"Styx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charity,' he continued, addressing a half-naked savage, who was helping to drag the bodies from the cart, 'to have these trunks well washed ere you bury them, or pitch them into the Tiber, else they will never get over the Styx—not forgetting too the ferriage—' what more folly he would have uttered, I know not, for the wretch to whom he spoke suddenly seized the lash of the driver of the cart, and laid it over Milo's shoulders, saying, as ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... hideous river came a sound like that which whirlwinds make among the shattered branches and bruised stems of forest-trees; and Dante, looking out with fear upon the foam and spray and vapour of the flood, saw thousands of the damned flying before the face of one who forded Styx with feet unwet. 'Like frogs,' he says, 'they fled, who scurry through the water at the sight of their foe, the serpent, till each squats and hides himself close to the ground.' The picture of the storm among the trees might well have occurred to Dante's mind beneath ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... glided, I thought of the Styx, and of Charon rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions, whose insane oaths ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... (alone) Wretch! Thou must meet inevitable ruin. Neptune has sworn by Styx—to gods themselves A dreadful oath,—and he will execute His promise. Thou canst not escape his vengeance. I loved thee; and, in spite of thine offence, My heart is troubled by anticipation For thee. But thou hast earn'd thy doom too well. Had father ever greater cause for rage? Just gods, who ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... sort of a festival every month, such as the 'Feast of Lanterns,' on the full moon, of the tombs, 'Dragon Boats,' and 'All Souls,' in honor of departed relatives, when the supposed hungry spirits from the other side of the Styx are fed at the cemeteries. The people are extravagantly fond of theatricals; and a kind of bamboo tent is erected for the performance, which is usually of inordinate length. Females, as in India, do not appear ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... bear to think of passing the Styx, lest Charon should touch me; he is so old and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of the Associated Shades, formerly located upon the River Styx, as the reader may possibly remember, had been torn from its moorings and navigated out into unknown seas by that vengeful pirate Captain Kidd, aided and abetted by some of the most ruffianly inhabitants of Hades. Like a thief in the night had they ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... wretched, impudent, shameless, threefold rascal, the most rascally of rascals. Ah! 'tis you who hunted out our dog Cerberus, whose keeper I was! But I have got you to-day; and the black stones of Styx, the rocks of Acheron, from which the blood is dripping, and the roaming dogs of Cocytus shall account to me for you; the hundred-headed Hydra shall tear your sides to pieces; the Tartessian Muraena[438] shall fasten ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... each only once. No one has done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell and I amused ourselves some years ago with attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words he gave me Phiz, styx, wrong, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... being landed at a stone-quay in a tangle of small launches, ferryboats, and cascoes. The Tondo Canal may be crossed on a covered barge, poled by an ancient boatman, who collects the fares—a copper cent of Borneo, Straits Settlements, or Hong Kong coinage—much in the same way as the pilot of the Styx collects the obolus. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... kingdom, where she ruled with Pluto. It was supposed to be below the volcanic grounds in southern Italy, near Lake Avernus. The entrance to it was guarded by a three-headed dog, named Cerberus, and the way to it was barred by the River Styx. Every evening Mercury brought all the spirits of the people who had died during the day to the shore of the Styx, and if their funeral rites had been properly performed, and they had a little coin on the tongue to ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well knowing that this would cause her instant death. Semele, suspecting no treachery, followed the advice of her supposed nurse; and the next time Zeus came to her, she earnestly entreated him to grant the favour she was about to ask. Zeus swore by the Styx (which was to the gods an irrevocable oath) to accede to her request whatsoever it might be. Semele, therefore, secure of gaining her petition, begged of Zeus to appear to her in all the glory of his ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... the act, in alarm snatched the boy from the flames; whereupon Thetis fled back to the sea in anger (Apollodorus iii. 13; Apollonius Rhodius iv. 869). According to another story Thetis dipped the child in the waters of the river Styx, by which his whole body became invulnerable, except that part of his heel by which she held him; whence the proverbial "heel of Achilles'' (Statius, Achilleis, i. 269). With this may be compared the similar ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces Consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in austros. Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... quarrel with destiny. It will be only too brief at the best, and the day is at hand when its inequalities will be redressed, and king and peasant, pauper and millionaire, be huddled, poor shivering phantoms, in one undistinguishable crowd, across the melancholy Styx, to the judgment-hall of Minos. To this theme many of Horace's finest Odes are strung. Of these, not the least graceful is that ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... there must needs be rooks, For cards, we know, are Pluto's books.) If Florimel had found her love, For whom she hang'd herself above? How oft a-week was kept a ball By Proserpine at Pluto's hall? She fancied those Elysian shades The sweetest place for masquerades; How pleasant on the banks of Styx, To troll it in a coach and six! What pride a female heart inflames? How endless are ambition's aims: Cease, haughty nymph; the Fates decree Death must not be a spouse for thee; For, when by chance the meagre shade Upon thy hand his finger ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... great attention to funeral rites, because they believed that the souls of the unburied were not admitted into the abodes of the dead; or at least wandered a hundred years along the river Styx before they were ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... responding "Yes," to both interrogatories, on the principle that it is sometimes just as well to cut the Gordian knot as to waste precious time trying to untie it. The burrowing owl makes me think of a denizen of the other side of the river Styx, and why should one try to love that which nature has made unattractive, especially when one cannot ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... forehead with her hand, and said: "Perverse! and slow to see where guile is not! How could thy heart permit thee thus to speak? Now bear me witness, Earth, and ye broad Heavens Above us, and ye waters of the Styx That flow beneath us, mightiest oath of all, And most revered by all the blessed gods, That I design no other harm to thee; But that I plan for thee and counsel thee What I would do were I in need like thine. I bear a juster mind; my ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... tool of a coiner; he remained motionless, gazing through the window-panes at the opposite wall, but seeing nothing,—listening, however, to Birotteau. Evidently he heard and judged, and weighed the pros and cons with the inflexibility of a Minos who had crossed the Styx of commerce when he quitted the Quai des Morfondus ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... back chamber he could hear voices. As he waited idly for the druggist to appear, Aubrey cast a tolerant eye over the dusty volumes in the twirling case. There were the usual copies of Harold MacGrath's The Man on the Box, A Girl of the Limberlost, and The Houseboat on the Styx. The Divine Fire, much grimed, leaned against Joe Chapple's Heart Throbs. Those familiar with the Tabard Inn bookcases still to be found in outlying drug-shops know that the stock has not been "turned" for many a year. Aubrey was the more surprised, on spinning the the case round, to find wedged ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the 'Brigadier'—know him so intimately—worked so constantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance—hard to shut my own partial eyes, and look at him through other people's. I will try, however; and, as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... the morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... place: On the hill of Erech'theus the strife shall be ended, When she with her spear, and the god with his mace, Shall strike the quick rock; and the gods shall deliver The sentence as Justice shall order; and thou Shalt see thy loved city established forever, With Jove for a judge, and the Styx ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the confidence I had by this time acquired in his skill and knowledge of the West Coast, a sense of horror seized on me as I gazed upon the scene, and I said to the old Coaster who then had charge of my education, "Good Heavens! what an awful accident. We've gone and picked up the Styx." He was evidently hurt and said, "Bonny was a nice place when you got used to it," and went on to discourse on the last epidemic here, when nine men out of the resident eleven died in about ten days from yellow fever. Next to the scenery of "a River," commend me for cheerfulness to the local ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... high, the total length being about half a mile. It contained many other rooms or caves, into which he conducted us, the first being known as the Bell House, and here the path we had been following suddenly came to an end at an arch about five yards wide, where there was a stream called the River Styx, over which he ferried us in a boat, landing us in a cave called the Hall of Pluto, the Being who ruled over the Greek Hades, or Home of Departed Spirits, guarded by a savage three-headed dog named Cerberus. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... animals with no rudimentary organs of vision whatever, and the inception of whose ancestors, themselves wholly blind, probably took place thousands of years ago, show by their actions that light is exceedingly unpleasant to them. Thus, I have seen actinophryans taken from the River Styx in Mammoth Cave (which is their natural habitat), seeking to hide themselves beneath a grain of sand which happened to be drawn up in the pipette and dropped upon the glass slide beneath ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... things, like disembarking from the Styx into the desolated underworld, was this landing at night. There was the raw, half-lighted, covered-in vastness of the dark place, boarded and hollow underfoot, with only desolation everywhere. Ursula had caught sight of the big, pallid, mystic letters 'OSTEND,' standing ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... divine in human form seems to be indicated in the war which Olympian Zeus waged with Cronos and the Titans. The origin and development of the various elements and powers of nature, Chaos, Eros, Uranus, Gaea, the Giants, Styx, Erebus, Hemera, AEther, &c, became, with the poets and philosophers after Homer, matters of speculation, of which the theogonies of Hesiod, Orpheus, Pherecydes, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... the poplar groves And fruitless willows wan of Proserpine, Push thither through the gulphy Deep thy bark, 620 And, landing, haste to Pluto's murky abode. There, into Acheron runs not alone Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud, From Styx derived; there also stands a rock, At whose broad base the roaring rivers meet. There, thrusting, as I bid, thy bark ashore, O Hero! scoop the soil, op'ning a trench Ell-broad on ev'ry side; then pour around Libation consecrate to all the dead, First, milk with honey mixt, then luscious wine, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... times been forward in owning the Egyptians as their teachers in religion; and in the dog Cerberus, the judge Minos, the boat of Charon, and the river Styx of their mythology, we see a clear proof that it was in Egypt that the Greeks gained their faint glimpse of the immortality of the soul, a day of judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments; and, now that Rome was in close intercourse with Egypt, the Romans were equally ready ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Styx she goes, She takes the fogs from thence that rose, And in a bag doth them enclose, When well she had them blended. She hies her then to Lethe spring, A bottle and thereof doth bring, Wherewith she meant to work the thing ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... kingdom of darkness, and torment, and sin? What could be more certain? Had not even the heathens said so, by the mouth of the poet Virgil? What could be more simple, rational, orthodox, than to adopt (as they actually did) Virgil's own words, and talk of Tartarus, Styx, and Phlegethon, as indisputable Christian entities. They were not aware that the Buddhists of the far East had held much the same theory of endless retribution several centuries before; and that Dante, with his various bolge, tenanted each by its various species ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... if we might be approaching the black Styx through this melancholy wood where all seemed weeping in torn ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... gifts, then, catch and cherish; Follow where her currents flow; Sure to prosper—or to perish, Follow, though to Styx we go! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... smear the general sky with poster's paste And at Dan Phoebus seem to "take a sight." Colossal bottles blot the air, to tell That MUCKSON's Temperance drink is a great sell. Here's a huge hat, as black as sombre Styx, Flanked by the winsome legend, "Ten and Six." Other Sky-signs praise Carpets, Ginghams, Socks, Mugg's Music-hall, and "Essence of the Ox." Bah! GAY's trim Muse might sicken of her rhymes Had she to read ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... nearer view of the labors of the volcano, after its awakening from centuries of sleep. In the hollow of the ridge, between that naked bluff and the next swell of the mountain, lie the fabulous Styx, the Elysian fields, and the place of the dead, as fixed by the Mantuan. More on the height and nearer to the sea, lie, buried in the earth, the vast vaults of the Piscina Mirabile—and the gloomy caverns of the Hundred Chambers; places that equally denote the luxury and the despotism of Rome. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... world. D'Arthez was dumbfounded. In his eyes convicts sent to the galleys for murder, or aggravated robbery, or for putting a wrong name to checks, were saints compared to the men and women of society. This atrocious elegy, forged in the arsenal of lies, and steeped in the waters of the Parisian Styx, had been poured into his ears with the inimitable accent of truth. The grave author contemplated for a moment that adorable woman lying back in her easy-chair, her two hands pendant from its arms like dewdrops from a rose-leaf, overcome by her own revelation, living over again the sorrows ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... it becometh thee to ask, seeing thou art a party interested in the matter. The emperor in whose care the jewel was left, hath sworn by the river Styx that unless the cup be brought back to the palace ere to-morrow's dawn, he will punish the innocent with the guilty, and that with no sparing hand. He hath already laid hands on some of the more wealthy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... moving slimily about in the black water, and, in the dim mysterious light, tree-stems and other objects assumed the appearance of hideous living forms, so that he was enabled to indulge the uncomfortable fancy that they were traversing some terrestrial Styx into one of Dante's ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the other side of Styx could not have been much worse than this, though, by his account, when he got back to earth, it appears that he had fallen in with "Bellua Lernae, horrendum ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... our right hand. The little jackals they call foxes crossed our path at intervals. Owls the size of a robin, only vastly fluffier, screamed from the rocks as we passed them. Otherwise, it was like a soul's last journey, eerie, lonely and awful, down toward River Styx. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... killed. But all that he affirmed was that to the soul the cart was no more real than its own imaginative reproduction of it, and perhaps the shade of the philosopher ran up to the first of his deriders who crossed the Styx with a triumphant "I told you so! The cart did not run over me, for here I am ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... manager—responsible to a board of directors from across the Styx," he said, with an approach to a smile. "Here's our waiter. I telephoned our order. Hope I've chosen to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... but we cannot stay here any longer. We want to reach the underground stream of which we have heard so much—the "River Styx." ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the mouth of Tartarus lay in Italy, hard by the volcanic lake Avernus; and after the unexpected eruption of Vesuvius in the first century, nothing seemed more clear than that Virgil was right; and that men were justified in talking of Tartarus, Styx, and Phlegethon as indisputable Christian entities. Etna, Stromboli, Hecla, were (according to this cosmogony) in like wise mouths of hell; and there were not wanting holy hermits, who had heard, from within those craters, shrieks, and clanking chains, and ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Filippo: "Only a transient word or act gives us a short and dubious glimmer, that reveals to us the abysses of his being; dark, lurid, and terrific, as the throat of the infernal pool." As you pass along, you hear the roar of invisible waterfalls, and at the foot of the slope, the River Styx lies before you, deep and black, overarched with rock. The first glimpse of it brings to mind the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Arcadians against Sparta; and besides other oaths with which he caused them to swear that they would assuredly follow him whithersoever he should lead them, he was very desirous also to bring the chiefs of the Arcadians to the city of Nonacris and cause them to swear by the water of Styx; for near this city it is said by the Arcadians 63 that there is the water of Styx, and there is in fact something of this kind: a small stream of water is seen to trickle down from a rock into a hollow ravine, and round the ravine ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer, For I wash'd 'em in Styx last night, son, And your blankets both, and dried them upon The brimstony banks of Acheron— It is not the fleas that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... this smooth, oleaginous, and delicately odorous employment for the silver spoon, was unknown. Should the knowledge of his loss reach him in the fields of Elysium, will not his steps be incontinently turned towards the borders of the Styx—his plaintive voice hail the grim ferryman, while in his most persuasive ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... noble princess! Thy will was good, and be that sufficient. I shall not want materials to write a commentary on the history of Frederic, when, in company with thee, I shall wander on the banks of Styx; there the events that happened on this earth may ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... enough. Look at it, and it is harmless enough. But tread on it, touch it, disturb it never so slightly, and instantly the whole surrounding atmosphere is permeated with a stench more infernally and awfully horrible than anything else this side of the Styx! ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... exclaimed uneasily, shifting in his seat. "If the Styx be more gloomy than this accursed stream, then Jesu pity its voyagers. Never have I put in so miserable a night, to say nothing of a strained back, and a pair of sore hands. What are those black, crawling things yonder? ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall near nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Ianeira, Acaste, Xanthe, Petraea the fair, Menestho, and Europa, Metis, and Eurynome, and Telesto saffron-clad, Chryseis and Asia and charming Calypso, Eudora, and Tyche, Amphirho, and Ocyrrhoe, and Styx who is the chiefest of them all. These are the eldest daughters that sprang from Ocean and Tethys; but there are many besides. For there are three thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far and wide, and in every place alike serve ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... may gainsay, the ketch Arangi, trader and blackbirder in the Solomon Islands, may have signified in Jerry's mind as much the mysterious boat that traffics between the two worlds, as, at one time, the boat that Charon sculled across the Styx signified to the human mind. Out of the nothingness men came. Into the nothingness they went. And they came and went always on ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... smiled at these words, and, taking the hero by the hand, rejoined: "Thou art a wise man, and thy answer is well made. I will pledge thee a solemn oath, by the heavens and the earth, and the waters of the Styx, that I have no plan of evil against thee. And I advise thee to do as I have instructed thee, to be ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... daylight rules the earth.—Am I perchance To slip—unknowing—from the realm of light? 'Tis well, if so it be,—if this delay Within the tomb be nothing but a flight Upon the wings of lightning into Hades,— If I be nearing even now the Styx! There roll the leaden billows on the shore; There silently old Charon plies his boat. Soon am I there! Then shall I seat myself Beside the ferry,—question every spirit, Each fleeting shadow from the land of life, As light of foot he nears the river of death,— Shall ask each ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of battles. "4. State reasons for presuming that the practice of lithography may be traced back to the time of Perseus and the Gorgon's head. "5. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied with spirits? "6. Show the probability of the College Hornpipe having been used by the students of the Academia; and give passages from Thucydides and Tennyson in support of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... felt more than ever the borderland-sense. In this silent house of sadness men stepped quietly, gravely, decorously, and served you with courteous sympathy. What was the name of the man who rowed his boat on the River Styx? Yes! Charon! These wise-eyed grave men who continually plied their oars between two worlds! How did they look on life? Were they hardened to their task? Was their gentle gravity all acting? Did earthly things appeal to them? How could they bear it all, this continual ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... metamorphosis of its sleek sides into mouths belching forth humanity. I think of Hades. This, by the way, isn't a bad representation of it—the up-to-date Hades. They've got a railway bridge now across the Styx, and Charon has a gold band around his cap, and this might be the arrival ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... soldier had no physical hurt that might appeal to the professional sympathies of the senior surgeon, and he turned away with a half laugh. "Let him go along! He can't rally Dovinger's Rangers this side of the river Styx, it seems." ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the infinite variety of creation, can alone give an adequate idea of this marvellous region. As you pass along, you hear the roar of invisible waterfalls; and at the foot of the slope, the river Styx lies before you, deep and black, overarched with rock. The first glimpse of it brings to mind, the descent of Ulysses ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... for a human foot. The hills were a purple haze, the trees along their crests making fantastic pictures against the sky. Beyond the land of living men, it seemed, an owl hooted, and a belated dove called and called like a moaning spirit wandering in some lost tarn of the Styx. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... has passed the water-carrier's sign, And Saturn's light, for five-and-twenty days Has lightened up the maid; the king divine Of Asia's land shall enter on the ways That painful lead to death and Styx's gloomy maze." ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... was cruising slowly along the Styx one pleasant Friday morning not long ago, and as he paddled idly on he chuckled mildly to himself as he thought of the monopoly in ferriage which in the course of years he had managed to ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... a bad business when the double-man goes about kneeling at the feet of more than one lady. Society (to give that institution its due) permits him to seek partial invulnerability by dipping himself in a dirty Styx, which corrects, as we hear said, the adolescent tendency to folly. Wilfrid's sentiment had served him (well or ill as it may be), by keeping him from a headlong plunge in the protecting river; and his folly was unchastened. He did not even contemplate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... jest looked on, feelin' 'bout as happy as a lot o' old hens worritin' to hatch out a batch o' Easter eggs. Say, pore Joe wus weepin' over his sins, an' I guess we wus all 'most ready to cry. Then the feller up an' sez, 'Fetch out the pernicious sperrit, the nectar o' the devil, the waters o' the Styx, the vile filth as robs homes o' their support, an' drives whole races to perdition!' an' a lot o' other big talk. An', say, we fetched! Yes, sir, we fetched like a lot o' silly, skippin' lambs. We brought out six bottles o' the worstest rotgut ever faked in a settlement saloon, an' ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... weariness! So many times had hopes been destroyed! Hundreds of tomorrows just like yesterday and today followed on, each similarly devoted to emptiness and waiting—to waiting for emptiness. Time no longer ran. The year was like a river Styx which encircles life with the circuit of its black and greasy waters, with its somber, watery, silky flood that seems no longer to move. Tomorrow? ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... creeps along, leaden and inert, half solid, like a torrent of liquid mud—irresolute whether to be earth or water; whether to stagnate here for ever at my feet, or crawl onward yet another sluggish league into the sea. So may Lethe look, or Styx: the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... fighters swiftly obeyed. With a powerful heave Lourenco sent the canoe after the others. Americans, Brazilians, and the Raposa hunched up among the packs, all went sliding down a jungle Styx. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... old misogynist Arthur Schopenhauer persuaded to cross the Styx and revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust if forced to listen to the music of his self-elected disciple Richard Wagner, what painted work would be likely to attract him? Remember he it was who named ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Across the Styx, past the dread Cerberus, Aeneas and the Sibyl went, through the abode of babes and those who died for deeds they did not do, and into the mourning fields, where the disappointed in love were hedged in with myrtle sprays. Here Aeneas descried Dido dimly through the clouds, and wept to see her ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... body on a heath than his soul in an octavo? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may be,' and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through life with a sort of eclat is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child. Now, might not some of this 'sutor ultra crepidam's' friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And then, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... on a sharp hill above the Styx, The bruised Christ upon his crucifix, And racked in anguish on his either side Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified. Their heavy blood falls in a monotone Like deep well-water dropping on a stone. None moves, ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... assert, that he had predicted Gataker's death! But the truth is, it was an empty epitaph to the "Lodgings to let:" it stood empty, reader, for the first passenger that the immortal ferryman should carry over the Styx. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the downcast appearance of the majority of the men, one might have thought that it was a funeral rather than a pleasure party, or that they were a contingent of lost souls being conducted to the banks of the Styx. The man who from time to time sounded the coachman's horn might have passed as the angel sounding the last trump, and the fumes of the cigars were typical of the smoke of their torment, which ascendeth ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... meretricious, with its streaks of light close to the dense shadows that lie under the bridges, its wailful, small waves licking the wharves, and bearing up the inky barges that look like the ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to feel vivaciously despairing, and he hugged himself in the belief that the Thames at nightfall tinged his soul with a luxurious melancholy, the capacity for which was not far from rendering him a poet. So he ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... I believe that I should meet the loved ones who have gone before, I do not know but that I should look forward with pleasure to the "passing across." Not having this belief, I am quite content to stay where I am as long as I can; and finally, when old Charon appears to row me over the river Styx, I ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... this lake be Styx's dark, Sullen flood? Hath Proserpine, In the absence of her Charon Sent her maids ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... and coteries know not how to mix. A barrier more impassable than Styx Is Philistine stupidity. Were mutual amusement meeting's aim, Mind must move maidenhood inert ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... the thing is so, but we can be made to see that it is so. Not only does a man tell us that when a taper burns the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he likes, that Charon is punting his ferry boat on the river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of statesmen; but we are made to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and water does actually happen. This reality of natural knowledge it is, which makes the friends ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... beloved in the spaces of endless felicity? Surely then he should be able to bear his sorrow with as great a fortitude as the pagan poets, who looked forward to nothing but the dust; to whom the fabled dim country beyond the Styx was a cheerless dream, and to whom a living dog upon the earth was more worthy of envy than the King of all Elysium. He ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... even when the sun shone. The walls had lost their brighter reds, and what colour they had was dark and sombre, a dirty brown and dark green predominating. The mythology of the ancients, with their Inferno and their River Styx, could hardly conjure anything more supernatural or impressive ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... represented as being full of mud and swords. Sylg (from svelgja to swallow) the devourer; Ylg (from yla to roar) the roaring one; Leipt the glowing, is also mentioned in the Lay of Helge Hunding's Bane, where it is stated that they swore by it (compare Styx); Gjoll (from gjalla to glisten and clang) the shining, clanging one. The meaning of the other words is not clear, but they doubtless all, like those explained, express cold, violent motion, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... subterranean sea dusky figures flitted, bearing ladles filled with the yellow fluid, which they had replenished from its depths. From this lake diverging streams of the same mysterious flood penetrated like mighty rivers the cavernous distance. As they walked by the banks of this glittering Styx, Father Jose perceived how the liquid stream at certain places became solid. The ground was strewn with glittering flakes. One of these the Padre picked up and curiously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Charon was a god of hell. It was his business to carry the dead across the river Styx. People thus carried over the Stygian ferry paid Charon by a small ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... unfrequently), I comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these trans-Atlantic visits, 'few and far between,' make me feel as if talking with posterity from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two the new English and Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older or earlier ages, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... seemed to me as deadening as the sluice of dreary Styx. Fire and foulness mixed with leadening Slush I drank; but swam the reddening Stuff a league with weary licks. Up a sulphurous bank We ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... painted toys. Every one acts with self-interest! His doctor, his friend, or his valet will be sorry for his death merely from the amount of money interest that they have in his life. Bare and grim unto tears, even if he had any, is the life of such a man. With him, sadder than Lethe or the Styx, the river of time runs between stony banks, and, often a calm suicide, it bears him to the Morgue. Happier by far is he who, with whitened hair and wrinkled brow, sits crowned with the flowers of illusion; and who, with the ear of age, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... ship, and which still seemed to be saturated with a pale spectral shimmering light, in the which men looked in each other's eyes like reanimated corpses. The ocean presented an aspect no less appalling; at one moment black as the waters of the Styx, and indistinguishable beyond the distance of a cable's length, and anon gleaming into view to the very verge of the horizon, a palpitating sheet of ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... seemed a city of the dead. The inhabitants had lived and died ages ago, and had left their palaces to be tenanted by the mermaids and spirits of the deep, for other occupants I could see none. Spectral fancies began to haunt my imagination. I conceived of the canal we were traversing as the Styx, our gondola as the boat of Charon, and ourselves as a company of ghosts, who had passed from earth, and were now on our silent way to the inexorable bar of Rhadamanthus. A more spectral procession we could not have made, with our spectral boat ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... quartiers on this side the Seine pass not there; between them and the Faubourg there is a gulf; the very skies seem different—your own feelings, thoughts—nature itself—alter, when you have passed that Styx which divides the wanderers from the habitants; your spirits are not so much damped, as tinged, refined, ennobled by a certain inexpressible awe—you are girt with the stateliness of Eld, and you tread the gloomy streets with the dignity of a man, who is ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by dreams of icy death, Whom air-blown bubbles of a poet's breath, Darkness and Styx in error's gulph have hurl'd, With fabled terrors of a fabled world; Think not, whene'er material forms expire, Consumed by wasting age or funeral fire, Aught else can die: souls, spurning death's decay, Freed from their old, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... beside the forty Shillings Peter Plod-all has given me; and if I get no more, I'm sure of that. But soft; Now I must try my cunning, for here he sits.— The high commander of the damned souls, Great Dis, the duke of devils, and prince of Limbo lake, High regent of Acheron, Styx, and Phlegeton, By strict command from Pluto, hell's great monarch, And fair Proserpina, the queen of hell, By full consent of all the damned hags, And all the fiends that keep the Stygian plains, Hath sent me here from depth of underground ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... And pill Concoctor, Most worthy follower in the steps Of Dr. Epps, And eke that cannie man Old Dr. Hanneman— Two individuals of consummate gumption, Who declare, That whensoe'er The patient's labouring under a consumption, To save him from a trip across the Styx, To ancient Nick's In Charon's shallop, If the consumption be upon the canter, It should be put upon the gallop Instanter; For, "similia similibus curantur," Great medicinal cod (Beating the mode Of old Hippocrates, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... in his hand a wooden dish with circles and semicircles marked on it in chalk. He put it down on the table and stood silent, sad, and sombre, as Charon by Styx waiting for his boat-load of souls. Then pouches and purses were rummaged, and each threw a coin into the dish. Gerard timidly observed that he had drunk next to no beer, and inquired how much less he was ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and oxalic acid. But, alas! in the matter of apology, it is not from the excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it is dispensed, that poor Humanity is hurried off to the Styx! How many times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology! Is it a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it? Make your will,—you are a dead man! A life do I say?—a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she took an oath by the waters of Styx, which to all the gods is most dread and most awful, that the Harpies would never thereafter again approach the home of Phineus, son of Agenor, for so it was fated. And the heroes yielding to the oath, turned back their flight to the ship. And on account of this ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... to roast all his enemies. It must be at once confessed that there are instances in the Divina Commedia which, taken by themselves, would lead one to so superficial an estimate of the man. In Canto VIII of the Inferno Dante with his guide, Virgil, enters a bark on the Styx and sails across the broad marsh. During the passage a spirit all covered with mud addresses Dante, who recognizes him as Filippo Argenti, a Florentine notorious for his arrogance and brutal violence. "Master," ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... "and dreadful Styx, ye sufferings of the damned, and Chaos, for ever eager to destroy the fair harmony of worlds, and thou, Pluto, condemned to an eternity of ungrateful existence, Hell, and Elysium, of which no Thessalian witch shall partake, Proserpine, for ever cut off from thy health-giving ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... always kissed at such affairs, and there was general jollification and cake, but this seemed more like a newfangled funeral, with the dear departed acting as his own Charon and steering himself across the Styx." ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... his brother pagans beyond the Styx; but Lisette blooms in evergreen youth. This young French person's theory of woman's rights is different from the one which obtains in New England; nor does she trouble herself at all to seek for woman's mission. She found it years ago. It is to deceive a man. She is satisfied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the golden branch from its ancient trunk and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, and was greeted by the mute ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... wintry Dodona, and dwelt on the tilth about lovely Titaresios that poureth his fair-flowing stream into Peneios. Yet doth he not mingle with the silver eddies of Peneios, but floweth on over him like unto oil, seeing that he is an offspring from the water of Styx, the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... philosophical mythology sprang up by the side of religious mythology. The religious mythology consisted in speaking of the spirits of the departed as ghosts, as mere breath and air, as fluttering about the gates of Hades, or ferried across the Styx in the boat ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... the Buddhists worshipped their sleeve idols. The gopa, or headman of Sati, a splendid fellow, who accompanied us through Nubra, and eight wild-looking, half-naked satellites, were the Charons of that Styx. They poled and paddled with yells of excitement; the rapids seized the scow, and carried her broadside down into hissing and raging surges; then there was a plash, a leap of maddened water half filling the boat, a struggle, a whirl, violent efforts, and a united ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... am lifeless and dead, back from the abode below, and hath brought me again into upper air, let him pay full penalty with his own death in the dreary shades beneath livid Styx. Behold, counter to my will and purpose, I must declare some bitter tidings. For as ye go away from this house ye will come to the narrow path of a grove, and will be a prey to demons all about. Then she who hath brought our death back from ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... quasi-scientific gentlemen to gather round, and express, with cheery capable look, their opinions,—still legible in the vanished JUGEMENS LIBRES (of Hamburg), GAZETTE DE SAVANS (Leipzig), and other poor Shadows of JOURNALS, if you daringly evoke them from the other side of Styx. Which, the whole matter being now so indisputably extinct, shadowy, Stygian, we will not here be guilty of doing; but hasten to the catastrophes, that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Peleca, in Thessaly, turn every thing white; and Bodine states that the stuttering of the families of Aquatania, about Labden, is entirely owing to their being water-drinkers: a man might as well drink of the river Styx as the river Thames, 'Stygio monstrum conforme paludi,' a monstrous drink, thickened by the decomposition of dead Christians and dead brutes, and purified by the odoriferous introduction of gas water and puddle water, joined to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 32: To the Stygian shades.—Ver. 139. That is, in deep caverns, and towards the centre of the earth; for Styx was feigned to be a river of the Infernal Regions, situate in the depths ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... letter for you, sir," said Johnson, handing in the third of the missives to come in that day's mail from beyond the Styx. It was inscribed: ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... had, what looked like a mountain in that subterranean region, rising from the ground, with a stream running at its base. We crossed several rivers; besides the "Echo," one called the "Styx," the other the "Lethe." Our guide had brought a net, with which he caught some fish and crawfish. On examining them we could discover no appearance of eyes, while, from being deprived of the warm rays of the sun, they were perfectly white. Uncle Denis remarked that as they had no lamps down ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Ev'n the Styx, which ninefold her infoldeth Hems not Ceres' daughter in its flow; But she grasps the apple—ever holdeth Her, sad Orcus, down below." SCHILLER, Das Ideal ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... called disgrace—what then? Cannot one, in case of need, always carry a small powder about one, which quietly smooths the weary traveller's passage across the Styx, where no cock-crowing will disturb his rest? No, brother Moritz! Your scheme is good; so at least ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... That's why I'm taking up this case. I believe science can really be used to detect crime, any crime, and in the present instance I've just pride enough to stick to this thing until - until they begin to cut ice on the Styx. Whew, but it will be cold out in the country to-night, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... interspersed with vulgarisms in dialect, and traits of vulgar manners; to dress up these materials in a Sing-Song jingle; and to offer them for sale as a Poem. According to the most approved recipes, something about the heathen gods and goddesses; and the schoolboy topics of Styx and Cerberus, and Elysium; are occasionally thrown in, and the composition is complete. The stock in trade of these Adventurers is in general scanty enough; and their Art therefore consists in disposing ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... field of activity open in Berlin, and could not comprehend why I should seek greater freedom of person and of action. Little really is known in Berlin about America, and to go there is considered as great an undertaking as to seek the river Styx in order to go to Hades. The remark that I heard from almost every quarter was, "What! you wish to go to the land of barbarism, where they have negro slavery, and where they do not know how to appreciate talent and genius?" But this could not prevent ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... an indelible obligation if they swore by Styx, the Scottish Highlanders had usually some peculiar solemnity attached to an oath which they intended should be binding on them. Very frequently it consisted in laying their hand, as they swore, on their own drawn dirk; ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... only on the verdureless banks of the Styx. When Proserpine, who was gathering flowers, was carried away to the dark Avernus, all the other blossoms which she had woven in her garland withered and died, but the Poppy; and that the goddess planted in the ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... bleak, black plateau, as hideous as desolation could render it, according well with the scenery of the desolate grave-stones we had just seen, and the woeful tales about them we had heard. It was the veritable beach of the river Styx. I turned with a chill of horror from the waste back again upon the valley which we had left. How different the view! Here we beheld the ten thousand fair waving palms, which cover the green bosom of The Wady,—a paradise encircled with ridges and outlines of the most frightful sterility. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... denizens of a country, a fairy realm, which figures partly as an abode of the dead, and which we are certainly justified in identifying with the Celtic Otherworld. The river which the fairy-woman crosses bears a certain resemblance to the Styx, or she tells Graelent plainly that should he reach its opposite bank he is as good as dead. Fairyland in early Celtic lore may be a place of delight, but it is none the less one of death ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... remained for ever unmixed, at the bottom of which I found this son-in-law for my poor daughter, my innocent Dora, then unborn; but she must make the best of him for me and herself, since the fates and my word, irrevocable as the Styx, have bound me to him, the purse-proud grazier and mean man—not a remnant of a gentleman! as the father was. Oh, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... shouted, "a man may not fight cowards, but he can cudgel them! An I have to wait for you on the River Styx, I'll punish you for making me break promise to ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... was easy enough; the lighthouse station at Styx broadcast a strong beep sunward every ten seconds. They could also pick up the radio lighthouses on Eros, Ceres, Luna, and Mimas. Evidently, the one on Titan was behind the ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... diligences, and old postilions in pigtails and jack-boots, who were once as alive as I am, and whose cracking whips I have heard in the midnight many and many a time. Now, where are they? Behold they have been ferried over Styx, and have passed ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Dodona lifts her holy trees; Or where the pleasing Titaresius glides, And into Peneus rolls his easy tides; Yet o'er the silvery surface pure they flow, The sacred stream unmix'd with streams below, Sacred and awful! from the dark abodes Styx pours them forth, the dreadful ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the prow, you may launch forth like a cucullo into the night. The dullest soul cannot go upon such an expedition without some of the spirit of adventure; as if he had stolen the boat of Charon and gone down the Styx on a midnight expedition into the realms of Pluto. And much speculation does this wandering star afford to the musing nightwalker, leading him on and on, jack-o'lantern-like, over the meadows; or, if he is wiser, he ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... hundred arms the heavens, "Already captive deem'd. Though fierce our foe, "One race alone warr'd with us, sprung from one. "Now all must perish; all within the bounds "By Nereus circled with his roaring waves. "I swear by Styx, by those infernal streams, "Through shades slow creeping. All I could I've try'd. "But lest to parts unsound the taint should spread, "What baffles cure, the knife must lop away. "Our demi-gods we have,—we have our nymphs, "Our rustic deities,—our satyrs,—fawns, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;—'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx—and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't—but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... his opponent. In the end the dog won, but he was the most devastated small dog that I have ever seen, before or since, and had it not been for prompt surgical aid at his home nearby I dare say Charon might have ferried both shades over the Styx together. No, the woodchuck is not so easy to get. He is quite likely to whip his own weight in most anything that forces ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... he his water-pot strangely has twirl'd; Or he's taken a cullender up by mistake, And unceasingly dips it in some mighty lake; Though it is not in Lethe—for who can forget The annoyance of getting most thoroughly wet? It must be in the river called Styx, I declare, For the moment it drizzles it makes the men swear. "It did rain to-morrow," is growing good grammar; Vauxhall and camp-stools have been brought to the hammer; A pony-gondola is all I can keep, And I use my umbrella and pattens ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... lying as ghost books, in a limbo on the banks of a certain Bristolian Styx, humanly speaking, a Canal; but the other apparatus of life is gathered about me, and performs its diurnal functions. The place pleases me better than I expected: a far lookout on all sides, over green country; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... however, we are conscious of a change. The gluttons seated or lying on putrid earth and exposed to lashing rain; the misusers of wealth, with all human lineaments effaced, and engaged in a foolish and wearisome scuffle; the ill-tempered, floating on the surface of the foul marsh of Styx or lying submerged in it according as their disposition was to fierce wrath or sullen brooding—all these are not merely ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... the same tone. "Crossing the Styx—perhaps." He heard Mr. Travers utter an unmoved "Very likely," which he did not expect. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat like a man ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of hay might be driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six" and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while the "fifty-six" was resting by the way, they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... in sight, growing slate-colour in the earliest dawn. He could see the boat nuzzling up against the pier, and snoring in its sleep. He said to himself that this was Styx and the fare an obolus. As he jumped on board, with hot face and hotter heart, Charon clicked his signal to the engines; the boat slowly snuffled itself half awake, and shoved out into the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... You turn the leaves of dead books; you are too young for antiquities. Look about you, the pale throng of men surrounds you. The eyes of life's sphynx glitter in the midst of divine hieroglyphics; decipher the book of life! Courage, scholar, launch out on the Styx, the deathless flood, and let the waves of sorrow waft you ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... the old celestial cant, Confess'd his flame, and swore by Styx, Whate'er she would desire, to grant— But wise Ardelia ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... to guide and support him in the conflict, and to succor him in danger. Achilles, on the other hand, possessed a charmed life. He had been dipped by his mother Thetis, when an infant, in the river Styx, to render him invulnerable and immortal; and the immersion produced the effect intended in respect to all those parts of the body which the water laved. As, how ever, Thetis held the child by the ankles when she plunged him in, the ankles remained unaffected by the magic ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... into Eternity And leaving the other alive as ever— As each wades through that ghastly stream, The satins that rustle and gems that gleam, Will grow pale and heavy, and sink away To the noisome River's bottom-clay! Then the costly bride and her maidens six, Will shiver upon the banks of the Styx, Quite as helpless as they were born— Naked souls, and very forlorn; The Princess, then, must shift for herself, And lay her royalty on the shelf; She, and the beautiful Empress, yonder, Whose robes are now the wide world's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... of anything in my life. We stopped, and I examined my clothes, and they were perfectly dry. The excitement and warmth of the body had acted like a drying-room in a laundry. Then I laid down under a fence and went to sleep, and dreamed I was in hades, building a corduroy bridge across the Styx, and that the devil repremanded me for building it in the wrong place. When I awoke I was so stiff with rheumatism that I had to be helped up from under the fence, and they put me in an ambulance with a soldier who had his jaw shot ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... LYTTLETON, so keen behind the wicket; Lord KINNAIRD, who once was hot upon the ball, Give our Arabs chance of football and of cricket. And you'll fairly earn the hearty thanks of all; For the young City Children, doomed to rummage In dim alleys foul as Styx, Never else may know the rapture of a "scrummage," Or "a slashing drive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... characters whose witty conversation furnishes all the amusement necessary. If the characters do act they have an unfortunate tendency to indulge in horse play. The work of John Kendrick Bangs well illustrates this type of story. His books, "The House Boat on the Styx" and "The Pursuit of the House Boat," are really only collections of short stories, for each chapter can ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... river to cross, I am told, Is the one that is known as the Styx; But, if rider and horseman be equally bold, You can do it by aid of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... '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 Phlegethon, Whose waves of torrent fire ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... sufficiently bewailed her in the upper {realms of} air, that he might try the shades below as well, he dared to descend to Styx by the Taenarian gate, and amid the phantom inhabitants and ghosts that had enjoyed the tomb, he went to Persephone, and him that held these unpleasing realms, the Ruler of the shades; and touching his strings in concert with his words, he thus said, "O ye ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... undertone of sadness and alarm. Not Orpheus' self, he says (I, xxiv, 13), in his exquisite lament for dead Quinctilius, can bring back life-blood to the phantom pale who has joined the spectral band that voyage to Styx: the gods are pitiless—we can only bear bereavements patiently (II, iii). You must leave, my Dellius, your pleasant groves and your cottage upon Tiber's banks, since Orcus, ruthless king, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... him to his own devices. If Southey's, "The Curse of Kehama," happens to be nearest his plate, he will naturally begin with that as I did with the deviled eggs. Or he may nibble at "The House-Boat on the Styx" while some one is passing the Shakespeare along. He may like Emerson, and ask for a second helping, and that's all right, too, for that's a nourishing sort of food. Having partaken of this generously, he will enjoy all the more the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... war-dance. Amid the wild yells of the invisible dancers could be heard the barking of their dogs. Then, sliding down the roots, the spirits disappeared in the cave. Within its recesses was a river flowing between sandy shores. All were impelled to cross it. The Charon of this Styx was no man, but a ferrywoman called Rohe. Any soul whom she carried over and who ate the food offered to it on the further bank was doomed to abide in Hades. Any spirit who refused returned to its body ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and patted him on the shoulder as she answered: "Thou art a sad rogue, and very deep of wit, as anyone may see by these words of thine. Now hear me swear: Witness, thou earth, and the wide heaven above us, and the dark waterfall of Styx, the greatest and most awful thing by which a god may swear, that I intend no ill, but only good, ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... Fielding himself deserves quotation, whether drawn by his own hand or that of another. The Champion for May 24, 1740, contains a vision of the Infernal Regions, where Charon, the ghostly boatman, is busy ferrying souls across the River Styx. The ferryman bids his attendant Mercury see that all his passengers embark carrying nothing with them; and the narrator describes how, after various Shades had qualified for their passage, "A tall Man came next, who stripp'd ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... has been sucked in by the mud-nymphs, and how they have shown him a branch of Styx which here pours into the Thames, and diffuses its soporific vapours over the Temple and its purlieus. He is solemnly welcomed by Milbourn (a reverend antagonist of Dryden), who tells him to "receive these robes which ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... all the Muses' laws, He may revenge his injured father's cause, Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go, And view your monarch in the shades below, Who takes not now from Helicon his drink, But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink; Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns, And in a pile of his own labours burns; Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise, Supplied with fuel from his impious plays; And when he ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Post," all my visionary guineas, the deceitful wages of unborn scandal. In truth, I wonder you took it up so seriously. All my intention was but to make a little sport with such public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c.—gentry dipped in Styx all over, whom no paper javelin-lings can touch. To have made free with these cattle, where was the harm? 'twould have been but giving a polish to lampblack, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After all, I cannot but regret my involuntary ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... figures, all gigantic as Gargantua, Floated before my eyes, and all the six Were shades like those that once the bard of Mantua Saw by the shore of Styx. ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... Styx, in Arcadia. Cassander says he has in a phial some of this "horrid spring," one drop of which, mixed with wine, would act as a deadly ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the slender cable down deep in the throbbing bosom of the ocean and of the little spark that brings the news to your door; and then reflect on the men whose abilities accomplish these results. Think of his work in the countries where it is so hot that it seems as if the land beyond the River Styx is at his elbow; in lands where it is always cold and the days and nights are long. In season and out; in times of death, pestilence and famine, with never a murmur, these sturdy, loyal men, and true-hearted women do their work. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... possible, not quarrel. Far from man, sir, in the virgin forest. Thence, as my strength returns, you may expect works of genius. I always feel as if I must write a work of genius some time or other; and when is it more likely to come off, than just after I have paid a visit to Styx and go thence to the eternal mountains? Such a revolution in a man's affairs, as I have somewhere written, would set anybody singing. When we get installed, Lloyd and I are going to print my poetical works; so all those who have been poetically addressed shall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Death, and offers him the bribe of a gold chain if he will shut the eyes of Zeus, Sleep does not think it can be done. Here then doubles her bribe, and offers Sleep a wife, the youngest of the Graces. Sleep makes her swear by Styx that she will hold to her word, and when she has done so flies off in her company, sits in the shape of a night-hawk in a pine tree upon the peak of Ida, whence when Zeus was subdued by love and sleep, Sleep went down to the ships to tell ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... journey; but I shall never again undertake such another. It was one of those things that have to be done once, to learn not to do it again. My only reading between Columbus and Pittsburgh is to be here in Zanesville, a town as black as Acheron, and where one might expect to see the river Styx. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... refusal of his hireling to go forward, and the impossibility of securing a trustworthy substitute convinced him finally that he had erred grievously in his method. Some men are invulnerable to open attack, and Gray, it seemed, had been wet in the waters of the Styx. No, that had been a bad beginning and Nelson regretted it, for he feared it had served as ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... I can usefully bequeath my little fortune, my sisters having each married rich men. I shall not need even Charon's obolus when I am dead, for we have ceased to believe in him—which is a pity, as the trip across the Styx must have been picturesque. Why, then, should I not deal myself a happy lot and portion by squandering my ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Death, that comes unto the king, And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne; And drowns his glory and his warfaring In unrecorded dim oblivion; And girds another with the sword thereof; And sets another in his stead to reign; And ousts the remnant, nakedly to gain Styx' formless shore and nakedly complain Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... about a penny, according to a custom among the Greeks placed in the mouth of a corpse at burial to pay to Charon to ferry the ghost of it over the Styx. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
