"Swan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed, in the direction of the Rue Rambuteau. On either side of the space reserved for the auctions were large circular stone basins, divided into separate compartments by iron gratings. Slender streams of water flowed from brass jets shaped like swan's necks; and the compartments were filled with swarming colonies of crawfish, black-backed carp ever on the move, and mazy tangles of eels, incessantly knotting and unknotting themselves. Again was Monsieur Verlaque attacked by an obstinate fit of coughing. The moisture of the atmosphere was ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of birds, I should have mentioned, that some of our gentlemen have seen in the lagoons and swamps which they have fallen in with, in their shooting excursions, the black swan, which is said to have been found in some parts of the west coast of this country; the extremity of their wings are described to be white, and all the rest of the plumage black. I have seen one which has been shot. It answered the above description as to colour, but the bill was ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... swan-shaped vehicle, brightly painted, thickly covered with buffalo robes, and drawn by two high-stepping horses, which tossed their heads and shook their bells merrily as if they shared in the prevailing jovialty ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... waged, I ween. Purple is the groundwork: good! All the field is stained with blood— Blood poured out for Helen's sake; (Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake!) But the shapes of men that pass Are as ghosts within a glass, Woven with whiteness of the swan, Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan From the garment's purple fold Where Troy's tale is twined and told. Well may Helen, as with tender Touch of rosy fingers slender She doth knit the story in Of Troy's sorrow and her sin, Feel sharp filaments of pain Reeled off with ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... hides, sables, and cable yarn; the other articles of less importance, and in smaller quantities, were coarse linen, feathers for beds, tar, linen yarn, beet, rhubarb, Persian silk, cork, bacon, cordage, skins of squirrels, and cats; bees' wax, hogs' birstles, mice and goats' skins, swan ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of whom Europe in late years has heard more than enough. It appears to me that we go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high-bred girl is so like a swan in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of ante-natal sin, to say nothing of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... in wait for departing visitors, and went with them to the door, taking leave of them with that eternal smile. When conversation grew lively, and he saw that every one was interested in one thing or another, he stood, happy and mute, planted like a swan on both feet, listening, to all appearance, to a political discussion; or he looked over the card-players' hands without a notion of what it was all about, for he could not play at any game; or he walked about and took snuff to promote digestion. Anais was the bright side of his ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... word, sex,—not on the physical side so studied and glorified by other painters, but in its psychological aspect. For once Leonardo has stripped bare not the body but the soul of desire,—the passion, the lust, the trembling and the shame. There is something frightening about Leda caught with the swan, about the effeminate Dionysus and John the Baptist's mouth "folded for a kiss of irresistible pleasure." If the stories then told about the children of Alexander VI and about Margaret of Navarre and Anne Boleyn were true, Mona Lisa ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... lily and the privet pale Compared, and Tibur's whitest ivory fail; The Spartan swan, the Paphian doves deplore Their hue, and pearls on ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Tannhauser is taken from the epic poem of "Parzifal," written by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the Middle Ages. Lohengrin, which is touched on in the "Parzifal," Wagner also found in the poem of an obscure Bavarian poet; and a more complete account of the celebrated "Swan Knight" appears in a collection of stories edited by the brothers Grimm. Lohengrin is a Knight of the Holy Grail, so part of the legend is borrowed ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... "Waal, I swan!" cried Hiram, "that would be the biggest thing ever happened in Mason's Corner. Well, I rather think I shall be able to tend to that matter now, at once. One, two, three," said Hiram, "just think of it; well, that's the ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... classic busts blackened by the weather. Then, tired of flying, they settled down on the rusty iron balconies, adding to the old building a white fluttering decoration, a rustling garland of feathers. In the middle of the square a marble swan, with its neck violently stretched toward the sky, threw out a jet, whose murmur seemed to heighten the impression of icy cold which he felt in ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... tenements,—chiefly tenements it seemed to me. Off in one corner of the district instead of high tenement buildings there was something almost worse, rows of mean, little two-story brick cottages that ranged upwards along a gentle slope that I tried to fancy was Swan's Hill,—a dangerous descent where my older brothers and I were once allowed to coast on our "double-runner." I will not weary the reader with further details of my wandering with its disappointment and shattered ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... in the azure water, A swan of dazzling white Floats longing round the lily, That trances all ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... "Well, I swan," said the grocery man, as he put some eggs in a funnel shaped brown paper for a servant girl. "What did the minister say when he ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... severely censured for his "fall from Homer's numbers, free as air, lofty and harmonious as the spheres, into childish shackles and tinkling sounds; for putting Achilles into petticoats a second time:" but we are told that the dying swan talked over an epick plan with Young a few ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... was proved that Perrault had in the course of the morning met Billy Blake, and asked him if he meant to bag the swan—if he followed the young lord's party and fired when they did, he would be sure to bring something down. He did not know that the Blakes never let the poor fellow load his old ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... argument to prove swan sane,—and good company besides I Well, I am mad, and expect to be so,-at least I think I have a right to be so, in the proportion of one hour to twenty-four, being so rational the rest of the time. I think it's but a reasonable ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... surface of the ground, on the exterior side, and three feet or so in diameter; while the interior was constructed of grass and pieces of stick woven together with clay. There was one large egg in the centre of this nest, a little bigger than that of a swan and quite white, with the exception of a band of small bright red spots which encircled the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Moore, the two greatest artists living in England, will never be elected Academicians; and artistic England is asked to acquiesce in this grave scandal, and also in many minor scandals: the election of Mr. Dicksee in place of Mr. Henry Moore, and Mr. Stanhope Forbes in place of Mr. Swan or Mr. John Sargent! No one thinks Mr. Dicksee as capable an artist as Mr. Henry Moore, and no one thinks Mr. Stanhope Forbes as great an artist as Mr. Swan or Mr. Sargent. Then why were they elected? ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... iris—oh! the slim-necked swan; And, sign of exiled souls, the bay divine; Ruddy as seraph's heel its fleckless sheen, Blushing the brightness of ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... very jolly and well-favored looking companions, most of the members bearing large bouquets of flowers. After them the Vintners' Company, with the band of the Royal Artillery; ten Commissioners, each bearing a shield; eight master porters in vintner's dress; the Bargemaster in full uniform, and the Swan Uppers. These are men who look after the swans belonging to the corporation of London, which build their nests along the banks of the Thames, and they mark the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... disobey us and you will quickly find out," snapped Indigo, swaying her head from side to side on its long, swan-like neck like the pendulum ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... kingdom, all are well. The eagle builds his nest in a high tree; at times he grows careless in the fancied security of his high-perched home; then even a small bird will sometimes come and plunder it and eat the eggs and young brood: so it is with the swan whose nest is in the sedges on the lake. It, too, trusts too confidently in the dark thickets of reeds, yet prowling water falcons will sometimes come and rob it of eggs and young. This might happen to my revered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... about HIS health, so she swung over on a new tack and tried her own. She said so much smoke in the house was drivin' her into consumption, and she worked up a cough that was a reg'lar graveyard quickstep. I heard her practicin' it once, and, I swan, there was harps and halos all ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in every species of creatures, but especially of the nobler kind, there are many evident marks of pride and humility. The very port and gait of a swan, or turkey, or peacock show the high idea he has entertained of himself, and his contempt of all others. This is the more remarkable, that in the two last species of animals, the pride always attends ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... a boat fit for a king was lowered, and eight or ten sailors, richly dressed, took their places at the oars. A man, whose long white hair hung about his shoulders in snowy profusion, and whose beard, white as the swan's down, came to his breast, descended to the boat and ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... bustle ensued that you might have thought a 30 goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it, in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... progressed a long way from the rabbit on the wall; but in the house, ambition in this accomplishment does not often extend further than that and one or two other animals, and this is why only the rabbit, dog, and swan are given here. The swan can be made more interesting by moving the arm which forms his neck as if he were prinking and pluming, an effect which is much heightened by ruffling up and smoothing down the hair with the fingers forming ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... sartin it ain't worth no sich money ter take 'em." Lest she would agree with him, however, he set off with celerity. "Like as not he'll give me a reprimand fer troublin' him with a gal's nonsense," he soliliquised, as he walked. "Swan ef I ain't most tempted ter throw ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... sites of their camps have been numerous. A considerable number of pipes of the Caroline period, with the usual small elongated bowls, were found in 1902 at Chichester, in the course of excavating the foundations of the Old Swan Inn, East Street, for building the present branch of the London and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... are the "Swan-maidens" (See vol. v. 346) "one of the primitive myths, the common heritage of the whole Aryan (Iranian) race." In Persia Bahram-i-Gr when carried off by the Div Sapid seizes the Peri's dove-coat: in Santhli folk-lore Torica, the Goatherd, steals the garment doffed by one of the daughters ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... with a whimsical, wistful smile the pathetic Romance of the Swan's Nest and the musing ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... the captain. The massive "Ilya Murometz," heaving a mighty sigh, emitted a thick column of white steam toward the side of the landing-bridge, and started upstream easily, like a swan. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... so some snowy swan, or timorous hare Jove's armour-bearer, swooping from the sky, Grips in his talons, and aloft doth bear. So, where apart the folded weanlings lie, Swift at some lamb the warrior-wolf doth fly, And leaves the mother, bleating in her woe. Loud rings the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... which Antonino had been shooting with and which had been removed from the drawing-room, where the guest for a day had too many opportunities to be alone with it. To cover his inspection, she suggested that Rebecca should afford the company a final pleasure, a kind of swan's song, and went and opened the cottage-piano for her. The Jewess did not refuse the invitation and began Gounod's "Medje" in a voice which Von Sendlingen had room to admit had improved in tone and volumn, and would make her as worthy of the grand ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... free. Even in the Crucifixion, one leg has been wrenched away from the nail which pierced its foot, and writhes round the knee of the other still left riven to the cross. The loves of Leda and the Swan, of Ixion and Juno, are spasms of voluptuous pain; the sleep of the Night is troubled with fantastic dreams, and the Dawn starts into consciousness with a shudder of prophetic anguish. There is not a hand, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... crow. He fancied that Coronis had really deserted him for another man, and his mind was filled with grief and rage. With his silver bow in his hands he started at once for his home. He did not stop to speak with any one; he had made up his mind to learn the truth for himself. His swan-team and his golden chariot were not at hand—for, now that he was living with men, he must travel like men. The journey had to be made on foot, and it was no short journey in those days when there were no roads. But after a time, ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... lay it before the Public in the words of Mr. SWAN: who in a Letter address'd to me in The Ladies Museum of this Month, after congratulating me on my "successful efforts," (and with such a Production to propose to public Attention how could they be unsuccessful?) "in rescuing from oblivion a Poem, which for the harmony ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... gardener's point of view—as a nuisance, but I shall tolerate their presence in the view of their utility and importance. A friend here to whom I am going to lend your book tells me that an agriculturist who had been in West Australia, near Swan River, told him many years ago of the hopelessness of farming there, illustrating the poverty and dryness of the soil by saying, "There are no ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... and told us stories, while we made daisy-chains. Then he took us in his boat on the lake, and rowed about, and, O mamma, what do you think! as we were passing a thick clump of flags, he parted them with his oar, and showed us a swan's nest! I thought of Mrs. Browning's poem of little Ellie, and her 'Swan's Nest among the Reeds.' O, I had almost forgot! Lord Glenmore intrusted to me the sweetest gift for baby Alfred: see! this lovely coral necklace. He ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... In every face that wariful Meets mine; this bud-mouth make Unkissable With kisses; and up-lap My soul's youth sap Till 't withers to a clutch about the gold You think pays all; yet from this reedy mould, This swamped, unfructant sedge, Gentility's marsh edge, I, on free wing, shall take My swan-course o'er the brake, Leaving the chanson of thy sin to thee Who hast not seen, not touched the ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... Wenus!" says John Swan, and pulls out that fair Amazon, battered almost past recognition, but ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... time the children stood in silence, watching the snow-flakes as they whirled and danced and floated like so many feathers, only to fall and pile up and cover the brown earth and the bare branches as with a lovely mantle of swan's-down. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and singular ornament of nature!" exclaimed the Knight, bowing low before her, as did his Squire; "fairer than the feathers of the graceful swan, and far more beautiful than Aurora's morning countenance, to thee, the fairest of all fair ones, most humbly and only to thy beauty do I here submit my affections. Tell me, therefore, to whom my heart must pay its true devotions, thy birth, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... streets lead out of High Street. To the west, Magpie Lane ends in the river meadows; and to the east, Swan Lane and Oat Street reach the ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... strayed higher and higher on the slopes above the old town. The core lies round a broad street in which the White Horse faces the Swan, and the town hall stands between them, a rather dull little building, in the middle of the road. The town has kept less of the past than Farnham; perhaps it had less to keep; but it has some good red seventeenth-century houses, weather-tiled gables, and tall brick chimneys. Toadflax and arabis climb ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... luncheon to the river and sailed up and down in a small steam-launch named The Swan of Avon. Jean thought privately that the presence of such things as steam-launches were a blot on Shakespeare's river, but the boys were delighted with them, and at once began to plan how one might be got ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Muse, who dost temper the sweet sound of the golden shell of the tortoise, and couldst also give, were it needed, to silent fishes the song of the swan."] ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Like the swan, who sings his one song, when feeling that death is near, Mr. Willson gave his brother co-workers in the Theosophical field all that was best, ripest and most suggestive in his thought in the series of articles the last of which is to come out in ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... the following account of burial among the Klamath and Trinity Indians of the Northwest coast, the information having been originally furnished him by James G. Swan. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... our civil guard at the entrance to a side street which was, we hinted, rather narrow for automobiles, and, not waiting for his grateful adieux, we darted on, asking a bootblack the way to the best hotel. At the "Sign of the Swan" we paused just long enough to give the Gloria water, and to find out that a motor-car had stopped for a few moments about two hours ago. There were ladies inside, but they had not got out. A gentleman, covered with dust, had ordered sherry and biscuits, which he and the chauffeur ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the opportune demise of an unfortunately balanced lady. From her point—or rather her circular area of vision—perhaps my dear Betty was right in declaring me odious. She hated to be reminded of the intolerable goosiness of her swan. She longed for comforting, corroborative evidence of essential swaniness for her own justification. In a word, the poor dear girl was sore all over with mortification, and wherever one touched her, no matter with how gentle ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... impress what we want upon the mind, without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such expedient. Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock: now a peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan; it has a high crest, so has a cockatoo; it has a long tail, so has a bird of Paradise. But the whole spirit and power of peacock is in those eyes of the tail. It is true, the argus pheasant, and one or two more birds, have something like them, but nothing for a moment comparable to them ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... said the poor creature, and bowed down its head to the water, and awaited death. But what did it see in the water? It saw beneath it its own likeness; but no longer that of an awkward grayish bird, ugly and displeasing—it was the figure of a swan. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... "Swan's Journal of a Voyage up the Mediterranean, 1826," gives the following account of Christmas ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... tripe was frying. It is called Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum; but it is an English book. I think I left it in the parlour. It is Mr. Cary's book, and I would not lose it for the world. Pray, if you find it, book it at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton stage immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, Church-street, Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. I am quite anxious about it. If it is lost, I shall never like ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was Harold mightily rejoiced, and he believed it to be truth that great good was in store for him; for he had seen pleasant things in the candle a many nights, and the smoke from his fire blew cheerily and lightly to the westward, and a swan had circled over his house that day week, and in his net each day for twice seven days had he drawn from the sea a fish having one golden eye and one silver eye: which things, as all men know, portend full goodly things, or else they portend nothing at all ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived fly with the filth away; But if the like the snow-white swan desire, The stain upon his silver down will stay. Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day: Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly, But eagles ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to have some young men offer, without any pay, to cut all the timber and do all the work on a building for the council-room for the Mission. The change came sooner under their limited instruction than I had expected, and almost immediately the chief, 'Swan,' offered to cut logs and build a house for a chapel-school at his camp, opposite Fort Randall. The chief, Mad Bull, offered the same for the other end of the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... chain upon the white swan's neck, What were it good for—save to break? And swans who wear and break a chain Swim never side by ...
— All Round the Year • Edith Nesbit
... the general motif is the stealing of the fairy-woman's clothes. The idea is the same as that found in stories where the fisherman steals the sea-woman's skin canoe as a prelude to making her his wife, or the feather cloak of the swan-maiden is seized by the hunter when he finds her asleep, thus placing the supernatural maiden in his power. Among savages it is quite a common and usual circumstance for the spouses not to mention each other's ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... he early resolved to, if at all practicable, substitute the electric light for the ordinary mode of illuminating the workings, and after investigating the various systems, he decided on giving that of Mr. Swan a trial. Accordingly, since April last, Messrs. D. & E. Graham, electrical engineers, Glasgow, have been engaged fitting up the Swan incandescent lamp, with modifications, to adapt it for safe use in the mine, and on Tuesday the inauguration of the new light took place in presence ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... to the store," he said and Denver followed in a daze. She was not like any woman he had ever dreamed of, nor was she the woman he had thought. In the night, when she was singing, she had seemed slender and ethereal with her swan's neck and piled up hair; but now she was different, a glorious human animal, strong and supple yet with the lines of a girl. And her eyes were still the eyes of a child, big and round and ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... in London with extraordinary success." This was, of course, our old friend "Boots at the Swan," which Frank Robson, later, made his own. As Boz had nothing to do with it, there could be no objection. Barnaby Rudge, however, was the piece of resistance. On another occasion, January, 1840, came Mr. J. Russell, with his vocal entertainment, "Russell's Recollections" ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... from London to Edinborough, or any place on that road, let them repair to Mr. John Baillie's, at the Coach and Horses, at the head of Cannongate, Edinborough, every other Saturday; or to the Black Swan, in Holborn, every other Monday; at both of which places they may be received in a stage coach, which performs the whole journey in thirteen days, without any stoppage (if God permit), having eighty able horses to perform ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lips were glowing as if the fire of her excitement were fanned by every breath; her eyes, half hidden by the veiling lids, seemed to throw a light out beneath them and down her cheek. She wore a mantle of swan's down closely wrapped round her, for she had complained ceaselessly of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... distant ridge of earth interesting to the eyes by the azure tint it imparts." ... Part of the echo may be "the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by the wood nymph." It is darker, the poet's flute is heard out over the pond and Walden hears the swan song of that "Day" and faintly echoes... Is it a transcendental tune of Concord? 'Tis an evening when the "whole body is one sense," ... and before ending his day he looks out over the clear, crystalline ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... the great creepers have burst into blossom and are stretching long shoots over the brown stone and the iron balconies. There is a smell of violets and flowers in the warm air, and down on the little pond the swan- shaped boats are paddling about with their cargoes of merry children and calico nursery-maids, while the Irish boys look on from the banks and throw pebbles when the policemen are not looking, wishing they had the spare coin necessary to embark for a ten minutes' voyage ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... church was somewhat poorly attended on this fine autumn evening, when the hunter's moon hung like a big golden shield above the river, glorifying the dipping willows, the narrow eyots, haunts of swan and cygnet, and the distant woodlands of Surrey. It was a night which tempted the free to wander in the cool shadowy river-side paths, rather than to worship in the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... himself to the processional pageantry of bas-relief. Yet, were this comparison to be instituted, we could hardly refrain from carrying it much further. Each great master of the Renaissance had his own relation to classical mythology. The mystic sympathies of "Leda and the Swan," as imaged severally by Lionardo and Michael Angelo; Correggio's romantic handling of the myths of "Danae" and "Io;" Titian's and Tintoretto's rival pictures of "Bacchus and Ariadne;" Raphael's "Galatea;" Pollajuolo's "Hercules;" the "Europa" of Veronese; ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... constant travel and traffic: the country towns and inns swarmed with life and gaiety. The ponderous waggon, with its bells and plodding team; the light post-coach that achieved the journey from the "White Hart," Salisbury, to the "Swan with Two Necks," London, in two days; the strings of pack-horses that had not yet left the road; my lord's gilt post-chaise and six, with the outriders galloping on ahead; the country squire's great coach ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... it is certain, that we cannot will to think of a new train of ideas, without previously thinking of the first link of it; as I cannot will to think of a black swan, without previously thinking of a black swan. But if I now think of a tail, I can voluntarily recollect all animals, which have tails; my will is so far free, that I can pursue the ideas linked to this idea of tail, as far as my ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... who know the treasure which they own, stood Harold's two standards of the fighting-man and the dragon of Wessex. And here, close by (for here, for many a century, stood the high altar of Battle Abbey, where monks sang masses for Harold's soul), upon this very spot the Swan-neck found her hero-lover's corpse. "Ah," says many an Englishman—and who will blame him for it—"how grand to have died beneath that standard on that day!" Yes, and how right. And yet how right, likewise, that ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... a Goose and a Swan, the one for his table, the other because she was reputed a good singer. One night when the Cook went to kill the Goose he got hold of the Swan instead. Thereupon the Swan, to induce him to spare her life, began to sing; but she saved him nothing but the trouble of killing ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... lose sight of the variety of concrete boys and girls in his abstract reasonings, necessary as these are. We are apt to forget that what is sauce for the goose may not be sauce for the gander, and still more perhaps that what is sauce for the swan may not be sauce for either of these humbler but deserving fowl. But it is certain that in discussing education we ought constantly to envisage the actual individuals to be educated. Otherwise our "average pupil ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... a miracle was no more than the same beautifully simple process which Nature enacts every day, when she changes an awkward and dirt-colored cygnet into a glorious swan or a leggily gawky colt into a superb Derby-winner. But Bruce's metamorphosis seemed none the less wonderful in the eyes of the two people who had ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... all is said and done, shall we answer the question as to which is the better lot: heavenly love, soaring on white swan's wings far above all that is common dust, as Ann was wont to sing of it, or earthly joys, bold and free, which we can know only with both feet on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to him as if his unholy foot was not worthy to tread this ground, nor to approach the bed which, with its white curtains, seemed to wave before his dazzled eyes like a white swan. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... "Or a swan among a flock of geese," laughed Mildred Roper. "You've all grown really quite silly over Monica. I admire her very much myself, but I don't go and kiss her jacket when it's hanging in the vestibule, or beg her old torn ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... He did not steal, but emulate; And he would like to them appear, Their garb, but not their cloaths did wear. He not from Rome alone but Greece, Like Johnson, brought the golden fleece. And a stiff gale, (as Flaccus sings) The Theban swan extends his wings, When thro' th' aethereal clouds he flies, To the same pitch our swan doth rise: Old Pindar's flights by him new-reach'd, When on that gale, his wings ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... we are indebted to an unpublished "Memoir of Alfred Kelley," by the late Judge Gustavus Swan, of Columbus. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... these times flights of birds were constantly approaching, and they could always rely upon coming home laden after an hour's shooting. Upon the present occasion, however, they did not do badly, but returned with a swan, three geese, and twelve ducks, just in time to find ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... "Of course, we needn't," he said. "If you don't want him, he can go to 'The Swan.' He is in the surgery at the present moment. I must go back and see ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and Faith and Una from a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester John and the Wandering Jew, divining rods and tailed men, of Schamir, the worm that split rocks and opened the way to golden treasure, of Fortunate Isles and swan-maidens. It was a great shock to Walter to learn that William Tell and Gelert were myths also; and the story of Bishop Hatto was to keep him awake all that night; but best of all he loved the stories of the Pied ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Burton played like that before, for as the music swelled and pealed through the place, his heart was singing its swan song. In a moment of manhood beyond his moral stature he had drawn back arms that were hungry for her—and he now knew, too late, that there was no one else who counted. But the organ was not so repressive, and as she listened she knew that the tragedy was not hers alone. While his fingers ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... weary, Not long was I there, Not more than nine nights; But the howl of the wolf Methought sounded ill To the song of the swan-bird." ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, occupied by the Prince's Servants; and the Fortune, in Golden Lane, and the Red Bull in St. John Street, Clerkenwell—establishments for the lower class, "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people." Earlier Elizabethan theatres, the Swan, the Rose, and the Hope, seem to have closed their career some time in the reign of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... with a pale of red velvet, and beneath it a red rose, was provided at Edward's own charge. This suit of armour was, until a few years back, preserved in the Round Tower, where the royal prisoner was confined. Edward's device was a white swan, gorged, or, with the "daring and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... stumbled through my story; told him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been honoured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... band of resolute men under the magnificent leadership of Cortez is always rightly ranked among the most romantic and daring exploits in history. With this as the groundwork of his story Mr. Henty has interwoven the adventures of an English youth, Roger Hawkshaw, the sole survivor of the good ship Swan, which had sailed from a Devon port to challenge the mercantile supremacy of the Spaniards in the New World. He is beset by many perils among the natives, but is saved by his own judgment and strength, and by the devotion of an Aztec princess. At last by a ruse he obtains the protection ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Dick, and then he shut off the engine, and silently and with the grace of a big, white swan, the ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... Grece, whan Poetrie was euen at the hiest pitch of per- fitnes, one Simmias Rhodius of a certaine singularitie wrote a booke in ryming Greke verses, naming it oon, conteyning the fable, how Iupiter in likenes of a swan, gat that egge vpon Leda, whereof came Castor, Pollux and faire Elena. This booke was so liked, that it had few to read it, but none to folow it: But was presentlie contemned: and sone after, both Author and booke, so forgotten by men, and consumed by tyme, ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... of a swan appeared, Upward he turned us who thus spake to us, Between the two walls of ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... "More swan as you count in twent' t'ous'nd year!" affirmed Mukoki. After a few moments he added, "Them ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... beneath the shade of an arbutus, watching her closely, and indeed, if the study of a perfect English lady of the noblest sort has any charms, he was not without his reward. There are some women—most of us know one or two— who are born to hold a great position and to sail across the world like a swan through meaner fowl. It would be very hard to say to what their peculiar charm and dignity is owing. It is not to beauty only, for though they have presence, many of these women are not beautiful, while some are even plain. Nor does ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... look upon the cow, ox, elephant, ape, eagle, swan, peacock, and serpent, as sacred; among plants, the lotus, the banana, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to church, but to Bloomsbury. Entering the portals of the Museum, she swam to the portico, full of her cares. But smoothly, swiftly, she went, with that even, gliding gait peculiar to her kind, which has precisely the effect of a swan breasting the stream. Past the door, she turned to the left, not glancing at the aligned Caesars, scarcely bowing to Demeter of the remote gaze. In that long gallery, where the Caryatid thrusts her bosom that her neck may be the prouder to the weight, she saw the objects ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... on such a hot day too! You'll be so tired." Was this satire? Pert little thing! Lawrence was faintly amused—not irritated, because she was certainly very pretty: what a swan's throat she had under her holland blouse, and what a smooth slope of neck! But for all that she ought ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... browsing off the Arctic moss that clung to the rocks in myriads of places, and contained the nourishment required. Birds were scarce, though in some places they had come upon countless numbers of ducks, geese and swan that seek these distant regions in ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... our company was thus dissolved the mayor was knocked down at the foot of Swan Hill by the Town Wall, gagged and trussed, and laid upon his own doorstep, where he was found by the maidservant in the morning, having wrought himself to the verge of apoplexy by his struggles to rid himself of his bonds. He ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... Attunes the soul to tender sadness; We love—but joy not in the ray— It is not summer's fervid gladness, But a melancholy glory, Hovering softly round decay, Like swan that sings her own sad story, Ere she floats in death away. The day declines; what splendid dyes, In fleckered waves of crimson driven, Float o'er the saffron sea that lies Glowing within the western heaven! Oh, it ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... note of the swan singing its own funeral hymn!' said the patrician Placidus, looking in maudlin pity from the corpse of the boy to the face of Vetranio, which presented for the moment an involuntary expression ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... drip the dewy juice of wine, drip, let the feast to which all bring their share be wetted as with dew; be silenced the swan, sage Zeno, and the Muse of Cleanthes, and let ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... flowers, she becomes the goddess of night and sleep and death, confuseable with Hecate, the goddess of midnight [110] terrors—Kor arrtos, the mother of the Erinnyes, who appeared to Pindar, to warn him of his approaching death, upbraiding him because he had made no hymn in her praise, which swan's song he thereupon began, but finished with her. She is a twofold goddess, therefore, according as one or the other of these two contrasted aspects of her nature is seized, respectively. A duality, an inherent opposition in the very conception of Persephone, runs all through ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... gits the fever an' gits deliriums, I want to be round, handy like. I'll swan there'll be more interestin' things told than we've heerd in our born days—that woman ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... me go Where none of mortal creatures but the swan Dabbles, and there 'you would pluck the harp, when the trees Had made a heavy shadow about our door, And talk among the rustling of the reeds, When night hunted the foolish sun away With stillness and pale tapers. No-no-no! I cannot. ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... The moon shone dimly, shrouded in mist, and over the earth there was, as it were spread out, a delicate smoke. The eye could not decide what it was, whether moonlight or fog. On one of the lakes a swan was asleep; its long back was white as the snow of the frost-bound steppes, while glow-worms gleamed like diamonds in the bluish shadow at the base ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... from the Royal Geographical Society of London, and another from that of Paris, have further rewarded Dr Leichhardt's meritorious labours. Unflinching in pursuit of science, he again set forth, in December 1845, on an overland journey to Swan River, expected to occupy two years and a half. This time he is better provided. His party consists of only eight persons, but he has mules for the stores, fourteen horses, forty oxen, and two hundred and seventy goats. And he further takes with him—light but pleasant baggage—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... resume, The long-time loosen'd reins grasp thou; be ruler here, And in possession take the treasures, us with them! Me before all protect, who am the elder-born, From this young brood, who seem, thy swan-like beauty near, But as a basely winged flock of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... whom he had summoned in the morning by a mounted messenger; and about half-past seven the Empress reappeared, dressed in perfect taste. In spite of the cold, she had had her hair dressed with silver wheat and blue flowers, and wore a white satin polonaise, edged with swan's down, which costume was exceedingly becoming. The Emperor interrupted his work to regard her: "I did not take long at my toilet, did I?" said she, smiling; whereupon his Majesty, without replying, showed her the clock, then rose, gave her his hand, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... and gold, The unbridged river runs all green With queenly swan-clouds floating bold Down to the mill's swift guillotine. Beyond the mill each murdered queen Floats ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... suffered no over-painting. The work has been mounted on a solid back, the greatest fissures and the holes filled up to match their surroundings, the stains and defacements of neglect cleared away, and the triumph is complete. It might well be the "swan song" of a veteran artist at such work. Whatever the mistakes of Eigener's career, the restoration of the Solothurn Madonna was a flawless achievement for himself ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... excellent swimmer, to jump over, dive under the drift, and catch him, knowing that as there were no crocodiles in this lake he could come to no harm. Entering into the fun of the thing, the man obeyed, and soon was dodging about after the winged swan in fine style, getting gradually nearer to the rock wall, against which the water ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard |
