"Acheron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whole domain, While he embodied breathed etherial air! Though panting in the play-hour of my youth I drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught, That roused within the feverish thirst of song, Yet never may I trespass o'er the stream Of jealous Acheron, nor alive descend The silent and unsearchable abodes Of Erebus and Night, nor unchastised Lead up long-absent heroes into day. When on the pausing theatre of earth Eve's shadowy curtain falls, can any man Bring back the far-off ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... near the dwelling of Acheron, and without paying any attention to the bellowing of the three heads, which was like the echo of fearful resounding thunder, he seized the dog by the legs, put his arms around his neck, and would not ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... nymph in terra-cotta, from whose urn dripped, day and night, a thin rill of water into a small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows threw upon its surface, even at mid-day, the blackness of Acheron. ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... it singing on? Since long ago grace-giving Phoebus died, And all the train that loved the stream-bright side Of the poetic mount with him are gone Beyond the shores of Styx and Acheron, In unexplored realms of night to hide. The clouds that strew their shadows far and wide Are all of Heaven that visits Helicon. Yet here, where never muse or god did haunt, Still may some nameless power of Nature stray, Pleased with the reedy stream's continual chant And purple ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... day like this Waits, as is seemly, and shall run By the white waves of Acheron To fold him in ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... alone the actual dangers thus described, but stood continually alert for unknown perils, which any bend in the swift, snake-like river might disclose, and which would make the gloomy groove through which they slipped a black-walled oubliette, or gate to Acheron. ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... of Acheron, and found Charon scooping his wherry, who seeing me approach him, bid me sit down a little, for he had been hard worked lately, and could not go with a single passenger: I was willing enough to embrace the proposal, being much fatigued ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... before me as strange and unlooked for: All things have I foreknown, and in soul have already endured them. One special thing I crave, since here, it is said, that the gateway Stands of the monarch infernal, and refluent Acheron's dark pool: Let it be mine to go down to the sight and face of my cherished Father, and teach me the way, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... [360]Moeris; where only the kings of Egypt had a right of sepulture. The region of the catacombs was called the Acheronian and [361]Acherusian plain, and likewise the Elysian: and the stream, which ran by it, had the name of Acheron. They are often alluded to by Homer, and other Poets, when they treat of the region of departed souls. The Amonians conferred these names upon other places, where they settled, in different parts of the world. They are therefore to be met with in [362]Phrygia, [363]Epirus, [364]Hellas, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... of the lost, that dwell Where the black stream of sullen Acheron flows, Rest on that holy night when Christ arose, And for a ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... foretold. These circumstances, added to the preceding, and still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a civil use, and thence ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... to the gloomiest shades of Acheron when a strong hand entered the carriage-door, helped me handsomely down the steps, and then began warmly to shake my own. Fortnoye!—Fortnoye in flesh and blood was before me. While my mouth was yet filled with maledictions he began ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the plain, that parted souls Had breathed a life into the guilty soil, That earthly darkness teemed with gibbering ghosts And Stygian terrors. Victory foully won Thus claimed its punishment. The slumbering sense Already heard the hiss of vengeful flames As from the depths of Acheron. One saw Deep in the trances of the night his sire And one his brother slain. But all the dead In long array were visioned to the eyes Of Caesar dreaming. Not in other guise Orestes saw the Furies ere he fled To purge his sin within the Scythian bounds; Nor in more fierce convulsions ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... had not feared to declare that she had done so in their family conversations. Together they had fished in turbid waters for marital nibbles and had told mutual falsehoods to unbelieving tradesmen. And yet the younger woman, when tempted with a bribe worth lies and tricks as deep and as black as Acheron, now stood on her dignity and her purity and stamped ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... base built on stubble. But corn let's on. Against th' opposing will and arm of Heav'n 600 May never this just sword be lifted up, But for that damn'd magician, let him be girt With all the greisly legions that troop Under the sooty flag of Acheron, Harpyies and Hydra's, or all the monstrous forms 'Twixt Africa and Inde, Ile find him out, And force him to restore his purchase back, Or drag him by the curls, to a foul death, Curs'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... On the west of Epirus is the island of Corcyra (Corfu), famous for the shipwreck of Ulysses, and for the gardens of Aleinous, and for having given rise to the Peloponnesian war. Epirus is also distinguished as the country over which Pyrrhus ruled. The Acheron, supposed to communicate with the infernal regions, was one of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of their villainies. "But, soft," as they say in the play, "where am I?" I thought I was a virtuous miner again. Here we are at this devil-discovered, demon-haunted old Hollow again—first cousin to the pit of Acheron. There's no help for it, Dick. We must play our parts gallantly, as demons of this lower world, or get ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... to alter the visible form of things, as with the child's hero, when he found the footprint on the sand of his peaceful, dreamy island. His elaborate philosophy had not put beneath his feet the terror of mere bodily evil; much less of "inexorable fate, and the noise of greedy Acheron." ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... a sense of coolness. Deep down, entombed amid smiling green hills and frowning forest peaks, lies the pearl of Gerardmer, its sweet lake, a sheet of turquoise in early morn, silvery bright when the noon-day sun flashes upon it, and on grey, sunless days gloomy as Acheron itself. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... scanty leisure of the illustrious warrior was employed in producing odes and epistles, a little better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the Plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to mediocrity. We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Stygian waves. Sometimes it is level, and is white with resounding foam. The Trachinian ship too, is influenced by these vicissitudes; and now aloft, as though from the summit of a mountain, it seems to look down upon the vallies and the depths of Acheron; at another moment, when the engulphing sea has surrounded it, sunk below, it seems to be looking at heaven above from the infernal waters. Struck on its side by the waves, it often sends forth a low crashing sound, and beaten against, it sounds with no less noise, than on an ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... land of performance; a land which may be bounded by the aurora borealis, but which has also undeniable acquaintance with the flames of the bottomless pit; a land which is laved at once by the rivers of Paradise and the leaden waters of Acheron. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Acheron, the dreadful Acheron, is not far from Avernus and is likewise a lake, tho' call'd a river in the mythology. It is also sulfuric and the ground about it is woody, low, marshy and ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the uncouth demons and monsters of the rocks awoke, glaring and blinking, to menace the voyagers in the depths below. The contrast between this supereminent brilliancy and the sullen obscurity of the subterranean river made the latter seem more than ever like Styx or Acheron. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... unworthy, and as groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of its muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse thick sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the river, which under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as Acheron. They reached the bottom of the huge block of buildings which they had seen from across the river, and began in silence to mount the naked and numberless stone steps, only pausing now and then to make short remarks on the rail ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... assigned by the poets to the lower world, and over which the souls of the dead were said to be first conveyed, before they were borne the Le'the, or "stream of oblivion," beyond. The true Acheron of Epirus has been ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... do not grudge you your share of the carrion. Perhaps such honours will not prejudice you in a certain house on the Palatine," he added, slyly. "But come! you and I shall join our forces and raid together. We have sent two hundred to Acheron since we left the camp, and birds have been singing on our ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... buried, the papers said that the mourning-coaches contained everybody of importance, that the floral tributes were sumptuous, splendid, intoxicating; but, for all that, it was a simple and quiet funeral. What, in the name of Acheron, did they expect it to be? Did they think there would be human sacrifice—the immolation of Oriental slaves upon the tomb? Did they think that long rows of Oriental dancing-girls would sway hither and thither in an ecstasy of lament? ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... homely rail-fences, and that was comfort; so we strolled contentedly through the pasture, found a river,—I believe it was the Hudson; at any rate, Halicarnassus said so, though I don't imagine he knew; but he would take oath it was Acheron rather than own up to ignorance on any point whatever,—watched the canal-boats and boatmen go down, marvelled at the arbor-vitae trees growing wild along the river-banks, green, hale, stately, and symmetrical, against the dismal ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... depressing forms of drama when she pays her annual visit to London. There was a silence after which she enquired whether I fished. As my ideas of fishing were restricted to the patient hosts—pale shades of Acheron—who have angled off the quays of the Seine for centuries and have till now caught nothing, I smiled and shook ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... see, Not Acheron itself is free. His wasting hand my subjects feel, Grow old, and wrinkle though in Hell. Decrepit is Alecto grown, Megaera worn to skin and bone; And t'other beldam is so old, She has not spirits left to scold. Go, Hermes, bid my brother Jove Send three new Furies from above." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... cruel mannes dede Acordeth nothing with godhede. Thei hadde of goddes yit an other, Which Pluto hihte, and was the brother Of Jupiter, and he fro youthe With every word which cam to mouthe, Of eny thing whan he was wroth, He wolde swere his commun oth, Be Lethen and be Flegeton, Be Cochitum and Acheron, 1110 The whiche, after the bokes telle, Ben the chief flodes of the helle: Be Segne and Stige he swor also, That ben the depe Pettes tuo Of helle the most principal. Pluto these othes overal Swor of his commun custummance, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... another now mourning in a youth obscure, but who will one day return to save.—Elec. Ah! him I yearn for, but he mocks my messages, and promises yet never comes.—Cho. Take heart: Time is a calm and patient deity; trusting in Zeus you will find neither Orestes nor the God of Acheron forgetful.—Elec. Yet meanwhile the larger portion of my life is gone; orphaned, un-wed, an alien stranger I serve in the house where I was wont to reign.—Cho. Ah! that sad day! Guile devised the blow and lust struck it!—Elec. Oh, most horrible day, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... sure it is, Seidlitz, with sixty-one squadrons, arriving from some distance, breaks in like a DEUS EX MACHINA, swift as the storm-wind, upon this Russian Horse-torrent; drives it again before him like a mere torrent of chaff, back, ever back, to the shore of Acheron and the Stygian quagmires (of the Mutzel, namely); so that it did not return again; and the Prussian infantry had free field for their platoon exercise. Their rage against the Russians was extreme; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Charon. His voice, and the questions he asked me, were not of a kind to remove this notion, so that, far from its requiring any effort of imagination, I found it not easy to avoid believing that, at length, I had actually reached Avernus, was about to cross Acheron, and to be ferried ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... repeated solicitations, promised that Proserpine should be restored, provided she had not yet tasted any thing in hell. Ceres joyfully descended, and Proserpine, full of triumph, prepared for her return, when lo! Ascalaphus, son of Acheron and Gorgyra, discovered that he saw Proserpine, as she walked in the garden of Pluto, eat some grains of a pomegranate, upon which her departure was stopped. At last, by the repeated importunity of her mother to Jupiter, she extorted as a favor, in mitigation of her grief, that Proserpine should ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... clime perhaps Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge Into the burning lake their baleful streams— Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton, Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, Lethe, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... see it, never more, For down to Acheron's dread shore, A living victim am I led To Hades' universal bed. To my dark lot no bridal joys Belong, nor e'er the jocund noise Of hymeneal chant shall sound for me, But death, cold death, my only spouse ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... the flood of deadly hate, Sad Acheron of sorrow black and deep; Cocytus named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... they still are in the mountain forests, though, doubtless, fast hastening towards extinction. I saw one in its wild state two years ago in the dense woods of the interior; I saw it clearly. . . . Two living specimens were lately taken by the Acheron, steamer, to Sydney, where they died; these were obtained at the Bay of Islands, where also I once got three at one time. Since then I have not been able to obtain another, although I have offered a great price for one. The fact is, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... well as in sleep, what time we behold strange shapes, and "idols" of the light-bereaved,' Lucretius expressly advances this doctrine of 'films' (an application of the Democritean theory of perception), 'that we may not believe that souls break loose from Acheron, or that shades fly about among the living, or that any part of us is left behind after death'. {341a} Believers in ghosts must have replied that they do not see, in sleep or awake, 'films' representing a mouldering corpse, as they ought to do ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... they are ever being born again from Hades and returning to life on earth; each man has his daimon,[136] who follows him throughout his existences, and at death takes him to the lower world[137] for Judgment.[138] Many souls enter Acheron,[139] and, after a longer or shorter period, return to earth to be incarnated in new bodies. Unpardonable sins fling the ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... officer, anxious for the recovery of his chest. It involved peculiar hazards, since it carried the diver below the familiar turret-chamber, through the inextricabilis error of entangling machinery in the engine-room, groping among floating and sunken objects, into a remote state-room, the Acheron of the cavernous hold. He was to find by touch a seaman's chest; handle it in that thickening gloom; carry it, push it, move it through that labyrinthine obscurity to a point from which it could be raised. To add immeasurably to the intricacy of this undertaking, there was the need of carrying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Nor waits till summer hath o'erpassed her prime? Give back, give back my hope one little day!— Not for a gift, but for a loan I pray. I pray not to you by the waves forlorn Of marshy Styx or dismal Acheron, By Chaos where the mighty world was born, Or by the sounding flames of Phlegethon; But by the fruit which charmed thee on that morn When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne! O queen! if thou reject this pleading ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... lov'st Golgi and the Sicel hill And Ida; Aphrodite radiant-eyed; The stealthy-footed Hours from Acheron's rill Brought once again Adonis to thy side How changed in twelve short months! They travel slow, Those precious Hours: we hail their advent still, For blessings do they bring to all below. O Sea-born! thou didst erst, or legend lies, Shed on a woman's ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... the kingdoms of infernal rule, Of Styx, of Acheron, and the fiery lake Of ever-burning Phlegethon, I swear That I do long to see the [109] monuments And situation of bright-splendent Rome: ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... which to stretch their limbs—and, for amusement—poor devils!—he swept his eyes whimsically around that dreariest of landscapes—they might exercise their imaginations by pretending, after the manner of John Teach, that they were on an excursion to Hades—this was the famous River Acheron—and so on. But, seriously, he ended, we would find some way of keeping them from committing hari-kari and, meanwhile, we would leave them in peace, and ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... could discover the causes of things, and place under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan, and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."—Virgil, Georg., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Which way they lead the clueless wanderer To fields suburban, and the towers of men, I would confront the strangest things that haunt In horrid shades of brooding desolation: Griffin, or satyr, sphinx, or sybil ape, Or lop-eared demon from the dens of night, Let loose to caper out of Acheron. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Who left that crock of water at my side? Who stole my dog that loved no one but me? Why was the tent unstruck, I unawaked, I left, most loved, and last to be forgotten By much obtaining, much indebted ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... both have alike lost heart and sunk into deepest dejection. Never crossed Acheron two spirits more despairing—less hopeful ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... 436 ff., Chorus.]—The "King black-browed" is, of course, Hades; the "grey hand at the helm and oar," Charon; the "Tears that Well," the more that spreads out from Acheron, the River of Ache ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... makes this pretended spirit say that, having been assassinated about sixty years before by a perfidious comrade who had taken his money, he had been secretly interred in that house; that the god of Hades would not receive him on the other side of Acheron, as he had died prematurely; for which reason he was obliged to remain in that house of which he ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... chasms, pits, swamps and rivers. The rivers, though different in name and aspect, appear to be one and the same stream winding its way through the various circles. We see it first as the boundary of Hell proper and it is known as the Acheron. It comes again to view in the fourth circle and is called the Styx. In the seventh circle, second round, it emerges as the red blood stream of Phlegethon. In the very depths of Hell it forms the frozen lake of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... what shall I do? whether am I to groan in weeping myself, or the city, which a cloud of such magnitude encircles as to cast us amidst the gloom of Acheron? For my son has perished having died for the city, having achieved a glorious name, but to me a name of sorrow. Him having taken just now from the dragon's den, stabbed by his own hand, I wretched bore in my arms; and the whole house resounds with shrieks; but I, myself ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... temples publicly dedicated to them. What do you conclude from thence? Others who have temples are not therefore Gods. But let us go on. You call Jupiter and Neptune Gods; their brother Pluto, then, is one; and if so, those rivers also are Deities which they say flow in the infernal regions—Acheron, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon; Charon also, and Cerberus, are Gods; but that cannot be allowed; nor can Pluto be placed among the Deities. What, then, will you ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Amore The Dead Child Carthusians The Three Witches Villanelle of the Poet's Road Villanelle of Acheron Saint Germain-en-Laye After Paul Verlaine-I After Paul Verlaine-II After Paul Verlaine-III After Paul Verlaine-IV To his Mistress Jadis In a Breton Cemetery To William Theodore Peters on his Renaissance Cloak The Sea-Change Dregs A Song Breton Afternoon Venite Descendamus ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... all men unborn," even for their love's sake; and prayed, "Would, O Father Cronides, and would, ye ageless immortals, that this might be, and that when two generations have sped, one might bring these tidings to me by Acheron, the irremeable stream: the loving-kindness that was between thee and thy gracious friend is even now in all men's mouths, and chiefly on the lips of the young." Hill and fountain and pine, the gray sea and Mother Etna, are here; but no children ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... as I am proud to think, has been the influence of the Snob of England upon Clubs in general:—Captain Shindy is afraid to bully the waiters any more, and eats his mutton-chop without moving Acheron. Gobemouche does not take more than two papers at a time for his private reading. Tiggs does not ring the bell and cause the library-waiter to walk about a quarter of a mile in order to give him Vol. II., which lies on the next table. Growler has ceased ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her voice was a sigh of hopeless grief. In mad desperation Orpheus sought to follow her, but his attempt was vain. At the brink of the dark, fierce-flooded Acheron the boat with its boatman, old Charon, lay ready to ferry across to the further shore those whose future lay in the land of Shades. To him ran Orpheus, in clamorous anxiety to undo the evil he had wrought. But Charon angrily repulsed him. There was no place for such as Orpheus ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... son of acides, he was in the direct line the Kings of Epirus. He was also cousin of an Alexander, who, in the year 332, had crossed over from Epirus to help the Tarentines against the Lucanians, had formed an alliance with the Romans, and had finally been killed by a Lucanian on the banks of the Acheron, in 326. After a variety of vicissitudes, Pyrrhus had ascended the throne of his father at the age of twenty-three, and, taking Alexander the Great as his model, had soon become popular and powerful. Aiming at the conquest ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the earth and return again, in their course forming lakes and rivers, but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on either side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice. These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal ones, Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus is the river which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite direction, and after flowing under the earth through desert places, at last reaches the Acherusian ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... one last look on Helios' ray, Led my last path toward the silent strand. Alive to the wide house of rest I go; No dawn for me may shine, No marriage-blessing e'er be mine, No hymeneal with my praises flow! The Lord of Acheron's unlovely shore Shall be mine only ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... it not probable that Avernus, if not corrupted from [Greek: aornos], is related to iffrin, the Irish inferi? This derivation is at any rate more probable than that of Grotefend, who connects the word with [Greek: Acheron]. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... not thy heart to despair. ant. 6. No lamentation can loose Prisoners of death from the grave; But Zeus, who accounteth thy quarrel his own, Still rules, still watches, and numb'reth the hours Till the sinner, the vengeance, be ripe. Still, by Acheron stream, Terrible Deities throned Sit, and eye grimly the victim unscourged. Still, still the Dorian boy, Exiled, remembers ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... lies no grain of sand between My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence, Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron, Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire! And may this intervening earth be snow, And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna, Plunging me, through it all, into the core, Where in their graves the dead ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... slung astride a long pole set over the fire, the wood crackles, the flames shoot up wrapping the pots around. And now the camp is all astir. The black objects are twice as numerous as before, moving about with increased animation. You imagine Little Antietam to be the Acheron of fable, and all these to be poor ghosts, strangely clad in the mortal habiliments of woe, crowding the banks of the fateful river, and waiting, sick with hope deferred, their turn to cross; and your eyes wander curiously along the swollen, dashing stream to catch sight ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... what they believe. They have little round-built temples, which they call pagodas, in which are images in most monstrous shapes, which they worship. Some of them dream, of Elysian fields, to which their souls pass over a Styx or Acheron, and there assume new bodies. Others hold that ere long, this world shall have an end, after which they shall live here again, upon a new earth. They talk of four books which were sent them about 6000 years ago by their prophet Ram, two of which were sealed up ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... on thee! thy bridal joy Was death and fire upon thy race and Troy! And woe for thee, Scamander's flood! Beside thy banks, O river fair, I grew in tender nursing care From childhood unto maidenhood! Now not by thine, but by Cocytus' stream And Acheron's banks shall ring my ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... constant inmates of this house? But, my friends, ply the speeding stroke of your hands about your heads, before the gale of sighs, which ever wafts on its passage the bark, on which no sighs are heard, with sable sails, the freighted with the dead, untrodden for Apollo, the sunless, across Acheron, and to the ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... landscape of such splendid and unequalled interest! the shores of Baia, where Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Pliny, Mecaenas, lived; the white towers of Puzzuoli and the Islands of Ischia, Procida, and Nisida. There was the Sybil's Cave, Lake Acheron, and the fabled Lethe; there the sepulchre of Misenus, who defied the Triton; and the scene of the whole sixth book of the AEneid, which I am now reading in Annibal Caro's translation: there Agrippina mourned Germanicus; and there her daughter fell a victim to her monster of a son. At ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... desperate ruffian, you! O, villain, villain, arrant vilest villain! Who seized our Cerberus by the throat, and fled, And ran, and rushed, and bolted, haling off The dog, my charge! But now I've got thee fast. So close the Styx's inky-hearted rock, The blood-bedabbled peak of Acheron Shall hem thee in: the hell-hounds of Cocytus Prowl round thee; whilst the hundred-headed Asp Shall rive thy heart-strings: the Tartesian Lamprey, Prey on thy lungs: and those Tithrasian Gorgons Mangle and tear thy kidneys, mauling them, Entrails and all, into one bloody mash. I'll speed ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... philosophers: all alike teaching the existence of gods, but greatly differing as to their number and order, nature and power. For the gods of the philosophers 'know nothing of disease or old age or pain, and have not to cross the resounding Acheron;' nor do the philosophers accept as gods Strifes, or Prayers, which are found in poetry;[121] nor will they admit Terror and Fear as gods or as the sons of Ares. And on many points also they are at variance with the legislators, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... we know is, nothing can be known." Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun? Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of Evil all their own. Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron: There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, But Silence spreads the couch of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... made us familiar, all appeared united in one skillful composition, arranged in groups. The other picture, the descent of Ulysses into Hades to interrogate Teiresias, might be called a pictorial epic of Hades. On one side was the entrance, indicated by Charon's boat crossing: the Acheron, and the evocation of Teiresias by Ulysses, besides the punishment of Tityos and other wicked men; on the other side were Tantalos and Sisyphos. Between these scenes, on the flanks, were various groups of heroes and heroines from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... invokes the pity of the stern god by the name of Chaos whence the world had birth, and by the dread rivers of the nether world, by Styx and Acheron: 'E pel sonante ardor di Flegetonte'; and lastly, turning ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Love deeply grounded, hardly is dissembled. These lovers parled by the touch of hands: True love is mute, and oft amazed stands. Thus while dumb signs their yielding hearts entangled, The air with sparks of living fire was spangled; And Night, deep-drench'd in misty Acheron, Heav'd up her head, and half the world upon Breath'd darkness forth (dark night is Cupid's day): And now begins Leander to display Love's holy fire, with words, with sighs, and tears; Which, like sweet music, enter'd Hero's ears; And yet at every word she turn'd aside, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman |
