"Orpheus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toll, and then a pause 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 Guiana he makes ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... sport if he do," said Colonel Mar, carelessly; "he may term himself a very Orpheus charming the beasts, so that they snatch ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... oh! what art can teach, What human voice can reach The sacred organ's praise? Notes inspiring holy love, Notes that wing their heavenly ways To mend the choirs above. Orpheus could lead the savage race, And trees uprooted left their place Sequacious of the lyre: But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher: When to her Organ vocal breath was given An angel heard, and straight ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... to human proofs of the dignity of learning, we find that among the heathen the inventors of new arts, such as Ceres, Bacchus, and Apollo, were consecrated among the gods themselves by apotheosis. The fable of Orpheus, wherein quarrelsome beasts stood sociably listening to the harp, aptly described the nature of men among whom peace is maintained so long as they give ear to precepts, laws, and religion. It has ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... comparison with the well-scourged verse-mason, Orpheus of the untenanted city, who had done his publishing ingenuously for glory: a good instance of the comic-pathetic. She wrote to Emma, begging her to take him in at Copsley for a few days: 'I told you I had no troubles. I am really troubled about this poor boy. He has very little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... financial inducement was large, and he soothed his artistic conscience with the argument that his music would tend to elevate the vaudeville rather than that the vaudeville would tend to degrade him. It was at the Orpheus Theatre in San Francisco, and it was his first appearance. He played one or two selections, and being tremendously applauded, and correspondingly gratified, he returned and answered the encore with the well-known "Old Glory." He was in his best vein, and played as one inspired. The audience ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... to be found in matching a beautiful shepherdess named Dido with a Great Shepherd called Lobbin, or when the verse requires it, Lobb. And not merely the speakers in the dialogue are shepherds; every one is in their view a shepherd. Chaucer is the "god of shepherds," and Orpheus is a— ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... his slim figure. He showed the precise carriage and moved with the cadenced step that made some say in mockery that he was like a dancing-master and earned him from others the name of the "French Orpheus." Robespierre, speaking in a clear voice, delivered an eloquent discourse against the enemies of the Republic. He belaboured with metaphysical and uncompromising arguments Brissot and his accomplices. He spoke at great length, in free-flowing harmonious periods. Soaring ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... beings; [Footnote: The identity of these incidents with those of "classic" times is worth noting. There is a lustration and the clothing the neophyte in a new garment, and he receives the magic fillet, as in the Mysteries of the old world. Nor is the resemblance of the pipe to that of Orpheus less striking. In many respects this is the most remarkable old Indian myth I have ever met with.] and then singing a song bade him join in with him. And doing this he found that he could sing, and ever after had a ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Orpheus and Pythagoras abstained from the slaying of animals for the service of ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... under the poet's wand above all, that, like the marble at Pygmalion's breast, she grows warm and breathes and answers to his charm; as in that symbolic saga, the listening woods and waters and the creatures followed Orpheus with his lute. Scientific knowledge, optical, acoustical, meteorological, geological, only widens and deepens love for her and increases and refines the sense of her beauty. In short, deep feeling for Nature always proves considerable ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... able to show me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history he brought that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some others are named, who having been the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers in learning. For not only in time they had ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... the woods and waters to lament Your dolefull dreriment: Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside; And, having all your heads with girlands crownd, Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound; Ne let the same of any be envide: So Orpheus did for his owne bride! So I unto my selfe alone will sing; The woods shall to me answer, and my ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... And it wald sing and it wald dance, Oure fute, and Orliance. Quha conjurit the litill gaist say ye? Nane bot the litill Spenzie fle, That with hir wit and her ingyne, Gart the gaist leif agane; And sune mareit the gaist the fle, And croun'd him King of Kandelie; And they gat them betwene, Orpheus king, and Elpha quene.[71] To reid quha will this gentill geist, Ye hard ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... of tumblers were sent into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through the nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a mockery the glare of the lamps and the capers of the mountebanks were, and how satisfied were we to enjoy it all without going inside. I hear the "Waterloo veterans" still, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... most famous, and intends to make sophistry his profession. A train of listeners followed him; the greater part of them appeared to be foreigners, whom Protagoras had brought with him out of the various cities visited by him in his journeys, he, like Orpheus, attracting them his voice, and they following (Compare Rep.). I should mention also that there were some Athenians in the company. Nothing delighted me more than the precision of their movements: ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... Argonaut must be mentioned, namely, the minstrel Orpheus. He was the son of the muse Calliope, and was looked on as the first of the many glorious singers of Greece, who taught the noblest and best lessons. His music, when he played on the lyre, was so ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would, agreeably to what we have above observed, be ineffable also in a secondary degree. But as this is by no means the case, it principally derives its immediate subsistence from a deity of a fabricative characteristic, whom Plato calls Jupiter, conformably to the theology of Orpheus. The intelligent reader will readily admit that this dogmas is so far from being derogatory to the dignity of the Supreme, that on the contrary it exalts that dignity, and, preserves in a becoming manner the ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... 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 ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 2d Fai. Orpheus, with his lute, made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing, To his musick, plants and flowers Ever spring, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. [During this song the body ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... graceful songs is Charles Fonteyn Manney, who was born in Brooklyn in 1872, and studied theory with William Arms Fisher in New York, and later with J. Wallace Goodrich at Boston. His most original song is "Orpheus with His Lute," which reproduces the quaint and fascinating gaucheries of the text with singular charm. He has also set various songs of Heine's to music, and a short cantata for Easter, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... in the growing countenance which was extended to these rites in the third century, Christianity came in for a share. The chapel of Alexander Severus contained statues of Abraham, Orpheus, Apollonius, Pythagoras, and our Lord. Here indeed, as in the case of Zenobia's Judaism, an eclectic philosophy aided the comprehension of religions. But, immediately before Alexander, Heliogabalus, who was no philosopher, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... collection of good old English music, and will scarcely have anything to do with modern composers. The time, however, at which his musical powers are of most use is now and then of an evening, when he plays for the children to dance in the hall, and he passes among them and the servants for a perfect Orpheus. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... away to the northward, and into the land of Thrace, till he found Orpheus, the prince of minstrels, where he dwelt in his cave under Rhodope, among the savage Cicon tribes. And he asked him, 'Will you leave your mountains, Orpheus, my fellow- scholar in old times, and cross Strymon once more ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... To Warwick it was far more; for music, the comforter, laid her balm on his sore heart as no mortal pity could have done, and wrought the miracle which changed the friend who seemed to have robbed him of his love to an unconscious Orpheus, who subdued the savage and harmonized the man. Soon he was himself again, for to those who harbor the strong virtues with patient zeal, no lasting ill can come, no affliction can wholly crush, no temptation wholly vanquish. He rose with eyes the clearer for their stormy rain, twice a man for ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... fight for the city is fought In Nature's old domain; Man goes out to the wilds, And Orpheus' ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... of sin, ye Righteous! fly, Speed the quick step, nor turn the lingering eye!"— —Such the command, as fabling Bards indite, When Orpheus charm'd the grisly King of Night; Sooth'd the pale phantoms with his plaintive lay, 250 And led the fair Assurgent into day.— Wide yawn'd the earth, the fiery tempest flash'd, And towns and towers in one vast ruin crash'd;— Onward ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Cecilia; Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below. Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love; With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art. When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre, The streams stand still, the stones admire; The listening savages advance, The wolf and lamb around him trip, The bears in awkward measures leap, And tigers mingle in the dance. The moving ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... covered, not merely with the bones, but with the skins, of those who have been consumed there. They address themselves, in the part of the song which Homer gives, not to the passions of Ulysses, but to his vanity, and the only man who ever came within hearing of them, and escaped untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the vain imaginations by singing the praises of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Another composition, in blank verse, curiously similar to Mary's own work, entitled Orpheus, has been allotted by Dr. Garnett (Relics of Shelley, 1862) to the same category. [Footnote: Dr. Garnett, in his prefatory note, states that Orpheus 'exists only in a transcript by Mrs. Shelley, who has written in playful allusion to her toils as amanuensis Aspetto fin che il diluvio cala, ed allora cerco di posare argine alle sue parole'. The poem is thus supposed to have been Shelley's ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... Cornelia and her Children. Paris. Venus and Cupid. Rome. Villa Borghese: Toilet of Minerva. Venice. Academy: The Marriage of Cana; Madonna in Glory; Vanity, Orpheus, and Eurydice; Rape of Proserpine; Virgin in Glory. Verona. Man and Woman playing Chess; Triumph of Bacchus. Vienna. Woman taken ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... 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 ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mata-ora in his pain chanted a song calling upon his wife's name. Report of this was carried to Niwa Reka, and her heart was touched. She forgave her husband, and nursed him through the fever caused by the tattooing. Happier than Orpheus and Eurydice, the pair returned to earth and taught men to copy the patterns punctured on Mata-ora's face. But, alas! in their joy they forgot to pay to Ku Whata Whata, the mysterious janitor of Hades, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of melody and rythm, from the wildest dithyrambic to the severest and most grave alcaic; she had struck the lute, calling forth notes such as might have performed the miracles attributed to Orpheus and Amphion. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... 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 ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... to Virgil on the death of Quintilius. He tells his illustrious friend simply that his calamity is without hope, irretrievable and eternal; that it is idle to implore the gods to restore the dead; and that, although his lyre may be more sweet than that of Orpheus, he cannot reanimate the shadow of his friend nor persuade 'the ghost-compelling god' to unbar the gates of death. He urges patience as the sole resource. He alludes not unfrequently to his own death in the same ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 passages from the Koran ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... am sure that in some sort of work lies the antidote to luxury. When Orpheus sailed past the beautiful islands "lying in dark purple spheres of sea," and heard the songs of the idle and luxurious syrens floating languidly over the waters, he drowned their singing in a paean to the gods. Religion often ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... exchange of salutations and the episcopal benediction the suffragan began with a voice so mild that I never heard a sweeter, so that if head and heart had only been in unison, Orpheus and Apollo would have been obliged to yield to him in grace, and Demosthenes and the Gracchi in eloquence. In vain would I attempt to communicate to you the discourse entire. It was confused and much too long. Meanwhile I had noted down the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... a lady to help you, you would be more successful," observed my mother, "like Orpheus of old, who charmed the savage beasts. She would with her voice produce a greater effect on their wild natures than any ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... They say that Orpheus with his lute Had power to tame the wildest brute; That "Variations on a Theme" Of his ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... besides, the three faculties of the soul must be together infused, which is most absurd as they hold, because in beasts they are begot, the two inferior I mean, and may not be well separated in men. [996] Galen supposeth the soul crasin esse, to be the temperature itself; Trismegistus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Homer, Pindarus, Phaerecides Syrus, Epictetus, with the Chaldees and Egyptians, affirmed the soul to be immortal, as did those British [997]Druids of old. The [998]Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis; and Palingenesia, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and schools I was best pleased, because poetry, religion, and philosophy were completely combined into one; and I only maintained that first opinion of mine with the more animation, when the Book of Job and the Song and Proverbs of Solomon, as well as the lays of Orpheus and Hesiod, seemed to bear valid witness in its favor. My friend had taken the smaller work of Brucker as the foundation of his discourse; and, the farther we went on, the less I could make of it. I could not ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Four Seasons were painted (1660-1664) for Richelieu. These beautiful compositions, more especially the last, The Deluge, typifying winter, will repay careful study. On the R. wall are, 724, the well-known Rape of the Sabine Women; 740, a most perfect work of his maturity, Orpheus and Eurydice (1659); and 742, Apollo and Daphne, his last work, left unfinished. Such are some of the more striking manifestations of this remarkable genius who alone, says Hazlitt, has the right to be considered as the painter of classical antiquity. His integrity was so rigid that ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... under present conditions? "Es bildet ein Talent sich in der stille," says Goethe, and I think you will admit that there is precious little of "der stille" to be found either in ordinary domestic life, or that refuge of the desperate, a garret in Bloomsbury. Picture to yourself Orpheus executing frenzied violin obbligati to the family baby (teething)—or Apollo hastily descending the slopes of Olympus to argue with a tax collector, or irate landlady! Alas! few survive this sort of thing. What ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "Eurydice!" "Eurydice!" so beseeching, so passionate, so exhausted by longing, drew me with an irresistible power. Gluck certainly achieved the effect he attempted, and showed us what the fabled power of Orpheus was. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... oblong sala with a banquette running all round it. Upon this the dancers seated themselves, drew out their husk cigarettes, chatted, and smoked, during the intervals of the dance. In one corner half a dozen sons of Orpheus twanged away upon harp, guitar, and bandolin; occasionally helping out the music with a shrill half-Indian chant. In another angle of the apartment, puros, and Taos whisky were dealt out to the thirsty mountaineers, who made the sala ring with their wild ejaculations. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... 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 burnished ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... this hymn to all poets, from Orpheus to Heine, than in "Les Baisers de Pierre"—a clever imitation of De Musset's stories in verse. Love of art and of the masters of art, a passion for the figures of old mythology, which had returned again after their exile in 1830, gaiety, and a revival ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... It is known that Orpheus was torn to pieces by some justly indignant Thracian ladies for belonging to an Harmonic Lodge. 'Let him go back to Eurydice,' they said, 'whom he is pretending to regret so.' But the history is given in Dr. Lempriere's elegant dictionary in a manner much more forcible ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... activity, to our life in the Hotel Baur. The excuse for all this, as I have said, was the society concert of the musical club of St. Gall. At the rehearsal, to my genuine delight, Liszt impressed two of his compositions, Orpheus and the Prelude, upon the orchestra with complete success, in spite of the limited resources at his command. The performance turned out to be a really fine one, and full of spirit. I was especially delighted with the Orpheus and with the finely proportioned orchestral work, to which I had always ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... 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 positions in chronology ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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 us—our Church, our Senate, our whole social constitution. The true ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... they never made use, and analysis of their scales show much ingenuity, but their accounts are so vague that one cannot get any clear idea of what these were really like. When art is mature, people do not tell of city walls being overthrown, of savage animals being tamed—as run the stories of Orpheus and Amphion. One Greek there was, Pythagoras, who discerned the association between the distant music of the spheres with the seven notes of the scale. "He discovered the numerical relation of one tone to another."[28] It was about ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... sweeter than 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, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... probably classed with the arts and true opinions, because they proceed from hypotheses (compare Republic). (4) The sixth class, if a sixth class is to be added, is playfully set aside by a quotation from Orpheus: Plato means to say that a sixth class, if there be such a class, is not worth considering, because pleasure, having only gained the fifth place in the scale of goods, is ...
— Philebus • Plato
... had been unhorsed by the archdeacon's impetuous replies, regained his saddle, and interrupted him with the triumphant tone of one learned man correcting another,—"Erras amice Claudi. The symbol is not the number. You take Orpheus ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... playing on instruments between the acts. In a play written by Damiano and printed at Siena, 1519, according to Crescimbeni, at the beginning of every act there was an octave stanza, which was sung to the sound of the lyra viol by a personage called Orpheus, who was solely retained for that purpose; at other times a madrigal was sung between the acts, after ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... they but heare perchance a trumpet sound, Or any ayre of musicke touch their eares, You shall perceiue them make a mutuall stand, Their sauage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of musicke: therefore the Poet Did faine that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods. Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But musicke for time doth change his nature, The man that hath no musicke in himselfe, Nor is not moued with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... understanding; and a woman who is ugly enough to know that she is so, knows that she has nothing left for it but her understanding, which is consequently and probably (in more senses than one) her weak side. But these are secrets which you must keep inviolably, if you would not, like Orpheus, be torn to pieces by the whole sex; on the contrary, a man who thinks of living in the great world, must be gallant, polite, and attentive to please the women. They have, from the weakness of men, more or less ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 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
... young author of this mischief been the only sufferer from the sugary torrent; but, alas! nearly a dozen innocent victims were splashed and spattered by the disastrous accident,—among them four or five bacchantes, who were furious at seeing their toilets injured, and would fain have made an Orpheus of the clumsy infant. While he was being rescued with great difficulty from their clutches by the German governess, a voice was heard amid the hubbub,—that of a pretty little blonde, saying to a small Scottish youth with whom she had danced the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... Being, that distinguishes and elevates man, and lifts him to a degree of social morality to which the beast is powerless to attain. Hercules destroying the monsters and punishing brigands for the safety of Greece, Orpheus teaching the rough and wild Pelasgians,—neither of them putting a price upon their services,—there we see the noblest creations of poetry, the loftiest expression of justice ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... scholars, who accept this view, assign him to about 550 B.C.; others regard him as purely mythical. A confused notice in Suidas mentions three persons of the name: the first, the inventor of the alphabet; the second, the son of Pandion, "according to some" the first prose writer, a little later than Orpheus, author of a history of the Foundation of Miletus and of Ionia generally, in four books; the third, the son of Archelaus, of later date, author of a history of Attica in fourteen books, and of some poems of an erotic character. As Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Judicium de ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... cheered, death comforted; the house Of sorrow smiles to listen. Once again - O thou, Orpheus and Heracles, the bard And the deliverer, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... modestly among the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by veiled glances, full of coquetry and attack!—Parbleu, if Monsieur de Viel-Castel should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and they should tear his eyes out, and send the fashionable Orpheus floating by the Seine, his slaughter might almost be ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the trail is killed and, on its being thrown 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 thence leading ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... of wandering about with their guide, seeing the points of most interest,—the beautiful houses recently excavated, the homes of Glaucus, of Pansa, of Sallust, of Orpheus, of Diomedes and very many others; the forum, temples, and amphitheatre—they sat long amid the ruins, looking at the fatal mountain, so close at hand, and the desolation at its foot, and meditated upon the terrors of ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... me, Madame, for this opinion, which is slightly pedantic, but without any pretension. When you see Madame Viardot again, tell her that I still cherish an enthusiastic recollection of her—a typical Orpheus, Fides and Rosina,—and, besides, an enchanting composer and a pianist full of ingenious dexterity. Have you heard anything of her daughter, Madame Heritte? Do you know her remarkable setting of Victor Hugo's "Feu ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... it was 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 ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 us ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... country boy it thrilled and held him like the voice of a Circe. They never noticed Amanda's silence. She could lean back in her chair and dream. She remembered the story of Ulysses and his wax-filled ears that saved him from the sirens; the tale of Orpheus, who drowned their alluring voices by playing on his instrument a music sweeter than theirs—ah, that was her only hope! That somewhere, deep in the heart of the man she loved was a music surpassing in sweetness the music of the shallow girl's voice ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... whole upward soul in her countenance glistening, Eurydice stood—like a beacon unfired, Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired— And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve the need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love Hears these words oft repeated—'beyond ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... they are gloomy, morose, unfeeling, and unsociable. To them they owe every civilization, and every improvement. Did Amphion, from the rude and shapeless stones, raise by his power a regular edifice, houses, palaces, and cities? Did Orpheus by his lay humanize the rugged beasts and teach the forests to listen? No, these are wild, unmeaning fables. It was woman, charming woman, that led unpolished man forth from the forests and the dens, and taught him to bend before thy shrine, humanity! See how the face of nature changes! Where ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... 1827, came on, Hector tried again, and this time passed the preliminary test. The task set for the general competition was to write music for Orpheus torn by the Bacchantes. An incompetent pianist, whose duty it was to play over the compositions, for the judges, could seem to make nothing of Hector's score. The six judges, headed by Cherubini, the Director of the Conservatoire, voted against the aspirant, and he was ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... then goes to those of Orpheus; but with a bad omen, as Eurydice dies soon after, and cannot be brought to life. In his sorrow, Orpheus repairs to the solitudes of the mountains, where the trees flock around him at the sound of his lyre; and, among others, the pine, into which Atys has been changed; and the cypress, produced ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... show pureness and good disposition of them, and relieve travail, and put off disease and sorrow. And make to be known the male and the female, and get and win praising, and change the affection of the hearers; as it is said in fables of one Orpheus, that pleased trees, woods, hills, and stones, with sweet melody of his voice. Also a fair voice is according and friendly to kind. And pleaseth not only men but also brute beasts, as it fareth in oxen that are excited ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... night 'tis settled by our manager, That we, to please great Johnny Bull, should plan a jeer, Dance a bang-up theatrical cotillion, And put on tuneful Pegasus a pillion; That every soul, whether or not a cough he has, May kick like Harlequin, and sing like Orpheus. So come, ye pupils of Sir John Gallini, {74} Spin up a tetotum like Angiolini: {75} That John and Mrs. Bull, from ale and tea-houses, May ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... information.[16] The subject is so comprehensive, and in a certain sense so well known, that I must satisfy myself by mentioning only a few particulars connected with recent discoveries. First, as to symbolic images allowed in churches and cemeteries. Of Orpheus playing on the lyre, while watching his flock, as a substitute for the Good Shepherd, there have been found in the catacombs four paintings, two reliefs on sarcophagi, one engraving on a gem. Here is the latest representation ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... forgetting their mollusks and glacial periods, gossiped about art, while devoting themselves to oysters and ices with characteristic energy; the young musician, who was charming the city like a second Orpheus, talked horses; and the specimen of the British nobility present happened to be the most ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and similar plays, were far more delightful than the grand operas; yet even now I wonder that Don Giovanni's scene with the statue and the conspiracy in the Huguenots stirred me, when a boy of nine or ten, so deeply, and that, though possessing barely the average amount of musical talent, Orpheus's yearning cry, "Eurydice!" rang in my ears ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, Thou hast redeem'd, and opened us a mine Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line Of masculine expression, which, had good Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood Our superstitious fools admire, and hold Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, Thou hadst been their exchequer.... Let others carve the rest; it will ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... too, they saw here the "Lyre" bird, the tail of which resembles in form the graceful instrument of Orpheus. It flew about among the tree ferns, and when its tail struck the branches, they were almost surprised not to hear the harmonious strains that inspired Amphion to rebuild the walls of Thebes. Paganel had a great ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... crucifixes and other images have miraculously spoken and answered, the Pagans say that their oracles have spoken and given answers to those who consulted them, and that the head of Orpheus and that of Policrates gave oracles after ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... 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 ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the morning, was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in a flame-colored car, drawn by two or four horses, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... according to the Mythology of the ancient Finns, the second Godhead, being only inferior to Jumala. He was master of the musical art, and when he played upon his instrument produced much the same effect as the Grecian Orpheus, enticing fishes from the stream and the wild animals from the forest. The lines here translated are a fragment of a poem which describes a musical contest between Woinomoinen and the Giant Joukkawainen, in which the latter was ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... mien. There is no more humorous reading, or more typical, than the ups and downs of office-seekers. Sometimes it is that of William the "Innocent," and often that of William the "Croker." The trials of "an unsuccessful," a prototype of "Orpheus C. Kerr," the nom de plume of that prince of writers, on this ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Orpheus," asked the Takur, "do you know that the lyre of this Greek demigod was not the first to cast spells over people, animals and even rivers? Kui, a certain Chinese musical artist, as they are called, expresses something to this effect: 'When I play my kyng the wild ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... "Love doesn't mean being comfortable; it doesn't mean being petted and coddled like a pussy cat, or being looked after like a child. It means what it meant to Romeo when he killed himself for love of Juliet. It means what it meant to Orpheus when he followed Eurydice to the underworld. It means what it will mean to me when I have found the one woman—that I'll work for her, live for her, die for her, and count the future blank if she does ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... they do not impress me as fully interpreting Leighton's picture. The expression of Eurydice is rather one of unthinking confiding affection—as if she were really unconscious or ignorant of the danger; while that of Orpheus is one of passionate agony as he tries ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... I am of the generations of Orpheus, and have in me the breed of his master! And of Raftery and Carolan and O'Daly and all that made sounds of music from this back to the foundations of the earth! And as to the rich of the world, I would not humble my head to them. Let them have their serving men and their labourers ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... was, to make some comparison between the two countries, which I knew would immediately bring on the conflict I desired; and not without danger, for I sometimes expected, in the ardour of their patriotism, to meet with the fate of Orpheus. ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... will make this matter clear. Let us take the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which has been utilized by many artists during more than two thousand years assuredly, and how much longer no one knows. Virgil told it in the Georgics and Ovid in the Metamorphoses. It became a favorite theme of medieval romance, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... look back before," she breathlessly said, as she released Adelaide; "I felt as if your papa were Orpheus, when ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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; ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... had already begun the programme of the day with Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony. The house was crowded to excess; numbers of people were standing, apparently willing to endure a whole afternoon's fatigue, rather than miss hearing the Orpheus of Andalusia,—the "Endymion out of Spain," as one of our latest and best poets has aptly called him. Only a languidly tolerant interest was shown in the orchestral performance,—the "Italian" Symphony is not a really great or suggestive work, and this is probably the reason why ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the scene was divided into 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 of Prometheus—a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... 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
... second Orpheus, Spiegelberg, you have charmed to sleep that howling beast, conscience! Take me as I stand, I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Socrates and Plato both I mark'd, Nearest to him in rank; Democritus, Who sets the world at chance, Diogenes, With Heraclitus, and Empedocles, And Anaxagoras, and Thales sage, Zeno, and Dioscorides well read In nature's secret lore. Orpheus I mark'd And Linus, Tully and moral Seneca, Euclid and Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galenus, Avicen, and him who made That commentary vast, Averroes. Of all to speak at full were vain attempt; For my wide theme so urges, that ofttimes My words fall short of what bechanc'd. In two The six ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Flgel schwingen, Hinter dir die trunknen Fichten springen, Wie von Orpheus' Saitenruf belebt; 15 Rascher rollen um mich her die Pole, Wenn im Wirbeltanze deine Sohle ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... heroes of the AEginetan pediment, and what was the subject of the Pheidian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three graceful figures of a basrelief which exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani, represent Orpheus, Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two sons? Was the winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus column meant for a genius of Death or a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... and arrived safely at Barbadoes. The surviving officers and crew of the Apollo marched to Figuera, a distance of eighteen miles, from whence they were conveyed in a schooner to Lisbon, and brought by the Orpheus ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... sang of that lordliest of all minstrels, Orpheus—how the trees swung circling about to his music; how the savage beasts lay down at his feet to listen; how the rocks rose up at his bidding and followed him, dancing, to build a town without hands; how he went to the dismal land of the dead ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, And winds shall waft it to the powers above. But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, The wondering forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call, And headlong streams hang, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the palm at fiddle-playing to Castero. That one man was no other than Frederick Katwingen, the son of a rich brewer, whom his admirers—more numerous than those of his rival—had called the Dutch Orpheus. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... reason a proper attendant on the manes or soul after death, and much contributes to tell the story, that is, to shew that a soul or manes is designed by the descending figure. From this figure of Love M. D'Hancarville imagines that Orpheus and Eurydice are typified under the figure of the manes and immortal life as above described. It may be sufficient to answer, first, that Orpheus is always represented with a lyre, of which there are prints of four different ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... "are the contemporaries of Orpheus; for in the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced; and I am dead, Professor; as much dead as those of your friends who are sleeping six feet under ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... repeated. "It 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 ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... was a bent, homely figure, but one containing a soul apparently lifted far above earthly things, for he was pouring forth a psalm, expressive of his joy in the glory of the evening, and with an ecstasy that might have befitted Orpheus ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... 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 ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope |
