"Helicon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the profane contumely done to the Muse; Done to the Muse in the person of Me, her patron, that never Licked Ministerial lips, dusted the boots of the Court! Surely I hear through the noisy and nauseous clamour of Carlton Sobs of the sensitive Nine heave upon Helicon's hump! ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... cross of Cynthia's way, One of whose names is sacred Trivia. And after penance thus perform'd you pass In like set order, not as Midas did, To wash his gold off into Tagus' stream; But to the Well of knowledge, Helicon; Where, purged of your present maladies, Which are not few, nor slender, you become Such as you fain would seem, and then return, Offering your service to great Cynthia. This is your sentence, if the goddess please To ratify it with her high consent; The ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... liberal Arts and the sciences. They were Calliope (Heroic Poetry), Clio Euterpe (Music), Erato (Love Poetry), Melpomene (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Muse of Singing and Rhetoric), Terpsichore (Dancing), Thalia (Comedy), and Urania (Astronomy). Mount Parnassus, Mount Helicon, and the fountains of Castalia and Aganippe were the sacred places of ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Hamilton Paul, their favourite and admired laureate of the north, has been heard to express his admiration of certain nymphs in a certain place; and that the said Hamilton Paul has ungratefully and feloniously neglected to speak with due reverence of the ladies of Helicon; that said Hamilton Paul shall be deprived of all aid in future from these goddesses, and be sent to draw his inspiration from the dry fountain of earthly beauty; and that, furthermore, all the favours taken from the said Hamilton Paul shall accrue ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... holy virgins! for your sakes If e'er I suffer'd hunger, cold and watching, Occasion calls on me to crave your bounty. Now through my breast let Helicon his stream Pour copious; and Urania with her choir Arise to aid me: while the verse unfolds Things that do almost ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Imbrium, covering 340,000 square miles, is sparingly dotted over with craters. All of the more conspicuous of them are indicated in the chart. The smaller ones, like Caroline Herschel, Helicon, Leverrier, Delisle, etc., vary from eight to twelve miles in diameter. Lambert is seventeen miles in diameter, and Euler nineteen, while Timocharis is twenty-three miles broad and 7,000 feet deep below its walls, which rise only 3,000 feet above the ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... were to be held on that day and the next,—the sports that drew, in those ancient days, over thirty thousand Greeks from all the country round; from the towns on the shores of the two gulfs and from the mountain-lands of Greece,—from Parnassus and Helicon and Delphi, from Athens and the villages on the slopes of Hymettus ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... Mighty cities fall; Their walls protect them not; their dwellers sink To ashes with them. Woods on mountains flame;— Athos, Cilician Taurus, Tmolus, burn; Oete, and Ide, her pleasant fountains dry; With virgin Helicon, and Haemus high, OEagrius since. Now with redoubled flames Fierce Etna blazes;—Eryx, Othrys too; Cynthus, and fam'd Parnassus' double top, And Rhodope, at length of snow depriv'd: Dindyma, Mimas, and the sacred hill Cythaeron nam'd, and lofty Mycale: Nor aid ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... crowning the great poets of the time. Italy, the mother of art, wished the laurel to encircle the brow of the living, not to be simply the ornament of a tomb. Rome had crowned, in 1341, him who, "cleansing the fount of Helicon from slime and marshy rushes, had restored to the water its pristine limpidity, who had opened Castalia's grotto, obstructed by a network of wild boughs, and destroyed the briers in the laurel grove": the illustrious Francis Petrarch.[478] Though somewhat tardy, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... precious stones His sword, which was the weapon he most used in fight, was given him by the king of the Citieans, and was of an admirable temper and lightness. The belt which he also wore in all engagements, was of much richer workmanship than the rest of his armor. It was the work of the ancient Helicon, and had been presented to him by the Rhodians, as a mark of their respect to him. So long as he was engaged in drawing up his men, or riding about to give orders or directions, or to view them, he spared Bucephalas, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life, the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. In his turbulent and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in the white robe of the Peacemaker; and with ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old Muses, daughters of Jupiter and the Goddess of Memory, after their seats on Helicon, Parnassus, and Olympus were barbarized? Not far away. They hovered like witches around the seething caldron of early Christian Europe, in which, "with bubble, bubble, toil and trouble," a new civilization was forming, mindful of the brilliant lineage of their worshippers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... during the celebration of the nuptials, Phineus claims Andromeda, who has been betrothed to him; and together with Proetus, he and Polydectes are turned into stone. Pallas, who has aided Perseus, now leaves him, and goes to Helicon, to see the fountain of Hippocrene. The Muses tell her the story of Pyreneus and the Pierides, who were transformed into magpies after they had repeated various songs on the subjects of the transformation of the Deities into various forms of animals; the rape ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... out of the plain where 'Mars loved to dance,' rises the Muses' haunt, Helicon, by whose silver streams Corinna and Hesiod sang. While far away under the white aegis of those snow-capped mountains lies Chaeronea and the Lion plain where with vain chivalry the Greeks strove to check Macedon first and afterwards Rome; Chaeronea, where in ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... on the few things absolutely essential to this result,—if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon,—all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... detail, combining the recollections of the scholar with the impressions of an artist. The pediment of the Parthenon, the oleanders of the Ilissus, the stream "that runs in rain-time," the naked peak of Parnassus, the green slopes of Helicon, the blue gulf of Argus, the pine forest beside Alpheus, where the ancients worshipped "Death the Gentle"—all of them passed in recount upon his ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... friend Bran. A simple and unsublimed taste now, like my own, would prefer a jet d'eau at Versailles to this cascade, with all its accompaniments of rock and roar; but this is Flora's Parnassus, Captain Waverley, and that fountain her Helicon. It would be greatly for the benefit of my cellar if she could teach her coadjutor, Mac-Murrough, the value of its influence: he has just drunk a pint of usquebaugh to correct, he said, the coldness of the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... dainty nymphs, that in this blessed brook Do bathe your breast, Forsake your watery bowers and hither look At my request.... And eke you virgins that on Parnass dwell, Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well, Help me to blaze Her worthy praise, Which in her ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... obliged to do penance at St. Monnica's rather frugal table. But when the fever of inspiration took hold of him, he forgot eating and drinking, and in his poetical thirst he would would have drained—so his master says—all the fountains of Helicon. Licentius had a passion for versifying: "He is an almost perfect poet," wrote Augustin to Romanianus. The former rhetorician knew the world, and the way to talk to the father of a wealthy pupil, especially if he is your benefactor. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... fill up the Glass, To the next merry Lad let it pass, Come away with't: Come Set Foot to Foot, And but give our Minds to't, 'Tis Heretical Six that doth slay Wit, No Helicon like to the Juice of the Vine is, For Phoebus had never had Wit, nor Diviness, Had his Face been bow dy'd as thine, his, and ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... brook you go, With sound of happy mirth and sheen Of daylight - whether by the green You fare that moment, or the gray; Whether you dwell in March or May; Or whether treat of reels and rods Or of the old unhappy gods: Still like a brook your page has shone, And your ink sings of Helicon. ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thus, a hired butcher, a savage chief of savage men. My father was a reverent man, who feared great Jupiter, and brought the rural deities his offerings of fruits ad flowers. He dwelt among the vine-clad rocks and olive groves at the foot of Helicon. My early life ran quiet as the brook by which I sported. I was taught to prune the vine, to tend the flock; and then, at noon, I gathered my sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of president APOLLO, And other gentle folks, that follow: Such as URANIA and CLIO, To whom my fame poetic I owe; With the whole drove of rhyming sisters, For whom my heart with rapture blisters; Who swim in HELICON uncertain Whether a petticoat or shirt on, From vulgar ken their charms do cover, From every eye but Muses' lover; In name of every ugly GOD; Whose beauty scarce outshines a toad; In name of PROSERPINE and PLUTO, Who board in ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... did not exactly remember them: it would have been a wonder if he had: but he thought Vivian Grey the most delightful fellow he ever met, and determined to ask him to Helicon Castle for ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... unloved uproar[A] Shrills round their portal; Yet not on Helicon Kept they more cloudless ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... was a man named Green, and dey said he was a powerful mean sort of man. I never did know whar it was dey lived when Daddy was borned. Mammy's marster was a lawyer dat dey called Slickhead Mitchell, and he had a plantation at Helicon Springs. Mammy was a house gal and she said dey treated her right good. Now Daddy, he done field work. You know what field work is, hoein', plowin', and things lak dat. When you was a slave you had to do anything and evvything your marster told you to. You was jus' 'bliged to obey your ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Gods a'me! away with your songs and sonnets and on with your gown and cap quickly: here, here, your father will be a man of this room presently. Come, nay, nay, nay, nay, be brief. These verses too, a poison on 'em! I cannot abide them, they make me ready to cast, by the banks of Helicon! Nay, look, what a rascally untoward thing this poetry is; I could ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... spurs thee on, Raising thy heart to flights of Helicon! If thus in strains of Delphic ecstasy Ascends the short-lived blissful memory Of his bright charms,—Oh, how divine must be His own sweet voice,—his look how heavenly! But why of that great attribute Kronion joys in most, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... place on a part of the Acropolis of Athens, the rocky temple-crowned hill around which the city was built. There were other "museums," or seats of the Muses, in ancient Greece; those on the slopes of Mount Helicon and of Mount Olympus were the most famous. In modern times a picture gallery and art collection, that of the Louvre, in Paris, is called "the Musee," whilst "the Museum" (the Latin form of the same word) is the name distinctively applied in Paris to the collections of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... may with much more elegance invoke a ballad, as some have thought Homer did, or a mug of ale, with the author of Hudibras; which latter may perhaps have inspired much more poetry, as well as prose, than all the liquors of Hippocrene or Helicon. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... with emotion! Her inlands, her isles of the ocean, Fanes rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring, And the Nine shall new hallow their Helicon's spring. Our hearts shall be kindled in gladness, That were cold, and extinguished in sadness; Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving arms, Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms,— When ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... Of Helicon-hill, O Thou that be Haunter, Urania's progeny, Who hurriest soft virginity To man, O Hymenaeus Hymen, O Hymen ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... jaundiced eyes: While, as for ancient models, take the code Which to the ten wise men our fathers owed, The treaties made 'twixt Gabii's kings and Home's, The pontiffs' books, the bards' forgotten tomes, They'll swear the Muses framed them every one In close divan on Alba's Helicon. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... ultimately came to want ("Works and Days", 34 ff.), Hesiod lived a farmer's life until, according to the very early tradition preserved by the author of the "Theogony" (22-23), the Muses met him as he was tending sheep on Mt. Helicon and 'taught him a glorious song'—doubtless the "Works and Days". The only other personal reference is to his victory in a poetical contest at the funeral games of Amphidamas at Chalcis in Euboea, where he won the prize, a tripod, which he dedicated ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Sweet rest sease thee evermore, 50 That to give the world encrease, Shortned hast thy own lives lease; Here besides the sorrowing That thy noble House doth bring, Here be tears of perfect moan Weept for thee in Helicon, And som Flowers, and som Bays, For thy Hears to strew the ways, Sent thee from the banks of Came, Devoted to thy vertuous name; 60 Whilst thou bright Saint high sit'st in glory, Next her much like to thee in story, That fair ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Wordsworth embalming May mornings, he began to talk of the older poets who had worshipped nature with the ardor of lovers, and his eyes lighted up with pleasure when I happened to remember some almost forgotten stanza from England's "Helicon." It was an easy transition from the old bards to "Elia," and he soon went on in his fine enthusiastic way to relate several anecdotes of his eccentric friend. As I rose to take leave ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... continued on his way, his quiver of arrows over his shoulder, his bow in one hand, and in the other a club made from the trunk of a wild olive tree which he had passed on Mount Helicon and pulled up by the roots. When he at last entered the Nemean wood, he looked carefully in every direction in order that he might catch sight of the monster lion before the lion should see him. It was mid-day, and nowhere could he discover any trace of the lion or any path that ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... first south, and then east to the sea, nearly inclosing Thessaly, and dividing it from the rest of Greece. After throwing out the various spurs of Othrys, OEta, and Corax, it loses itself in those famous haunts of the Muses—the heights of Parnassus and Helicon, in Phocis and Boeotia, In the southern part of Greece are the mountains which intersect the Peloponnesus in almost every part, the principal of which are Scollis, Aroanii, and Taygetus. We can not enumerate the names of all ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Sir, you are a man of sense, and express yourself well. I did, as you say, once make a small sally into Parnassus—took a sort of flying leap over Helicon; but if ever they catch me there again—sir, the town have a prejudice to my family; for, if any play could have made them ashamed to damn it, mine must. It was all over plot. It would have made half a dozen novels: nor ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... citadel of Greece. It is now guarded by a handful of soldiers, two or three neglected cannons thrust their muzzles idly over the rampart, and shepherds with their flocks roam at will within. A sharp wind was sweeping over the summit, and the mountains and islands—Parnassus, Cyllene, Helicon, Pentclicon, Salamis, AEgina—were veiled with a dull, opaque haze. While Basil, with stiff fingers, was sketching the view from the top, I wandered about with my other companion, picking spring flowers, reading the descriptions of Pausanias, and studying the distant landscape. There is a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... bloom-woven, hides The sobered brow and lessening hair For aught I know, the myrtled sides Of Helicon ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Muses, open Helicon, and let your song awake To tell what kings awoke to war, what armies for whose sake Filled up the meads; what men of war sweet mother Italy Bore unto flower and fruit as then; what flame of fight ran high: For ye remember, Holy Ones, and ye may tell the tale; But ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... you, my little friends, have probably heard that this Pegasus was a snow-white steed, with beautiful silvery wings, who spent most of his time on the summit of Mount Helicon. He was as wild, and as swift, and as buoyant, in his flight through the air, as any eagle that ever soared into the clouds. There was nothing else like him in the world. He had no mate; he never had been backed or bridled by a master; and, for many a long year, he led ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... passages in The Brides' Tragedy seem only to be waiting for the breath of inspiration which will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of Apollo. No one, surely, whose lips had not tasted of the waters of Helicon, could have uttered such ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... spring of Tilphusa, Copais lay bright in the moon, Helicon glass'd in the lake Its firs, and afar rose the peaks Of Parnassus, snowily clear; Thebes was behind him in flames, And the clang of arms in his ear, When his awe-struck captors led The Theban seer to the spring. Tiresias drank and died. Nor did ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... then to understand, And smiled bland, On Helicon the sacred Nine Occasionally ask bards to dine. 'For most,' she said, 'we do not move, Though we approve; For one alone we ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... dangle wagging of my tub, what would you have me to do? By the Virgin that tucks up her sleeve, I know not as yet. Stay a little, till I suck up a draught of this bottle; it is my true and only Helicon; it is my Caballine fountain; it is my sole enthusiasm. Drinking thus, I meditate, discourse, resolve, and conclude. After that the epilogue is made, I laugh, I write, I compose, and drink again. Ennius ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... him now And, since he pledged me in so rare a cup, I'll lift and drink to him, though lightnings fall From envious gods to scourge me. I will lift This cup in darkness to the soul that reigns In light on Helicon. Who knows how near? For I have thought, sometimes, when I have tried To work his will, the hand that moved my pen Was mine, and yet—not mine. The bodily mask Is mine, and sometimes, dull as clay, it sleeps With old Musaeus. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes |
