, And threaten'st death whether he rise or fall, 'Tis not the hugest monster of the sea, Nor foulest harpy, that shall swallow him. Y. Mor. If in his absence thus he favours him, What will he do whenas he shall be present? Lan. That shall we see: look, where ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... the corner of her handkerchief, and took from it a broad shining louis d'or. She placed it in the hand of La Corriveau, whose long fingers clutched it like the talons of a harpy. Of all the evil passions of this woman, the greed for money was the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... woman! Whither should he take himself? In what furthest part of the Rocky Mountains should he spend the coming autumn? If neither Mr. nor Mrs. Green called upon him for an explanation, what possible right could this abominable old harpy have to prey upon him? Just at the end of a cotillon he had said one word! He knew men who had done ten times as much and had not been as severely handled. And he was sure that Jack De Baron had had something to do with it. Jack ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... consideration included a confiscation of the property, and a disfranchisement of the members of the East India Company; all the several articles of whose effects were transferred by violence to strangers. Imagination was at a loss to guess at the most insignificant trifle that had escaped the harpy jaws of a ravenous coalition. The power was pretended, indeed, to be given in trust for the benefit of the proprietors; but, in case of the grossest abuses of trust, to whom was the appeal? To the proprietors? No; to the majority of either house of parliament, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... follows—"Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made." Then, giving rest after labour, it "fetches dew from the still vext Bermoothes, and, with a charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves men asleep." Snatching away the feast of the cruel, it seems to them as a harpy; followed by the utterly vile, who cannot see it in any shape, but to whom it is the picture of nobody, it still gives shrill harmony to their false and mocking catch, "Thought is free;" but leads them into briers and foul ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... surroundings for with their heads hidden from view they felt a fanciful security from outward aggression. The rings of bony armor that covered their bodies was strong enough, it is true, to protect them from the talons of the harpy eagle and claws of the tiger cats; but when Suma dealt her crushing blow it proved at once the fallacy of taking too many things for granted. So the shattered casques and broken bones of many a luckless armadillo were strewn along the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... of Florence, Borgherini was absent, and the picture dealer, Giovanni Battista della Palla, who prowled like a harpy to carry off treasures for the King of France, made an effort to obtain these paintings by inducing the government to confiscate them and sell them to him. But Margherita was equal to the occasion, and meeting the despoiler at her door, she poured out such a torrent of indignation, exhortation, ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... been enough for several dates with Sylvia. Out of the office she wasn't quite the protective harpy about Paul Cleary that she had been in the office, although the thought was ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... persons just home from a vacation. "One has positively seen nothing, and has always been robbed; the landlady was a harpy, the bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was tough. The other has always found the coziest nooks, the cheapest houses, the best landladies, the finest views, and the ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... we have sown But the crop was not our own; We have reaped, but harpy hands Swept the harvest from our lands; We were perishing for food, When, lo! in pitying mood, Our kindly rulers gave The fat fluid of the slave, While our corn filled the manger Of the war-horse ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... 'Governor Tompkins' burned fourteen vessels successively in the British Channel. The 'Young Wasp,' of Philadelphia, cruised nearly six months about the coasts of England and Spain, and in the course of West India commerce. The 'Harpy,' of Baltimore, another large vessel of some 350 tons and fourteen guns, cruised nearly three months off the coast of Ireland, in the British Channel, and in the Bay of Biscay, and returned safely to Boston filled with plunder, including, as was said, upward of L100,000 ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... but one blacks, and were formerly slaves. They are very devoted and faithful, but are ill-qualified for their duties, having obtained all the learning they possess in the Sabbath school. They are all pious, and exert a harpy influence on the morals of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... great dishes! how I gloat Upon the sight!" exclaims some harpy-throat. Blow strongly, blow, good Auster, and ferment The glutton's dainties, and increase their scent! And yet, without such aid, they find the flesh Of boar and turbot nauseous, e'en though fresh, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... keel grates upon the shingly strand, their ears are saluted by a chorus of cries—the alarm signal of seabirds, startled by the intrusion; among them the scream of the harpy eagle, resembling the laugh ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... roll of baby-linen lay on the floor; beside it a pap-clogged spoon and an overturned tin pap-cup. Against the wall a Dutch clock was fixed out of level, and ticked wildly in longs and shorts, its entrails hanging down beneath its white face and wiry hands, like the faeces of a Harpy ('foedissima ventris proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper ora'). A baby was crying against every chair-leg, the whole family of six or seven being small enough to be covered by a washing-tub. Mrs. Higgins sat helpless, clothed in a dress ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... beings which play important roles and which bear evidence of archaic origins. There is, however, one fragment of a food bowl which is adorned with a pictograph so realistic and so true to modern legends of a harpy that I have not hesitated to affix to it the name current in modern Tusayan folklore. This fragment ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... administer at sick-bedsides with becoming steadiness, bid him write his brothers word that he was dead, and gently desired a woman who waited to leave him quite alone. No interested attendants watching for ill-deserved legacies, no harpy relatives clung round the couch of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... floor of flaky cloud, on which stand the hosts of heaven. Christ kneels upon the water, and does not sink; the figure of St. John is indistinct, but close beside his raised right arm there is a spectre in the black shade; the fiend, harpy-shaped, hardly seen, glares down upon Christ with eyes of fire, waiting his time. Beneath this figure there comes out of the mist a dark hand, the arm unseen, extended to a net in the river, the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... and auguries of prosperous flight, tell me now,—for the voice of revelation was all favourable to my course, and all divine influence counselled me to [364-396]seek Italy and explore remote lands; only Celaeno the Harpy prophesies of strange portents, a horror to tell, and cries out of wrath and bale and foul hunger,—what perils are the first to shun? or in what guidance may ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... rightful heir, now a beggar, in these domains, wrested from me by rapine and the harpy fangs of injustice misnamed law. Theophilus Ashton, from whom ye took your share of the inheritance when death dislodged it from his gripe, won it himself most foully from my ancestors;—and have I not ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... last, Find out the still, the rural cell, Where sage Retirement loves to dwell! There let me taste the homefelt bliss. Of innocence and inward peace; Untainted by the guilty bribe; Uncursed amid the harpy tribe; No orphan's cry to wound my ear; My honour and my conscience clear; Thus may I calmly meet my end, Thus to the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... winged. So HESIOD drew The legendary Harpy crew, The "Spoilers" of old fable; Maidens, yet monsters, woman-faced, With iron hearts that had disgraced The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... beginning of the XIX Century the Villa Mattei was the property of Godoy. King Charles IV and his wife were in Rome, living in the Barberini Palace, and they spent their days in the seclusion of the Villa Mattei; and while the favourite and the Queen, who had now become a harpy, walked in those poetical avenues, bordered with box and laurel, the good Bourbon, now an old man, walked behind them, his forehead ornamented like a faun's, enchanted to watch them; I don't know whether ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Squire blundering about like a walrus in a horse-pond, and fancying everything is being conducted for his sole advantage, and that all the world revolves round Honham Castle. And there at the end of the chain is this female harpy, Edith Jones, otherwise d'Aubigne, alias the Tiger, gnawing at my vitals and holding my fortunes ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... child of Envy and of Love! That turnest into pain thy father's joys, To evil Argus-eyed, but blind as mole to good. Minister of torment! Jealousy! Fetid harpy! Tisiphone infernal! Who steals and poisons others' good, Under thy cruel breath does languish The sweetest flower of all my hopes. Proud of thyself, unlovely one, Bird of sorrow and harbinger of ill, The heart thou visitest by ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... himself. There ought to be an end to this kind of thing now. He has got out of this mess, but every time it becomes worse and worse, and he'll be taken in horribly by some harpy if we don't get him to marry decently. I fancy he was very nearly going in this last affair." Sir George, in this matter, did not quite agree with his wife. It was in his opinion right to avoid Miss Trefoil, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... swell'st the victor's train, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee,) Alike from priestcraft's harpy minions, And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, The guide of homeless winds, and ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... man to cram and stuff. She sent her priests in wooden shoes From haughty Gaul to make ragouts; Instead of wholesome bread and cheese, To dress their soups and fricassees; And, for our home-bred British cheer, Botargo, catsup, and caviare. This bloated harpy, sprung from hell, Confined thee, goddess, to a cell: Sprung from her womb that impious line, Contemners of thy rites divine. First, lolling Sloth, in woollen cap, Taking her after-dinner nap: Pale ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... comely Countenance (as they told me), indeed, but with just two Guineas in my pouch for all my Fortune. Many a Lord Mayor of London has begun the World, 'tis said, with a yet more slender Provision (I wonder what Harpy Hopwood had to begin with?) and Eighteenpence would seem to be the average of Capital Stock for an Adventurer that is to heap up Riches. Still I seemed to have made my Start in Life's Voyage a great many times, and to have been very ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in that peculiarly distressing state of mind in which one oppressing idea displaces or colours every other, absorbing, intermingling with, empoisoning, and, like the filth of the harpy, turning every thing into disgust—when a certain incubus rides upon the brain, as the Old Man of the Mountain did upon the shoulders of Sinbad, burdening, irritating, and rendering existence a misery—when, looking around, you see but one ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... are surprised to encounter strange monsters, and to be enveloped in dense mists, through which they hear the flapping of bat-like wings and catch glimpses of harpy-like creatures. Knowing monsters and mists are mere delusions, Sir Guyon pays little heed to them, and the palmer soon disperses them by a touch from his magic staff. Still bearing the steel net and iron chains, this faithful henchman follows Sir Guyon into the enchanted bower of Acrasia, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... far better had we never met. For this love of ours has proven a tyrannous and evil lord. I have had everything, and upon each feast of will and sense the world afforded me this love has swept down, like a harpy—was it not a harpy you called the bird in that old poem of yours?—to rob me of delight. And you have had nothing, for he has pilfered you of life, giving only dreams in exchange, my poor Antoine, and he has ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... widow in friendly terms,—declaring that she was simply mistaken in her ideas as to the duration of her interest in the Scotch property, and mistaken again about the diamonds;—whereas in truth he regarded her as a dishonest, lying, evil-minded harpy. Had Lord Fawn consulted him simply as a client, and not have come to him an engaged lover, he would have expressed his opinion quite frankly; but it is not the business of a lawyer to tell his client evil things of the lady whom that client is engaged to marry. In regard to the property he spoke ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Jacques Coeur was poured into the laps of Charles and his harpy courtiers, and the victim was consigned to oblivion. Of all he had saved and supported, one man alone was grateful—Jean du Village, his clerk, devoted himself to his master's interests, and his life, and part of his property ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... confound him, the confounder of us all; Pelt him, pummel him, and maul him; rummage, ransack, overhaul him; Overbear him and outbawl him; bear him down, and bring him under. Bellow, like a burst of thunder, robber! harpy! sink of plunder! Rogue and villain! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, I repeat! Oftener than I can repeat it has the rogue and villain cheated. Close around him, left and right; spit upon him, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies,—rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy: You have no ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... was crowded with episodes that Medenham might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a middle-aged harpy like Mrs. Devar. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... past, Yet let my setting sun at last Find out the still, the rural cell, Where sage Retirement loves to dwell! There let me taste the homefelt bliss Of innocence and inward peace; Untainted by the guilty bribe, Uncursed amid the harpy tribe; No orphan cry to wound my ear, My honor and my conscience clear; Thus may I calmly meet my end, Thus to the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... had my choice of being any of the fabulous creatures in the mythology book," said Hinpoha musingly, "I think I'd choose to be a harpy." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... find her he flew into a terrible rage, and hastened home to consult his books, by which means he discovered that it was his son who had deprived him of this precious treasure. Immediately he took the shape of a harpy, and, filled with rage, was determined to devour his son, and even the Princess too, if only he could ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... you old harpy!" I exclaimed, being now in a sort of rage, and quite familiar with him. "Where is the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... gain of unutterable longing. Who were these gods who heard not the cry of the weak and were ever on the side of the strong? Were they only in those hands of power that flung their levin from the Palatine? Could he, who had learned to love innocence and purity, love also the foul harpy which Rome had become? It seemed to him difficult to reconcile the love of Arria and the love of Rome. Was the time not, indeed, overdue when the wicked should tremble and the proud should bow themselves, according to that ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... 'carpe diem,' Juan, 'carpe, carpe!' To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. 'Life 's a poor player,'—then 'play out the play, Ye villains!' above all keep a sharp eye Much less on what you do than what you say: Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... rid of the notes they scattered; The great house is down at last; The image of gold is shattered, And never can be recast. The bankrupts show leaden features, And weary, distracted looks, While harpy-eyed, wolf-souled creatures Pry through their dishonored books. On, and on, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Tarvrille to the table generally. "Go on! It's not a general conflagration, and the fire brigade won't be five minutes. Don't see that it's our affair. The stuff's insured. They say old Lady Paskershortly was dreadful. Like a harpy. The Dowager Empress had shown her some little things of hers. Pet things—hidden away. Susan went straight for them—used to take an umbrella ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the Bride to come; and mother thinks the Bride don't want to come. So why should they ask her to come? And why should she come? I wouldn't," Edith said; "but I hope she will, for I love her! And oh, I hope she'll bring her harp! I've never seen a harpy. But people are funny," Edith summed it up; "inviting people and not wanting 'em; and visiting 'em and not wanting to. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... indorse what is said of those harpy-defilers of knowledge known as juvenile books. A limited use of the works of Abbott, Edgeworth, Sedgwick, and a very few others may certainly be permitted. But the common practice of removing every occasion for effort from the path ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Behold him stand With lion-hide on loins, and club in hand! Forceful and formidable to all foes, But fatal most especially to those Of Hydra presence and Stymphalian beak, Whose quarry is unseasoned youth, who seek By subtle snares the Infant's steps to trip, And catch the Minor in their harpy grip. To his Twelve Labours, against monsters grim, Who might have lived in safety but for him, To snare, to slay, to humbug, and to cozen, Herschelles, just to make a baker's dozen, Adds a Thirteenth! A wily, wicked wight, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... as good I hold, Except you eat the feathers green and gold. Of carps and mullets why prefer the great (Though cut in pieces ere my lord can eat), Yet for small turbots such esteem profess? Because God made these large, the other less. Oldfield with more than harpy throat endued, Cries "Send me, gods! a whole hog barbecued! Oh, b—— it, south-winds! till a stench exhale Rank as the ripeness of a rabbit's tail. By what criterion do ye eat, d'ye think, If this is prized for sweetness, that for stink?" ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... voice, recall? 30 Recall the Muses too Driv'n from their antient seats In Albion, and well-nigh from Albion's shore, And with keen Phoebean shafts Piercing th'unseemly birds, Whose talons menace us Shall drive the harpy ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... identity; helpless, unprepared, and all too ignorant of the world from which such as she should for ever be shielded and protected, she had left the only spot on earth she knew as home, the only place where she could claim a friend, and fared out into the unknown! It was as if some evil harpy of the air had swooped down and borne her into the pathless sky, as though the earth or the waters had closed over her and left no trace. The simple and the sincere, those most direct and frank, ofttimes are ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... she rifled foot-stools and hymn-books and cushions, like a bee among flowers, whilst the organ echoed away. This continued for some weeks. Then the charwoman worked herself up into a frenzy of rage, to dare to attack Brangwen, and one day descended on him like a harpy. He wilted away, and wanted to break ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... "That harpy hopes to fleece us," said Dalrymple, slipping his arm through mine and drawing me towards the roulette table. "She has just told De Simoncourt to take us in hand. I always suspected ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... strength; coercion &c 744; strong hand, tight hand. hard lines, hard measure; tender mercies [Iron.]; sharp practice; pipe-clay, officialism. tyrant, disciplinarian, precisian^, martinet, stickler, bashaw^, despot, hard master, Draco, oppressor, inquisitor, extortioner, harpy, vulture; accipitres^, birds of prey, raptorials^, raptors^. V. be severe &c adj.. assume, usurp, arrogate, take liberties; domineer, bully &c 885; tyrannize, inflict, wreak, stretch a point, put on the screw; be hard upon; bear a heavy hand on, lay a heavy hand on; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... an East India ship, and a brig, of the same nation: likewise two other French ships with slaves from the coast of Mozambique bound to the West Indies: a Dutch packet from Europe, after a four months passage: and the Harpy, a South Sea Whaler with 500 barrels of spermaceti, and 400 of seal and other oils. There is a standing order from the Dutch East India Company that no person who takes a passage from Batavia for Europe in any of their ships shall ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Sicily. Then they sailed past the tall rock of Acragas and palm-loving Selinus, and so came to the western corner, where the harbor of Drepanun gave them shelter. Here a sorrow overtook AEneas, that neither the harpy nor the seer had foretold. Anchises, weary with wandering and sick of long-deferred hope, fell ill and died. Sadly AEneas sailed from hence without his trusted friend and counselor, and steered his course ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... young fellow is a prime sailor, as you know, and would make fine stuff for Nelson. Therefore we must do one thing of two—let Carroway catch him, and get the money to pay for all the breeches and the petticoats we saw; or if we catch him ourselves, say nothing, but draft him right off to the Harpy. You understand me. It is below us to get blood-money upon the man. We are ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... pursued thee many a weary hour; But thou nor swell'st the victor's pomp, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power! Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, (Nor prayer nor boastful name delays thee) From Superstition's harpy minions And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions, The guide of homeless winds ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... clouded sky In flocks the birds of omen fly; And oft the wandering harpy, Care, Must thy delicious viands share: But all the soul's interior light, All that is soothing, sweet, and bright, All fragrance, softness, colour, glow, To thee, as ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... rather the mortal steed which was yoked with these immortal twain, the brood of Zephyr and the Harpy Podarga; only we can hardly say of the poet what ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the unsightly Harpy, and the heroes drew together, made fearful by these awful shapes. All drew back except Zetes and Calais, the sons of the North Wind. They laid their hands upon their swords. The wings on their shoulders spread out and the wings at ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... directions, to report the proceedings of the squadron named in the margin—[the Elephant, Defiance, Monarch, Bellona, Edgar, Russell, Ganges, Glatton, Isis, Agamemnon, Polyphemus, and Ardent, ships of the line; the Amazon, Desiree, Blanche, and Alcmene, frigates; the Dart, Arrow, Cruiser, and Harpy, sloops; the Zephyr, and Otter, fire-ships; the Discovery, Sulphur, Hecla, Explosion, Zebra, Terror, and Volcano, bombs; with eight gun-brigs]—which you did me the honour to place under my command, I beg leave to inform you that, having by the assistance of that able officer Captain ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... the lines of her face took place. She became sinister, mocking, and pitiless. An exultant cruelty croaked in her voice. Minute, repulsive remodellings of her neck and cheeks changed her to a harpy, and seeing these evidences of her great genius Douglass grew bitterly resentful, and when she laughed, with the action of a vulture thrusting her head forward from the shoulders, he sickened and turned away. It was marvellous work, but how desecrating to her glorious womanhood. Coming ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... formerly returned with so much ardour, in a letter which she received privately, but returned by her father's footman. Contempt has driven out my love, and I am content to have purchased, by the loss of fortune, an escape from a harpy, who has joined the artifices of age to the allurements of youth. I am now going to pursue my former projects with a legacy which my uncle bequeathed me, and if I succeed, shall expect to hear of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... mind thought herself secure, O'ercast with dim and darksome coverture. And now she lets him whisper in her ear, Flatter, entreat, promise, protest and swear; Yet ever, as he greedily assayed To touch those dainties, she the harpy played, And every limb did, as a soldier stout, Defend the fort, and keep the foeman out. For though the rising ivory mount he scaled, Which is with azure circling lines empaled, Much like a globe (a globe may I term this, By which love sails to regions full of bliss) Yet there with ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... Albion was happy in Athena's tears? Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung, Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears; The Ocean Queen, the free Britannia, bears The last poor plunder from a bleeding land: Yes, she, whose generous aid her name endears, Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand, Which envious Eld forbore, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... delightful and sympathetic. Perhaps if you had looked like a bear and behaved like a harpy, who knows what I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... with debt, never knew what it was to have a crown piece of ready money. At cards she had to borrow first of one admirer and then of another. She had been able to get plenty of credit for gowns and trinketry from a harpy class of West End tradespeople, who speculated in Lady Judith's beauty as they might have done in some hazardous but hopeful stock; counting it almost a certainty that she would make a splendid match and recoup ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the living began to well up within him ... for Hilmer in the relentless grip of the harpy who would tear at his content with her scrawny fingers ... for Mrs. Hilmer, condemned to feed to the end upon the bitter fruits of hatred ... for his wife, drifting to a pallid fate made up of petty adjustments and compromises. Yes ... he found himself pitying Helen Starratt ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... town. Much excitement is caused by the expectation of Rotherwood's visit, and it is even said that he is to be met here by the great White himself, whom I have always regarded as a sort of mythical personage, not to say a harpy, always snatching away every promising family of Jane's to the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... keep hard in chase The harpy, hoodock, purse-proud race, Wha count on poortith as disgrace; Their tuneless hearts, May fireside discords jar a base To a' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... did mean, even when we first approached his cell, that something was going on in him—a revolution, a coup d'etat, so to speak, of the spirit. For a Prince in Rags, but not in Debts and Dishonour, will throttle the Harpy which has hitherto ruled and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... adrift in an open boat, with his infant daughter and his books for company, are wrecked through his art upon the island of which he has become the master. Ariel, the spirit who serves Prospero, a mysterious, ever changing form, now fire, now a Nymph, now an invisible musician, now a Harpy, striking guilt into the conscience (and yet apparently not interested in either vice or virtue, but {206} longing only for free idleness), guides all to Prospero's cave, and receives freedom for his toil. His ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Bertrade, she could barricade herself within and thus delay, at least, her impending fate in the hope that succor might come from some source. But her most subtle wiles proved ineffectual in ridding her, even for a moment, of her harpy jailer; and now that the final summons had come, she was beside herself for a lack of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... creator, was the daughter of a storekeeper in a small town in Indiana who ran away from home and went to Chicago to learn the millinery business, he, wielding a ruthless but gifted blue pencil, would speedily transform her into the ebon-hearted heiress of a Klondyke millionaire, an angel without but a harpy within, and after opening up Reel One with scenes in a Yukon dance hall speedily would move all the important characters to New York, where the plot thickened so fast that only a succession of fade-outs and fade-ins, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... distinguished from other shrubs, the roots of which wanted the property of sweetness so necessary to give point to the device. Unnatural or chimerical figures could not be admitted, excepting those to which tradition or classical authors had given fixed forms and attributes—as the mermaid, harpy, phoenix; consequently, a device representing a winged tortoise, the motto, Amor addidit (Love has added them), was improper. Qualities ascribed to animate or inanimate bodies by the ancients, were considered legitimate, though known by the moderns to be fictitious. Thus the dolphin, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... of the ranks of men, and whom he held trustiest in battle to abide his call. And for him Automedon led beneath the yoke the swift horses, Xanthos and Balios, that fly as swift as the winds, the horses that the harpy Podarge bare to the West Wind, as she grazed on the meadow by the stream of Okeanos. And in the side-traces he put the goodly Pedasos, that Achilles carried away, when he took the city of Eetion; and being but a mortal steed, he ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... "carpe diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!" To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devour'd by the same harpy. "Life's a poor player,"—then ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... then quite unused to the species, had to stand and receive a flood of the most fulsome flattery, delivered in a strident voice, and to bear the critical and prolonged stare of the spectacled eyes. Nor would the harpy easily release her prey. She kept him much against his will, and I saw him looking wistfully ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... arrival he began to complain that he felt worse. It was then that he became the ranch's incubus, its harpy, its Old Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous kobold or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing. The keynote of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a gehenna against his will; that he was dying of neglect and ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Anchises, but a Harpy who delivered this prophecy. See Book VIII. stanza xxix. This, and other slight inconsistencies in the Aeneid are undoubtedly due to the fact that Virgil died before he ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... penniless, unmarried woman, railed at, taunted, sneered at, forced to be part of humiliating tricks played to enable them to get into debt and then to avoid paying what they owed. Had she not seen one horrible old woman of their own rank who was an example of what poverty might bring one to, an old harpy who tried to queen it over her landlady in an actual back street, and was by turns fawned upon and disgustingly "your ladyshiped" or outrageously insulted by ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... freedom and beauty in these statues, as also in the lions which support them, recalling the early French and German manner. In addition, one finds the usual Lombard grotesques—two sea-monsters, biting each other; harpy-birds; a dragon with a twisted tail; little men grinning and squatting in adaptation to coigns and angles of the windows. The toothed and chevron patterns of the north are quaintly blent with rude acanthus scrolls and classical egg-mouldings. Over ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to gain his ends, For want of foes to rob, made free with friends,[2] And, deepening still by amiable gradations, When foes were stript of all, then fleeced relations![3] Most mild and saintly Prussia—steeped to the ears In persecuted Poland's blood and tears, And now, with all her harpy wings outspread O'er severed Saxony's devoted head! Pure Austria too—whose history naught repeats But broken leagues and subsidized defeats; Whose faith, as Prince, extinguisht Venice shows, Whose ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... wins the realm of air and might have been An eagle with a soul; you make him harpy, More murderous than dragons of the ooze. I tell you, we outsiders see the game, We Jews, who bidden rise beyond the code Of eye for eye, must rub both eyes to see Not e'en eye-justice done in Christendom, Whose cannon thunder 'gainst both God ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... one grievance—a publisher by the name of Hotten, a sort of literary harpy, of which there were a great number in those days of defective copyright, not merely content with pilfering his early work, had reprinted, under the name of Mark Twain, the work of a mixed assortment of other humorists, an offensive volume bearing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... female face, with the bodies and claws of birds, calling them Harop, or winged destroyers. This solution of the fable corresponds with the opinion of Le Clerc, who takes the harpies to have been a swarm of locusts, the word Arbi, whence Harpy is formed, signifying, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... diem," Juan, "carpe, carpe!"[608] To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, and devoured by the same harpy. "Life's a poor player,"[609]—then "play out the play,[610] Ye villains!" and above all keep a sharp eye Much less on what you do than what you say: Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... kindly humdrum life from which he should never have strayed. Never again, he vowed, never again. Rather would he spend the rest of his days in hydropathics than come within the pale of such horrible adventures. Romance, forsooth! This was not the mild goddess he had sought, but an awful harpy who battened on the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... as the associate of this old harpy who sat leering at him, hands on his knees, and already swelling with a sense of proprietorship, he almost forgot his personal wrongs in the hot flush of his indignation on behalf ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day |
