Septentrion

The OED

Quotations and Authors:

Yet he, as telleth us Swetonius, 3655
This wyde world hadde in subieccioun,
Both Est and West, South and Septemtrioun;

Of rubies, saphires, and of perles whyte
Were alle his clothes brouded up and doun;
For he in gemmes greetly gan delyte.

The Canterbury Tales (Middle English) Chaucer, Geoffrey 1400

Thou art as opposite to every good
As the Antipodes are unto us,
Or as the south to the septentrion.

O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!

Henry the Sixth, Part 3 Shakespeare, William 1591

Explore the Quotation in the context of the full text.

And, fearing least the God should so obtaine her grace,
From the Septentrion cold, in the breem freezing ayre,
VVhere the bleake North-wind keeps, still dominering there,
From Shetland stradling wide, his foote on Thuly sets:

Poly-Olbion Drayton, Michael 1612

As Irthing comming in from her most plenteous source,
Through many a cruell Crag, though she be forc’d to crawle,
Yet working forth her way to grace her selfe with all,
First Pultrosse is her Page, then Gelt shee gets her guide,
Which springeth on her South, on her Septentrion side,

Shee crooked Cambeck calls, to wait on her along,
And Eden ouertakes amongst the watry throng.

The Second Part, or a Continuance of Poly-Olbion Drayton, Michael 1622

Wash’d by the Southern Sea, and on the North
To equal length back’d with a ridge of hills
That screen’d the fruits of the earth and seats of men 30
From cold Septentrion blasts
, thence in the midst
Divided by a river, of whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With Towers and Temples proudly elevate
On seven small Hills, with Palaces adorn’d,
Porches and Theatres, Baths, Aqueducts,
Statues and Trophees, and Triumphal Arcs,
Gardens and Groves presented to his eyes,
Above the highth of Mountains interpos’d.

Paradise Regained Milton, John 1671

At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Maior produced and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the line alpha delta of Ursa Maior. On land, meridional, a bispherical moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day.

Ulysses Joyce, James 1920

the monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about the period of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of the birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the…

Ulysses Joyce, James 1920