"Siren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they had crossed, they found themselves unable to resist her smile. Forward they must march through the garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the precaution to walk with drawn sword, and, like Orlando in Morgana's park, to stuff their casques with roses that they might not hear the siren's voice too clearly. It was thus that Italy began the part she played through the Renaissance for the people of the North. The White Devil of Italy is the title of one of Webster's best tragedies. A white Devil, a radiant daughter of sin and death, holding in her ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... woman who had wrought him such signal injury, who had put upon him such insufferable indignity. Surely he could feel naught for her but the rancor she had earned! From the beginning, she had been all siren, all deceit. She was but the semblance, the figment, of his foolish dream, and why should the dream move him still, shattered as it was by the torturing realities of the truth? Why must he needs bring tribute to her powers, flatter her ascendency in his life, by faltering before her ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... that my lady was very glad to keep her. She could make caps like a Parisian milliner; she could dress her exquisitely; she could read for hours in the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of dull High Church novels. She could answer notes and sing like a siren, and she could embroider prie-dieu chairs and table-covers, and slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... of the saloon were endeavoring to persuade each other that all was well, the loud wail of the siren thrilled them with increased foreboding. It was not the warning note of a fog, nor the sharp course-signal for the guidance of a passing ship, but a sustained trumpeting, which announced to any steamer hidden in the darkening waste of waters that the Kansas was ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... very shortly. But ill-luck made him accept an invitation to a bachelor dinner, where champagne and smutty stories were flowing freely, too freely. He left about midnight, and as the night was beautiful he decided to walk home. He met a siren, who invited him to accompany her. Under other circumstances he would have sent her on her way, or at least he would have stepped into a drugstore for a prophylactic. But, excited by the wine, the smutty stories and the year's abstinence, he went along like a sheep, as a matter ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense—a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... suspect," Valentine cried gaily. "In the wilds of South Kensington, in a tiny house, all Morris tapestry and Burne-Jones stained glass, dwells the latest siren who has been calling to our Ulysses. He is there, I suspect. Wait a moment, though. His telegram might tell us. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... "You beautiful siren!" he said. "You are coaxing me. How you know how to use your charms and your powers, and what man could resist your ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... electro-magnetic brake siren of Mr. Bourbouze; Konig's apparatus for the synthesis of sounds; and Mr. S.P. Thompson's cymatograph—a pendulum apparatus for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... he said, smiling. "I am, perhaps, not as wise as Ulysses, and shall not fill my ears with wax, but listen to the song of the siren, even at the risk of perishing in the whirlpool of passion. Let us not impose upon ourselves any promises concerning the destiny of our hearts; but your position in the world is an entirely different question. As to this, I ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... of a siren above them filled the world with hideous clamour as Saltash recovered himself. "Damn them!" he ejaculated savagely. "Do they want to deafen us as well as send ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... sweet persuasions of a Lally Tollendal, a Mounier, a Malouet, or a Mirabeau could induce a Louis XVI. to cast in his lot with the bourgeoisie, in opposition to the feudalists and the remnants of absolute monarchy, just as little will the siren songs of a Camphausen or a Hansemann ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... chivalry whispered him what to do. He had found himself like Lancelot with "his honor rooted in dishonor" and "faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." But Stephen Coburn was no Lancelot, any more than his siren was a Guinevere or her slain husband a King Arthur. He was simply a well-meaning, hot-headed, madly enamoured young fool. The proof of this last was that he took a revolver to his Gordian knot. Revolvers, as he found too late, do not ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... her seat, a handsome siren shaped, drilled, fitted, polished from her birth for nothing else than the beguiling of lordly man. From the heart of her beautiful bouquet she plucked a spray of perfect lily-of-the-valley, and, eyes upon her own flowers, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... dying, to mix his death With her memorial breath; Smiled, being most sure of her, that in no wise, Die whoso will, she dies: And she smiled surely, fair and far above, Wept not, but smiled for love. Thou too, O splendour of the sudden sword That drove the crews abhorred From Naples and the siren-footed strand, Flash from thy master's hand, Shine from the middle summer of the seas To the old Aeolides, Outshine their fiery fumes of burning night, Sword, with thy midday light; Flame as a beacon from the ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Steropes, and all the other one-eyed monsters were nothing but sea-wrack, bowlders, and weeds. He sailed farther, past Scylla and Charybdis, and discovered no greater dangers than sharp rocks and whirlpools. Yet farther he sailed out into the unknown sea, and the only Siren's song he heard was the whistling of the wind through ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... dog— to nothing short of illusion in the treatment of them, as ancient connoisseurs would have you understand. It is said that there are thirty-six extant epigrams on his brazen cow. That animal has her gentle place in Greek art, from the Siren tomb, suckling her young there, as the type of eternal rejuvenescence, onwards to the procession of the Elgin frieze, where, still breathing deliciously of the distant pastures, she is led to the altar. We feel sorry for her, as we look, so lifelike is ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... voice and strange: I am the Witch of Cities! glide along My silver streets that never wear by change Of years: forget the years, and pain, and wrong, And every sorrow reigning men among. Know I can soothe thee, please and marry thee To my illusions. Old and siren-strong, I smile immortal, while the mortals flee Who whiten on ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... dwellings; it was like the vivid illumination of a flash of lightning, a great prying eye which no one could avoid. To obviate this a screen has been placed on the landward side of the lantern. The light stands about 200 feet above the sea; and in addition to this there is a fog-siren, whose tremendous voice bellows through thick weather at intervals of two minutes. West of the lighthouse is the little fishing-cove and lifeboat station of Polpeor. In old times this headland was lit by a bonfire beacon, kept burning at night; ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... 1753 the cumulative discontents of the tribe were near the crisis, earnestly fostered by the French on the western boundaries, that vast domain then known as Louisiana, toward whose siren voice the Cherokees had ever lent a willing ear. The building by the British government, two or three years later, of those great defensive works, Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon, situated respectively at the eastern and western extremities of the Cherokee territory, mounted with cannon and ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... snuffy brown of that unromantic garment known as the business suit. The winding horn is become a goblet, and its notes are the tinkle of ice against glass. The baying of hounds has harshened to the squawk of the motor siren. The fresh-plowed field is a blue print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper. All the romance is out of it, all ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... Rhedern gave him courage; what the king had granted to the daughter of the merchant, he could not refuse to the daughter of the court tailor, more particularly when the latter, by her own gifts and talents, had opened the doors of the palace for herself; when by the power of her siren voice she had made the barriers tremble and fall which separated the tailor's daughter from the court circle. If the lovely Anna became a celebrated singer, if she succeeded in winning the applause of the king, she would be ennobled; and no one could ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... her life to its very foundation. Lady Winsleigh found it almost impossible to get her on the subject of the burlesque actress, Violet Vere, and Sir Philip's supposed admiration for that notorious stage-siren. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... at Chingka drew in sight, with a B. and A. boat landing concrete bags at the end of its wharf; and on beyond, the sparse roofs of the capital of the Free State blistered and buckled under the sun. The steamer, with hooting siren, ran up her gaudy ensign, and came to an anchor in the stream twenty fathoms off the State wharf. A yellow-faced Belgian, with white sun helmet and white umbrella, presently came off in the doctor's boat, and announced himself as the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Where self, for England's sake, was self-effaced, In silence reining-in his soul On the strait difficult line by wisdom traced, 'Twixt gulf and siren, avalanche and ravine, Guarding ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... though with a depth of melancholy that endears it. No doubt it was founded on the universal idea in folk-lore of the nixies or water-spirits, one of whom, in Norwegian legend, was seen weeping bitterly because of the want of a soul. Sometimes the nymph is a wicked siren like the Lorelei; but in many of these tales she weds an earthly lover, and deserts him after a time, sometimes on finding her diving cap, or her seal-skin garment, which restores her to her ocean kindred, sometimes on his intruding on her while she is under a periodical transformation, as with ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund, with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... are now, such once were we. Through many scenes of trial, through heroic constancy, and ever-during patience, have we attained to this bright eminence. Large and mysterious are the paths of heaven, just and immaculate his ways. If ye listen to the siren voice of pleasure, if upon the neck of heedless youth you throw the reins, that base and earth-born clay which now you wear, shall assume despotic empire. And when you quit the present narrow scene, ye ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... has sung his grasshopper songs in careless disregard of changing seasons, and who has found some impossible examinations barring his primrose path, blinks painfully at the merciless sun of Commencement Day, laughing at him above the roofs of siren Mayfield, and holds his foolish head in his hands; for last night, while the other Seniors, full of honors and regrets, were trying to choke down a little of the good-bye supper after the Promenade, he went a bit too ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... were two of them. He knew that he must become a prey, but was there any choice left to him as to which siren should have him? He had been quite aware in his more gallant days, before he had been knocked about on that Charybdis rock, that he might sip, and taste, and choose between the sweets. He had come to think lately that the younger young ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... moment's pause, a few natural tears, and a single sigh hushed the assembly; then Bertha, with her siren voice, told ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... once, of a yellow day, having chanced to glance out of the window and down the harbor in the direction of Cottage Point, and having clapped eyes on a sight that pinched and shook the very heart of her, she was changed in a twinkling into the Siren of Scalawag Run. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... while it knows what it wants when it sees it, cannot clearly express its wants, and never wants the thing that it does ask for, although it thinks it does at the time. But woe to the editor and his periodical if he heeds that siren voice! ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... murmured, "once again ere I forsake the flesh, are my ears blest with that voice! It is the song of the eternal woman! For me she sings!—Sing on, siren; my soul is a listening universe, and therein nought but ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the Italian Commedia had not seized on all minds. It would have been an evil thing for Italian, perhaps for European, literature if the siren tales of the Decameron had not been the first to occupy the ears with the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... on down the harbor, none the worse for the cannon-balls that were sent after her, and continued her course until she reached her consort, the Siren, which awaited her outside the harbor. Joining company, they proceeded to Syracuse, where the fleet ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... blanket on the floor and fell quickly to sleep. I dreamed I was tied to a railroad track with a train rushing towards me. With a start I awoke, just as a siren voiced shell came screaming across the fields, bursting at the foot of the hill on ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... be," replied Philibert, "but the Intendant alone would have had no power to lure him back. It was the message of that artful siren which has drawn Le Gardeur de Repentigny again ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... uncertain. Miss Carroll, an intimate friend of Gov. Hicks, and at that time a member of his family, favored the national cause, and by her powerful arguments induced the Governor to remain firm in his opposition to the scheme of secession. Thus, despite the siren wooing of the South, in its ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... become intolerably hot. As is the way with the Siren city when June is half-way through, the asphalt pavements radiated heat; the air was heavy, laden with strange, unpleasing odours; and even the trees, which form such delicious oases of greenery in the older quarters of the town were powdered ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his parent earth bequeathed[my][21.H.] His dust,—and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?[440] That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? No;—even his tomb Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... windows one can see Lake Leman, closed in near here by mountains, blue like a great turquoise, ploughed by white, triangular sails. From time to time one hears the strident noise of a steamboat's siren and the murmur of ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... again with a beaming countenance, convinced that he was the only man in the world to that shameless slut, as treacherous, but as lovely and as engaging as a siren. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... minute before, Kate—a little uneasy now, at the truly reckless speeding of the driver, and at the daredevil way in which he was taking curves without either sounding his siren or reducing speed—had touched him on the shoulder, with a command: "Not quite ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... seconds the Pavilion d'Armenonville swirled round the unfortunate painter so violently that he felt as if he were on a roundabout at a fair. He feared that the siren must hear the pounding of his heart. To think that he had dreaded paying two louis! Two louis? Why, it would have been a bagatelle! Speechlessly he laid a fortune on the salver. With a culminating burst of recklessness he waved four francs towards Jules, and ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... A siren's dry shriek as the Sheriff's gasoline buggy made its way through the crowded street outside. Cummings raised his brows at me, got my nod of permission, and shot his first ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... tingle that her head was but a few inches from his head. Her, sleeve touched him. He turned more wooden under the spell of the orris root and violet. Her courtiers thought it all a graceful pose, but Coleman believed otherwise. Her voice sank to the liquid, siren note of a succubus. " Do you know what kind of a man I like? Really like? I like a man that a woman can't bend in a thousand different ways in five minutes. He must have some steel in him. He obliges me to admire him the most when he remains stolid; stolid to me lures. Ah, that ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... you,[38] typically represented as the protectresses of nations, the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse; the fountain Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Siren Ligeia of Terina. Now, of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature than the rest, and some softer in expression: in other respects, can you trace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth and Heaven, or between the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water Nymph of Syracuse? ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Authors! suit your topics to your strength, And ponder well your subject, and its length; 60 Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear. But lucid Order, and Wit's siren voice, [xiv] Await the Poet, skilful in his choice; With native Eloquence he soars along, Grace in his thoughts, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it; by so smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion required. And thus it ceases to be incredible that (as is commonly told of him), the charm of his familiar and domestic Siren made him forget his food and neglect his person, to that degree that when he was occasionally carried by absolute violence to bathe, or have his body anointed, he used to trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and diagrams in the oil on his body, being in a state ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Nisida," exclaimed Fernand, profoundly touched by the urgent, earnest appeal of the lovely siren whose persuasive eloquence besought him to seal his own eternal damnation—"would'st thou have me yield up my soul to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... head. "After that supper, there wasn't any need; I turned back to the glacier. And before I reached the landing, I heard Weatherbee's voice booming out on the thick silence like a siren at sea; piloting me straight to that one dip ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... delivered two cards, with Mr. Henry Foker engraved upon them, to Jeames, in a speechless agony. Jeames received the tickets bowing his powdered head. The varnished doors closed upon him. The beloved object was as far as ever from him, though so near. He thought he heard the tones of a piano and of a siren singing, coming from the drawing-room and sweeping over the balcony-shrubbery of geraniums. He would have liked to stop and listen, but it might not be. "Drive to Tattersall's," he said to the groom, in a voice smothered with ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some more into the radio, and the laborer with the lifter brought it and let it down, and Murell sat down on his luggage. Tom lit a cigarette and gave it to him, and told him to remain perfectly still. In a couple of minutes, an ambulance was coming, its siren howling. ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... I discussed these historical questions, particularly the correspondence between Celtic and Chinese dates, with Dr. Siren and Professor Fernholm; and they pointed out to me a similar correspondence between the dates of Scandinavian and West Asian history. I can remember but one example now: Gustavus Vasa, father of modern Sweden, founder of the present monarchy, came to the throne in 1523 and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... glass and strewn relics of former luxury; on the very grass of the promontory, brown and withered, and trodden into the earth for many a yard; on the horrible grave of the maiden who had watched her own image in the crystal pools, lilted her siren songs to the break of the waves, woven at once chains for her adorers and the web of that destiny which buried her there, unshrouded ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... for my second, for I should have suffered too much for you if I had been wounded under your eyes—that duel, for a quarrel at play, in which my second unfortunately killed that young Frenchman, the Viscount St. Remy. Apropos, do you know what has become of that dangerous siren St. Remy brought to Oppenfeld, and whose name was, I think, Cecily David? You will smile with pity, my friend, to see me wander thus among these vague remembrances of the past, instead of proceeding to the grave confessions ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... siren that Calypsowise in "Sartor" seduced Teufelsdroeckh at the commencement of his career, but who opened his eyes to see that it is not in sentiment, however fine, that the soul's cravings can ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... compass, and from the heart; while the Phoebus shows himself acquainted with art, and warbles in seductive quavers, now and then beyond the pitch of his voice. We must own also, Friedrich proves little seducible; shows himself laudably indifferent to such siren-singing;—perhaps more used to flattery, and knowing by experience how little meal is to be made of chaff. Voltaire, in an ungrateful France, naturally plumes himself a good deal on such recognition by a Foreign Rising Sun; and, of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... implore you. How if you have made a mistake? Suppose that in a few days' time, when you have compared him with men whom you will meet, men of real ability, men who have distinguished themselves in good earnest; suppose that you should discover, dear and fair siren, that it is no lyre-bearer that you have borne into port on your dazzling shoulders, but a little ape, with no manners and no capacity; a presumptuous fool who may be a wit in L'Houmeau, but turns out a very ordinary specimen of a young man in Paris? And, after all, volumes of verse come out ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... two illustrious coadjutors. The first was the jealous Queen, whose unbridled rage and vulgar clamor had made the Louvre a hell. The second was Henriette d'Entragues, Marquise de Vernenil, the crafty and capricious siren who had awakened these conjugal tempests. To this singular coalition were joined many other ladies of the court; for the pious flame, fanned by the Jesuits, spread through hall and boudoir, and fair votaries of the Loves and Graces found it a more grateful task to win heaven for the heathen ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... he could not think of any further means to render assistance, but he says, 'as was always my experience in the Discovery, my companions were never wanting in resource.' Soon the shrill screams of the siren were echoing among the hills, and in ten minutes after the suggestion had been made, a whaler was swinging alongside ready to search the cliffs on ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost, therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in company with a German who had been ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... slowly back to the partial barricade which compelled the motors to slow down. A siren heralded the approach of a car. I drew her aside into the ditch. Wrenching her hand ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... steered them, between the grinding bergs, raising his voice in lone signals like the weird cry of a siren. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... stopping, no matter how good the reason looked. We went hurtling through villages and towns we had not seen before. Our horn and our siren shrieked a warning as we shot through. And it seemed wrong. They looked so peaceful and so quiet, did those French towns, on that summer's morning! Peaceful, aye, and languorous, after all the bustle and haste we had been seeing. The houses were set in pretty encasements of ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... whence her beauty is derived? Hell may have arrayed her in its fatal charms. Sin is beautiful, but all-destructive. And the time will come when you may thank me for delivering you from the snares of this seductive siren." Richard uttered ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Capt. Marchmont suddenly becomes cognizant that his wife is an unscrupulous adventuress, who has deceived him from the day of their first meeting. The rapid and mortal duel between them from that moment—she with her magnificent lies and siren charm, winding about him like a serpent, trying to recover her lost ground; he with his man's agony and scorn and lost faith, trying to tear her from his heart. That scene I always thought was a crackerjack. When Capt. Marchmont discovers ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... not where those siren lips learned their unworthy skill, Nor reck of how shame's black eclipse obscured her purer will. You think not whence fair thoughts like flowers gave room to passions low; You know not of her girlhood's hours; you ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... supported, and at last even the swinging seats of the passengers in a dotted row. Although it was falling it seemed to them to be rushing up the sky, and over the roof-spaces of the city below its shadow leapt towards them. They heard the whistling rush of the air about it and its yelling siren, shrill and swelling, to warn those who were on its landing-stage of its arrival. And abruptly the note fell down a couple of octaves, and it had passed, and the sky was clear and void, and she could turn her sweet eyes again to Denton ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... element was melancholy, sighed, "I've been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough! The lookout saw a siren and the Infanta Isabella was dashed on the rocks and something laughed at ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... entranced. The songster adventured on with the "Amsterdam Maid," another stanza and chorus. The soft bell-like tones, the salty words, the air, like all the chanteys, both sad and reckless, caressed Martin's ears like a siren charm. The boatswain's words, "'E sings like a blessed angel," crossed his mind. Rather, a blessed merman! To Martin, greedy for the oceans and beyond, the ditty seemed the very whisper of bright and beckoning distance—a ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... cool. Out of the lattice would look a wonderful face, as thinly veiled as the moon by a mist, and then it would vanish so quickly that a man who saw, half believed that he had dreamed. But the eyes of the dream seemed to call, and could not be forgotten, any more than the song of a siren can cease to echo in ears which ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "Teacher of the world". According to Christoval, the creator and his sons were "eternal and unchangeable". Among the Canaris men descend from the survivor of the deluge, and a beautiful bird with the face of a woman, a siren in fact, but known better to ornithologists as a macaw. "The chief cause," says the good Christoval, "of these fables was ignorance ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... "siren" put me back on track, and I realized that the animal belonged to the order Sirenia: marine creatures that legends have turned into ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the curious their one Muse and Siren, this the sweetest note they can hear. For curiosity desires to know what is hidden and secret; but no one conceals his good fortune, nay sometimes people even pretend to have such advantages as they do not really possess. So the curious man, eager to hear a history of what ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... continually seeking concealment in some secret covert, some supposed security from his omniscient inspection. Captivated by deceitful appearances, human confidence is perpetually misplaced, and therefore perpetually betrayed; the siren song of pleasure soothes the unhappy captives of her bewitching charms into the bosom of destruction—the splendour of earthly distinctions dims the eye of sense, and prevents its perception of the bright realities of heaven. In fact, such has been ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... "S-W-A. All trading posts, mines and colonies are warned to prepare for possible attack. The Earth Government has just announced the receipt of an ultimatum from—" A raucous howl cut across the message and drowned it out. The siren blast howled on and on, mocking Jim's straining ears. "Well I'll be—Interference! Deliberate blanketing! The rats! The—" He blazed into a torrent of profanity whose imaginativeness was matched ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... not mine to fold you Against my heart for any length of days. I had no loveliness, alas, to hold you, No siren voice, no charm ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... but to deceive; it allures by worldly considerations to a heaven of purity, which no worldling can enter; it gives to its votaries, who long to eat of forbidden fruit, the assurance of impunity from the threatened evils, and leads them on by siren strains from the Paradise of purity into the broad road which ends at last in the blackness of the darkness of an eternal night ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... noble qualities of moral character and good judgment evinced by Kit Carson on this occasion of his eventful life. He found himself surrounded with the choice spirits of the new El Dorado; his name a prestige of strength and position, and his society courted by everybody. The siren voice of pleasure failed not to speak in his ear her most flattering invitations. Good-fellowship took him incessantly by the hand, desiring to lead him into the paths of dissipation. But the gay vortex, with all its brilliancy, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... her sister, whose jealousy she knew to be quick as the lightning, her vengeance hot as the breath of the volcano, and now she saw this featherhead, with monstrous ingratitude, dallying with fate, calling down upon the whole party the doom she alone could appreciate, all for the smile of a siren whose charms attracted him for the moment; but, worst of all, her heart condemned her as a ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... upon its unfinished frigate, and forgot the honor and interest of the country in the lap of the siren of the South,—of that South which sixty years since broke down the navy of John Adams, and left us to encounter the embargo and war with England without a navy, or, at most, with a few frigates which sufficed to show what the navy of Adams might have effected,—the honor of launching the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... men, View what is present, what is past review, And my old stock exhausted, lay in new. For twice six moons (let winds, turn'd porters, bear This oath to Heav'n), for twice six moons, I swear, No Muse shall tempt me with her siren lay, Nor draw me from Improvement's thorny way; Verse I abjure, nor will forgive that friend, Who in my hearing shall a rhyme commend. It cannot be—Whether I will, or no, Such as they are, my thoughts in measure flow. Convinc'd, determin'd, ...
— English Satires • Various
... mental eye the image of the girl weeping silently, abundantly, patiently, and as if irresistibly. I thought of her tawny hair. I thought how, if unplaited, it would have covered her all round as low as the hips, like the hair of a siren. And she had bewitched him. Fancy a man who would guard his own life with the inflexibility of a pitiless and immovable fate, being brought to lament that once a crowbar had missed his skull! The sirens sing and lure to death, but this one had been weeping silently as if for the ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... your fight. The little imps pluck at you: the big giant assails you: the seductions of the soft-mouthed siren are not wanting. Slacken the knot an instant, and they will all have play. And the worst is, that you may be wrong, and they may be right! For is it, can it be proper for you to stain the silvery whiteness of your skin by plunging headlong into yonder pitch-bath? Consider the defilement! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is familiar with melancholy, and gently brings on like a Siren, a shoeing-horn, or some sphinx to this irrevocable gulf, [1559]a primary cause, Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... neatness and speed. If there was no trouble yet, there would very likely be some swearing when the soldiers got there. In the meantime he was wet through, both with rain and perspiration. The thought of a bath and dry clothes urged him like the voice of a siren calling; and he had shown the babu all the courtesy his Sikh creed ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... of the sentence was lost in the wild shriek of a siren, shriek after shriek succeeding each other as a big car, with far-reaching acetylene lamps, roared down upon them. Like a mighty whirlwind it swept by them, careening perilously on the sloping edge of the road. Suddenly the grinding of brakes assailed the ears of the ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... And I do not think that this—this—shall we call it glamour, John?—this glamour, of the imagination and the senses, will overcome you in any detrimental way. I cannot picture you as the victim of a 'society' siren!" ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... could find a man to drive me thither; so I secured careful directions, and the next morning I left the town on foot and alone. I did not mind the labor of it. I was as vigorous as a young giant, fear of personal peril I had never known, and the love of adventure was singing its siren's song to me. I was clad in the strong, coarse garments, suited to the Plains. I was armed with two heavy revolvers and a small pistol. Hidden inside of my belt as a last defence was the short, sharp knife bearing Jean Le Claire's ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... note out of distance flung, From the moment man hears the siren call Of Victory's bugle, which sounds for all, To his inner self the promise is made To weary not, rest not, but all unafraid Press on—till for him the ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... scarcely cared so much. Sitting in his garden yesterday, he could never have imagined such a change. But his heart did not hail the barkentine as usual. Books, music, pale paper, and print—this was all that was coming to him, some of its savor had gone; for the siren voice of Life had been speaking with him face to face, and in his spirit, deep down, the love of the world was restlessly answering it. Young Gaston showed more eagerness than the Padre over this arrival of the vessel that might be bringing Trovatore in the nick of time. Now he would have the chance, ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... operation with the outward impassibility of theatrical servants, though she imperceptibly smiled as she realized that this display of her mistress' personal charms was made solely for the purpose of rendering the young soldier still more the slave of that artful siren. ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... Alexandria he found, to his disgust, that the transports still lay at the wharf where he had left them on his departure.[253] The muskets arrived at length, and the fleet sailed on the twenty-second of May. Three small frigates, the "Success," the "Mermaid," and the "Siren," commanded by the ex-privateersman, Captain Rous, acted as convoy; and on the twenty-sixth the whole force safely reached Annapolis. Thence after some delay they sailed up the Bay of Fundy, and at sunset on the first of June anchored ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... about to perish, went up a babel of sounds which in its sum shaped itself to one prolonged scream, such as might proceed from a Titan in his agony. All this beneath a brooding, moonlit sky, and on a sea as smooth as glass. Upon the ship, which now lay upon her side, the siren still sent up its yells for succour, and some brave man continued to fire rockets, which rushed heavenwards and burst ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... playing with the very worst sort of fire; and first made him see that in spite of himself, and almost without his knowledge, the girl had grown wonderfully sweet and dear to him. He now saw his danger, and struggled to keep himself beyond the spell of her perilous glances and siren song. This modern Ulysses made a masterful effort, but alas! had no ships to carry him away, and no wax with which to fill his ears. Wax is a good thing, and no one should enter the Siren country without it. Ships, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... awful wail that suddenly smites the stillness as with a blow? It seems like the wailing of all the lost souls of the war. It sounds like the crying of the more than five million sorrowing women there are left comfortless in Europe. It is the siren. An air-raid is on. The "alert" is sounding. The bombs begin to fall. The Boches have gotten over even before the barrage is up. Hell breaks loose for an hour. No battle on the front ever heard more terrific cannonading ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain that hides the inner parts of the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... A fog-siren somewhere on the invisible shore was sending out its unearthly blasts. Then a whistle seemed to cut the gloom right ahead, and a big black shape loomed through the murk. The Merry Seas sounded her warning, and the helm ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... trains them front row eyes of hers on him, opens up with a few lines of lively chatter, and inside of half an hour she has him sittin' picturesque at her feet, callin' him Hermes of the Lobster Pots, and otherwise workin' the siren spell. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... who sit in a bower of roses under the shadow of an umbrageous maple-tree, their arms intertwined, their eyes fixed upon a moonbeam, piping out Swedish melodies, which, to our two swains, prove seductive as the songs of a Siren. The moonbeam aforesaid is kind enough to convert into silver all the trees, bushes, leaves and twigs in the vicinity of the young ladies with the Thor-and-Odin names; whilst to complete this German vision, a white bird with a yellow tuft upon its head stands sentry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the obscure race and country of the heavenly siren? Ithaca is his country, Telemachus his father, and Epicasta, Nestor's daughter, the mother that bare him, a man by far the wisest of mortal kind.' This we must most implicitly believe, the inquirer and the answerer being who they are—especially since the poet has so greatly ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... chanted a siren, whose profession might be guessed by her appearance. A tattered caidie, or errand-porter, whom David Deans had jostled in his attempt to extricate himself from the vicinity of these scorners, exclaimed in a strong north-country tone, "Ta deil ding out her Cameronian ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... thou siren!" cried the warrior, with fierceness. As he spoke he threw the tender knees of Lady Helen upon the rocky floor. His voice echoed terribly in her ears, but obeying him, "Free me," cried she, "for the sake of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... I speak the winged galley flies, And lo! the Siren shores like mists arise. Sunk were at once the winds; the air above, And waves below, at once forgot to move; Some demon calm'd the air and smooth'd the deep, Hush'd the loud winds, and charm'd the waves to sleep. Now every sail we furl, each oar we ply; Lash'd by the stroke, the frothy ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... of the things you should know. Now you will find that there is hardly a single page of those sacred writings in which there is not a malediction pronounced against the world, and a warning for you to avoid its siren charms. You will find in the gospel according to St. John its true character described by Jesus Christ Himself, who, being the Incarnate Wisdom, could not have any other than the most perfect idea of things according to their ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is a lady living in this place That wears the radiant name of Victory; And we that love would bid her wingless be, Like the Athenian image, lest her grace, Lifting a siren's-tinted pinions, trace Its glittering course across the Tyrrhene sea To some more favored Cyprian sanctuary, Leaving us lonely, longing for her face. O daughter of the gods, though lovelier lands, If such there be, entreat you, do not hear Their whispering ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... The siren sounded, and a bustle began as people put on their life-belts. "All life-belts on, please," said a young officer continually, who, with a brassard on his arm, was going up and down among the chairs. "Who's that?" asked Peter, struggling ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... "Those siren waves were bearing me on to the gulf where"—She paused a moment, shuddering at the dark retrospect of the past. "Where all your pomp and pageantry will be overwhelmed, and yourselves, for ever, in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... room and the siren-like face behind its silken folds of crimson, he fretted to return and look again for a change wrought out by his brief absence; but ...
— The Story of a Picture • Douglass Sherley
... erroneously, it is assumed to be proper for gradation also; and a very flattering assumption it is, promising a perfectly homogeneous system of weights, measures, coins, and numbers, than which nothing can be more desirable; but, siren-like, it draws the mind away from a proper investigation of the subject, and the basic qualities of numbers, being unquestioned, remain unknown. When the natural order is adopted, and the base of gradation is ascertained by its adaptation to things, and the base ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... is almost forced to believe that Savage's well-wisher, the writer of the little satire, "To the Ingenious Riverius, on his writing in the Praise of Friendship," was none other than Eliza herself.[14] Exactly what injury she had sustained from him and his Siren is not known, but although he still stood high in her esteem, she was implacable against that "worse than Lais" whom in a long and pungent description she satirized under the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... and was answered from astern. Then somewhere to the south-eastward a siren sent a wailing cry, subdued by distance. The fog settled on everything and shone on the boys' sweaters in little beads of moisture. The Adventurer seemed to be standing still, for, with nothing to judge ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... her sails rosy-tinted in the morning sunlight, very beautiful and magical. There was no fleck of cloud in all the wide blue of the sky, but the horizon was hidden by a faint haze, sunlit but impenetrable, and from somewhere in the mist came the reiterated wails of a siren, from some ship groping its way up the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland |
