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All our geese are swans.
Author: Robert Burton
Source: Anatomy of Melancholy (pt. I, sec. II, memb. 3, subsect. 14)
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Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Don Juan (canto III, st. 86, 16)
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The jelous swan, agens hire deth that syngith.
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Source: The Parlement of Fowles (l. 342)
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The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo, because
foreseeing his happiness in death, he dies with singing and
pleasure.
[Lat., Cignoni non sine causa Apoloni dicata sint, quod ab eo
divinationem habere videantur, qua providentes quid in morte boni
sit, cum cantu et voluptate moriantur.]
Author: Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Source: Tusculanarum Disputationum (I, 30)
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Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings,
Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings:
Live so, my Love, that when death shall come,
Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home.
Author: Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Source: Tusculanarum Disputationum (I, 30)
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The immortal swan that did her life deplore.
Author: Giles Fletcher ("The Younger")
Source: Temptation and Victory of Christ
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The dying swan, when years her temples pierce,
In music-strains breathes out her life and verse,
And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her wat'ry hearse.
Author: Phineas Fletcher
Source: Purple Island (canto I)
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The swan in the pool is singing,
And up and down doth he steer,
And, singing gently ever,
Dips under the water clear.
Author: Heinrich Heine
Source: Book of Songs--Lyrical Interlude (no. 64)
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And over the pond are sailing
Two swans all white as snow;
Sweet voices mysteriously wailing
Pierce through me as onward they go.
They sail along, and a ringing
Sweet melody rises on high;
And when the swans begin singing,
They presently must die.
Author: Heinrich Heine
Source: Early Poems--Evening Songs (no. 2)
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The swan, like the soul of the poet,
By the dull world is ill understood.
Author: Heinrich Heine
Source: Early Poems--Evening Songs (no. 2)
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There's a double beauty whenever a swan
Swims on a lake with her double thereon.
Author: Thomas Hood
Source: Her Honeymoon
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The swan murmurs sweet strains with a flattering tongue, itself
the singer of its own dirge.
Author: Marcus Valerius Martial
Source: Epigrams (bk. XIII, ep. LXXVII)
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The swan, with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet.
Author: John Milton
Source: Paradise Lost (bk. VI, l. 438)
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Thus does the white swan, as he lies on the wet grass, when the
Fates summon him, sing at the fords of Maeander.
Author: John Milton
Source: Paradise Lost (bk. VI, l. 438)
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Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Antony at III, ii)
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We bodged again, as I have been a swan
With bootless labor swim against the tide
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Plantagenet, Duke of York at I, iv)
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I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of fraity sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Life and Death of King John (Prince Henry at V, vii)
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Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then if he lose he makes a swanlike end,
Fading in music.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Merchant of Venice (Portia at III, ii)
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I will play the swan,
And die in music.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Othello the Moor of Venice (Emilia at V, ii)
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Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Titus Andronicus (Aaron at IV, ii)
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You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am
infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching
death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they
have in going to the God they serve.
Author: Socrates
Source: see Plato's "Phaedo", 77
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The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear.
Author: Lord Alfred Tennyson
Source: The Dying Swan
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Some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs.
Author: Lord Alfred Tennyson
Source: Passing of Arthur
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The stately-sailing swan
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;
And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet
Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle,
Protective of his young.
Author: James Thomson (1)
Source: Seasons--Spring (l. 775)
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The swan on still St. Mary's lake
Float double, swan and shadow!
Author: William Wordsworth
Source: Yarrow Unvisited
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