"Orpheus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hyperborean Apollo. He himself is said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods." (Hist. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... these great fathers as regards chronology is especially reflected from the tables of Eusebius. In these, Moses, Joshua, and Bacchus,—Deborah, Orpheus, and the Amazons,—Abimelech, the Sphinx, and Oedipus, appear together as personages equally real, and their ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... outrage upon our understandings which common sense alone enables us to brook; granted that it carries with it a distinctly miraculous element which should vitiate the whole process ab initio, still, if we have faith we can so work these miracles as Orpheus-like to charm denizens of the unseen world into the seen again—provided we do not look back, and provided also we do not try to charm half a dozen Eurydices at a time. To think is to fuse and diffuse ideas, and to fuse and ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... ORPHEUS, lutist. When a young man he was given a lute. Practised in obscurity, and later appeared before large audiences. Made several successful concert tours. Married Eurydice. Spent a happy honeymoon. The bride did not wear shoes. She was bitten by a serpent. She died. O. ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... whom I will love as well (As ever yet was said or sung, Since Orpheus sang his spouse from Hell) Whilst thou art fair ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... himself fainted.[100] This is declared to have happened no longer ago than the year 1869. The writer, apparently a pious Roman Catholic, who vouches for the fact, probably never heard the touching tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... is your spirits are attentive: For do but note a wild and wanton herd, If any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of music. Therefore, the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature: The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... themselves are those of the south. No mosaic, I believe, has ever come to light in the whole of Roman Britain which represents any local subject or contains any unclassical feature. The usual ornamentation consists either of mythological scenes, such as Orpheus charming the animals, or Apollo chasing Daphne, or Actaeon rent by his hounds, or of geometrical devices like the so-called Asiatic shields which are purely of classical origin.[1] Perhaps we may detect in Britain a special ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... draught upon a dying soldier. Next appeared a cluster of tobacco-pipes, consisting of Sir Walter Raleigh's, the earliest on record, Dr. Parr's, Charles Lamb's, and the first calumet of peace which was ever smoked between a European and an Indian. Among other musical instruments, I noticed the lyre of Orpheus and those of Homer and Sappho, Dr. Franklin's famous whistle, the trumpet of Anthony Van Corlear, and the flute which Goldsmith played upon in his rambles through the French provinces. The staff of Peter the Hermit stood in a corner with that of good old Bishop Jewel, and one of ivory, ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the floor; curios, ranging from mummied cats and ibises to Turkish yataghans and Zulu assegais, surrounded the place in riotous disorder. Beyond doubt this was the apartment of Sir Lionel Barton. A lamp burned upon a table near to the disordered bed, and a discolored Greek statuette of Orpheus lay overturned on the carpet ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... (because it is always agreeable to talk about learning with learned men) let your Wisdom choose out for us the best harper of the day, for the purpose that we have mentioned. Herein will you accomplish a task somewhat like that of Orpheus, when he with sweet sounds tamed the fierce hearts of savage creatures. The thanks which we owe you will be expressed by liberal compensation, for you obey our rule, and to the utmost of your power render it illustrious by ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Gipsy men or women die, their friends don't care to hear their names again—it makes them too sad, so they are changed to other names. All don't do it—no—but half of them do so still. My boy's name was Horfer or Horferus (Orpheus), but the children called him Wacker. Well, one day at the great fair of the races, my wife saw a large doll in some window of a shop, and said, 'That looks just like our Wacker!' So we called him Wackerdoll, but after my wife died I called him Wacker again, because ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... "Orpheus, his weapon, is a harp, not a gun. Nevertheless, I am one of five, and shall yield me to a man's bidding for the sake of her, my mistress, to whose glory I have this day indited my ode, and into whose sweet ear I will even ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... down the steps and over the grass, through the storm. Beyond the nearer trees, by the great pyrus japonica bush, flame-red, she met a ragged spectre, an Orpheus afoot and travel-stained, a demigod showing signs of service in the trenches, Edward Cary, in short, beautiful still, but gaunt as any wolf. The two embraced; they had always been comrades. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... up a howl loud enough to make the scaly monsters of the deep seek their dark caverns. They rent the hearts of the poor tender-hearted girls; and when the thorough bass of the males was joined by the sopranos and trebles of the women and children, it would have made Orpheus ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... constantly, with his wife Lady Carbury, and poor old Booker of the "Literary Chronicle." City men can make a budget popular or the reverse, and therefore the Mills Happertons of the day were welcome. Rising barristers might be wanted to become Solicitors-General. The pet Orpheus of the hour, the young tragic actor who was thought to have a real Hamlet within him, the old painter who was growing rich on his reputation, and the young painter who was still strong with hope, even the little trilling poet, though he trilled never so faintly, and the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Orpheus[9] could lead the savage race, And trees unrooted left their place, Sequacious of the lyre; 50 But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher: When to her organ vocal breath was given, An angel heard, and straight[10] appeared— Mistaking earth ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... combinations are novel. Other humorists, like Henry W. Shaw ("Josh Billings") and David R. Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby"), have used bad spelling as a part of their machinery; while Robert H. Newell ("Orpheus C. Kerr"), Samuel L. Clemens ("Mark Twain"), and more recently "Bill Nye," though belonging to the same school of low or broad comedy, have discarded cacography. Of these the most eminent, by all odds, is Mark Twain, who has probably made more people laugh than any ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... that of Orpheus in hades, seemed to soothe all unpropitious powers with a sudden spell. The Fire began to slacken, the kettles began to lull, the meat began to cook, the irons began to cool, the clothes began to behave, the spirits began to rise, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... proves most conclusively that Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod,[160] who are usually designated "the theologians" of Greece, but who were in fact the depravers and corrupters of pagan theology, do not teach the existence of a multitude of unmade, self-existent, and independent deities. Even they believed in the existence of one uncreated ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... That is the way one should love everything that is worth loving. I am delighted, for we make here a troupe of fanatical melomaniacs, as you will presently perceive. As for myself, I scrape wildly on the violin, as a simple country amateur—'Orpheus in silvis'. Do not imagine, however, Monsieur le Comte, that we let the worship of this sweet art absorb all our faculties—all our time-certainly not. When you take part in our little reunions, which of course ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... nine sections in three divisions, called l'Age d'or, l'Age d'argent, l'Age de fer. Above is a pediment from which Christ presides over this human panorama. But this is where this great genius has the same intuition as you had: each of the three parts bears the name of a hero—Adam, Orpheus, and Cain, and each one represents three periods. Now, the periods of the golden age are called Ecstasy, Prayer, and Sleep, while the periods of the silver age are called Inspiration, Song, ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... to be intended for some other monument referring to Revolutionary times and personages; and with these were intermixed some ideal statues or groups,—a naked boy playing marbles, very beautiful; a girl with flowers; the cast of his Orpheus, of which I long ago saw the marble statue; Adam and Eve; Flora,—all with a good deal of merit, no doubt, but not a single one that justifies Crawford's reputation, or that satisfies me of his genius. They are but commonplaces in marble and plaster, such as we should ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kind, as of other forms of originality in literature, that the elements of it are old, but the combinations are novel. Other humorists, like Henry W. Shaw ("Josh Billings"), and David R. Locke, ("Petroleum V. Nasby"), have used bad spelling as a part of their machinery; while Robert H. Newell, ("Orpheus C. Kerr"), Samuel L. Clemens, ("Mark Twain"), and more recently "Bill Nye," though belonging to the same school of low or broad comedy, have discarded cacography. Of these the most eminent, by all odds, is Mark Twain, who has probably made more people laugh than any other living writer. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... from the Council. His eyes had shed so many tears that they were swollen and unrecognisable. He shunned the occasions when there was an assembly, buried himself in his private apartments or in his groves, and resembled, in every trait, Orpheus weeping for his fair Eurydice, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Good. I thank you. (He looks at them): Heavens! my cherished leaves! The poems of my friends! Torn, dismembered, to make bags for holding biscuits and cakes!. . .Ah, 'tis the old tale again. . .Orpheus ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... makes it still more to be regretted that nothing is done in England towards the advancement of music as a science. Is the world of sound and the soul of song exhausted? Why should we, who are marching in every other direction, stand still in this? But no; what Orpheus did with music, we are striving to accomplish by steam; what he effected by quietly touching his lyre, we study with the atmospheres and condensers of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... but Sarah cheered his heart, and grace reigned. In the mean time the girls wrought fancy work, which was sent to Boston, and sold in their behalf, and thus they were spared from want. Subsequently he was appointed missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. It was Orpheus among the wild beasts, but without his success. President Wayland quotes this fact in order to support a theory which is palpably false, that a preacher should not be much above the literary platform of his people; whereas, Edwards' ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... said Lady Davers (always severe upon her poor nephew), "thou ever saidst. The music must be equal to that of Orpheus, which can make such a savage as thee dance to it. I charge thee, say not another word tonight."—"Why, indeed, aunt," returned he, laughing, "I believe it was pretty well said for your foolish fellow: though it was by chance, I must confess; I ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... hatched out of an egg; and Theseus, who was so renowned for killing the Minotaur, and Lynceus, with his wonderfully sharp eyes, which could see through a millstone, or look right down into the depths of the earth, and discover the treasures that were there; and Orpheus, the very best of harpers, who sang and played upon his lyre so sweetly, that the brute beasts stood upon their hind legs, and capered merrily to the music. Yes, and at some of his more moving tunes, the rocks bestirred their moss-grown bulk out of the ground, and a grove of forest ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... peculiarly impressed with the supreme genius of Schwanthaler. These chambers, eight in number, are painted in encaustic, with subjects from the Greek poets, of which Schwanthaler supplied the designs. The ante-chambers are devoted to Orpheus and Hesiod, and the ornaments are in the oldest Greek style; severely simple; archaic, but not rude; the figures of the friezes in outline, and without relief. The saloon of reception, on the contrary, is Homeric; and in its colouring, design, and decoration, as brilliant, as free, and ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... asmoche as they afore time that euer excelled in anye kinde of learning, or durste take vppon them, to prescribe lawe, and rule of life vnto to other, as Orpheus, Homeire, Museus, Melampode, Dedalus, Licurgus, Solon, Plato, Pithagoras, Samolxis, Eudoxus, Democritus, Inopides, and Moses the Hebrue, with manye other, whose names the Egiptians glorie to be ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... redeemed lady walked in the same manner as Orpheus and Eurydice marched heretofore; but though I cannot believe that Jones was designedly tempted by his fair one to look behind him, yet as she frequently wanted his assistance to help her over stiles, and had besides many trips and other accidents, he was often obliged ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... not yet easy to imagine the cause. Lucy's requests were laws to me, and Neb was ordered to sheer down on the quarter of this second sloop, as we had done on that of the first. As we drew near, her stern told us that she was called the "Orpheus of Sing-Sing," a combination of names that proved some wag had been connected with the christening. Her decks had also a party of both sexes on them, though neither carriage nor horses. All this time, Lucy stood quite near me, as if ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature. The power of music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as it were clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus. The philosophical perception of identity through endless mutations of form makes him know the Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept yesterday, who slept last night like a corpse, and this morning stood and ran? And what see I on any side but the transmigrations of Proteus? I can symbolize ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the hum of bees. It was sweeter than the soul the lute gave up to the ears of Nature when Orpheus touched the strings. It was so sweet that tears came stealing from under Lily's eyelids and dropped down upon her clasped hands. She sat there motionless till the twilight came over the moor, and Maurice entered, white and weary, to ask impatiently ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... recollection of ever having seen Bret Harte. It must also be remembered that in the fifties his reputation as an author had not been established. Of all that group of brilliant young men who visited the mines in early days, which included for a brief space "Orpheus C. Kerr" and "Artemus Ward," I can well imagine that Bret Harte attracted the least attention. It is extremely doubtful to my mind if he ever had much actual experience of the mining camps. To a man of his vivid imagination, a mere suggestion afforded a plot for a story; even the Laird's Toreadors, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Boston was still more rightfully adorned with the Allston Gallery; and the sculptures of our compatriots Greenough, and Crawford, and Powers, were brought hither. The following lines were addressed by Margaret to the Orpheus:— ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... back before," she breathlessly said, as she released Adelaide; "I felt as if your papa were Orpheus, when ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists[3] to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there are entered much that we are accustomed ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and the stars sang, that was the day of musicians! But the triumph of Phoebus Apollo himself was not so wonderful as the triumph of a mortal man who lived on earth, though some say that he came of divine lineage. This was Orpheus, that best of harpers, who went with the Grecian heroes of the great ship Argo in search ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... oratory also, since it has so great a power of persuasion; and the alliance between these two gifts had existed from the time that the verses of Orpheus had, according to the fable, made woods and streams and wild animals to follow him about. Soon, however, Oratory became the subject of a separate art, which was called Rhetoric, and of which the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... published her second volume, "Admetus and Other Poems," which at once took rank as literature both in America and England, and challenged comparison with the work of established writers. Of classic themes we have "Admetus" and "Orpheus," and of romantic the legend of Tannhauser and of the saintly Lohengrin. All are treated with an artistic finish that shows perfect mastery of her craft, without detracting from the freshness and flow of her inspiration. While sounding no absolutely new note in ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... his works to the public, which immediately attracted great attention. His first work was a piece of the Three Graces, represented by as many female figures, with a globe over their heads. He soon after executed one of his masterpieces, a drawing of Orpheus. About this time, to please his father, as it is said, he married the daughter of Hans Fritz, a celebrated mechanic, who proved a fierce Xantippe, and embittered, and some say shortened his life. In 1506, he went to Venice to improve himself, where his abilities excited envy and admiration. Here ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... accompanying himself upon his rustic lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone upon his lips. I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides, and the masculine Sappho. I passed and recognised, as they sat on the bank of a fresh rivulet, the poet Horace, Varius, Gallus, and Lycoris. A little apart, leaning against the trunk of a dark holm-oak, Virgil was gazing pensively at the grove. Of lofty stature, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... geometry, and that their arithmetic extended not beyond their Swan-pan. Of the same nature is the bold and unfounded assertion of another of the Jesuits, "that the musical system of the Chinese was borrowed from them by the Greeks and Egyptians, anterior to the time of Hermes or Orpheus!" ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Orpheus!—yes, Faith may grow bold, And take to herself all the wonders of old;— Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same, In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... Plato.—Homer and Orpheus are impatient to see you in that region of these happy fields which their shades inhabit. They both acknowledge you to be a great poet, though you have written no verses. And they are now busy in composing for you unfading wreaths ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... goblin shank of hoary sage. Then pomp of gloom breaks into bloom, The Temple's arch cracks as we sigh, A clashing sound above that spoke Blind wrath unto each Wizard's rage, Revealed the chasm of stark Doom. Unto the peaks and gables black, Syrian airs like Orpheus Lull sequestered afrites to sleep, A witch smites her high biforous— A symbol of king Typhon's wrack! Where crystal lamps shine most glorious, Twin legions lie in cajons bleak,— Tokens of Hell invidious! Then fades the ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... again, and then a toll, and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight minutes, and then another toll, and so on. Acteon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white campanero. He is never seen to feed with the other cotingas, nor is it known in what part of ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... opportunities for him to indulge his fancy, and we have found him adapting themes derived from these sources to the decoration of cassoni, or marriage chests. Another typical example of this practice is afforded by his "Orpheus and Eurydice," in the gallery at Bergamo, a splendid little panel, probably, like the "Apollo and Daphne" in the Seminario at Venice, intended as a decorative piece of applied art. Although bearing Giorgione's name by tradition, modern critics have passed it by presumably on the ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... much amazed to say anything at first, and quickly saw the danger of any betraying comment. The troubadour marched up to Biterres, asked permission to sing, and began a doggerel ballad about one Sir Orpheus and his magic harp. The harp, as the song explained, had the power of luring pigeons, rabbits, wild geese, lambs, sucking-pigs and even fish from the stewponds, into its owner's dinner-pot, so that Orpheus never lacked for good living and became ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. He admired Aeschylus and Pindar; but, when some one was commending them, he said that "Aeschylus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no good one. They ought not to have moved trees, but to have chanted to the gods such a hymn as would have sung all their old ideas out of their heads, and new ones in." His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... one shall find those who are true judges, and who are said to judge there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, AEacus and Triptolemus, and such others of the demi-gods as were just during their own life, would this be a sad removal? At what price would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I indeed should be willing to die often, if this be true. For to me the sojourn there would be admirable, when I should meet with Palamedes, and Ajax, son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients who has died by an unjust sentence. The comparing my sufferings with ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... though real, place in the general scheme of Greek religion, this phase of the worship of Dionysus had its special development in the Orphic literature and mysteries. Obscure as are those followers of the mystical Orpheus, we yet certainly see them, moving, and playing their part, in the later ages of Greek religion. Old friends with new faces, though they had, as Plato witnesses, their less worthy aspect, in certain appeals to vulgar, superstitious fears, they seem to have been not without the charm ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... ourselves in a pleasant digression, because it is always agreeable to talk of learning with the learned; but be sure to get us that Citharoedus, who will go forth like another Orpheus to charm the beast-like hearts of the Barbarians. You will thus both obey ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... bid the soul of Orpheus sing Such notes as warbled to the string Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, And made Hell grant what love ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... strains, by antient Orpheus sung. To such, Mufaeus' heav'nly lyre was strung; Exalted truths, in learned verse they told, And nature's deepest secrets did unfold. How at th' eternal mind's omnisic call, Yon starry arch, and this terrestrial ball, The briny ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... easily conceivable that the time-consecrated Egyptian myth of Isis and Horus may have suggested the original type, the outward form and the arrangement of the maternal group, as that the classical Greek types of the Orpheus and Apollo should have furnished the early symbols of the Redeemer as the Good Shepherd; a fact which does not rest upon supposition, but of which the proofs remain to us in the antique Christian sculptures and ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... this Invention to Orpheus, and look upon the Cat-call to be one of those Instruments which that famous Musician made use of to draw the Beasts about him. It is certain, that the Roasting of a Cat does not call together a greater Audience of that Species than this Instrument, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... two parts, from the roof to the floor; the lower part being first discovered, there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket, from which issued Orpheus. At the back part of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played about the house ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... giving my life to accomplish. That such a thing may be is possible. Surely the old myths were not absolute inventions; they must have had a basis somewhere in fact. May not the world-old story of Orpheus and Eurydice have been based on some deep-lying principle or power of human nature? There is not one of us but has wished at some time to bring back the dead. Ay, and who has not felt that in himself or ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... art as silvery tongued as Orpheus with his lute," said Sir Walter with a smile. "Mark me, boy! I would not that any should know of this message, least of all the queen. 'Tis not that there is aught of harm in it, lad. As thou art new to the court ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... sixty-six performances in the season of light operas, and one ballet, the latter Delibes's "Sylvia." The operas were Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew" (five times), Gluck's "Orpheus" (thirteen times), Wagner's "Lohengrin" (ten times), Mozart's "Magic Flute" (six times), Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor" (nine times), Delibes's "Lakm" (eleven times), Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" (seven times), and Mass's ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... feaste sat both he and she, With other worthy folk, upon the dais. All full of joy and bliss is the palace, And full of instruments, and of vitaille, * *victuals, food The moste dainteous* of all Itale. *delicate Before them stood such instruments of soun', That Orpheus, nor of Thebes Amphioun, Ne made never such a melody. At every course came in loud minstrelsy, That never Joab trumped for to hear, Nor he, Theodomas, yet half so clear At Thebes, when the city was in doubt. Bacchus the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... out of doors. He was, therefore, only acting upon his own theory, and he seems to us to have been acting wisely as well as courageously, when he consented to become a humble but necessary wheel of the machinery of administration, the Orpheus among the Argonauts ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your teares, your sighes, your heart: Write till your inke be dry: and with your teares Moist it againe: and frame some feeling line, That may discouer such integrity: For Orpheus Lute, was strung with Poets sinewes, Whose golden touch could soften steele and stones; Make Tygers tame, and huge Leuiathans Forsake vnsounded deepes, to dance on Sands. After your dire-lamenting Elegies, Visit by night your Ladies chamber-window With some sweet Consort; To their ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... into the ocean, a path is made visible which leads down into the shades. There the lover is found; he has grown a new body and is living with two old women. The young woman is overjoyed at finding her Orpheus, but he, pointing to the wound in the eye, tells her that her mother was the cause of it and refuses to return with her. She mournfully retraces her steps to earth and decides to choose the other road ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... is ridiculous of me, but I have heard the signals and the music more than once and wondered. I did not know"—he smiled the smile of the flaneur—"I did not know it was, let me say, Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus with his lyre restored from among the constellations, and forgetting something of its old wonder. Madame, I hope Orpheus will not en-rheum himself by ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... consulted—e.g., the temple at Phigalia, in Arcadia, used by Pausanias, the Spartan commander;[53] or the [Greek: nekyomanteion], the oracle of the dead, by the River Acheron, in Threspotia, to which Periander, the famous tyrant of Corinth, had recourse;[54] and it was here, according to Pausanias, that Orpheus went down to the lower world in search ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... latter part of the eighteenth century—especially of the Connecticut press—abound in advertisements of horses of the "true Narragansett breed," yet it is said that in the year 1800 but one full-blooded Narragansett Pacer was known to be living. In the War of 1812 the British man-of-war Orpheus cruised the waters of Narragansett Bay, and her captain endeavored through agents to obtain a Narragansett Pacer as a gift for his wife, but in vain—not a horse of the true breed ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... hymns for shrimp and prawn, Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, Who looked the gold sun in the eye While garden mists grew thin, ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... have been a Christian, and he had certainly learned enough of the Divine Law to love virtue, and be firm while he was forbearing. He loved virtue, but he did not accept the faith, and would only look upon our Blessed Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His statue with that of Abraham, Orpheus, and all whom he thought great teachers of mankind, in a private temple of his own, as if they were all on a level. He never came any nearer to the faith, and after thirteen years of good and firm government he was killed in a mutiny of the ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... I cannot say is absolutely on words—for the thought turns with them—is in the fourth Georgic of Virgil, where Orpheus is to receive his wife from hell on express condition not to look on her till she ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... predicting the different changes of weather almost as accurately as an almanac; they are moreover exquisite performers on three-stringed fiddles; in whistling they almost boast the far-famed powers of Orpheus's lyre, for not a horse or an ox in the place, when at the plough or before the wagon, will budge a foot until he hears the well-known whistle of his black driver and companion. And from their amazing skill at casting up accounts upon ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... persons. This honour was to be obtained only from the public voice. The assembly of the judges met on the other side of a lake, which they crossed in a boat. He who sat at the helm was called Charon, in the Egyptian language; and this first gave the hint to Orpheus, who had been in Egypt, and after him, to the other Greeks, to invent the fiction of Charon's boat. As soon as a man was dead, he was brought to his trial. The public accuser was heard. If he proved that the deceased had led a bad life, his memory was condemned, and he was deprived of burial. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... go farther than other men into the secrets of the Immortal labor. His yearnings, his sorrows were the links that united him to the unseen world; he went there, armed with his love, to seek his mother; realizing thus, with the sublime harmonies of ecstasy, the symbolic enterprise of Orpheus. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... shouldst abide My passion might decay? Thou leav'st me pining and denied, Coyly thou say'st me nay. Ev'n as I woo thee to my side, Thou, importuned to stay, Like Orpheus' half-recovered bride ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... becomes manifest to the dullest, that mind is stronger than matter—that mind is the creator and shaper of matter—that not brute force, but only persuasion and faith, is the King of this world. The true poet, who is but an inspired thinker, is still an Orpheus whose lyre tames the savage beasts, and evokes the dead rocks to fashion themselves into palaces and stately inhabited cities. It has been said, and may be repeated, that literature is fast becoming all in all to ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... And those who nag under any circumstances requested more cheerfulness. They found the "Czar and Zimmermann" too dull, the "Muette de Portici" too hackneyed. They insisted on "Madame Angot" and "Orpheus ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Dark Euxine trembles to its distant shores, Proud Jason starts, confounded in his might, Leads back his peers, and dares no more the fight. But the sly Priestess brings her opiate spell, Soft charms that hush the triple hound of hell, Bids Orpheus tune his all-enchanting lyre, And join to calm the guardian's sleepless ire. Soon from the tepid ground blue vapors rise, And sounds melodious move along the skies; A settling tremor thro his folds extends, His crest contracts, his rainbow heck unbends, O'er all his hundred ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... part of the back wall is represented, in the same precious stones, and in a graceful attitude, a European in a kind of Spanish costume, playing upon his guitar, and in the character of Orpheus charming the birds and beasts which he first taught the people of India so well to represent in this manner. This I have no doubt was intended by Austin de Bordeaux for himself. The man from Shiraz, Amanat Khan, who designed all the noble Tughra characters in which the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... from the shackling, smirching half-sorrows of actual life. Some of the listening faces smiled; some were sodden, stupefied rather than enlightened; some showed a sensual rudimentary gratification; some, lapped in the tide, yet unaware of its significance, were merely silly. But no Orpheus, wildly harping through the woods, ever led more enthralled and ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... out any other." Indeed 'tis most strange and surprising to me That all folks in rhiming their int'rest can't see; For I'm sure if it's use were quite common with men, The world would roll on just as pleasant again. "'Tis said, that while ORPHEUS was striking his lyre, "Trees and brutes danc'd along to the sound of the wire; "That AMPHION to walls soon converted the glebes, "And they rose, as he sung, to a city call'd Thebes; "I suppose they were Butlers (like me) of that time, "And the tale shows our sires knew the wonders of rhime." ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... "Don't trouble the ashes of the dead; let the grave at least put an end to your unjust hatreds. Reflect that even Kings make peace after long battling; cannot you ever make it? I think you would be capable, like Orpheus, of descending to Hell, not to soften Pluto and bring back your beautiful Emilie, but to pursue into that Abode of Woe an enemy whom your wrath has only too much persecuted in the world: for shame!" [OEuvres ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... arbiter of life and death: when he finds no other subject for his mercy, he should spare himself. All his punishments are rather to correct than to destroy. Why are prayers with Orpheus said to be the daughters of Jupiter, but that princes are thereby admonished that the petitions of the wretched ought to have more weight with them than the ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow'rs attend, Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend; But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling'ring jest, Perplex the fawning niece and pamper'd guest. While growing ...
— English Satires • Various
... shore, Let those adore The god Apollo, and his Nine, Parnassus' hill, And Orpheus' skill; But let ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... did not move nor growl for fear of disturbing their master, but kept quite still, glaring at the soldiers with big yellow eyes. The men were so astonished at the sight that they stole away without capturing an animal or saying a word to Saint Blaise, for they thought he must be Orpheus or some heathen god who charmed wild beasts. They went to the Governor and told him what they had seen, ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... lyrick numbers write an ode on His mistress, eating a black-pudden: 380 And when imprison'd air escap'd her, It puft him with poetic rapture. His sonnets charm'd th' attentive crowd, By wide-mouth'd mortal troll'd aloud, That 'circl'd with his long-ear'd guests, 385 Like ORPHEUS look'd among the beasts. A carman's horse could not pass by, But stood ty'd up to poetry: No porter's burthen pass'd along, But serv'd for burthen to his song: 390 Each window like a pill'ry appears, With heads thrust through, nail'd by the ears All trades run in as to the sight Of monsters, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... upon sub-consciousness, the mind calling upon the spirit, he found himself questing a likeness, a memory, a furtive thought; and partly it took shape, so that it seemed to him that Apis, Isis, Orpheus and the Buddha had a common resemblance to some person living and human, known to him; whose voice he had heard, and heard again leading the Orphic hymn, chanting the Buddhist prayers and bewailing the passing of Adonis. A man it was his memory sought, and alike in granite statue ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whil'st this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot have it! By the sweet power of music; therefore, the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods. Since naught so stockish, hard and full of rage But music for the time doth change his nature, The man that hath no music in himself Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... mythological personage. Jason appeared with the golden fleece, Phoebus Apollo brought in a calf stolen from the herds of Admetus, Diana led Actaeon in the form of a stag, Atalanta followed with the wild boar of Calydon, Iris came with a peacock from the car of Juno, and Orpheus carried in the birds whom he had charmed with his lute. Hebe poured out the wines, Vertumnus and Pomona handed round apples and grapes, Thetis and her sea-nymphs brought every variety of fish, and shepherds crowned with chaplets of ivy arrived from the hills of Arcady, bearing jars of milk and honey ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... lord I serve? Music and poetry, my two last crimes, Are those two exercises of delight, Wherewith long labours I do weary out. The dying swan is not forbid to sing: The waves of Hebrus[46] play'd on Orpheus' strings, When he (sweet music's trophy) was destroy'd. And as for poetry, words'[47] eloquence (Dead Phaeton's three sisters' funeral tears That by the gods were to Electrum turn'd), Not flint or rock, of icy cinders flam'd, Deny the force[48] of silver-falling streams. Envy enjoyeth ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Gwynplaine to sing, according to the method of Orpheus and of Egide Binchois. Frequently he interrupted the lessons with cries of enthusiasm, such as "Orpheus, musician of Greece! Binchois, musician ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... humorist. Thus we have seen in rapid succession John Phoenix, Doesticks, Fanny Fern, and Artemus Ward enjoying extraordinary popularity, and then new 'lords of misrule' 'reigning in their stead.' The last popular favorite is 'Orpheus C. Kerr'—a name thinly disguising that of Office Seeker, and which is not indeed too well chosen, since in the volume before us little or nothing relative to the very suggestive subject of office-seeking, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... been so miraculously evinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation, an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined. There was a gentleman of the court, celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity; my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six weeks after her confinement, she put this rock into motion,—they eloped. Poor gentleman! it must have been a severe trial of patience to a man never known before to transgress the very ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... well as make verses, do you not—you, whose music opened the gates even of Valmy? Indeed, I heard you just now. You are another Orpheus, and Valmy a very similar interior. You don't like me to say so? Very well, my lute is in your hand, and I am waiting. Did they teach you in Poitou to ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... from the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid are treated here in the same key; but the latter, since they engaged Signorelli's fancy upon Greek mythology, are the more important for our purpose. Two from the legend of "Orpheus" and two from that of "Proserpine" might be chosen as typical of the whole series. Mediaeval intensity, curiously at variance with antique feeling, is discernible throughout. The satellites of Hades are gaunt and sinewy devils, eager to do violence ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... birth of the god of fire, which nearly destroyed the mother's life, Izanami fled to the land of roots or of darkness, that is into Hades. Izanagi, like a true Orpheus, followed his Eurydice and beseeched her to come back to earth to complete with him the work of creation. She parleyed so long with the gods of the underworld that her consort, breaking off a tooth of ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... angels pipe to children who are about to die; and in Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs of elf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by their magic lay allured voyagers to destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow him. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighing through untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than the wind, and the ancients ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... walk with their wives, they go in advance, and the wives follow, as that is just the contrary of our custom. This was a bit of carelessness that cost Orpheus the loss of his wife, who was stolen by the prince Auresteo, as we are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... you hope to find the formula of a fellow who could only be expressed in fractions, and vulgar fractions, too? How on earth could you pull yourself together when Nature had deliberately cut you into little pieces? Never since poor Orpheus was torn to tatters by the Maenads was there a poet so horribly subdivided. Talk of being dissolute, dissipated! Those adjectives were a poor description of S.K.R. It was more than sowing a mere handful of wild oats, it was a disintegration, a scattering of Rickmans to all ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair |
