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It is as hard for human weakness to struggle against talent as to look at the sun without winking, or to stop the wind. One simple mortal by the power of the word turns thousands of convinced savages to Christianity; Odysseus was a man of the firmest convictions, but he succumbed to the Syrens, and so on.
"It is reported," replied Socrates, "that there are some words so powerful that they who know them make themselves loved by pronouncing them, and that there are likewise other charms for the same purpose." "And where can one learn these words?" added Critobulus. "Have you not read in Homer," answered Socrates, "what the Syrens said to enchant Ulysses? The beginning of it is thus
And then at last the clock in the middle of the balcony gave forth the single stroke to which it was limited; the ministers rose, and the congregation after them; and everybody smiled as though it was the millennium, and not simply the new year, that had set in. Then, faintly, through walls and shut windows, came the sound of bells and of steam syrens and whistles.
"'But now, what ho for a merry round of pleasure, says I. 'Here's one of Hall Caine's shows, and a stock-yard company in "Hamlet," and skating at the Hollowhorn Rink, and Sarah Bernhardt, and the Shapely Syrens Burlesque Company. I should think, now, that the Shapely "But what does this healthy, wealthy, and wise man do but reach his arms up to the second-story windows and gape noisily.
His subtlety led him to "pose his apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity with incarnation and resurrection;" and to start odd inquiries: "what song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women;" or whether, after Lazarus was raised from the dead, "his heir might lawfully detain his inheritance."
There are, however, many pastors who faithfully warn their flocks of the dangers of the world, and who strenuously advise their hearers to take warning lest they be over-captivated with the "Song of the Syrens." In my intercourse with serious individuals with whom I came in contact during my stay on the continent of America, the doctrines of Dr.
I escaped from these syrens without being bound to the mast, like Ulysses; but, like him, I had nearly fallen a victim to a modern Polyphemus; for though he had not one eye in the middle of his forehead, after the manner of his prototype, yet the rays from both his eyes meeting together at the tip of his long nose, gave him very much that appearance.
And put the case, that in the literal sense you meet with purposes merry and solacious enough, and consequently very correspondent to their inscriptions, yet must not you stop there as at the melody of the charming syrens, but endeavour to interpret that in a sublimer sense which possibly you intended to have spoken in the jollity of your heart.
"Ay, like the voices of syrens," said Murgatroyd, speaking for the first time since the Astronef had landed; for this big, grizzled, taciturn Yorkshireman, who looked upon the whole cruise through Space as a mad and almost impious adventure, which nothing but his hereditary loyalty to his master's name and family could have persuaded him to share in, had grown more and more silent as the millions of miles between the Astronef and his native Yorkshire village had multiplied day by day.
The peasants pretend that the river near the rock cannot be fathomed, and that this particular spot is inhabited by fairies, nymphs, syrens, and other amiable ladies of this description, who have superb voices, and sing from the interior of their grottos delicious melodies of the other world, with the charitable intention of attracting the passing traveller or fisherman, and drowning him in the whirlpool beneath a fate that would certainly be inevitable, if the attraction in question could bring them within its vortex, for certain it is that neither sheep-dogs or cattle which have fallen in, or been drawn within reach of its power, have ever been seen again.
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