Greek Fleet

Famous quotes containing the words greek and/or fleet:

    I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    On the middle of that quiet floor
    sits a fleet of small black ships,
    square-rigged, sails furled, motionless,
    their spars like burned matchsticks.
    Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)