Well sung a shepherd, that now sleeps in skies,[100] "Dumb swans do love, and not vain chattering pies.

A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po, A shriller nightingale than ever bless'd The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.

A dozen secretaries labored in the next room, but the door between was closed; the only witnesses were leisurely, majestic swans, seen down a vista of well pruned shrubbery that flanked the narrow lawn.

Over above the top of those walls was to be seen a great many tall towerssome built of stone and some of brickthat rose high up into the clear, shining sky all full of slow-drifting clouds, that floated, as it were, like full-breasted swans in a sea of blue.

Generally each valley is watered by a silvery stream, tumbling here and there over rocks and natural dams, ministering in a continuous rain to the strange- looking river-canes, dumb-canes, and balisiers that voluptuously bend their heads to the drizzly shower which plays incessantly on their glistening leaves, off which the globules roll in a thousand pearls, as from the glossy plumage of a stately swan.

The golden swan murder (The usual three) By Dorothy Cameron Disney.

It matters little whether the poet draws his images directly from present experience, or indirectly from memorywhether the sight of the slow-sailing swan, that "floats double swan and shadow" be at once transferred to the scene of the poem he is writing, or come back upon him in after years to complete some picture in his mind; enough that the image be suggested, and not sought.

The silver swan.

A monk, of course, in the fourteenth century was everywhere to be seen; and a monk we have among the pilgrims, riding a "dainty" horse, accompanied with greyhounds, loving fur trimmings on his Benedictine habit and a fat swan to roast.

He had a favourite swan, long accustomed to feed out of his hand.

To see him think her demoralized by mistrust of the sincerity of the service to be meddlesomely rendered her by his future wifeshe would have hurled herself publicly into the lake there at their side, would have splashed, in her beautiful clothes, among the frightened swans, rather than invite him to that ineptitude.

Montesma came to her every now and then to explain what was being done; and by-and-by, when the canvas was all up, and the yacht was skimming over the water, like a giant swan borne by the current of some vast strong river, he came and stayed by her side, and they two sat making little baby sentences in Spanish, he as teacher and she as pupil, with no one near them but the sailors.

I made the circuit of the basin, graciously accompanied by a snow-white swan, handsome enough to make one think it might be Jupiter in disguise, seeking some Hamburg Leda, and, the better to carry out the deception, snapping at the bread-crumbs offered him by the traveler.

Honnell can't draw, but hates his inseparable Swan to tell him so.

A dozen secretaries labored in the next room, but the door between was closed; the only witnesses were leisurely, majestic swans, seen down a vista of well pruned shrubbery that flanked the narrow lawn.

Prepare syrup to fill the hollow of the lake, to represent the water; having previously modelled in gum paste little swans, place them in various parts of the syrup; put it into the stove for three hours, then make a small hole through the paste, under your lake, to drain off the syrup; a crust will remain with the swans fixed in it, representing the water.

But after a time the male swan got tired of the game; his patience was exhausted.

Within my nets I have snared the most marvellous swan in the world.

a mighty swan, With radiant plumage undented, And folded airy van, With serpent neck all proudly bent, And stroke of swarthy oar, Dreams on to me, by sea-maids sent Over the billows hoar.

Nor is any thing more elegant than the representation of the graceful tranquillity occasionally put on by one of the author's favourites; who, though gay and airy, in general Was graceful, when it pleased him, smooth and still As the mute Swan that floats adown the stream, Or on the waters of th' unruffled lake Anchored her placid beauty.

Sometimes, too, a moorhen will join the party; whilst two little wild ducks, the sole survivors of a brood of sixteen, which were attacked and killed by a stoat, will take food right out of the mouths of the good-natured old swans.

"' Well and nobly said, thou rare black swan!

The bird of Paradise, song's sacred swan!

That is the swaying noise of the great jet that rises from marble shells and falls into a wide basin, where silvery swans swim round and round in enchanted circles; and the other slenderer sound is the smaller jet that rains down its spray into the violet-borders deep in the shrubbery; and that other, the shallow babble of the waters that go down the marble steps to the lake.

Parzival, his father, accompanied him to the foot of the mountain, where, swimming gracefully over the smooth waters of the lake, they saw a snowy swan drawing a little boat after her.