"Sibyl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many a king and queen of evil repute that ruled Naples, the vile Pier-Luigi Farnese, the adventurer Joachim Murat, all have left the marks of their personality upon the coveted shores of the Neapolitan Riviera. From the days of the Sibyl and of the Trojan hero to the stirring times of Garibaldi and of King Bomba, which were but of yesterday, Naples and its environs have played a prominent part in the annals and development of the civilised western world; Roman emperors, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... groups of mothers with orange kerchiefs on their heads and heavy silver rings on every finger. Strange processions with cowled faces and crucifix and banners borne aloft sweep into the piazza and up the church steps. Old women with Sibyl-like faces sit spinning at their doors. Maidens with water-jars on their heads which might have been dug up at Pompeii; priests with broad hats and huge cloaks; sailors with blue shirts and red girdles; urchins who almost ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... figure, arresting it in its course by the magic of his gaze, and, suffering the gay crowds to pass on, he has given himself up with delight to the divination of its mystic revelations, while he continued to weave his incantations and spells only for the entranced Sibyl ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the old sibyl immediately appeared from the stairs, whither she had discreetly retired to wait during Annetta's visit. "Bring water, and that bottle of my wine from downstairs. You know, the bottle of old wine of Stefanone's that ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... sleep at all but sat bowed together in the window, her arms about her knees, her forehead upon them, and her dark hair loose about her. She sat like a sibyl till the dawn, then rose and bathed and dressed, and was at the hospital earliest of all the workers of that day. In the evening again, just at dusk, she reentered the room, and presently again took her seat by the window. The red ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the Sibyl in Northland-dawn drew Forth from the myth-billows gliding, Told all the past, all the future so true, Sank with the lands' last subsiding,— Prophecies leaving, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... She was very glad to get rid of me just now. Why? I am inoffensive enough. There is something uncommon about her; she gives me the idea of having a history, which is anything but desirable for a young woman. What fine eyes she has! She is something like that Sibyl of Guercino's in the Capitol. Why does she object to me? It is rather absurd. I must make her talk, then ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... which would keep them always young. Under its influence, a gem brightens yearly which is only seen to more advantage through the fissures Time makes in the casket. [Footnote: Appendix F.] No one thinks of Michael Angelo's Persican Sibyl, or St. Theresa, or Tasso's Leonora, or the Greek Electra, as an old maid, more than of Michael Angelo or Canova as old bachelors, though all had reached the period in life's course appointed ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... some act of personal violence. But she changed her purpose, and suddenly made way for Eveline, who passed without farther parley; and as she descended the staircase, which conducted from the apartment to the gateway, she heard the voice of her aunt behind her, like that of an aged and offended sibyl, denouncing wrath and wo ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... them, because tradition refers the origin of its name to an altar—ARA PRIMOGENITI DEI—raised to the son of God by the emperor Augustus, who had been warned of his advent by the sibylline books. For this reason the figures of Augustus and of the Tiburtine sibyl are painted on either side of the arch above the high altar. They have actually been given the place of honor in this church; and formerly, when at Christmas time the Presepio was exhibited in the second chapel on the left, they occupied the front row, the sibyl pointing out to Augustus the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... handkerchief, she approached the window, but no sooner did the little boy become aware of her intention than, with a rebellious shake of his curly head, he buried his nose in his little chapped fists, and, regardless of Sibyl's advice, that he had better be good, he firmly stood his ground, determined to resist Chany ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... mother's love loves such forces, Choke the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; Black Manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging. So sang a wither'd Sibyl energetical, And bann'd the ungiving door ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... disciples, who, though clearly not of the peasant class, wore the peasant costume. I observed these with interest but certainly as long as they were under the spell of the master they communicated nothing worth preserving; they seemed to show "the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration." ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... fortuitous concourse of male and female evening-dresses. I have now before me a very brilliant published account of a reception at George Eliot's house. Those assemblies were company, and company of the finest kind. The exaggerated fuss made by the sibyl's husband in order to secure silence while she was speaking sometimes became a little embarrassing when men of a humorous turn were there; but nevertheless the best in England met in that drawing-room, and all that was highest in ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... ready to spring on the unwary traveler. Better take a long circuit round Sicily than come even within sight and sound of Scylla. As soon as you touch the western shores of Italy, go to the city of Cumae and the Sibyl's cavern. Try to win her favor, and she will tell you of the nations of Italy and the wars yet to come, and how you may avoid each peril and accomplish every labor. One warning would I give you and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... mistletoe among the Druids. The candidate, in these initiations, was crowned with myrtle, because, according to the popular theology, the myrtle was sacred to Proserpine, the goddess of the future life. Every classical scholar will remember the golden branch with which Aeneas was supplied by the Sibyl, before proceeding on his journey to the infernal regions[198]—a voyage which is now universally admitted to be a mythical representation of the ceremonies ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... implore. Let gifts be to the mighty queen design'd, And mollify with pray'rs her haughty mind. Thus, at the length, your passage shall be free, And you shall safe descend on Italy. Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood, The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find, Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd. She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits, The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits. What she commits to leafs, in order laid, Before the cavern's entrance are display'd: Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind Without, or ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... people. The poor Jews took to it as a trade. In Alexandria the Jewess, half beggar, half fortune-teller, would stop people in the streets and interpret dreams by the help of the Bible, or sit under a sacred tree like a sibyl, and promise wealth to those who consulted her, duly proportioned to the size of the coin by which she was paid. We find among the Theban ruins pieces of papyrus with inscriptions, describing the positions of the heavens at particular hours in this reign, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Iris The Head of Iris Neptune A Greek Coin Silenus Holding Bacchus Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn Latona Jason Castor, the Horse-Tamer Pollux, the Master of the Art of Boxing Daedalus and Icarus Making Their Wings Juno and Her Peacock Athena Minerva Daphne A Sibyl Ceres Apollo Narcissus Adonis and Aphrodite Woden on ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... one of its most delectable episodes ends in his excusing Mr. Justice Bridoye for settling law cases in that way. But he recommends the sortes Virgilianae, and he, others, and Panurge himself add the experiment of dreams, and the successive consultation of the Sibyl of Panzoust, the dumb Nazdecabre, the poet Raminagrobis, Epistemon, "Her Trippa," Friar John himself, the theologian Hippothadee, the doctor Rondibilis, the philosopher Trouillogan, and the professional fool Triboulet. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... she follows a certain diet; an artist can't bring his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience. You demand of us to be imaginative, and you deny us that which feeds the imagination. In labor we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl; in life we must be mere machines. It won't do. When you have got an artist to deal with, you must take him as he is, good and bad together. I don't say they are pleasant fellows to know or easy fellows ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... is alone in the world,—alone in the home where loneliness had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma, shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved one has made the hearth desolate,—have you not felt as if the gloom of the altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?—you would leave ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sell to Tarquin nine books of prophetic oracles. When the king refused to give her the price demanded, she went away, burnt three of them, and returning to the king, demanded the same price for the remaining six. Again the king declined the purchase. The sibyl, after burning three more of the volumes, demanded the original sum for the remaining three. Tarquin paid the money, and Amalthaea was never more seen. Aulus Gellius says that Amalthaea burnt the books in the king's presence. Pliny affirms that ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... other parts of the castle, the Jewess Rebecca awaited her fate in a distant and sequestered turret. Hither she had been led by two of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept murmuring to herself a Saxon rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance which her spindle was performing upon the floor. The hag raised her head as Rebecca entered, and scowled at the fair Jewess with the malignant envy with which ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... manner of costly contrivances for absorbing money and labor, made on me the impression of waste rather than taste, seeming to give form and substance to the orator's simile of "the contortions of the sibyl without her inspiration." A better acquaintance with the edifice, or with the principles of architecture, might serve to correct this hasty judgment; but surely Westminster Abbey ought to afford a place of worship equal in ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of the modern world; and in the inconclusive termination of the struggle of that day, the Italians were already judged and sentenced as a nation. The armies who met that morning represented Italy and France,—Italy, the Sibyl of Renaissance; France, the Sibyl of Revolution. At the fall of evening Europe was already looking northward; and the last years of the fifteenth century were opening an act which closed in blood at Paris on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... afford considerable help in case of need. The expedition did not take place, else Benvenuto would probably have been able to tell us something of the impostor's assistants. The whole neighborhood was then proverbial. Aretino says somewhere of an enchanted well, 'there dwell the sisters of the sibyl of Norcia and the aunt of the Fata Gloriana.' And about the same time Trissino could still celebrate the place in his great epic with all the resources of poetry and allegory as ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... a long breath of smoke. "Very well thought out—unusually clever—for a layman," she uttered, and was still, with the suggestion of a sibyl whose ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... a light touch and brilliant colours. The reader merely groans when the heavy-handed Silius introduces his wondrously engraven shield,[610] his funeral games,[611] his Amazon,[612] his dismal catalogues,[613] his Nekuia.[614] In the latter episode, he even introduces the Vergilian Sibyl of Cumae; it is a redeeming feature that Scipio does not make a 'personally conducted tour' through the nether world; such a direct challenge to the Sixth Aeneid was perhaps impossible for so true a lover of Vergil as Silius. The Homeric method of necromancy is wisely preferred, and the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... and the three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and its implied wit can endow a college. The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure. The Sibyl, "speaking with inspired mouth, smileless, inornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries by the power of the god." The scholar might frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis of the farmer's call to his team, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the professor, "Countess Sibyl is indubitably very beautiful, but the beauty-in-itself in my dream was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... simulated frame which surrounds the fresco, are hexagonal spaces containing half figures of prophets with labels, containing texts referring to the passion of Christ; and below them on the right, the Erythrean Sibyl. In the lower part of the frieze, are ten rounds, containing portraits of the most illustrious members of the Dominican Order. In the centre St. Dominic, on the left Pope Innocent V., Cardinal Ugone, Father Paulo the Florentine, the Archbishop St. Antonino (this must surely ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... knows everything that you know, petite mere," Diane continued, turning to where her mother-in-law sat, slightly bowed, her extended hand resting on her cane, like some graceful Sibyl. "She knows everything that you know, and she knows one thing more. She knows what some cruel people say was the way in ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... fortune, commissioned, in the revolution of things, to put a period at this time to the liberty of Greece, which opposed and thwarted all their actions, and by many signs foretold what should happen. Such were the sad predictions uttered by the Pythian priestess, and this old oracle cited out of the Sibyl's verses: ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... said Ayesha, who, standing with the lamp raised above her head, flooding with its light her own rich beauty and the cold wonder of the death-clothed form upon the bier, resembled an inspired Sibyl rather than a woman, as she rolled out her majestic sentences with a grandeur and a freedom of utterance which I am, alas! quite unable ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... and shall we see Those sibyl-leaves of destiny, Those calm eyes, nevermore? Those deep, dark eyes so warm and bright, Wherein the fortunes of the man Lay slumbering in prophetic light, In characters a child might scan? So bright, and gone forth utterly! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... in his imitation. Our Dunce hero visits Elysium in a dream; whilst he sleeps, his head recumbent on the lap of the goddess, in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. "A slipshod sibyl," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... excavation,—for it was an old disused clay-pit, at the bottom of which the cottage was situated,—he speedily succeeded in arousing the ancient sibyl, and having committed Edgeworth Bess to her care, with a promise of an abundant reward in case she watched diligently over her safety, and attended to her comforts till his return,—to all which Black Mary readily agreed,—he departed ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Orat. ad Sanctos, c. 19 20. He chiefly depends on a mysterious acrostic, composed in the sixth age after the Deluge, by the Erythraean Sibyl, and translated by Cicero into Latin. The initial letters of the thirty-four Greek verses form this prophetic sentence: Jesus Christ, Son of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... no power? When united with virtue and intellect, we might almost answer,—All power. It is the embodied harmony of the true poet; his visible Muse; the guardian angel of his better nature; the inspiring sibyl of his best affections, drawing him to her with a purifying charm, from the selfishness of the world, from poverty and neglect, from the low and base, nay, from his own frailty or vices:—for he cannot approach her with unhallowed thoughts, whom the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... soaks the heart As hills are soaked by slow unsealing snow, Or secret as that wind without a chart Whereon did the wild leaves of Sibyl go. ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... original creations,—"Dominie Sampson" and "Meg Merrilies," whom no reader can forget,—the one, ludicrous for his simplicity; and the other a gypsy woman, weird and strange, more like a witch than a sibyl, but intensely human, and capable of the strongest attachment for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... old, wise-headed Sibyl—that is what you are, darling!" the Princess returned. "I wish I could ever know what has so utterly changed you from our convent days," and she sighed impatiently. "Then you were the merriest madcap, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... dashing and proud air of Adeline Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze Much as she would have seen a glow-worm shine; Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays. Juan was something she could not divine, Being no sibyl in the new world's ways; Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor, Because she did not pin her ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Belvidere; Forum Appii, mentioned by St. Paul, from which travelers on the Appian Way embarked on a canal; Arpinum, the birthplace of Cicero; Aquium, where Juvenal and Thomas Aquinas were born, famous for a purple dye; Formiae, a favorite residence of Cicero. In Campania were Cumae, the abode of the Sibyl; Misenum, a great naval station; Baiae, celebrated for its spas and villas; Puteoli, famous for sulphur springs; Neapolis, the abode of literary idlers; Herculaneum and Pompeii, destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius; Capua, the capital of Campania, and inferior to Rome ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of the Temple of Jupiter. Its present altar encloses an ancient altar which is said to have been erected by Augustus. "According to a legend of the 12th century, this was the spot where the Sibyl Tibur appeared to the emperor, whom the senate proposed to elevate to the rank of a god, and revealed to him a vision of the ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... N. oracle; prophet, prophesier, seer, soothsayer, augur, fortune teller, crystal gazer[obs3], witch, geomancer[obs3], aruspex[obs3]; aruspice[obs3], haruspice[obs3]; haruspex; astrologer, star gazer[obs3]; Sibyl; Python, Pythoness[obs3]; Pythia; Pythian oracle, Delphian oracle; Monitor, Sphinx, Tiresias, Cassandra[obs3], Sibylline leaves; Zadkiel, Old Moore; sorcerer &c. 994; interpreter &c. 524. [person who predicts by non-mystical (natural) means] predictor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... made clear to the mind of man, the mystical hypostasis through which the ideas of the human coincide with those of universal Intelligence. This is what the Pythian priestess, the Siberian shaman, the Roman sibyl, the Voluspan prophetess, the Indian medicine-man, all claimed in various degrees along with the Hebrew seers and ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... dips his quill: And, since blank paper is denied the press, He mingles the whole alphabet by guess: In various sets, which various words compose, Of which, he hopes, mankind the meaning knows. So sounds spontaneous from the sibyl broke, Dark to herself the wonders which she spoke; The priests found out the meaning, if they could; And nations star'd at what none understood. Clodio dress'd, danc'd, drank, visited, (the whole And great concern of an immortal soul!) Oft have I said, "Awake! exist! and strive For ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... would lothe her as much as he had loved her. She dying gave it me, and bade me, if I ever married, to give it to my wife. I did so; take heed of it. Make it a darling as precious as your eye." "Is it possible?" said the frighted lady. "'Tis true:" continued Othello; "it is a magical handkerchief; a sibyl that had lived in the world two hundred years, in a fit of prophetic fury worked it; the silk-worms that furnished the silk were hallowed, and it was dyed in mummy of maidens' hearts conserved." Desdemona, hearing the wondrous virtues of the handkerchief, was ready to die with fear, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... go get a leaf of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words, And lay it by. The angry northern wind Will blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad, And where's your ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... commercial, as well as of all other property, was involved" in passing it without delay. In a meeting held in the common-hall of London, Colonel Torrens remarked:—"Let the peers refuse this bill if they dare; and if they do, dearly will they rue their obstinacy hereafter. You all remember the Sibyl's story. She presented her oracles to the court of Tarquin, and they were rejected. She burned a portion, and again offered them, but they were again rejected. After diminishing their number still further, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... very children spat out evil words in the Romany language. But Baltic, used to black skins and black looks, was not daunted by this inhospitable reception, and in grave tones repeated his inquiry for the sibyl. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... say it amounts to that," Dr. Renshaw returned reluctantly. His age, the kindness of his manner and tone, were disarming, and his listener entertained no more personal resentment toward him than if he were an ancient sibyl uttering of necessity the will ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... and I couldn't see that her satisfaction in being justified by the event relieved her little nephew's condition. The truth is that, as the sequel was to prove, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities of the sibyl and had therefore perhaps a right to the sibylline contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied that I felt my presence an indiscretion and was sorry I had promised to remain over the morrow. I put it to Mark that clearly I had best leave them in the morning; ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... habit of emotion. The first person he met on his landing happened to be his aunt, whose appearance, as, bent to the earth with age and infirmities, she ascended a hill, supporting herself upon a long staff, Nicholas compares to that which we might conceive the Sibyl bore, when she presented herself to Tarquin. Yet, when she came up to Korro-korro, the chief, we are told, having fallen upon her neck, and applied his nose to hers, the two continued in this posture for some minutes, talking together in a low and mournful voice; and then disengaging themselves, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... the "Life of Margaret Fuller." What a tragedy from first to last! She must have been odious in Boston in spite of her power and her strong sense of duty, with which I always sympathize; but at New York, where she dwindled from a sibyl to a "lionne," one begins to like her better, and in England and Paris, where she was not even that, better still; so that one is prepared for the deep interest of the last half-volume. Of course her example must have done much injury to the girls of her train. Of course, also, she is ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... intellectual education of the whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant and diversified and persistent a promulgation of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes down to us? The Sibyl wrote her prophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted them; but here such careless profusion might be prudently indulged, for it can be afforded without loss, in consequence of the almost fabulous fecundity of the instrument which these latter ages have invented. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... priestesses of Delphi, the miko was in ancient times also a divineress—a living oracle, uttering the secrets of the future when possessed by the god whom she served. At no temple does the miko now act as sibyl, oracular priestess, or divineress. But there still exists a class of divining-women, who claim to hold communication with the dead, and to foretell the future, and who call themselves miko—practising their profession secretly; for it has ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... growing now, and primroses in spring will peep amid anemones from rustling foliage strewn by winter's winds. The heights of Casentino, the Perugian highlands, Volterra, far withdrawn amid a wilderness of rolling hills, and solemn snow-touched ranges of the Spolentino, Sibyl-haunted fastnesses of Norcia, form the most distant horizon-lines of this unending panorama. And then there are the cities, placed each upon a point of vantage: Siena; olive-mantled Chiusi; Cortona, white upon her spreading throne; poetic Montalcino, lifted aloft ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... than I should. They will hear that "Miss 'Unter, is the missis, and lets every one know she is. Miss 'Ester keeps the maids on their legs all day long because she won't use hers. Miss H'Amabel does the sporting gent, and is never indoors except to meals; while Miss Sibyl—well, there, she is not much 'count in the fam'ly, for she can't say bo to a goose, and doesn't mind how ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... invisible since the disappearance of the renowned prince Arthur, approached on a floating island along the moat to recite adulatory verses. Arion, being summoned for the like purpose, appeared on a dolphin four-and-twenty feet long, which carried in its belly a whole orchestra. A Sibyl, a "Salvage man" and an Echo posted in the park, all harangued in the same strain. Music and dancing enlivened the Sunday evening. Splendid fireworks were displayed both on land and water;—a play was performed;—an Italian tumbler exhibited his feats;—thirteen ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... patience, were I to describe many objects of interest and many scenes of beauty I witnessed in New York and the neighbourhood. The Common Schools; the Croton Waterworks, capable of yielding an adequate supply for a million-and-a-half of people; Hoboken, with its sibyl's cave and elysian fields; the spot on which General Hamilton fell in a duel; the Battery and Castle Garden—a covered amphitheatre capable of accommodating 10,000 people; the Park, and the City Hall with its white marble front; ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... stream, And, of the hymns of hope and faith, Sang by the monks of Nazareth, Hears pious echoes, in the call To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, Repeating where His works were wrought The lesson that her Master taught, Of whom an elder Sibyl gave, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the fierce pursuing Gaul Had drawn his sword for Marius' fall, The godlike hero with a frown Struck all his rage and malice down; Then how can we dread William Wood, If by thy presence he's withstood? Where wisdom stands to keep the field, In vain he brings his brazen shield; Though like the sibyl's priest he comes, With furious din of brazen drums The force of thy superior voice Shall strike him dumb, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... air, and blow away with a change of wind; but beliefs are rooted in human wants and weakness, and die hard. The oaks of Dodona are prostrate, and the shrine of Delphi is desolate; but the Pythoness and the Sibyl may be consulted in Lowell Street for a very moderate compensation. Nostradamus and Lilly seem impossible in our time; but we have seen the advertisements of an astrologer in our Boston papers year after year, which seems to imply that he found believers ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... speculations beyond the sibyl of his odd adoration; Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... indiscriminate adulation had drawn to a head of conceit. This youth bestowed a great deal of attention on a certain young woman of a classical turn of mind, who once had a longing to attend a fancy-ball as a sibyl. About the same time Sophomore missed the first volume of his Potter's "Antiquities of Greece"; and, having searched for it in vain, made up his mind that I had presented it as a keepsake, together with a lock of my hair and a cent's worth of pea-nut taffy, to the head ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... quite right, of course. To continue would have been equally rude and foolish. I had perforce to bottle up my curiosity for the moment and wait till my sibyl was in the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam's calves must have ached with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... past or of the future, from which she could not turn her face. The curve of her upper lip, where it lay along its fellow and made a dimpled end, sharpened and grew bleak. Poring and smiling into the fire, she looked like a Sibyl envisaging the fate of men, not concerned in it, yet absorbed, interested in the play, not at all in the persons. This friend of Mrs. Benson, this midnight mate of young gardeners, disturber of high ladies' comfort, serene controller of Wanless, she ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... alone could have triumphed over the heterogeneous and fantastic surroundings in which he has chosen to enframe his great central group. And yet even these—the great rusticated niche with the gold mosaic of the pelican feeding its young, the statues of Moses on one side and of the Hellespontic Sibyl on the other—but serve to heighten the awe of the spectator. The artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, yet another focus of illumination being the body ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... little doubt that she was leaning like a ripe peach within his reach, ready at a touch to fall into his hand; and though Regina felt that this low-browed, sibyl-eyed woman was vastly his inferior in all save beauty and wealth, she knew that even his failure to marry the widow would furnish no justification for the further indulgence of her ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... cover a green head—and I make a fool of my father. What's here! Erra Pater: or a bearded sibyl? If Prophecy ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... himself marked out for a high destiny. He had imbibed the idea—we say not whether it were revealed to him by witchcraft, or in a dream of prophecy, or that his brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of a Sibyl—but he had imbibed the idea, and held it firmest among his articles of faith, that three marvellous events of his life were to be confirmed to him ...
— The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; Whose dark eyes flash'd thro' locks of blackest shade, When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bay'd:— And heroes fled the Sibyl's mutter'd call, Whose elfin prowess scal'd the orchard-wall. As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew, And trac'd the line of life with searching view, How throbb'd my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears, To learn the colour of my future years! Ah, then, what honest ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... should prove to be the true 'King of Kings,' and Augustus Caesar therefore dedicated an altar in his palace to this unknown God." Eusebius and St. Augustine inform us that the first letter of each line of the verses from the Erythrean Sibyl containing this prophecy, formed the word [Greek: ICHTHYS] (a fish), and were taken as representing the sentence: [Greek: Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter]("Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour"). ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... seer and sibyl sang in ages long gone by; This is He of old revealed in the page of prophecy; Lo! He comes, the promised Saviour; let the world His ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... in perfume found Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Miss Pembroke was on the table. He did not hurry to open it, for she, and all that she did, was overwhelming. She wrote like the Sibyl; her sorrowful face moved over the stars and shattered their harmonies; last night he saw her with the eyes of Blake, a virgin widow, tall, veiled, consecrated, with her hands stretched out against an everlasting wind. Why should she write? Her letters were ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... some new misfortune, Mary Avenel hastily arranged the dress which she had not laid aside, and, venturing to quit her chamber, learned from Tibb, who, with her gray hairs dishevelled like those of a sibyl, was flying from room to room, that the bloody Southron villain had made his escape, and that Halbert Glendinning, poor bairn, would sleep unrevenged and unquiet in his bloody grave. In the lower ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... appearance alone, though her eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swift and varying; it was to be found in the whole presence—something mountain- like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret, something remote—brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl. But suppose that in days to come the thing that did not belong, which was of the East, of the tan, of the River ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Lady Sibyl, "the proud maiden of Bernshaw," was from her youth the creature of impulse and imagination—a child of nature and romance. She roved unchecked through the green valleys and among the glens and moorlands ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... I saw her with my own eyes at Cumae, hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, 'What would you, Sibyl?' she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... great, that awful day, This vain world shall pass away. Thus the sibyl sang of old, Thus hath holy David told. There shall be a deadly fear When the Avenger shall appear, And unveiled before his eye All the works of man shall lie. Hark! to the great trumpet's tones Pealing o'er the place of bones: ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that it was impossible for God to become man, and be acquainted with grief, Catherine showed how the birth and passion of Jesus Christ had been announced by the Gentiles themselves, and prophesied by Plato and the Sibyl. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... loved—until the stranger gave her offence. And if then she passed to imprecation, she would not curse like an ordinary woman, but like a poetess, gaining rather than losing dignity. She would rise to the evil occasion, no hag, but a largely-offended sibyl, whom nothing thereafter should ever appease. To forgive was a virtue unknown to Mistress Conal. Its more than ordinary difficulty in forgiving is indeed a special fault of the Celtic character.—This must not however be confounded with ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... happened, too, was so far out of her hands that a trace of philosophical acceptance, recognition, came to her support. The loveliest woman alive must do the same, meet in a looking-glass—that eternal accompanying sibyl—her disaster. She rose, her lips firmly set, composed and pale, and returned to the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Captain Flinders, as to the effect of the ship's course upon it. The reader will find them in the appendix to the account of his voyage lately published, 2d volume. Similar observations have still more recently been made by an officer on board his majesty's ship Sibyl, while in the North Sea protecting our Greenland fishery. They form an appendix to the Account of a Voyage to Spitzbergen, by Mr John Laing, Surgeon, published at Edinburgh, 1815. Of their importance and accuracy, notwithstanding the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... house where I live now was not built; all up here Hampstead-ways was grass and fields. It was over these fields that Herbert Spencer and George Eliot used to walk on their way to Hampstead Heath. The Sibyl has gone, but the great Philosopher still remains, to brighten the sunshine. It was not my luck to know him then—would it had been!—but he is my friend and neighbour in these latter days, and, thanks to him, I still get glimpses of the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... here, where the very pavement bears the story of Odysseus, and each passage-way is a Via Sacra, and every stone is old with years whose tale is told by hundreds or by thousands, and the wounded Adonis can be adored beside the tempted Christ of Sistine, and the serious beauty of the Erythean Sibyl lives beside the laughing grace of ivy-crowned Thalia, and the Jupiter Maximus frowns on the mortals made of earth's dust, and the Jehovah who has called forth woman meets the first smile of Eve. A ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... crutches Alessandro had made him of manzanita wood, dragged himself all the way round the house, to have a look at Senor Felipe and a word with him. The Senora sat there, in the big carved chair, looking like a sibyl with her black silk banded head-dress severely straight across her brow, and her large dark eyes gazing out, past Felipe, into the far south sky. Ramona lived there too, with her embroidery or her book, sitting on cushions on the floor in a corner, or at the foot of Felipe's bed, always so placed, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a perfectly translucent medium. It was not so much that she said rare things, but her very silence was eloquent, and there was a great deal of it. Her girlhood had in it a certain dignity as of a virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet her hearty sympathies and her healthy energy made her at home in daily life, and in a democratic society. To Kate, for instance, she was a necessity of existence, like light or air. Kate's nature was limited; part of her graceful equipoise was narrowness. Hope ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the new organization, and a great genius wrote some delightful novels to show their purpose, and to illustrate their manner of how-not-to-do-it in grappling with the grand social questions of the age. In "Coningsby" they sing canticles and carry about the boar's head; in "Sibyl" they sing hymns to the Holy Virgin and the song of labor, and steal title-deeds, after setting houses on fire to distract attention from their immediate object; and in "Tancred" they go on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, by way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... traditions which were then still floating from the fireside to the philosopher's closet: he points his pen, as AEneas brandished his sword at the Gorgons and Chimeras that darkened the entrance of Hell; wanting the admonitions of the sibyl, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... anatomically beautiful and desirable—he bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his trouvaille. As but one attitude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a Sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. Like Mr. Watts, Sir Frederic Leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, unlike Mr. ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... magic in the web of it. A sibyl, that had numbered in the world The sun to make two hundred compasses, In her prophetic fury sew'd the work: The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk, And it was dyed in mummy, which the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... footprint on the threshold-stone of the ancestral mansion seems to have associated itself inextricably with the dreamy substance of his yet unshaped romance. Indeed, it leaves its mark broadly upon Sibyl Dacy's wild legend in "Septimius Felton," and reappears in the last paragraph of that story. But, so far as we can know at this day, nothing definite was done until after his departure for Italy. It was then, while staying in Rome, that he began to put upon paper that plot which had first ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... met with a comical little adventure the other evening. We were wandering over the common, and encountered two gypsies. I always had desired to have my fortune told, so A—— and I each seized hold of a sibyl and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... his heroes say, 'how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne, and at the sides of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... far it bear her from earth, she never loses her close sympathy with the fortunes of mankind. Nay, from her lofty station she is the teacher of truth and love and justice, in splendid prophecy. It is with an impassioned exaltation, worthy of Sibyl and Pythoness in one, of divine wisdom both Roman and Greek, that she cries to the companions of her voyage words which embody her soul and the soul of all the wise and loving of the earth, when they act for men; bearing their ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... indeed, according to one theory, the Grotta della Pace would be a portion of this canal. On the east side of the lake are remains of baths, including a great octagonal hall known as the Temple of Apollo, built of brickwork, and belonging to the 1st century. The so-called Grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl, on the south side, is a rock-cut passage, ventilated by vertical apertures, possibly a part of the works connected with the naval harbour. To the south-east of the lake is the Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill upheaved in 1538, with a deep extinct crater in the centre. To the south ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... "This shows that the Sibyl at the festival of Adonis was right when she sang in the Jalemus that the gods did half ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... enough, rare Sibyl, sing us These runes no more, thy beverage bring us, And quickly fill the goblet to the brim; This drink may by my friend be safely taken: Full many grades the man can reckon, Many good swigs have ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Dante's poetic invention is represented first as saved through the influence of Virgil's poems and then is shown to be a Christian, having been led to embrace Christianity both from the heroic example of the martyrs and from his meditation on Virgil's prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl interpreted in the Middle Ages to refer to Christ. In the Divina Commedia Statius pays a glowing tribute to the AEneid and its author, wholly ignorant that he is addressing Virgil himself. "Of the AEneid I speak which was a mother to me ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery |
