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Orpheus   /ˈɔrfiəs/   Listen
Orpheus

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) a great musician; when his wife Eurydice died he went to Hades to get her back but failed.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Orpheus" Quotes from Famous Books



... familiar phenomena. The clouds were thus made to be animated things; a moving spirit was given to the storm, the dew, the wind. The sun setting in the glowing clouds of the west became Hercules in the fiery pile; the morning dawn extinguished by the rising sun was embodied in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. These ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... most conclusively that Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod,[160] who are usually designated "the theologians" of Greece, but who were in fact the depravers and corrupters of pagan theology, do not teach the existence of a multitude of unmade, self-existent, and independent deities. Even ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... (Posthumous Poems, 1824) among the 'poems written in 1820'. 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 attempt at improvisation, if ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... follows Clemens would seem to have scorned this publication, but he was a frequent contributor to it at one period. Joaquin Miller was of this band of literary pioneers; also Prentice Mulford, Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, and Orpheus C. Kerr. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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 ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... in peace soothing the ferocious spirit of discord among his countrymen into harmony and union; and giving to that very sword, now presented to his country, a charm more potent than that attributed in ancient times to the lyre of Orpheus. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... 16: Haemus.—Ver. 219. This, which is now called the Balkan range, was a lofty chain of mountains running through Thrace. Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus and Calliope, was there torn in pieces by the Maenades, or Bacchanalian women, whence the mountain obtained the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... therefore, only acting upon his own theory, and he seems to us to have been acting wisely as well as courageously, when he consented to become a humble but necessary wheel of the machinery of administration, the Orpheus among the Argonauts ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... man in collecting books.' The Wesleys were book-lovers and readers, but have perhaps but little claim to rank as collectors pur sang. However, it is interesting to point out that Lilly's catalogue for 1863 included a copy of Purcell's 'Orpheus Britannicus,' 1706, with an inscription on the fly-leaf: 'C. Wesley, junior. The valuable gift ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... in Tuscany, less use is made of the persons of classical mythology in finding subjects for punishment. Among the virtuous heathen several find their place; but it may be doubted whether Electra or Orpheus were to Dante any less historical than Plato or Seneca. Semiramis, Dido, Achilles, again, would all be recorded in the histories of Orosius and others whom Dante read, with dates and possibly portraits. Capaneus, one of the "Seven ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... pyramid away, Turning that monument wherein men trust Their names, to what it keeps, poor dust; Then shall the epitaph remain, and be New graven in eternity. Poets by death are conquered, but the wit Of poets triumph over it. What cannot verse? When Thracian Orpheus took His lyre, and gently on it strook, The learned stones came dancing all along, And kept time to the charming song. With artificial pace the warlike pine, The elm and his wife, the ivy-twine, With all the better trees which erst had stood Unmoved, forsook their native ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... they expanded the original writings of such historians as Hecataeus, who had spoken in a commendatory way of the Jews. They even went so far as to insert long passages into the writings of the famous Greek poets, such as Orpheus, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Menander, so as to transform them into ardent champions of the persecuted race. The culmination of this illegitimate form of defence was to insert in the famous Sibylline Books (III) a long passage describing the glories of the Jewish race and voicing the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... Orpheus with his lute-made trees, And the mountain-tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung, as sun and showers There had made a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... other forms of originality in literature, that the elements of it are old, but the combinations are novel. Other humorists, like Henry W. Shaw ("Josh Billings"), and David R. Locke, ("Petroleum V. Nasby"), have used bad spelling as a part of their machinery; while Robert H. Newell, ("Orpheus C. Kerr"), Samuel L. Clemens, ("Mark Twain"), and more recently "Bill Nye," though belonging to the same school of low or broad comedy, have discarded cacography. Of these the most eminent, by all odds, is Mark Twain, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... notes were coming from. A maiden of ten or twelve was sitting in front of a cottage that faced the lake, combing her long, black hair that glistened in the morning rays, and pouring forth such exquisite trills as might have made Orpheus envious. The whole beauty of ben, loch, and sky seemed to be gathered up in that child's song. I had been wandering along in the sparkling air and feeling that something ought to be done to intimate to Heaven that it was a heavenly morning. The girl felt so happy ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... and understand directly you see him why I do. We are so placid here these beautiful summer days. Everybody accepts us now resignedly as a fait accompli, and though they remain unenthusiastic they are polite and tolerant. And whenever I play to them they all grow kind. It's rather like being Orpheus with his lute, and they the mountain tops that freeze. I've discovered I can melt them by just making music. Helena really does love music. It was quite true what her mother said. Since I played that first wonderful night of my engagement ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... him had been so miraculously evinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation, an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined. There was a gentleman of the court, celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity; my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six weeks after her confinement, she put this rock into motion,—they eloped. Poor gentleman! it must have been a severe trial of patience to a man never known before to transgress the very ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... from Ovid in the beginning of his tale, where the Renaissance poet undertakes to explain why Mirrha is cursed with love for her father. While she listens to the sweet, sad songs of Orpheus, Cupid,[15] falling in love with her, courts her and is rejected; his parting kiss "did inspire/her brest with an infernall and unnam'd desire" (p. 123). Golding's Ovid, specifically denying that Cupid had anything to do with Mirrha's unnatural love, suggests that Cinyras' daughter must have been ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... well as make verses, do you not—you, whose music opened the gates even of Valmy? Indeed, I heard you just now. You are another Orpheus, and Valmy a very similar interior. You don't like me to say so? Very well, my lute is in your hand, and I am waiting. Did they teach you in Poitou to keep ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... Orpheus, the night is full of tears and cries, And hardly for the storm and ruin shed Can even thine eyes be certain of her head Who never passed out of thy spirit's eyes, But stood and shone before them in such wise As when with love her lips ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... lord, my monarch of high art, Forgive a tongue held fast and bound by heart. Not Orpheus, Linus, or great Hermes could Find words to make their rapture understood. No Muse, no Phoebus, hath this work inspired, But Jove himself, with heaven's own splendour fired. I see the nursing fingers ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... may be considered oratory also, since it has so great a power of persuasion; and the alliance between these two gifts had existed from the time that the verses of Orpheus had, according to the fable, made woods and streams and wild animals to follow him about. Soon, however, Oratory became the subject of a separate art, which was called Rhetoric, and of which the Sophists were the chief masters. Moreover, as Rhetoric ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... incongruity seems 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

... said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato

... 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 light on high; Magicians stave their heads in ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... Hebrus; and, if I had much regard for the glories that one's name enjoys after death, I should certainly be sorry for having missed the romantic conclusion of swimming down the same river in which the musical head of Orpheus repeated ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... We have already seen (above, vol. ii. p. 41, n.) that Cowper had read Emilius, and the mocking reference to the Deist as "an Orpheus and omnipotent in song," coincides with Rousseau's comparison of the Savoyard Vicar to "the divine Orpheus singing the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... take it seriously, an outrage upon our understandings which common sense alone enables us to brook; granted that it carries with it a distinctly miraculous element which should vitiate the whole process ab initio, still, if we have faith we can so work these miracles as Orpheus-like to charm denizens of the unseen world into the seen again—provided we do not look back, and provided also we do not try to charm half a dozen Eurydices at a time. To think is to fuse and diffuse ideas, and to fuse and diffuse ideas is to feed. We can all feed, and by consequence ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... farther than other men into the secrets of the Immortal labor. His yearnings, his sorrows were the links that united him to the unseen world; he went there, armed with his love, to seek his mother; realizing thus, with the sublime harmonies of ecstasy, the symbolic enterprise of Orpheus. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... impersonators, sentimental soloists, and so forth and so forth. These people are professional vaudevillists. They make their living that way. Many are excellently paid. Some are free rovers, doing a turn wherever they can get an opening, at the Obermann, the Orpheus, the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and so forth and so forth. Others cover circuit pretty well all over the country. An interesting phase of life, and the pay is big enough to ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... number of hoodlums to take their places in the gallery and hoot and hiss when the time came. And those who nag under any circumstances requested more cheerfulness. They found the "Czar and Zimmermann" too dull, the "Muette de Portici" too hackneyed. They insisted on "Madame Angot" and "Orpheus in the Under World." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... boats for the purpose of transporting into Europe an hundred and seventy myriads of barbarians. A sea contracted within such narrow limits may seem but ill to deserve the singular epithet of broad, which Homer, as well as Orpheus, has frequently bestowed on the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness are of a relative nature; the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed along the Hellespont, who pursued the windings of the stream and contemplated the rural scenery which appeared on every side to terminate ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... Pelasgians is conjectured to have been from—(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from some (b) mariners—from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy," the "dark-skinned;" represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their "Divine Image." Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have been Turanians, Semites or Aryans. That they could not have been either of the two first, and must have been the last named, is ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... So, as she had sung herself down to the nether pit, Elsley would help to sing her up again; and had already been throwing off, ever since 1848, a series of sonnets which he entitled Eurydice, intimating, of course, that he acted as the Orpheus. Whether he had hopes of drawing iron tears down Pluto Radetzky's cheek, does not appear; but certainly the longer poem which had sprung from his fancy, at the urgent call of Messrs. Brown and Younger, would have been likely ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... poem upon some classical subject, which he would deal with so admirably. The result of it all was that he found the editor’s strictures on the unlucky poem to be absolutely well grounded, and wrote for The Nineteenth Century ‘Orpheus,’ one of the ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... playing on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream: Ay me! I fondly dream 'Had ye been there,' ... for what could that have done? What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself, for her enchanting son Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... others who ascribe this Invention to Orpheus, and look upon the Cat-call to be one of those Instruments which that famous Musician made use of to draw the Beasts about him. It is certain, that the Roasting of a Cat does not call together a greater Audience of that Species than this Instrument, if dexterously played upon ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... 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 been said that people would then ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... found Ulysses weak, though cords were strong; But happier Orpheus stood unbound, And shamed it with a sweeter song. His mode be mine. Of Heav'n I ask, May I, with heart-persuading might, Pursue the Poet's sacred task Of superseding faith by sight, Till ev'n the witless Gadarene, Preferring Christ to swine, shall know That life is sweetest ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... Italian score were also made by Gluck in the later French version. Here is an example; being the recitative immediately preceding the great air of Orpheus in the last act: ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... other guests, to what company would not Sir Alfred Lyall have added that touch of something provocative and challenging which draws men and women after it, like an Orpheus-music? I can see him sitting silent, his legs crossed, his white head bent, the corners of his mouth drooping, his eyes downcast, like some one spent and wearied, from whom all virtue had gone out. Then some ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... me tell you that your commands have been performed to the letter, and that one Greek motto (from 'Orpheus') is given to the first part of 'The Seraphim,' and another from ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... doesn't matter. If you had ever done so, I believe you would confirm my experience of the position. If Orpheus had whistled, instead of singing to a lute, Eurydice would have stopped with Pluto, and Orpheus would have cut a very poor figure. I began to perceive that Achilles wasn't going to respond, and I knew the hare wouldn't, all along. So I walked on and got to a wood of oaks with an interesting ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... life and death, are by it blended together in the most intimate combination. As the oldest lawgivers delivered their mandatory instructions and prescriptions in measured melodies; as this is fabulously ascribed to Orpheus, the first softener of the yet untamed race of mortals; in like manner the whole of the ancient poetry and art is, as it were, a rhythmical nomos (law), an harmonious promulgation of the permanently established legislation ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... Old Homer sang, accompanying himself upon his rustic lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone upon his lips. I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides, and the masculine Sappho. I passed and recognised, as they sat on the bank of a fresh rivulet, the poet Horace, Varius, Gallus, and Lycoris. A little apart, leaning against the trunk of a dark holm-oak, Virgil was gazing pensively at the grove. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... too-favourite beverage, old Hanks listened to an account of my adventures. "It was the Cremona did it, after all!" he exclaimed, slapping my shoulder. "I told you it would stand you in good stead. Stick to it, my lad, and you'll become as great a man as that old chap Orpheus, I've heard tell of, who made the beasts jig when he fiddled. Who the gentleman was, I can't say, except that he was one of Julius Caesar's ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... Orpheus the So his, which Women slue, Thracian Poet. And it int' Hebrus threw, Caput, Hebre, Such sounds yet forth it sent, lyramque Excipis. The Bankes to weepe that drue, &c. Ouid. lib. 11. As downe the ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... history of exploration have we a more poetical account of the launching of a ship for distant lands: "Then they have stored her well with food and water, and pulled the ladder up on board, and settled themselves each man to his oar and kept time to Orpheus' harp; and away across the bay they rowed southward, while the people lined the cliffs; and the women wept while the men shouted at the starting of that gallant crew." They chose a captain, and the choice fell on Jason, "because he was the wisest of them all"; and they rowed on "over the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... new humorist. Thus we have seen in rapid succession John Phoenix, Doesticks, Fanny Fern, and Artemus Ward enjoying extraordinary popularity, and then new 'lords of misrule' 'reigning in their stead.' The last popular favorite is 'Orpheus C. Kerr'—a name thinly disguising that of Office Seeker, and which is not indeed too well chosen, since in the volume before us little or nothing relative to the very suggestive subject of office-seeking, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... in Arcady, and the greater Gods withdrew to sleep in lotos-gardens beyond the lands of the Hesperides. In the subtle cadences and hidden melodies of the bard the spirit of the maiden has found rest at last, for there echo the divinest notes of Thracian Orpheus; notes that moved the very rocks and trees by Hebrus' banks. The singer ceases, and with eagerness asks a verdict, yet what can Marcia say but that the strain ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... fairyland is a genuine reality to these men. We feel this in nearly all the work of that sort—least, in the archaeological Mantegna's. We see it beginning in the mere single figures—the various drawings of Orpheus, "Orpheus le doux menestrier jouant de flutes et de musettes," as Villon called him, much about that time—piping or fiddling among little toy animals out of a Nuremberg box; the drawing of fauns carrying sheep, some with ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... Christ, music was most cultivated and was most progressive in Greece." The verses of the Greek poet Homer, who was himself a musician, abound in beautiful allusions to and descriptions of this charming science; while in mythology are recounted the wonderful musical achievements of the god Orpheus, who is said to have been so skilled in music that the very rocks and trees followed in his ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... that among the ancient mysteries not one is to be found that does not include dancing. Orpheus and Musaeus, the best dancers of their time, were the founders of these rites; and their ordinances show the value they attached to rhythm and dance as elements in religion. To illustrate this point would be to make the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... frightened they did not move nor growl for fear of disturbing their master, but kept quite still, glaring at the soldiers with big yellow eyes. The men were so astonished at the sight that they stole away without capturing an animal or saying a word to Saint Blaise, for they thought he must be Orpheus or some heathen god who charmed wild beasts. They went to the Governor and told him what they ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown

... "Licentiousness!"—there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned, or poured forth, since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. de S. are far more formidable than any quantity of verse. They are so, because they sap the principles, by reasoning upon the passions; whereas poetry is in itself ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... way he wins, his post maintains— He twirled her knots and cracked her fan, Like any other gentleman. When jests grew dull he showed his wit, And many a lounger hit with it. When he had fully stored his mind— As Orpheus once for human kind,— So he away would homewards steal, To civilize the ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods." (Hist. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... pavement, rich with graceful designs and ever-enduring colours, representing the stories of the gods, the poetry of nature, and the legends of the heroes of his beloved native land. Here we see Perseus freeing Andromeda, Medusa's locks, Bacchus and his band of revellers, Orpheus with his lyre, by which he is attracting a monkey, a fox, a peacock, and other animals, Apollo singing to his lyre, Venus being loved by Mars, Neptune with his trident, attended by hosts of seamen. The seasons form an accustomed ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... ghosts, rejoice! For never has such soothing voice 35 Been to your shadowy world convey'd, Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade Heard the clear song of Orpheus deg. come deg.38 Through Hades, and the mournful gloom. Wordsworth has gone from us—and ye, 40 Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen—on this iron time Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears. He found us when the age had bound 45 Our souls in its ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... him. The frayed and overworn gut broke at a knot, and with a loose roll he dropped back towards the deep. I sprang at him, stumbled, fell on him, struggled with him, but he slipped from my arms. In that moment I knew more than the anguish of Orpheus. Orpheus! Had I, too, lost my Eurydice? I rushed from the stream, up the steep bank, along to my rooms. I passed the church door. Olive, pale as her orange- blossoms, was issuing from the porch. The clock pointed to 10.45. I was ruined, I knew it, and I laughed. I laughed like a lost spirit. ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... manifold sciences, be 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 this priority (although in itself ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... Sweet Orpheus, lord of minstrelsy, For this with flute and pipe came nigh The danger of the dog's heads three That ravening at hell's door doth lie; Fain was Narcissus, fair and shy, For love's love lightly lost and won, In a deep well to drown and die; ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... replied the praetor. "But when Orpheus sings the trees dance, the Muse can turn dull, motionless stones into a Bacchante, and when Balbilla appears Timon is at once transformed into the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... At Richard's accession Prior John of Cambridge in the vacancy of the abbot was in charge of the house. The prior was a man skilled in all the arts of his day. In sweetness of voice, in knowledge of sacred song, his eulogists pronounced him superior to Orpheus, to Nero, and to one yet more illustrious in the Bury cloister though obscure to us, the Breton Belgabred. John was "industrious and subtle," and subtlety and industry found their scope in suit after suit with the burgesses and farmers around him. "Faithfully ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... those who are true judges, and who are said to judge there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, AEacus and Triptolemus, and such others of the demi-gods as were just during their own life, would this be a sad removal? At what price would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I indeed should be willing to die often, if this be true. For to me the sojourn there would be admirable, when I should meet with Palamedes, and Ajax, son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients who has died by an unjust sentence. The ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... Launfal's fairy love; the lively adventures of William of Palerne, who had a werewolf for his friend and an emperor's daughter for his love, eloping with her in white bear-skins, the unusual meat of which was being cooked in her father's kitchen; Sir Orfeo—Orpheus and Eurydice, with a happy ending; Emare, one of the tales of innocent but persecuted heroines of which Chaucer's Constance is the best known; Florence of Rome; the rather famous Squire of Low Degree; ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the Great 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

... of Pleyel? Or is your work to be at a dead stop, until the allies set our modern Orpheus at liberty from the savage thraldom of democrat discords? Alas the day! And woe is me! That auspicious period, pregnant with the happiness of millions. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... ceased the rival crew, when Purcell came; They sung no more, or only sung his fame: Struck dumb, they all admired the godlike man: The godlike man, Alas! too soon retired, As he too late began. We beg not hell our Orpheus to restore: Had he been there, Their sovereign's fear Had sent him back before. The power of harmony too well they knew: He long ere this had tuned their jarring sphere, And ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... by the colors of the sinking sun. There was a murmur of wind in the tops of the trees and a stirring of linen-clad girls near the temple entrance—voices droning from the near-by booths behind the shrubbery— one flute, like the plaint of Orpheus summoning Eurydice—a blossom- scented air and an enfolding mystery ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... the ashes of the dead; let the grave at least put an end to your unjust hatreds. Reflect that even Kings make peace after long battling; cannot you ever make it? I think you would be capable, like Orpheus, of descending to Hell, not to soften Pluto and bring back your beautiful Emilie, but to pursue into that Abode of Woe an enemy whom your wrath has only too much persecuted in the world: for shame!" [OEuvres de Frederic, xxiii. 61-65 ("Wilsdruf, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... disciples of Protagoras is the 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: they never got into his way at all; but ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... listen greedily, And joy to hear how they have died, How fell these glorious sons of Greece, The robber-band that fought their way Back from far Colchis. Thracian maids Rent limb from limb sweet Orpheus' frame; And Hylas found a watery grave; Pirithoues and Theseus pierced Even to Hades' darksome realm To rob that mighty lord of shades Of his radiant spouse, Persephone; But then he seized, and holds them there For aye in chains and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Instead of the vague and contradictory opinions of the philosophers in regard to the destiny of the soul, Serapis offered certainty founded on divine revelation corroborated by the faith of the countless generations that had adhered to it. What the votaries of Orpheus had confusedly discovered through the veil of the legends, and taught to Magna Grecia,[88] namely, that this earthly life was a trial, a preparation for a higher and purer life, that the happiness of an after-life could be secured ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... and to appear before such as are truly so—Minos, Rhadamanthus, AEacus, Triptolemus—and to meet with those who have lived with justice and probity![23] Can this change of abode appear otherwise than great to you? What bounds can you set to the value of conversing with Orpheus, and Musaeus, and Homer, and Hesiod? I would even, were it possible, willingly die often, in order to prove the certainty of what I speak of. What delight must it be to meet with Palamedes, and Ajax, and others, who have been betrayed by the iniquity of their judges! Then, also, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. He admired Aeschylus and Pindar; but, when some one was commending them, he said that "Aeschylus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no good one. They ought not to have moved trees, but to have chanted to the gods such a hymn as would have sung all their old ideas out of their heads, and new ones in." His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... celebrities, 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

... his ship by the Isle of the Sirens, the beautiful sirens began to play their sweetest music to lure the sailors from their posts of duty. Ulysses and his sailors stuffed wax in their ears, and lashed themselves to the masts that they might not be lured away; but, when Orpheus passed by in the search of the golden fleece and heard the same sweet songs, he simply took out his harp and played sweeter music, and not a sailor desired to leave the vessel. The sirens of sin and crime are doing all in their power to lure us from the highest ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... 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

... instantly raised their pipes like fifty ciphered keys in an organ, first against Enoch, then against all the male kind, and lastly turned so furiously upon me that there seemed to be danger of their tearing me piece-meal, like as the mad females of Thrace did the disconsolate Orpheus. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... 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 subject, is ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... the public, which immediately attracted great attention. His first work was a piece of the Three Graces, represented by as many female figures, with a globe over their heads. He soon after executed one of his masterpieces, a drawing of Orpheus. About this time, to please his father, as it is said, he married the daughter of Hans Fritz, a celebrated mechanic, who proved a fierce Xantippe, and embittered, and some say shortened his life. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... swiftly through the streets, plain as the house from which it came, regal with royalty beyond that of kings; the ceaseless charity untold; the strong sustaining heart of private friendship; the eloquence which, like the song of Orpheus, will fade from living memory into a doubtful tale; that great scene of his youth in Faneuil Hall; the surrender of ambition; the mighty agitation and the mighty triumph with which his name is forever blended; the consecration ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser

... when Frolic was lying at the school house door, where it learned a great deal listening to the recitations, the teacher read aloud the story of Orpheus, who could tame wild animals with his lyre, and then went on to say that she had heard of music by which animals might be changed into persons. Frolic's white ears were pricked up, and every word was treasured, and thought over, day after day. The children ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... her most ordinary poses used to throw me into the deepest ecstasies of admiration. Whenever I gazed at her I fully agreed with Monsieur de Lessay that Jupiter had once reigned as a despot-king over the mountainous regions of Thessaly, and that Orpheus had committed the imprudence of leaving the teaching of philosophy to the clergy. I am not now quite sure whether I was a coward or a hero when I accorded al this to the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... the young lady; but the public seemed to be of the same opinion as Roger, and rewarded the young songstress, when she had finished, with round after round of applause. Encouraged by the applause, she sang the aria from "Orpheus"—"Ah, I have lost her, all my happiness is gone." This ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... report—but it was a gloomy place at best. Horace alludes to it always in the tone of the Hebrew Psalmists, or of Hezekiah sick to death, utilizing Minos and Cerberus and Tantalus and Sisyphus for poetic effect, yet ever with an undertone of sadness and alarm. Not Orpheus' self, he says (I, xxiv, 13), in his exquisite lament for dead Quinctilius, can bring back life-blood to the phantom pale who has joined the spectral band that voyage to Styx: the gods are pitiless—we can only bear bereavements patiently (II, iii). You must ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... that upon the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart: Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears 75 Moist it again; and frame some feeling line That may discover such integrity: For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews; Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans 80 Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands. After your dire-lamenting elegies, Visit by night your lady's chamber-window With some sweet concert; to their instruments ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... three species. Another rare bird is the Uruponga, or Campanero, in English the tolling-bell bird, found only on the borders of Guiana. It is of the size of our jay, of a pure white color, with a black tubercle on the upper side of the bill. "Orpheus himself (says Waterton) would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel, and romantic is the toll of the pretty, snow-white Campanero." "The Campanero may be heard three miles! (echoes Sidney Smith). This single little ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... be used as book covers. Occasionally the five leaves were made up of classical ivories which had been altered in such a way that they now had Christian significance. The beautiful diptych in the Bargello, representing Adam in the Earthly Paradise, may easily have been originally intended for Orpheus, especially since Eve is absent! The treatment is rather classical, and was probably adapted to its later name. Some diptychs which were used afterwards for ecclesiastical purposes, show signs of having had the Consular ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... 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 discovered, from the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... might be a religion or a religion which might be a story into any degree of belief in which she could lapse at will. The name and the form of her new deity was revealed to her in a dream. He was Corambe, pure as Jesus, beautiful as Gabriel, as graceful as the nymphs and Orpheus, less austere than the Christian God, and as much woman as man, because she could best understand this sex from her love for her mother. He appeared in many aspects of physical and moral beauty; was eloquent, master of all arts, and above ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... of the North Wind; King Neptune and Winds and Waters; Echo, the Air Maiden; Iris, the Rainbow Queen; Tennyson's Lullaby; Orpheus, Myth of the South Wind; The Bag that was a Balloon; Hail, or the Bird with Arrow Feathers; Phaeton, Myth of the Sun; ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 37, July 22, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... the car on which the boy was carried was upset, and he himself fainted.[100] This is declared to have happened no longer ago than the year 1869. The writer, apparently a pious Roman Catholic, who vouches for the fact, probably never heard the touching tale of Orpheus ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... first time, 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

... party; what he had to do, though seeming to give orders, was simply to repeat their orders—'Port your helm,' said the party; 'Port it is,' replied the helmsman.—But Burke was no steersman; he was the Orpheus that sailed with the Argonauts; he was their seer, seeing more in his visions than he always understood himself; he was their watcher through the hours of night; he was their astrological interpreter. Who complains ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... he has both three heads and three tongues: cui tres sint linguae tergeminumque caput. Virgil, in the AEneid, vi. 417, has huge Cerberus barking with triple jaws; his neck bristles with serpents. Ovid in his Metamorphoses, x. 21, makes Orpheus, looking for dear Eurydice in Tartarus, declare that he did not go down in order that he might chain the three necks, shaggy with serpents, of the monster begotten of Medusa. His business also is settled for all time; he is the terrible, fearless, and ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield

... palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... it is not true. I told Nero that if Orpheus put wild beasts to sleep with song, his triumph was equal, since he had put Vespasian to sleep. Ahenobarbus may be blamed on condition that to a small criticism a great flattery be added. Our gracious Augusta, Poppaea, understands ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see, Like Orpheus asking what the deuce to do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... 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 ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... devour one another; or because, in China (and other countries) it is practiced, where, according to Herrera, one great market is supplied with human flesh alone, for the better sort of people; or because cannibalism was universal before the days of Orpheus. I almost fear lest the emancipationists, by adopting cannibalism as right, with such high authorities and precedents to support their position, may endeavor to palliate African cannibalism on the ground that it is not a ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... of the season, January 28, Sig. Stigelli was prevailed upon to give a farewell concert in Boston Music Hall, assisted by the Oratorio Society and Orpheus Musical Society. Soloists for the occasion were Mlle. Carlotta Patti, who sang the aria from the Magic Flute, Carl Formes, basso profundi, Signor Stigelli, tenor. It was a gala night and every seat was filled at the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... by such hate are held, To maim and slay delights them: As Orpheus' lyre the brutes compelled, The bagpipe ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... of a country which was called Thessaly there lived a man whose name was Orpheus. Every day he made soft music with his golden harp, and sang beautiful songs such as no one had ever heard before. And whenever Orpheus sang, then everything came to listen to him, and the trees bowed down their heads to hear, and even the clouds sailed along more gently and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Grant called on the President, he met with a hearty reception, and Mr. Lincoln, taking him into a private room, repeated to him a story from a comic article by Orpheus C. Kerr, satirically criticising the conduct of the war. It was a story about Captain Bob Shorty and the Mackerel Brigade and the Anaconda Policy— something about generals in the field being hampered by a flood of orders. When he had finished his story, he told General Grant that he did not ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... 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 in Adultery; ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... isn't love," he said, almost roughly. "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 not love me ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... beast their master; as we may act submission to children till we are obliged to practise it in earnest. That authors are and ought to be considered the masters and preceptors of the public, and not vice versa. That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus, and Musaeus, and would be so again, if it were not that writers prove traitors to themselves. That, in particular, in the days of the first of those three great authors just mentioned, audiences appear to have been perfect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... his devotions in the early morning hours in his lararium, in which he had statues of the divine princes and also a select number of the best men and the more holy spirits, among whom he had Apollonius of Tyana, and as a writer of his times says, Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus, and others similar, as well ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... 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 clearly see what the first Greek philosophers would have. Socrates I esteemed ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... sincerity in 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, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... the symbolic star; and we believe that some day the Mason will recognise the Mystic. He is the heir of the great names of antiquity, the philosophers and hierarchs, and the spiritual kings of old; he is of the line of Orpheus and Hermes, of the Essenes and the Magi. And all those illustrious systems and all those splendid names with which Masonry has ever claimed kindred belong absolutely to ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... makes it capable of being moulded into any form? Then if she should awake! But how to awake her? A kiss awoke the Sleeping Beauty! a kiss cannot reach her through the incrusting alabaster." I kneeled, however, and kissed the pale coffin; but she slept on. I bethought me of Orpheus, and the following stones—that trees should follow his music seemed nothing surprising now. Might not a song awake this form, that the glory of motion might for a time displace the loveliness of rest? Sweet sounds can go where kisses ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... 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 considered as ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of the king that I was peculiarly 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, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... Conservatoire examinations of 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 thrown ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... 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, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... soft Italian melodies; yonder, Spanish songs are sung, accompanied by the rattle of the castanets; but strongest of all, and predominating over the rest, the street-organ tunes of the moment, the exciting "Can-Can" music, which Orpheus never knew, and which was never heard by the "Belle Helene." Even the barrow was tempted to hop upon ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... observed by Livy, long ere our philosophy of the mind existed as a system. This rapture, or sensation of deep study, has been described by one whose imagination had strayed into the occult learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of Orpheus it seemed to him that he had lifted the veil from Nature. His feelings were associated with her loneliness. I translate his words:—"When I took these dark mystical hymns into my hands, I appeared as it were to be descending into an abyss of the mysteries of venerable antiquity; at that moment, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... muse! For when mankind ran wild in grooves Came holy Orpheus with his songs And turned men's hearts from bestial loves, From brutal force and savage wrongs; Amphion, too, and on his lyre Made such sweet music all the day That rocks, instinct with warm desire, Pursued him in ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... the Hecht yielded nothing, in point of 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 ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... 1867. At that time I was in Santa Cruz. He was one of the organizers of the Harmonic society, Prof. Dohrmann, director. Later John P. Morgan was leader. He was also one of the charter members of the Orpheus society of male singers, conductor, Prof. McDougal. Connected with the Orpheus was also a choral of women's and men's voices. They gave some fine concerts in Oakland at that time. At the death of Prof. McDougal this society went out of existence, but afterward reorganized with men's voices only, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... the main, Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies. 1075 A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... 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

... Italian method. "Mein Gott! he is an idiot," said Handel; "he knows no more of counterpoint then mein cook." Handel did not see with prophetic eyes. He never met Gluck afterward, and we do not know his later opinion of the composer of "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Iphigenia in Tauris." But Gluck had ever the profoundest admiration for the author of the "Messiah." There was something in these two strikingly similar, as their music was alike characterized by massive simplicity and strength, not rough-hewn, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... "Rather an Orpheus," said the King; "and what is worse, one that is already provided with a Eurydice—She is clinging ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... for his age than some prosperous man whose few stumbling words have sufficed for shaping national policies and guiding his generation. All the young are drawn into the wake of the successful. Wealth fulfills the story of Orpheus, whose sweet voice made the very stones and trees follow after him. Truly wealth is an evangelist, the almoner of bounty toward college and library and art gallery and liberty and religion. But its chief use is ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... 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 search of the ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... Scriptures a polity more beautiful and more saintly than that which was extracted therefrom by that rocky and sterile M. Bossuet! What a city, more harmonious than that erected by the sounds of the lyre of Orpheus, could be built on the maxims of Jesus Christ, on the day when His priests, no more sold to emperors and kings, manifest themselves as the ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... And (mighty subject!) of a Mushroom sing, Fair to the eye, and pleasant to the taste; Charm'd by the note, a pigmy group, in haste, Lay down their grainy loads, as slow they move Thro' lanes of reed and grass, to them a grove! As if an Orpheus thou, they gather round, Erect their tiny ears, and drink the sound. Gray was the sky, save where the eastern ray O'er fragrant hills proclaim'd th' approaching day; Rurilla, loveliest virgin of the plain, With spirits light, and mind without a stain, Rose from her simple bed, refresh'd ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... Germany, stopping at Paris on the way, where Rameau's operas had a strong influence upon him. From 1746 to 1762 he wrote a large number of operas, with varying success so far as performance was concerned, but with great and lasting benefit to his style and fame, as was shown when his "Orpheus" was first produced, Oct. 5, 1762. Its success determined him at once to acquaint the musical world with his purpose to reform the opera by making it dramatically musical instead of purely lyric, thus paving the way for the great innovator of Baireuth. "Alceste," produced in 1767, was the first ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... human heart, man's noblest strength, and he knows that God is nothing—nothing but love! Whence cometh the wonder of a moment? From sources we know not. But we do know that from obscurity, and from this higher Orpheus come measures of sphere melodies [note: Paraphrased from a passage in Sartor Resartus.] flowing in wild, native tones, ravaging the souls of men, flowing now with thousand-fold accompaniments and rich symphonies through all our hearts; ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... other forms of originality in literature, that the elements of it are old, but their combinations are novel. Other humorists, like Henry W. Shaw ("Josh Billings") and David R. Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby"), have used bad spelling as a part of their machinery; while Robert H. Newell ("Orpheus C. Kerr"), Samuel L. Clemens ("Mark Twain"), and more recently "Bill Nye," though belonging to the same school of low or broad comedy, have discarded cacography. Of these the most eminent, by all odds, is Mark Twain, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... before dinner." A concert following, Napoleon stood alone by the piano, but, not fancying the instrumental part of the performance, at the end of a piece by Jadin, he struck on the piano and cried, "Garat! Garat!" who then sang a scene from "Orpheus." Music always profoundly moved Madame Recamier, but whenever she raised her eyes she found those of the Consul fixed upon her with so much intensity that she became uncomfortable. After the concert, he came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... for shrimp and prawn, Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, Who looked the gold sun in the eye While garden mists grew thin, And intoned ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... pain cheered, death comforted; the house Of sorrow smiles to listen. Once again - O thou, Orpheus and Heracles, the bard And the ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... puzzle their brains to find out any other." Indeed 'tis most strange and surprising to me That all folks in rhiming their int'rest can't see; For I'm sure if it's use were quite common with men, The world would roll on just as pleasant again. "'Tis said, that while ORPHEUS was striking his lyre, "Trees and brutes danc'd along to the sound of the wire; "That AMPHION to walls soon converted the glebes, "And they rose, as he sung, to a city call'd Thebes; "I suppose they were Butlers (like me) of that time, "And ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald

... that addressed Orpheus, in the infernal regions, and offered him for food a roasted ant, a flea's thigh, butterflies' brains, some sucking mites, a rainbow tart etc., to be washed down with dew-drops and beer made from seven barleycorns—a very heady ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... before the others stand nearest to him; Democritus, who ascribes the world to chance; Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Zeno; and I saw the good collector of the qualities, Dioscorides, I mean; and I saw Orpheus, Tully, and Linus, and moral Seneca, Euclid the geometer, and Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen, and Averrhoes, who made the great comment. I cannot report of all in full, because the long theme so drives me that many times speech comes short ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... Atramenti, was not begun until July. The poems in it were written at various times. In the manuscript, Hafbur and Signy is dated February 4, 1870; Hildebrand and Hillilel, March 1, 1871; and Love's Reward, Kelmscott, April 21, 1871. Meeting in Winter is a song from The Story of Orpheus, an unpublished poem intended for The Earthly Paradise. The last poem in the book, Goldilocks and Goldilocks, was written on May 20, 1891, for the purpose of adding to the bulk of the volume, which was then being prepared. A few of the vellum covers were stained ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris

... Nemo, "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 ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... bountyhood, And show how liberal a lord I serve? Music and poetry, my two last crimes, Are those two exercises of delight, Wherewith long labours I do weary out. The dying swan is not forbid to sing: The waves of Hebrus[46] play'd on Orpheus' strings, When he (sweet music's trophy) was destroy'd. And as for poetry, words'[47] eloquence (Dead Phaeton's three sisters' funeral tears That by the gods were to Electrum turn'd), Not flint or rock, of icy cinders flam'd, Deny the force[48] of silver-falling streams. Envy enjoyeth ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various



Words linked to "Orpheus" :   Greek mythology, orphic, mythical being



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