"Helicon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the art in Grecian mythology are the Muses. These were not always nine in number. Originally, at Mount Helicon, in B[oe]otia, three were worshipped,—Melete (meditation), Mneme (memory), and Aoide (song). Three Muses were also recognized at Delphi and Sicyon. Four are mentioned as daughters of Jupiter and Plusia, while ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... 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 the rich stream of Music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, Through verdant vales, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... visions. He told his story well and with detail, combining the recollections of the scholar with the impressions of an artist. The pediment of the Parthenon, the oleanders of the Ilissus, the stream "that runs in rain-time," the naked peak of Parnassus, the green slopes of Helicon, the blue gulf of Argus, the pine forest beside Alpheus, where the ancients worshipped "Death the Gentle"—all of them passed in ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... while I was looking that way from a rising ground, lo! I saw a city, and on one side of it two small hills; that which was nearer to the city being lower than the other. "That city," said he, "is called Athens, the lower hill Parnassus, and the higher Helicon. They are so called, because in the city and around it dwell the wise men who formerly lived in Greece, as Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristippus, Xenophon, with their disciples and scholars." On my asking him concerning Plato and Aristotle, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... he piped to the flocks of Admetus. I put myself in a regimen of admiring a fine woman; and in proportion to the adorability of her charms, in proportion you are delighted with my verses. The lightning of her eye is the godhead of Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile the divinity of Helicon!" ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... caeteros loqui, nisi mota mens. Then it riseth higher, as by a divine instinct, when it contemns common and known conceptions. It utters somewhat above a mortal mouth. Then it gets aloft and flies away with his rider, whither before it was doubtful to ascend. This the poets understood by their Helicon, Pegasus, or Parnassus; and this ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... chides his prolonged existence. But her own hand, conscious to itself of the ruthless deed, exacted punishment of the mother, the sword piercing her entrails.[75] If a God had given me a mouth sounding with a hundred tongues, and an enlarged genius, and the whole of Helicon {besides}; {still} I could not enumerate the mournful expressions of his unhappy sisters. Regardless of shame, they beat their livid bosoms, and while the body {still} exists, they embrace it, and embrace it ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... places, now up in high heaven, now down almost to the earth. The moon saw with astonishment her brother's chariot running beneath her own. The clouds began to smoke. The forest-clad mountains burned,—Athos and Taurus and Tmolus and Oete; Ida, once celebrated for fountains; the Muses' mountain Helicon, and Haemus; Aetna, with fires within and without, and Parnassus, with his two peaks, and Rhodope, forced at last to part with his snowy crown. Her cold climate was no protection to Scythia; Caucasus burned, and Ossa and Pindus, and, greater than both, Olympus,—the Alps ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the dolphin in the wood and the boar in the waters, the sesquipedalian word, the mountains in travail and the birth of the ridiculous mouse, the plunge in medias res, the praiser of the good old times, the exclusion of sane poets from Helicon, the counsellor who himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for genius, the nodding ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... was a splendid bridle, this man had, made of gold; and I forgot—the mountain the horse trotted round on was called Helicon. And the man mounted him, and went up, up, till they were nothing ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... compare With one who quaffs at Helicon; Whose playfellows the Muses are, And whom Apollo calleth son? Who, had he lived in olden day, With some fierce host had strode along; Like Taillefer to Hasting's fray, Cheering the Normans ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... labor is begun Ye Muses, open all your Helicon. Sing you the chiefs that sway'd th' Ausonian land, Their arms, and armies under their command; What warriors in our ancient clime were bred; What soldiers follow'd, and what heroes led. For well you know, and ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... be, just as he was in the early time, nothing more nor less than a "seer." He is always the man who is willing to take the age he lives in on trust, as the very best that ever was. Shakespeare did not sit down and cry for the water of Helicon to turn the wheels of his little private mill at the Bankside. He appears to have gone more quietly about his business than any other playwright in London, to have drawn off what water-power he needed from the great prosy current of affairs that flows alike for ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the code Which to the ten wise men our fathers owed, The treaties made 'twixt Gabii's kings and Home's, The pontiffs' books, the bards' forgotten tomes, They'll swear the Muses framed them every one In close divan on Alba's Helicon. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Now Helicon must needs pour forth for me, And with her choir Urania must assist me, To put in verse things difficult ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... fustian of thy book, The witty ancient you enrobe, You make the graceful Horace look As pitiful as Tom M'Lobe.[1] Ye Muses, guard your sacred mount, And Helicon, for if this log Should stumble once into the fount, He'll make ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... purchase, half charity. I have materials for another volume; but they were written principally while Clifton Grove was in the press, or soon after, and do not now at all satisfy me. Indeed, of late, I have been obliged to desist, almost entirely, from converse with the dames of Helicon. The drudgery of an attorney's office, and the necessity of preparing myself, in case I should succeed in getting to college, in what little leisure I could boast, left no room for the flights of ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... contained anything more poetically pathetic or touchingly imaginative than that gentle conception. Equally simple and trustful was his selection of myself as compiler. It was based somewhat, I think, upon the fact that "the artless Helicon" I boasted "was Youth," but I imagine it was chiefly owing to the circumstance that I had from the outset, with precocious foresight, confided to him my intention of not putting any of my own verses in the volume. Publishers are appreciative; and a self-abnegation so sublime, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Passage of arms, and slay that fearsome thing. So with my buxom bow and quiver lined With arrows I set forth: my left hand held My club, a beetling olive's stalwart trunk And shapely, still environed in its bark: This hand had torn from holiest Helicon The tree entire, with all its fibrous roots. And finding soon the lion's whereabouts, I grasped my bow, and on the bent horn slipped The string, and laid thereon the shaft of death. And, now all eyes, I watched for that fell thing, In hopes to view him ere he spied ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... sports were to be held on that day and the next,—the sports that drew, in those ancient days, over thirty thousand Greeks from all the country round; from the towns on the shores of the two gulfs and from the mountain-lands of Greece,—from Parnassus and Helicon and Delphi, from Athens and the villages on the slopes of Hymettus ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... in old years dead and gone Brimmed the spring on Helicon, Just a little spring like you— Ferns and moss and stars and dew— Nigh the sacred Muses' dwelling, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... have we disposed of this one definition: but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted in leisure, courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual misliking; to your books, to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of all unctuous quality—that having gone to an epicure Captain, at the Albert Villa. Poor Spohf's talent has not put many talents in his purse—these real racing times run over genius!—they would tunnel Helicon, turn Hippocrene to flush a city's drains,—make Pegasus serve letters by carrying a post-boy, and, in the end, sell the noble beast for feline food:—everything now must be tangible. The little organist, who had spent so many a Merry Christmas with the Browns—he has no pleasure to anticipate on ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... divine, Or bid the Paphian lute mellifluous play, And tune to plaintive lore the liquid lay: Their numbers every mental storm control, And lull to harmony the afflicted soul; With heavenly balm the tortured breast compose, 370 And soothe the agony of latent woes: The verdant shades that Helicon surround, On rosy gales seraphic tunes resound! Perpetual summers crown the happy hours, Sweet as the breath that fans Elysian flowers: Hence pleasure dances in an endless round, And love and joy, ineffable, abound. IV. Stop, wandering thought! methinks I feel their strains Diffuse ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... their feet, rose Mount Helicon, 1,520 feet high, and round about the left rose moderate elevations, enclosing a small portion of the "Sea of Rains," under the name of the Gulf of Iris. The terrestrial atmosphere would have to be one hundred and seventy times more transparent than it is, to allow astronomers to make perfect ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... thus, a hired butcher, a savage chief of savage men. My father was a reverent man, who feared great Jupiter, and brought the rural deities his offerings of fruits ad flowers. He dwelt among the vine-clad rocks and olive groves at the foot of Helicon. My early life ran quiet as the brook by which I sported. I was taught to prune the vine, to tend the flock; and then, at noon, I gathered my sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute. I had a friend, the son of our neighbor; we led our flocks ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... live with him in a fine house with a piano and polished floors. This must be the Great Adventure, not second even to a college course. What if the road out of Orchard Glen, which she had sought so persistently, and as yet without success, should not be the steep Path up Helicon, after all, but the rose hedged lane along which Mary had gone? Christina's heart left her no doubt as to which road she would choose, were the choice hers. But when one's True Knight was far away and merely nodded carelessly to one when he was near, what chance had ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Muse's path to tread, And curs'd with Adam's unpoetic head, Who, though that pen he wielded in his hand Ordain'd the Wealth of Nations to command; Yet when on Helicon he dar'd to draw, His draft return'd and unaccepted saw. If thus like him we lay a rune in vain, Like him we'll strive ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... removed to Copenhagen. Whatever is interesting in these papers will, of course, be published. Mr. Thiele has also discovered in the same cellar the model of a bas-relief by the same great artist, representing the Muses dancing by Helicon. It will be added to the collection of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... what hero, O Clio, do you undertake to celebrate on the harp, or the shrill pipe? What god? Whose name shall the sportive echo resound, either in the shady borders of Helicon, or on the top of Pindus, or on cold Haemus? Whence the woods followed promiscuously the tuneful Orpheus, who by his maternal art retarded the rapid courses of rivers, and the fleet winds; and was so sweetly ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Scaliger because he was considered as the greatest poet of that time. The celebrated Peyresc[40] hinted it to that learned man, who made answer, he was too old not to be the aversion of the Virgins of Helicon; and that the verses were not written by him, but by Grotius, a most accomplished youth. Notwithstanding this declaration, Mathieu, in the Life of Henry IV. ascribes them to Scaliger. They were thought so excellent, several men of learning ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... yonder close-curled wild thyme are laid before the maidens of Helicon, and the dark-leaved laurels before thee, Pythian Healer, since the Delphic rock made this thine ornament; and this white-horned he-goat shall stain your altar, who nibbles the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... when he wrote his "Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shattered about their Eares, that idely Idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, or at least overlove so loathsome a Vanity, by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon," 1615. Controversialists of that period rejoiced in full-worded titles and in ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... concludes his boutade, 'that no one can understand the mysteries of this science who has had the least intercourse with the Muses or the Graces. All that you have learned in the way of bonae literae has to be unlearned first; if you have drunk of Helicon you must first vomit the draught. I do my utmost to say nothing according to the Latin taste, and nothing graceful or witty; and I am already making progress, and there is hope that one day ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... there reciprocally laboreth. In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire, Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre; Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats In cream of morning Helicon; and then Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, To woo them from their beds, still murmuring That men can sleep while ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... a winged horse which sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus cut off her head. As soon as born he left the earth and flew up to heaven, or, according to Ovid, took up his abode on Mount Helicon, and was always associated with ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless. Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so decreed. They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries. Swift the ripple ripples follow'd, as of aureate Helicon, Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the distances, And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight! Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air! Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory! Chafed the youth with their spirit surcharged, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heard him now And, since he pledged me in so rare a cup, I'll lift and drink to him, though lightnings fall From envious gods to scourge me. I will lift This cup in darkness to the soul that reigns In light on Helicon. Who knows how near? For I have thought, sometimes, when I have tried To work his will, the hand that moved my pen Was mine, and yet—not mine. The bodily mask Is mine, and sometimes, dull as clay, it sleeps With old Musaeus. Then strange flashes come, Oracular ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... stones His sword, which was the weapon he most used in fight, was given him by the king of the Citieans, and was of an admirable temper and lightness. The belt which he also wore in all engagements, was of much richer workmanship than the rest of his armor. It was the work of the ancient Helicon, and had been presented to him by the Rhodians, as a mark of their respect to him. So long as he was engaged in drawing up his men, or riding about to give orders or directions, or to view them, he spared Bucephalas, who was now growing old, and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... celebration of the nuptials, Phineus claims Andromeda, who has been betrothed to him; and together with Proetus, he and Polydectes are turned into stone. Pallas, who has aided Perseus, now leaves him, and goes to Helicon, to see the fountain of Hippocrene. The Muses tell her the story of Pyreneus and the Pierides, who were transformed into magpies after they had repeated various songs on the subjects of the transformation of the Deities into ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the first of all, and bade me slay the dreadful monster. So I took my supple bow, and hollow quiver full of arrows, and set forth; and in my other hand I held my stout club, well balanced, and wrought, with unstripped bark, from a shady wild olive-tree, that I myself had found, under sacred Helicon, and dragged up the whole tree, with the bushy roots. But when I came to the place whereby the lion abode, even then I grasped my bow and slipped the string up to the curved tip, and straightway laid thereon the bitter arrow. Then I cast my eyes on every side, spying for the baneful monster, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... days of yore, Ere thou had'st taught the clumsy rocks to soar? How could the muses in their ambient bower, In loftiest lays, anticipate thy power! How could the sparkling Helicon flow free, How durst it ripple, and not wait for thee? No business had the Stagyrite to name The rules of verse; old Homer was to blame, For laying out too soon the Iliad's plan; Homer was nothing but a "blind, old man!" Light, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... indeed the slightest gift or taste for political life. "Pity," said Mrs. Manley, the authoress of "The New Atlantis," speaking of Addison, "that politics and sordid interest should have carried him out of the road of Helicon and snatched him from the embraces of the Muses." But it seems quite unjust to ascribe Addison's divergence into political ways to any sordid interest. He had political friends who loved him, and he went with them into politics as he might have travelled in company with them, and for the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy |
