United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For now, as if all the Muses were got with child, to bring forth bastard poets, without any commission, they do post over the banks of Helicon, till they make the readers more weary than post-horses: while in the mean time, they Queis meliore luto finxit procordia Titan, are better content, to suppress the outflowing of their wit, than by publishing them to be accounted knights of the same order.
It literally is not possible that any fruitful power of the Muses should be put forth upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less is it possible that any Christian nation should grow up "tanquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum," which cannot recognise the lesson meant in their being told of the places where Rebekah was met; where Rachel, where Zipporah, and she who was asked for water under Mount Grerizim by a Stranger, weary, who had nothing to draw with.
As to that, I doubt whether you have so much as heard of Helicon, the reputed haunt of those Goddesses; your youthful pursuits were not those of a Hesiod; take not the Muses' names in vain.
May I presume to ask the manner how? Kep. By Cloud, Sir, through the Regions of the Air, down to the fam'd Parnassus; thence by Water, along the River Helicon, the rest by Post upon two wing'd Eagles. Doct. Sir, are there store of our World inhabiting the Moon? Kep. Oh, of all Nations, Sir, that lie beneath it in the Emperor's Train!
Something of the jollity and merriment of old Elisabethan days seemed to be in the air. But with a vast difference. Instead of "dallying with the innocence of love," as in England's Helicon , or The Passionate Pilgrim, the sentiment, crushed and maimed by unwise repression, found a less honest and less refined expression.
O, do you know this horse was white, with silvery wings, wild as a hawk; and, once in a while, he would fold up his wings, and trot round on the mountain!" Florence yawned, and waxed her thread. "O, it was a splendid bridle, this man had, made of gold; and I forgot the mountain the horse trotted round on was called Helicon.
When Perseus cut off Medusa's head, the blood sinking into the earth produced the winged horse Pegasus. Minerva caught and tamed him, and presented him to the Muses. The fountain Hippocrene, on the Muses' mountain Helicon, was opened by a kick from his hoof. The Chimaera was a fearful monster, breathing fire.
At this point rose under their feet the Helicon, 505 metres high, and on the left were the mediocre heights, which inclose a small portion of the Sea of Rains under the name of the Gulf of Iris. The terrestrial atmosphere ought to be 170 times more transparent than it is in order to allow astronomers to make complete observations on the surface of the moon.
At five o'clock the Helicon was sent in to say that white flags would not be noticed, unless hoisted by authority; and if they were again shown, the British admiral would consider them the signs of a general surrender.
His debt consists in translations of two songs from Montemayor's romance, printed among his miscellaneous poems . About a dozen translations from the same source appeared in England's Helicon, the work of Bartholomew Yong. They are for the most part very inferior to the general average of the collection, but the opening of one at least is worth quoting:
Word Of The Day