Neptune Quotes
A grand old Neptune in the prow,
Gray-hair'd, and white with touch of time,
Yet strong as in his middle prime;
A grizzled king, I see him now,
With beard as blown by wind of seas,
And wild and white as white sea-storm,
Stand up, turn suddenly, look back
Along the low boat's wrinkled track,
Then fold his mantle round a form
Broad-built as any Hercules,
And so sit silently.
Joaquin Miller
Oh, give me again the rover's life - the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.
Herman Melville
When Hannibal's eyes were sated with the picture of all that valour, he saw next a marvellous sight-the sea suddenly flung upon the land with the mass of the rising deep, and no encircling shores, and the fields inundated by the invading waters. For, where Nereus rolls forth from his blue caverns and churns up the waters of Neptune from the bottom, the sea rushes forward in flood, and Ocean, opening his hidden springs, rushes on with furious waves. Then the water, as if stirred to the depths by the fierce trident, strives to cover the land with the swollen sea. But soon the water turns and glides back with ebbing tide; and then the ships, robbed of the sea, are stranded, and the sailors, lying on their benches, await the waters' return. It is the Moon that stirs this realm of wandering Cymothoe and troubles the deep; the Moon, driving her chariot through the sky, draws the sea this way and that, and Tethys follows with ebb and flow.
Silius Italicus
The Illustrated Review... to which we are indebted for the preceding statements, remarks that, since the death of Sir John Herschel... Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, is the admitted master of the sublime science. There are other eminent English astronomers-as John Hinde, the discoverer of many asteroids, and John Adams, also a Cambridge Senior Wrangler and the rival of Urban Leverrier, who groped his way by mathematical calculation to the discovery of the hitherto unknown planet Neptune. If incidents as brilliant and remarkable as these are wanting in the history of Sir George Airy, his claims to respect are equally valuable, solid, and enduring.
George Biddell Airy