Note 1. I will play the swan and die in music.Othello, act v. sc. 2. I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death. King John, act v. sc. 7.
There, swan-like, let me sing and die.Lord Byron: Don Juan, canto iii. st. 86.
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.Socrates: In Phaedo, 77. [back]