"Philomel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bay, chaste Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wail'd the sweet Philomel; The tears of Ceres swell'd in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... a ring Aye round about Jove's altar sing; And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; But, first and chiefest, with thee bring Him that yon soars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The Cherub Contemplation; And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will deign a song, In her sweetest saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustomed oak. Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... Thy voice be as divine; If both in these together meet, The feather'd race must own Of all their tribe there's none, Of form so fair, of voice so sweet. Who'll then regard the linnet's note, Or heed the lark's melodious throat? What pensive lovers then shall dwell With raptures on their Philomel? The goldfinch shall his plumage hide, The swan abate her stately pride, And Juno's bird no more display His various glories to the sunny day: Then grant thy Suppliant's prayer, And bless my longing ear With notes that I would die to hear!" Flattery prevail'd, the Crow believ'd The tale, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in my heart, death in my hand, Blood, and reuenge, are Hammering in my head. Harke Tamora, the Empresse of my Soule, Which neuer hopes more heauen, then rests in thee, This is the day of Doome for Bassianus; His Philomel must loose her tongue to day, Thy Sonnes make Pillage of her Chastity, And wash their hands in Bassianus blood. Seest thou this Letter, take it vp I pray thee, And giue the King this fatall plotted Scrowle, Now question me no more, we are espied, Heere comes a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... theatres, nor arches here, But, in their stead, the fir, the beech, and pine On the green sward, with the fair mountain near Paced to and fro by poet friend of thine; Thus unto heaven the soul from earth is caught; While Philomel, who sweetly to the shade The livelong night her desolate lot complains, Fills the soft heart with many an amorous thought: —Ah! why is so rare good imperfect made While severed from ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... attention but the woes of the daughter of Sion[55]. Then listen to the lamentations of this inspired and afflicted prophet: they are full of deepest pathos, and uttered in notes sweet as the warblings of philomel. Turn now, O Christian soul, to a more sublime and mournful spectacle. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemani and on mount Calvary mourned not for a single city or nation: he sorrowed over the ruins ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... the lovely night, Nor stirred a whispering breeze. Smooth was the glassy lake, And still the leafy trees; No sound in air Was heard afloat, Save Philomel's ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... in the season when sad Philomel[336] Weeps with her sister, who remembers and Deplores the ancient woes which both befel, And makes the nymphs enamoured, to the hand Of Phaeton, by Phoebus loved so well, His car (but tempered by his sire's command) Was given, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... laboured with thy stars. How soft is the night air that flows from yonder casement heavy with the breath of lilies! Hark to the whisper of the sea lapping against the rocks, that, though it is faint, yet, being so strong, doth almost drown the quick cool fall of yonder fountain. List to Philomel; how sweet from a full heart of love she sings her message to her dear! Indeed it is a lovely night, and most beautiful is Nature's music, sung with a hundred voices from wind and trees and birds and ocean's wrinkled lips, and yet ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... poets were right, and had some grounds for the myth of Philomela, I do not dispute; though Sophocles, speaking of the nightingales of Colonos, certainly does not represent them as lamenting. The Elizabethan poets, however, when they talked of Philomel, 'her breast against a thorn,' were unaware that they and the Greeks were talking of two different birds; that our English Lusciola Luscinia is not Lusciola Philomela, one of the various birds called Bulbul in the East. The true Philomel hardly enters Venetia, hardly crosses the Swiss Alps, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... shade, And hear what music's made— How Philomel Her tale doth tell, And how the other birds do fill the choir: The thrush and blackbird lend their throats, Warbling melodious notes. We will all sport ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... dry smooth-shaven green" paced on solitary evenings "to the far-off curfew's sound," beneath those groves of forest-trees among which "Philomel still deigns a song" and the spirit of contemplation lingers still; whether the silent avenues stand in the summer twilight filled with fragrance of the lime, or the long rows of chestnut engirdle the autumn river-lawns with walls of golden glow, or the tall elms cluster ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... poetry has conferred the name of Philomel upon the nightingale; but many respectable authorities among the ancients assigned this metamorphose to Progne, and made Philomel the swallow, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Is it not a lovely night, Jim. Listen, my own, to Philomel; he is saying that he is lately married. So are we, you ducky thing. I feel, Jim, that I am Rosalind and that you are ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... sleepless twirl. A flea is in her ear, 'tis said. The morning broke. Of fleas and heat Kitty complained. "Let me entreat, "O mother, I may put my bed "Out in the gallery," she said, "'Tis cooler there, and Philomel "Who warbles in the neigh'bring dell "Will solace me." Ready consent The simple mother gave, and went To seek her spouse. "Our Kate, my dear, "Will change her bed that she may hear "The nightingale, and sleep more cool." "Wife," said the good man, "You're a fool, "And ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... who saw him and heard him singing, caught him, and took him round the world in a cage for show. The value of him was discovered. Great crowds came to see the little Jackdaw, and to hear him sing. He was described now as the "Amphabulous Philomel, or the Mongrel-Minstrel"; but ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... silvery:—to compare 't with gold Is sure a new conceit. But, sir, you praise My singing, who have not yet heard me sing." And he: "I take it that a woman's speech Is to her singing what a bird's low chirp Is to its singing: and if Philomel Chirp in the hearing of the woodman, he Knows 'tis the nightingale that chirps, and so Expects nought meaner than its sovereign song. Madam, 'tis thus your speaking-voice hath given Earnest of what your singing-voice will be; And therefore I entreat you not to dash The expectations ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... producing odes and epistles, a little better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting-woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to mediocrity. We hardly know any instance of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
