Famous quotes containing the words swan song, chatterton, swan and/or song:
“The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Liste! now the thunder’s rattling clymmynge sound
Cheves slowlie on, and then embollen clangs,
Shakes the hie spyre, and losst, dispended, drown’d,
Still on the gallard eare of terroure hanges;
The windes are up; the lofty elmen swanges;
Again the levynne and the thunder poures,
And the full cloudes are braste attenes in stonen showers.”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Do you hear the wind? It’s not dying,
It’s singing, weaving a song about the president saluting the trust,
The past in each of us....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)