"Tantalus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lyre he played. Tantalus—who, for his crimes, had been condemned to stand up to his neck in water and yet never be able to assuage his thirst—Tantalus heard, and for a while did not strive to put his lips toward the water that ever flowed away from ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... comes to the rich and the poor alike, and comes once for all; but remember, Acheron could not be bribed by gold to ferry the crafty Prometheus back to the sunlit world. Tantalus, too, great as he was above all mortals, went down to the kingdom of the dead, never to return. Remember, too, that, although death is inexorable, yet he is just; for he brings retribution to the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Pluto. Why do you go on? The impartial earth is opened equally to the poor and to the sons of kings; nor has the life-guard ferryman of hell, bribed with gold, re-conducted the artful Prometheus. He confines proud Tantalus; and the race of Tantalus, he condescends, whether invoked or not, to relieve the poor freed from ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... each individual his own peculiar adventures. Vossius refers the adventure of Niobe, the daughter of Phoroneus, to Jupiter Apis, the king of Argos, who reigned about B.C. 1770; and that of Danae to Jupiter Proetus, who lived about 1350 years before the Christian era. It was Jupiter Tantalus, according to him, that carried off Ganymede; and it was Jupiter, the father of Hercules, that deceived Leda. He says that the subject of the present Fable was Jupiter Asterius, who reigned about B.C. 1400. Diodorus Siculus tells us that he was the son of Teutamus, who, having married the daughter ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... things, and touched the strings to his words, the bloodless spirits wept. Tantalus did not catch at the retreating water, and the wheel of Ixion stood still, {as though} in amazement; the birds did not tear the liver {of Tityus}; and the granddaughters of Belus paused at their urns; thou, too, Sisyphus, didst seat thyself on thy stone. The story is, that ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... up this comedy of passion with wonderful energy. One day, when the royal barge, passing down to Gravesend, crossed below his window, he raved and stormed, swearing that his enemies had brought the Queen thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just catch a sight of the Queen, or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... you, Bishop, observation has taught me all the shades and delicate gradations of that difference. We women no more mistake the latter for the former, than the gods who declined to turn cannibal when they went to dine with Tantalus, and were offered a fricassee of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... accursed cliff! Look at the beautiful water! It smiles. It ripples on, on, on! Let us drink. No, not yet; we cannot yet. We must go farther. Ugh! Such a height to leap from! But we must drink, one and all. Come, Gode! Come, Moro, old friend! Alp, come on! We shall reach it; we shall drink. Who is Tantalus? Ha! ha! Not I; not I! Stand back, fiends! Do not push me over! ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... unmarried," said the Colonel; "that my sword is my whole fortune; and that such a challenge is setting Tantalus down to a banquet which he ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... over a new leaf, and given christian measure to his customers, was now a thriving man. When they again inspected the larder, they saw the same spirit, but woefully reduced in size, and in vain attempting to reach at the full plates and bottles, which stood around him; starving, in short, like Tantalus, in the midst of plenty. Honest Heywood ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... but the piteous tale I've heard men tell Of Tantalus' doomed child, Chained upon Siphylus' high rocky fell, That clung like ivy wild, Drenched by the pelting rain and whirling snow, Left there to pine, While on her frozen breast the tears aye ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... their infatuation, for their water was all expended, and they had taken no thought how they should be supplied till either the ship came or the boat returned, which was not likely to be under five or six days. Here, like Tantalus, they almost famished in sight of the fresh streams and lakes, being drove to such extremity at last that they were forced to tear up the floor of the cabin and patch up a sort of tub or tray with rope-yarns to paddle ashore ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... a minute," cried the girl; and she ran off, leaving the young sailor in the position of that mythical gentleman Tantalus, waiting her return. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... he locked up spirit tantalus and cigar-box with his wonted deliberation; and on reaching the drawing-room found her absorbed in contemplation of Dick's portrait, hands clasped behind her, the unbroken lines of her grey-green dress lending height and dignity to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... all unusual about the place. The room was in exactly the same condition as I had observed it hundreds of times before when I had dropped in for a smoke and a chat. On the table, beside the lamp, was a tantalus and a glass, and a half empty syphon. The glass had been used and the ash on the floor, beside an armchair, showed that a cigar had accompanied the drink. A pair of slippers lay on the hearth rug as if they had been carelessly kicked off. Forrest ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... marriage of Cana in Galilee; for how much soever you shall draw forth at the faucet, so much shall I tun in at the bung. Thus shall the barrel remain inexhaustible; it hath a lively spring and perpetual current. Such was the beverage contained within the cup of Tantalus, which was figuratively represented amongst the Brachman sages. Such was in Iberia the mountain of salt so highly written of by Cato. Such was the branch of gold consecrated to the subterranean goddess, which Virgil treats of so sublimely. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... dear one?" he asked, looking at her with the wistful eyes of Tantalus gazing at the luscious fruits which the wrathful winds wafted ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... render life agreeable, or that a God who has created all things, every object the most desirable to the nourishment and health of man, should nevertheless forbid him their use? The Christian religion appears to doom its votaries to the punishment of Tantalus. The most part of the superstitions in the world have made of God a capricious and jealous sovereign, who amuses himself by tempting the passions and exciting the desires of his slaves, without permitting them the gratification of the one or the enjoyment of the other. We see among all sects the ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the Tantalus of the fable, man, plunged in this world of woe with his lips thirsty for happiness, stretches out his hand to pluck the bitter Dead-Sea fruits of this earth. With his profound instincts of the Infinite, his craving for the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "My silks and fine array" William Blake The Flight of Love Percy Bysshe Shelley "Farewell! If ever Fondest Prayer" George Gordon Byron Porphyria's Lover Robert Browning Modern Beauty Arthur Symons La Belle Dame Sans Merci John Keats Tantalus—Texas Joaquin Miller Enchainment Arthur O'Shaughnessy Auld Robin Gray Anne Barnard Lost Light Elizabeth Akers A Sigh Harriet Prescott Spofford Hereafter Harriet Prescott Spofford Endymion Oscar Wilde "Love is a Terrible Thing" Grace Fallow Norton The Ballad ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... tantalus and found a syphon in the corner cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed to ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... questions arise," murmured the young man sadly, and his thoughts reminded him of the renowned son of Jupiter dying of thirst with the tempting element raised to his chin, but could not partake of a single drop. "Ah! there's many a modern Tantalus," said Phillip wearily, "many ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... heads," according to the calculation of Alfred, whose mythology is not very safe. Charon welcomes the harper, "because he was desirous of the unaccustomed sound"; all sufferings cease at the melody of the harp; the wheel of Ixion ceases to turn; the hunger of Tantalus is appeased; the vulture ceases to torment King Tityus; and the prayer ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... to him what seemed the bitterest memories of all. It was the thought of that first too fragile happiness which slowly but implacably merged into discontent, still hidden and tacit, but none the less evident. That interregnum of peace had been a Tantalus-like taste of a draught which he all along knew was to be denied him. Yet, point by point, he recalled their first quiet and hopeful weeks in England, when their old ways of life seemed as far away as the America they had left behind, when they still had unbounded faith in themselves and in the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... foresight &c. 510. contemplation, prospection[obs3], lookout; prospect, perspective, horizon, vista; destiny &c. 152. suspense, waiting, abeyance; curiosity &c. 455; anxious expectation, ardent expectation, eager expectation, breathless expectation, sanguine expectation; torment of Tantalus. hope &c. 858; trust &c. (belief) 484; auspices &c. (prediction) 511; assurance, confidence, presumption, reliance. V. expect; look for, look out for, look forward to; hope for; anticipate; have in prospect, have in contemplation; keep in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... patient, lingring vnder the rough hands of a cruell phisitian: his creditor hauing cast his water knowes his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him. He is like Tantalus, who hath freedome running by his doore, yet cannot enioy the least benefit thereof. His greatest griefe is that his credit was so good and now no better. His land is drawne within the compasse of a sheepe's skin, and his owne hand the fortification that barres him of entrance: hee is fortunes ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... relation of which is melancholy in the extreme, but there is no approach to fun in the whole penny library. And yet it attracts, it is calculated, four millions of readers—a fact which makes my mouth water like that of Tantalus. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... to my face? He that hath robbed me of my peace, my energy, the whole love of my life? Could I call the fabled Hydra, I would have him live and perish, survive and die, until the sun itself would grow dim with age. I would make him have the thirst of a Tantalus, and roll the wheel of an Ixion, until the stars of heaven should quit their ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Dandy a bucket of water, and as the man carried it and the horse pawed and whinnied at the welcome sight, the quartermaster appeared on his piazza, and shouted in wrath to the soldier not to interfere again or he'd "have him in the lock-up." And poor Dandy, like an equine Tantalus, was robbed of the needed fluid. Ray could bear no more. He kept one foot inside the door-way as his arrest demanded, but leaning far out, with blazing eyes and clinching fist he hurled his challenge at the quartermaster in a voice that rang along ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... when he sought the fleece of gold, Or change from man to beast three years entire, As King Nebuchadnezzar did of old; Or else have times as shameful and as bad As Trojan folk for ravished Helen had; Or gulfed with Proserpine and Tantalus Let hell's deep fen devour him dolorous, With worse to bear than Job's worst sufferance, Bound in his prison-maze with Daedalus, Who could wish evil to the ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a traveller who had returned from Hades where he had conversed with Tantalus and with others of the shades. They all agreed that for the first six, or perhaps twelve, months they disliked their punishment very much; but after that, it was like shelling peas on a hot afternoon in July. They began by discovering (no doubt long after the fact had been apparent ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... still he was insatiate and unappeased. Her husband's suspicions meanwhile had been aroused. She spent so much money in occult ways that he had been impelled to ask her father what he thought L—— was doing with so much money. Fettered thus, with the torments both of Prometheus and Tantalus—the vulture gnawing at her vitals, and the lost joys mocking her out of reach—she had at last in sheer desperation been driven to request her father to procure her the ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... I be able to read Chinese, nor even Japanese; and the little Japanese poetry that I manage, with exceeding difficulty, to translate, contains so many allusions to Chinese stories of butterflies that I am tormented with the torment of Tantalus... And, of course, no spirit-maidens will even deign to visit so skeptical a person ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... you'd like to see the boss? Well, he's comin' right on over. Just now he's eatin' a mess o' bacon and beans and cawfee, over to the camp. My Gawd, that's good cawfee, too. Like to have some, eh?" But Wade refused to play Tantalus to the lure of this temptation and kept silent. "Here he ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... other accomplishments, my aunt is a very fair accountant. She has found out that the girl cannot eat figs and candies in a year to the amount of sixty thousand florins, so she is not over-willing to part with her at all. But I am not going to play the Tantalus for years, and run the risk of having the girl snatched from me by some jackanapes ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... indignation is superfluous; both sets have just what they deserve—one as hungry and thirsty and dry-mouthed as Tantalus, getting no further than gaping at the gold; and the other finding its food swept away from its very gullet, as the Harpies served Phineus. Come, be off with you; you will find Timon has much more ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... believe that the tortures of Tantalus were greater than were mine at this moment. In all my hopes of rescue or release, I had included nothing so strange, so improbable as this. A sort of awe possessed me; for if by this means the key which should release me should come into my possession, how ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... fact is that it was for passionate admirers the torment of Tantalus to see Chopin going about a whole evening in a salon and not to hear him. The mistress of the house took pity on us; she was indiscreet, and Chopin played, sang his most delicious songs; we set to these joyous or sad airs the words which came into our heads; we followed with our thoughts his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Tantalus lay far out on a spiral arm, well away from the main stream of traffic that flowed through the galaxy. It was a fair planet boasting an equable climate, at least in the tropic zone. But as yet the population was small, consisting mostly of administrative officials ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... care? She is nothing to you. Ah! I begin to see," he continued thoughtfully; "you would not regret had he a taste of the Tantalus punishment." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... all these disquisitions with indolence and indifference. At present they seem to be in a very lamentable condition, and such as the poets have given us but a faint notion of in their descriptions of the punishment of Sisyphus and Tantalus. For what can be imagined more tormenting, than to seek with eagerness, what for ever flies us; and seek for it in a place, where it is impossible ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... said Mr. Ratler. "Lord de Terrier wants nothing better, but it is rather hard upon poor Daubeny. I never saw such an unfortunate old Tantalus." ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Yea ferried ouer with Charon [Caron passenger of Hell.] and yet he did no hurt. Well to my purpose now, in Hell what hurt had hee? Perchance he might strange sights inow and vgly spirits there see: Perhaps eke Tantalus, there, making of his mone, Who staru'd always: and Sysiphus still rolling vp the stone. Yet Orpheus passed by, and went still on his way, There was no torment came him nigh or heate to make him stay. And I a Gods name woulde at ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... wait and watch this Robin Hood Dangle the fruit of Tantalus before me, Then eat it in my sight! I have borne enough! He gave me like a fairing to my brother In Sherwood Forest; and I now must watch him, A happy bridegroom with the happy bride, Whose lips ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... you want to know precisely the state I am in, read the account of the Myth of Tantalus, beginning at 20—p. 24 and going on ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... this torment, which is that of Tantalus. This is my last night on earth. After one final effort, our Mother shall have her child again—the Adriatic ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... made stones, birds, and beasts, to lead a dance, Constrained the hilly trees to follow him, Thou couldst not move the judge of Erebus, Nor move compassion in grim Pluto's heart; For fatal Mors expecteth all the world, And every man must tread the way of death. Brave Tantalus, the valiant Pelops' sire, Guest to the gods, suffered untimely death, And old Tithonus, husband to the morn, And eke grim Minos, whom just Jupiter Deigned to admit unto his sacrifice. The thundering trumpets of blood-thirsty Mars, The fearful rage of fell ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... the sensations we experienced. The trees which crowned the mountains, the green fields, the banana-trees which surrounded the dwellings, all combined to charm our senses with an inexpressible delight; but the sea broke violently on the shore, and, like Tantalus, we were obliged to devour with our eyes what ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... lovers are natural and uninventive. They get married. Pursuit, with all its Tantalus delights, its sighings and its songs, is gone, never to return. And in its place is possession, which is satisfaction, familiarity, knowledge. It heralds the return of rationality, the return to duty of the weighing and measuring qualities of the mind. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... there one night. He had a little book on the washstand that he read instead of shopping in the saloons after hours. 'I'm on to that,' says I, 'from reading about it in novels. All the heroes on the bum carry the little book. It's either Tantalus or Liver or Horace, and its printed in Latin, and you're a college man. And I wouldn't be surprised,' says I, 'if you wasn't educated, too.' But it was only the batting averages of the League ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... and bowlders that were too hard to be bitten into dust and have fallen out of the cliff, which is fifty feet high, as the sea eats it away. Some of these are sculptured into the likeness effaces and figures, solemn and grotesque. It is easy to find Pharaoh, Cleopatra, Tantalus, represented here. ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... preparing for us; whatever might have been the wishes of Sheikh Hamed and the black chief, the voices of the marabouts and the people prevailed. We were doomed to a fate scarcely less terrible than that of Tantalus. We were condemned to be buried alive, with our heads above the sand,—water and food being placed just beyond our reach, so that we might see the means of saving life and yet be unable to profit thereby. Certainly, I think, the ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... pair were the long lines of very pale and anxious faces (I really must except my own, for my face never looked anxious till I thought of marrying, or pale till I took to scribbling), the possessors of which were experiencing a little the torment of Tantalus. The palisades, those graves of sand, turned into a rich compost by the ever-recurring burial, were directly under the windows, and the land-breeze came over them, chill and dank, in palpable currents, through the jalousies, into the heated room; and, had one thrust ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... worse," sighed I, with a submissive mind, as I drew a lame table from the window where the wind and rain were not contented to stop outside. At that moment my eye fell upon a brilliantly blazing fire in a kitchen, which lay, Tantalus-like, directly opposite to my modest room, where the fireplace was as ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... the empty glass. "Au contraire, mon cher," he said. "I am no richer than you are. Like Tantalus, I can never quench my thirst. Like many a better man than I, I see the stars, but I ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... that King, and the old spear laid low That Tantalus wielded when the world was young. Aegisthus hath his queen, and reigns among His people. And the children here alone, Orestes and Electra, buds unblown Of man and womanhood, when forth to Troy He shook his sail and left them—lo, the ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... there is nothing more stimulating to human patience, and courage, and energy, than the certain prospect of relief at the end, so there is nothing more depressing than to see that relief suddenly snatched away, and the same round of toil thrust again under one's feet! This is the fate of Tantalus ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... with down, amid a thousand wants, Pale Dropsy rears his bloated form, and pants; "Quench me, ye cool pellucid rills!" he cries, Wets his parch'd tongue, and rolls his hollow eyes. So bends tormented TANTALUS to drink, 420 While from his lips the refluent waters shrink; Again the rising stream his bosom laves, And Thirst consumes him 'mid circumfluent waves. —Divine HYGEIA, from the bending sky Descending, listens to his ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... order to open the boxes, and lay out the machines, to show them to the sultan. Accordingly, on the third, I was sent for, and I exhibited the following experiments; viz. head and wig; dancing images; electric stool; cotton fired; small receiver and stand; hemispheres; Archimedes' screw; siphon; Tantalus's cup; water-pump; condensing engine, &c. Captain Dovetoun was present, and explained, as I went on, to the sultan, who has given us an instance of his being acquainted with some of these experiments. He has shown us a condensing engine made by himself, which ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... it shall not be serv'd like Tantalus any more: he was doom'd to behold; and, beholding, to wish and languish for the tempting draught, in vain: but a better doom awaits the happy Harriet;—what she desires is not thus interdicted, but will soon be ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... be taken not to confound Attalus with Tantalus,—a blunder which, as Villani observes, [Footnote: Cron. Lib. I. c. vii.] is often committed by ignorant chroniclers. But Tantalus, as we all very well know, was the son of Jupiter, and grandson of Saturn. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... orthodox phonograph and appurtenances. But if he could foresee the future as distinctly as Mr. Punch's Seer has done in the following prophetic visions, he might substitute a biscuit-box, or a fish-slice and fork, a Tantalus spirit-case, or even a dumb-waiter, as likely, on the whole, to inspire a ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... to their brave men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus, are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue and dehortations from wickedness collected; whereby good ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... negro, only there is no hope at the bottom. The wretchedness of his fate is not a little increased by being a constant witness of the unbounded freedom enjoyed by others: the slave's labor must necessarily be like the labor of Sisiphus; and here the torments of Tantalus are added. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... pride to a flourishing state to which, as they alleged, they had all belonged long ago on the slopes of Mount Sipylos, between the valley of the Hermos and the Gulf of Smyrna. The traditional capital of this kingdom was Magnesia, the most ancient of cities, the residence of Tantalus, the father of Niobe and the Pelopidae. The Leleges rise up before us from many points at the same time, but always connected with the most ancient memories of Greece and Asia. The majority of the strongholds on the Trojan coast belonged ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Tantalus, as the old Greek fable tells us, was King of Lydia. Being invited by Jupiter to his table, he heard secrets which he afterwards divulged. To divulge a secret is to make it vulgar, or common, by ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... antiquity—the Chimaera has given us 'chimerical,' Hermes 'hermetic,' Pan 'panic,' Paean, being a name of Apollo, the 'peony,' Tantalus 'to tantalize,' Hercules 'herculean,' Proteus 'protean,' Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic,' and Daedalus 'dedal,' if this word, for which Spenser, Wordsworth, and Shelley have all stood godfathers, may find allowance with us. The demi-god Atlas figures with a world upon his ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... one moment, and so neer the brink; But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt 610 Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards The Ford, and of it self the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on In confus'd march forlorn, th' adventrous Bands With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast View'd first thir lamentable lot, and found No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile They pass'd, and many a Region dolorous, O're many a Frozen, many a Fierie Alpe, 620 Rocks, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... themselves in its pellucid wave; some making the valley vocal with their melodious warblings, and others filling it with harsh, stridulous cries. Burning with thirst, and faint from fatigue, he will fix his gaze on the glistening water, to be tortured as Tantalus, and descry the cool shade, without being able to rest his weary ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... lesser heat of the earlier hours, but his way led him through loose sand, down into cuts and gorges, up their steep sides, across fields of loose stones, which, shifting underfoot, made his striving for haste a pure work of Tantalus. At the end of the first hour the heat was already intense; at the end of the second he felt that his skin was as dry as the desert sands and that the moisture of his body was being sucked out of it by the thirsty air and that at every stride the day grew drier and hotter. Thirst clutched his ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... one of their flattering panders, I would hang on their ears like a horseleech, till I were full, and then drop off. I pray, leave me. Who would rely upon these miserable dependencies, in expectation to be advanc'd to-morrow? What creature ever fed worse than hoping Tantalus? Nor ever died any man more fearfully than he that hoped for a pardon. There are rewards for hawks and dogs when they have done us service; but for a soldier that hazards his limbs in a battle, nothing but a kind of ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... I know her as a mystery; as Tantalus thirsting for the fruit which hangs ever beyond the reach, I know her; as a woman who is not what she seems, always masked, with or without the cambric. Know her?" with a laugh ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... white. To his mind the great point was, should their policy be one of repression or a policy of inspiration? They had inspired the Natives to a certain extent, but no sooner had they created an appetite than they had told the Natives they should go no further. Their policy was the policy of Tantalus. That Bill would create a feeling of insecurity in the minds of the Natives. There were those who said that if the Natives would not submit to dictation they should be wiped out. But that should not be their policy. They must cease the policy of repression ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... unresting labour of rolling up a hill in Tartarus, a huge unhewn block of stone, which so soon as he gets it to the hill top, for all his efforts, rolls down again. In classical representation of the scene he is associated with Tantalus and Ixion; Tantalus, who, presuming too much on his relations with Zeus, was after death afflicted with an unquenchable thirst amidst flowing fountains and pellucid lakes—like the lakes of "The Thirst of the Antelope" ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... pale, beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse, 'Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows there comes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... low sort of pleasure to recall—was my prompt discovery, as we gathered around the tea-board, to eat the picnic's remains, that our Flora was out of humor with the Baron. It was plain that the whole day's flood of small experiences had been to her pretty vanity a Tantalus's cup. She was quick to tell, with an irritation, which she genuinely tried to conceal, and with scarcely an ounce of words to a ton of dead-sweet insinuation, what a social failure he had chosen to be. Evidently he had spent every golden hour of sweet ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... records, but she has not the means of working them into a universal history. Is such a universal history, then, to be regarded as unattainable? Are all the grandest and most interesting problems which offer themselves to the geological student essentially insoluble? Is he in the position of a scientific Tantalus—doomed always to thirst for a knowledge which he cannot obtain? The reverse is to be hoped; nay, it may not be impossible to indicate the source ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... Art of Prolonging Human Life, in which he professes to have already attained the age of one thousand and twenty-five years. [180] He must by this account have been born about one hundred years after our Saviour. He professed to have visited the infernal regions, and there to have seen Tantalus seated on a throne of gold. He is also said by some to be the same person, whose life has been written by Philostratus under the name of Apollonius of Tyana. [181] He wrote a book on the philosopher's stone, which was published in Latin and French at Paris ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... asserting for them a more real and active existence than the old beliefs allowed. The subterranean kingdom of Hades (the "Invisible") is acquiring clearer shape. The punishments are described which certain great transgressors, such as Tantalus and Ixion, are there undergoing; and other details are also known. Of a different spirit is the conception of the Elysian plains in the far west, whither the hero is taken by the gods when he dies, and where there is no ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... W. Ralegh having gazed and sighed a long time at his study window, from whence he might discern the barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly brake out into a great distemper, and sware that his enemies had on purpose brought her majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus's torments, that when she went away he might see death before his eyes; with many such like conceits. And, as a man transported with passion, he sware to Sir George Carew that he would disguise himself, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... though his imagination possessed a seven-leagued-boot-power of travel, could have anticipated the last great exploit of our generals, whose energies thus far, have been devoted to the achieving of a 'masterly inactivity.' The 'forward movement' has receded and receded, like the cup of Tantalus, but the backward movement came suddenly upon us, like a ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... misfortunes of a luckless young man who goes to breakfast with an absent-minded pedagogue, and, being turned away empty, orders successive refreshments at different coffee-houses, each of which proves a feast of Tantalus. The idea is not bad; but the carrying out suits the stage better than the study, and is certainly far below such things as Maginn's adventures of Jack Ginger and his friends, with the tale untold ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... "Yes; there was a tantalus containing brandy and whisky on the sea-chest. It is of no importance to us, however, since the decanters were full, and it had ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as though ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the plan of action decided on by Hilda and Philip; no misadventure came to mock them, dashing the Tantalus cup of joy to earth before their eyes. On the contrary, within forty-eight hours of the conversation recorded in the last chapter, they were as completely and irrevocably man and wife, as a special licence and the curate of a city church, assisted by the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... substantial feature of the insubstantial world of shades. Sappho still sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of Alcaeus sounds its chords only to songs of earthly hardships by land and sea, Prometheus and Tantalus find no surcease from the pangs of torture, Sisyphus ever rolls the returning stone, and the Danaids ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... to enter the feasting hall, where we found the "ticket men" washed but unfed. All told, there must have been nearly seven hundred of us who sat down—not to meat or bread, but to speech, song, and prayer. From all of which I am convinced that Tantalus suffers in many guises this side of the infernal regions. The adjutant made the prayer, but I did not take note of it, being too engrossed with the massed picture of misery before me. But the speech ran something like this: "You will feast in Paradise. No matter ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... with enthusiasm. "Of all vices, indiscriminate hospitality is the most pernicious. It allows us neither conversation nor dinner, and realizing the mythological fable of Tantalus, gives us starvation in the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... belong to the public, in his own private gratification. The conscientious, the useful librarian, living amid the rich intellectual treasures of centuries, the vast majority of which he has never read, must be content daily to enact the part of Tantalus, in the presence of a tempting and appetizing banquet which is virtually beyond ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... was not in a happy frame of mind. Many things lay heavy upon his soul; but among these things there was not one named remorse. To have brought about all these failures this thought irked him most. Here was a crown almost within reach of his greedy fingers, the water to Tantalus. To have underestimated this yellow haired young woman, he who knew women so well—there lay the bitter sting. He had been too impetuous; he should have waited till all her fears had been allayed. That spawn of Siva, the military, was ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... taught, Who yields his arms, nor fends himself in fight? Was it a crime he for his country fought? Ill upon thee the sun bestows his light. Remorseless aera, which hast filled the page With Atreus', Tantalus', Thyestes' rage! ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Tan'talus, placed up to his chin in water, which ever flowed away from his lips, was tormented with unquenchable thirst, while the fruits hanging around him constantly eluded his grasp. The story of Tantalus is well told by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I dare say despise me. But I know the treasures of the Bible; I love and adore them. I can see the Well of Life in all its clearness and brightness; but when I stoop down to drink of the pure waters they fly from my lips as if I were Tantalus. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... which he does not possess, the partaker of the illustrious blood of Douglas, but which in his veins is sullied with illegitimacy. Paint him the ruthless, the daring, the ambitious—so nigh greatness, yet debarred from it; so near to wealth, yet excluded from possessing it; a political Tantalus, ready to do or dare anything to terminate his necessities and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... rain outright. However, yesterday there were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent outpouring. As to the new cistern, it seems to be bewitched; for, while the spout pours into it like a cataract, it still remains almost empty. I wonder where Mr. Hosmer got it; perhaps from Tantalus, under the eaves of whose palace it must formerly have stood; for, like his drinking-cup in Hades, it has the property of filling itself forever, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... that she might be driven still nearer; but, as we thought she was approaching, the current swept her away again into the middle of the stream. It was a melancholy exemplification of the story of Tantalus. There were those poor famished men floating down a river in the midst truly of plenty—for where can be found more fertile regions!—and yet they were unable to procure a mouthful of food to appease ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... now the same gan so to scorch and glow, As in plain terms, yet cunningly, he crave it: Love always makes those eloquent that have it. She, with a kind of granting, put him by it, And ever, as he thought himself most nigh it, Like to the tree of Tantalus, she fled, And, seeming lavish, sav'd her maidenhead. Ne'er king more sought to keep his diadem, Than Hero this inestimable gem: Above our life we love a steadfast friend; Yet when a token of great worth we send, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... impatient patient, lingering under the rough hands of a cruel physician: his creditor having cast his water knows his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him. He is like Tantalus, who hath freedom running by his door, yet cannot enjoy the least benefit thereof. His greatest grief is that his credit was so good and now no better. His land is drawn within the compass of a sheep's skin, and his own ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... school-girl's examination paper:—"Question. What do you know of Tantalus? Answer: Tantalus suffered from continual hunger and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... wondrous realm, wakes unable to recall anything but the hues and outlines of the pageant; the real knowledge, the recreative power induced by familiar love, the assimilation of its soul and substance,—all the true value of such a revelation,—is wanting; and he remains a poor Tantalus, hungrier than before he ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... scorching sunshine—for it can be hot in these stuffy valleys—and the poor boy will be raving for water—yes, water. Who was that chap who was tortured by having it close to him and not being able to reach it? Tantalus, of course! I am forgetting all my classics. Well, soldiers don't want cock-and-bull stories out of Lempriere. I wonder, though, whether I could crawl down among the bushes to the edge of the torrent ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... and his comrade had spent $5,000, and traveled half way around the world for those sheep, that is in brief the story of how the cup of Tantalus was given them by the Russians, actually at their goal! As spoil-sports, those Russian officers were the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... usual amusement of admiring the ladies, and being admired in return, not a boat having made its appearance. They often remarked, with the characteristic vivacity of their nation, that they were placed in the situation of Tantalus,—so many beauties in view, without the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... man that coffers-up his gold Is plagued with cramps and gouts and painful fits; And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold, But like still-pining Tantalus he sits, And useless barns the harvest of his wits; Having no other pleasure of his gain But torment that it cannot cure ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... all ye phantoms of the dark abyss: Bring, Tantalus, thy unextinguished thirst, And Sisyphus, thy still returning stone; Come, Tityus, with the vulture at thy heart; And thou, Ixion, bring thy giddy wheel; Nor let the toiling sisters stay behind. Pour your united griefs into this breast, And in low murmurs ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... five from April to October, instead of having, as you will most probably in the mountain, just one day's sport in the whole of your month's holiday. Deluded friend, who suffered in Scotland last year a month of Tantalus his torments, furnished by art and nature with rods, flies, whisky, scenery, keepers, salmon innumerable, and all that man can want, except water to fish in; and who returned, having hooked accidentally by the tail one ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... TANTALUS, king of Phrygia, was the son of Jupiter and Plota. Whether it was for this cause, the violation of hospitality, or for his pride, his boasting, his want of secrecy, his insatiable covetousness, his imparting ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... mind. Taxes were infinitesimal. There were no elections, assemblies, or the like. A single magistrate, or Syndic, decided all disputes and made the few regulations and enforced them. There were no land speculators, no dry-mouthed sons of the commercial Tantalus, athirst for profits. Boone used to say that his first years in Missouri were the happiest of his life, with the exception of his ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... he opened one after another of the various volumes, he began to fancy that a feast of Tantalus had been provided for him: one book was English, another German, a third Russian; there was even one in cabalistic letters that seemed Turkish. Was this a polyglottic joke the countess ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... I have many prologues to which he cannot possibly fit his catchword: "Pelops, the son of Tantalus, having started for Pisa on ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... o'er nine roods, lies Tityos accursed, The vulture at his vitals feeding slow; There Tantalus, whose bitter, burning thirst The fleeting waters madden as ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... shall you sit starved and thirsty in the midst of fruit and wine like Tantalus? Poor fellow? I think I see your face as you are springing up to the branches and missing your ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the story of the juniper tree reminds us of the Tantalus story and the meal of Thyestes. Demeter (or Thetes) ate a shoulder of the dismembered Pelops, who was set before the gods by his father Tantalus, and the shoulder, after he was brought to life again, was replaced by an ivory one. In a story from the northeastern Caucasus, a chamois similarly dismembered ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... of all my faculties; and full, too, of fierce present rage, wounded vanity, bitter grudgings against those more favoured than myself, which grew in time almost to cursing against the God who had made me a poor untutored working man, and seemed to have given me genius only to keep me in a Tantalus' hell of unsatisfied thirst. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... on a wheele,[*] For daring tempt the Queene of heaven to sin; And Sisyphus an huge round stone did reele Against an hill, ne might from labour lin; 310 There thirsty Tantalus hong by the chin; And Tityus fed a vulture on his maw; Typhoeus joynts were stretched on a gin, Theseus condemnd to endlesse slouth by law, And fifty sisters water in leake ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... realia'{94}. Let me without confining myself to those of more recent introduction endeavour to enumerate as many as I can remember of the words which have by this method been introduced into our language. To begin with mythical antiquity—the Chimaera has given us 'chimerical', Hermes 'hermetic', Tantalus 'to tantalize', Hercules 'herculean', Proteus 'protean', Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic', and Daedalus 'dedal', if this word may on Spenser's and Shelley's authority be allowed. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied that famous 'gordian' knot which Alexander cut, will supply ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Tantalus and Sisyphus, have also a kinship. Both had known secrets of the Gods and had betrayed them; Tantalus is also reported to have taken away nectar and ambrosia from the Olympian table after being a guest there; Sisyphus ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Tantalus' gold is all such Lamias hold; 'tis Devil's dice such Mammon vassals throw; A sordid fever fires each fool-believer in the gross glitter, the unholy glow. Vile is your Dagon! Circe's venomed flagon embruted less than doth the Lamia's wine, Than ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... my brain this many a day, and just now, when I was laying hold on the invention of them, your sudden call made them, like Tantalus's apples, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... to her distant goal. The groaning trees, tossed by the tempest, flung off showers of half-frozen flakes, that falling on her flaming cheeks failed to cool the fever of her suspense, while the yielding snow beneath her feet became a tantalus path, delaying her advance, and seeming to make ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... no more those snowy breasts With azure riverets branched, Where, whilst mine eye with plenty feasts, Yet is my thirst not stanched; O Tantalus, thy pains ne'er tell! By me thou art prevented: 'Tis nothing to be plagued in Hell, But thus in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... makeshift of poles, badly chinked, and showing through the crevices what scanty store there was of corn and pumpkins. A black-and-white work-ox, that had evidently no deficiency of ribs, stood outside of the fence and gazed, a forlorn Tantalus, at these unattainable dainties; now and then a muttered low escaped his lips. Nobody noticed him or sympathized with him, except perhaps the little girl, who had come out in her sun-bonnet to help her brother bring in the fuel. He gruffly accepted her company, a little ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of the drama belongs to that heroic house whose tragic history was among the most terrible and the most familiar to a Greek audience. Tantalus, the founder of the family, for some offence against the gods, was suffering in Hades the punishment which is christened by his name. His son Pelops was stained with the blood of Myrtilus. Of the two sons of the next generation, Thyestes ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... whirling round upon the wheel, teaches {us} what a rolling thing is fortune. Sisyphus, with immense labour, pushing the stone up the lofty hill, which ever, his labour lost, rolls back from the top, shows that men's miseries are endless. When Tantalus is athirst, standing in the midst of the river, the greedy are described, whom a sufficiency of blessings surrounds, but none can they enjoy. The wicked Danaids carry water in urns, and cannot fill their ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... am not going to compete with this undistinguished lavishness. I give you my picture to stand in your drawing-room as an artist puts his signature to a completed masterpiece, so that when you look around upon the furniture, the silver, the cut glass, the clocks, the engagement tablets, and the tantalus stands, the offerings of the rich whose names you have long ago forgotten, then you will confess to yourself in a burst of thankfulness to your fairy godmother that all this would never have been yours if it had not been ...
— Kimono • John Paris |
