"Charon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may enjoy, for a brief space, this untasted pleasure? Ye gods! in our mind's eye we behold the heartless and unfeeling Charon refuse his earnest prayer, and see his languid spirit—diluted by disappointment to insipidity—wandering over the enamelled meads, as flat and shallow as an overflow in the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... themselves. Then they put these relics in urns of earthenware, or glass, or stone, or metal; they besprinkled them with oil or other liquid extracts; they threw into the urn, sometimes, a piece of coin, which sundry antiquaries have thought was the obolus of Charon, forgetting that the body, being burned, no longer had a hand to hold it out; and, finally, the urn was placed in a niche or on a bench arranged in the interior of the tomb. On the ninth day, the family came back to banquet ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... Nimrod, with a snaky-haired head, was the object of adoration of the heretical followers of Marcion; and the same head was the palladium set up by Antiochus Epiphanes over the gates of Antioch, though it has been called the visage of Charon. The memory of Nimrod was certainly regarded with mystic veneration by many; and by asserting himself to be the heir of that mighty hunter before the Lord, he vindicated to himself at least the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... grandsires might have been saddlers—and if detected, the detection but a matter of laugh; delicate women living like lawless men; men making trade out of love, like dissolute women, yet with point of honour so nice, that, doubt their truth or their courage, and—piff! you are in Charon's boat,—humanity in every civilised land may present single specimens, more or less, answering to each thus described. But where, save in France, find them all, if not precisely in the same salons, yet so crossing each other ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the earliest opportunity to acquaint you, that I parted from the fleet last Thursday, with the Charon, hospital ship, which I saw safe into Portland this morning: Captain Grindall, (the only captain wounded,) who took his passage on board her, was much recovered. On the day I left the fleet, Admiral Cornwallis, with the ships under ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... in the poet's ears like a sad refrain. The Digentia lost its charm; he could not see its crystal waters for the shadows of Charon's rueful stream. The prattle of his loved Bandusian spring could not wean his thoughts from the vision of his other self wandering unaccompanied along that "last sad road." We may fancy that Horace was thenceforth ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... were bare, dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution. Two slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's boat. Was he indeed in the workhouse he had pre—ferred to Cairncarque? It could hardly be, for there was the plaster fallen in great patches from the walls as well as the ceiling, and surely no workhouse would be allowed ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... stands studying the procession to destruction, because he must make his living in that way. He is a sort of clean-aproned Charon on a whiskey Styx, ferrying the multitude to perdition on the other side of the river. But what ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... stay! why bid the dead arise? Why call them back from Charon's wherry? Come, Yankee Mark, with twinkling eyes, Confuse these ghouls with something merry! Come, Kipling, with thy soldiers three, Thy barrack-ladies frail and fervent, Forsake thy themes of butchery And ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... uncertain voyage, I had time not only to coax into quietness my restive horse, but also to conclude that it would never do to dismiss our Charon on the other bank, as half an hour might put on our track a squad of cavalry, who, in our ignorance of the roads and country, would soon return us to Rebeldom and a rope. A man who would take twenty dollars for twenty minutes' work, after swearing that his conscience ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... papa—well, papa sips his wine And says nothing. You know him of old, dear. He's only too happy to rest,— After making three millions in gold, dear. He's played out, it must be confessed,— And I—I'm to wed an old Baron Three weeks from to-day, in great style (He's as homely and gaunt as old Charon, And they say that his past has been vile); And I've promised to cut you hereafter,— Small chance, though, we ever shall meet,— So let's turn our old love into laughter, And face the thing through. Shall we, sweet? Can you give ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... thou hast passed a good part of that way, thou shalt see a lame Asse carrying of wood, and a lame fellow driving him, who will desire thee to give him up the sticks that fall downe, but passe thou on and do nothing; by and by thou shalt come unto a river of hell, whereas Charon is ferriman, who will first have his fare paied him, before he will carry the soules over the river in his boat, whereby you may see that avarice raigneth amongst the dead, neither Charon nor Pluto will do any thing for nought: for if it be a poore man that would passe over ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... deities, the Consentes and Complices, making a council of gods, whom Jupiter consulted in important cases. Vertumnus was an Etruscan; so, according to Ottfried Mueller, was the Genius. So are the Lares, or household protectors, and Charun, or Charon, a power of the under-world. The minute system of worship was derived by Rome from Etruria. The whole system of omens, especially by lightning, came from the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... but a foretaste of Charon's boat!" said Mary, who was one of those people whose spirit of enterprise rises with the occasion, and she murmured to Mary Seaton the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to it," said the friar, "or it will give us no peace. I would all my customers were of this world. I begin to think that I am Charon, and that ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... 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 mother, and horrid Hecate, Cerberus curst with incessant hunger, ye Destinies, and Charon endlessly murmuring at the task I impose of bringing back the dead again to the land of the living, hear me!—if I call on you with a voice sufficiently impious and abominable, if I have never sung this chaunt, unsated with human gore, if I have ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... lake, we nearly missed our passage for that time, the ferry-boat being already full; there was incessant lamentation, and all the passengers had wounds upon them; mangled legs, mangled heads, mangled everything; no doubt there was a war going on. Nevertheless, when good Charon saw the lion's skin, taking me for Heracles, he made room, was delighted to give me a passage, and showed us our direction ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... most of them from the school of Sosia, set against a hundred picked captives of all nations. Not less than a half of each number got it. These fellows look as if they had done their best. You've fought your last battle, old boys—unless you have a bout with Charon, who will be loath, I warrant you beforehand, to ferry over such a slashed and swollen company. Now ought you in charity,' he continued, addressing a half-naked savage, who was helping to drag the bodies from the cart, 'to have ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Charon, the Ferryman of renown, 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 ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... city of Jersey; and immediately beyond, the village of Hoboken, famous for turtle and pistol-matches: its neighbourhood to the Elysian fields renders it a singularly lucky site for the fire-eaters, since, if shot, they have no Charon to pay; the turtle-eaters here find, no doubt, equal facilities. Far to the north, the dark promontory of the Palisadoes beetles broadly forth, marking the course of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Rhadamanthus, and Minos, the Fates and the Furies, together with Charon, Calumnia, Bellona, and all such objectionable divinities, were requested to disappear for ever from the Low Countries; while in their stead were confidently invoked Jupiter, Apollo, Triptolemus, and last, though ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... guided by the Sibyl, after a great sacrifice, AEneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sibyl, however, made him take AEneas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sibyl threw him a cake of honey and of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Purcell's instrumentation, it is primitive compared to Mozart's, but when he uses the instrument in group or batteries he obtains gorgeous effects of varied colour. He gets delicious effects by means of obligato instrumental parts in the accompaniments to such songs as "Charon the Peaceful Shade Invites"; and those who have heard the "Te Deum" in D may remember that even Bach never got more wonderful results from the sweeter tones of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... was to put two pieces of money. On entering the dreary path she would meet an old man driving a lame ass, laden with wood, and the old man would ask her for help, but she was to pass him by in silence. Then she would come to the bank of the black river, over which the boatman Charon ferries the souls of the dead; and from her mouth Charon must take one piece of money, she saying not a word. In crossing the river a dead hand would stretch itself up to her, and a dead face, like that of her father, would appear, and a voice would ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... armies. Their fraternal union doubled the force and reputation of the Comneni, and their ancient nobility was illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers, with a captive princess of Bulgaria, and the daughter of a patrician, who had obtained the name of Charon from the number of enemies whom he had sent to the infernal shades. The soldiers had served with reluctant loyalty a series of effeminate masters; the elevation of Michael the Sixth was a personal insult to the more deserving ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... I thank you heartily,' said De Stancy. 'But I am coming to the conclusion that it is useless to press her further. She is right! I am not the man for her. I am too old, and too poor; and I must put up as well as I can with her loss—drown her image in old Falernian till I embark in Charon's boat for good!—Really, if I had the industry I could write some good Horatian verses on my inauspicious situation!... Ah, well;—in this way I affect levity over my troubles; but in plain truth my life will not be the brightest ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... after-times— "Here Cassy lies, by Celia slain, And dying, never told his pain." Vain empty world, farewell. But hark, The loud Cerberian triple bark; And there—behold Alecto stand, A whip of scorpions in her hand: Lo, Charon from his leaky wherry Beckoning to waft me o'er the ferry: I come! I come! Medusa see, Her serpents hiss direct at me. Begone; unhand me, hellish fry: "Avaunt—ye cannot say 'twas I."[1] Dear Cassy, thou must purge and bleed; I fear thou wilt be mad ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... that Michelangelo meant to represent by this figure the Renascence of Italy, still struggling with darkness. The whole work brings the times before us. There is the Christian Heaven above, and the heathen Styx below. Charon ferries the souls across the dark stream; they are first judged by Minos, and Minos is a portrait of a cardinal who had ventured to judge the rest of the picture before it was finished. There is in the picture all the whirling ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... their miseries whenever they have a chance, And deride their demands as useless extravagance. One case of a bride was brought to my view, Too sad for belief, but alas! 'twas too true, Whose husband refused, as savage as Charon, To permit her to take more than ten trunks to Sharon. The consequence was, that when she got there, At the end of three weeks she had nothing to wear; And when she proposed to finish the season At Newport, the monster refused, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... wedding I ever saw, but I must say it is rather different from my idea of that sort of thing. I thought that people 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 Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... of the whole world in some of his finest sonnets. He did not live long to enjoy the reward of his treachery and it was popularly believed in Italy that he had poisoned himself in his despair, or put an end to his wretched life by falling upon his own sword. Even Charon, sang the poet, shuddered when he heard the traitor's name, and refused to let him enter the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... court; convicted without defense; sent headless to Charon, and was obliged, on that account, to make a ventriloquial request for a passage across the Styx; so that, in the morning, it was with genuine relief he returned the jewel to its owner and resumed his wonted meagerness of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... just finished dressing, when a knock was heard at the door, and a Spartan soldier came in and gravely informed Charon that the commander wished to ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... all be merry, And then if e'er a disaster befall, At Styx's ferry is Charon's wherry In ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... on the shore, and, in many places, created crimson lakes where, instead of boats, blood-stained bodies floated with yawning wounds. It seemed as if the Styx had flowed to Lobau to spare the ferryman Charon the arduous task of conveying so many corpses to the nether world, and for the purpose transformed itself into a single ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... Stygian set, With Dirce in one boat convey'd! Or Charon, seeing, may forget That he is old ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Charon's Westerne barge Running a tilt at the Subjunctive mood, Beckoned to Bednal Green, and gave him charge To fasten ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... angels are hovering with the cross, the column, and other instruments of Christ's agony, which they clasp with a loving devotion. In the lower right-hand corner, Charon appears (taken from pagan mythology) with a boat-load of sinners, whom he smites with his oar according to Dante's description. He is truly a terrible demon, and his fiery eyes gleam across the length of the chapel. Minos, who receives the boat-load in the likeness of Biagio da Cesena, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... and Charon of Lampsakus relate that Xerxes was now dead, and that Themistokles gave himself up to his son; but Ephorus, Deinon, Kleitarchus, Herakleides, and many others, say that it was to Xerxes himself that he came. But the narrative of Thucydides agrees better ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... prison, being like to want the honour of burial, his son Cimon had no other means to release it, but by taking upon himself his father's debts and fetters. Sometime before interment, a piece of money was put into the corpse's mouth, which was thought to be Charon's fare for wafting the departed soul over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... to follow her, in vain he besought Charon to carry him a second time across the waters of Acheron. Seven days he sat on the further bank without food or drink, nourished by his tears and grief. Then at last he knew that the gods below were pitiless; and full of sorrow he returned to the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Logicians Laborious Writers On a Club of Sots Holland Women Epigrams of Edmund Waller On a Painted Lady On the Marriage of the Dwarfs Epigrams of Matthew Prior A Simile The Flies Phillis's Age To the Duke de Noailles On Bishop Atterbury Forma Bonum Fragile Earning a Dinner Bibo and Charon The Pedant Epigrams of Joseph Addison The Countess of Manchester To an Ill-favored Lady To a Capricious Friend To a Rogue Epigrams of Alexander Pope On Mrs. Tofts To a Blockhead The Fool and the Poet Epigrams of Dean Swift On Burning a Dull Poem To a Lady The Cudgeled ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... style of art, but even to take precedence of and set aside the abstract idea of beauty. Little more would be required to justify Hogarth in his Gothic resolution, that if he were to make a figure of Charon, he would give him bandy legs, because watermen are generally bandy-legged. It is very well to talk of the abstract idea of a man or of a God, but if you come to anything like an intelligible proposition, you must either individualise and define, or destroy the very idea you contemplate. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... being was permitted to enter Charon's boat, or to cross the Stygian river without the passport of the golden bough. This could be obtained only by special favor of some powerful god, and few had been so favored. Even the dead, if their bodies had not received burial rites, were refused admission to the boat, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... Phormio's hand restrained him. "Not so fast, lad! Thank Olympus, I'm not Lampaxo. You're too young a turbot for Charon's fish-net. Let me think ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... [228]Charon in Lucian, as he wittily feigns, was conducted by Mercury to such a place, where he might see all the world at once; after he had sufficiently viewed, and looked about, Mercury would needs know of him ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... prayers or sacrifice. In that land of forgetfulness and shadows there is the unnavigable lake Avernus, Acheron, Styx, the groaning Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with its waves of fire. There are all kinds of monsters and forms of fearful import: Cerberus, with his triple head; Charon, freighting his boat with the shades of the dead; the Fates, in their garments of ermine bordered with purple; the avenging Erinnys; Rhadamanthus, before whom every Asiatic must render his account; Aeacus, before whom every European; and Minos, the dread arbiter of the judgment-seat. There, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the current, with a rising gale, Still set them onwards to the welcome shore, Like Charon's bark of spectres, dull and pale: Their living freight was now reduced to four, And three dead, whom their strength could not avail To heave into the deep with those before, Though the two sharks still followed them, and dashed The spray into their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... truth whose significance Dale was far from realising. Of what value, indeed, is money to me? There is none to whom 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 money benevolently during ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Charon," said Belle. "But, Cora Kimball, do you suppose we could make mythological frocks that would stand damp, night air? Of course, ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... Cupid. "That's where Charon hangs out; and he and I don't hit it off. No, we'd better go down to where you went asleep, and then trot down by the track to Llanberis. I know the way— ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... and said something under his breath, but he took the oars and pulled ashore. Mae turned her eyes downward and felt the color creep up, up into her cheeks. It seemed eternity. The boat was Charon's, and she was drifting to her fate. Norman Mann stood like a statue. The wind moved his hair over his forehead, and once Mae saw him toss the unruly locks back in a familiar way he had. She did not know why, but the tears half came to her eyes as ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... open a dispensary, but, proving dishonest, he lost his license and became a ferryman—a very Charon for terrestrial passengers. He died in New Caledonia of cancer ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... views the Elysian shade, A slip-shod sibyl led his steps along, In lofty madness meditating song; Her tresses staring from poetic dreams, And never wash'd, but in Castalia's streams. Taylor,[348] their better Charon, lends an oar, (Once swan of Thames, though now he sings no more.) 20 Benlowes,[349] propitious still to blockheads, bows; And Shadwell nods the poppy[350] on his brows. Here, in a dusky vale where ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Annihilation is repugnant to the common intelligence. Homer sends Ulysses, Dantelike, to the realms of the dead, where he converses with them he had known in life. The Stygian River, the dumb servitor, Charon, the coin-paid fare, are all well known in the classics of ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... M. Charon, who was a counsellor, and in charge of a suit between Madame d'Urfe and her daughter Madame du Chatelet, whom she disliked heartily. The old counsellor had been the favoured lover of the marchioness forty years before, and he thought himself bound by the remembrance ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... heat not heaven itself is free. Then since to me thy loss can be no gain, Avoid thy harm and fly what I foretell. Make thou thy love with me for to be slain, That I with her and both with thee may dwell. Thy fact thus, Charon, both of us shall bless, Thou save thy boat and I ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... at law so slowly get ahead, Even when the right is visibly unclouded, That if all men are classed as quick and dead, The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded. Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight, His bark prove worse than ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... only there wouldn't be any reward," retorted Francois. "The prince would only capture us again and then—" He shrugged. "I know his temper and have no desire for the longer voyage with old man Charon—" ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... held one division of the expedition were merely old sugar-barges, roofed over with boards, and looking like coffins. They were pleasantly named the "Charon" and the "Cerberus," but Stedman thought that the "Sudden Death" and the "Wilful Murder" would have been titles more appropriate. The chief duty of the troops consisted in lying at anchor at the intersections of wooded ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... referred to is Charon, of Greek mythology, who was supposed to ferry the souls of the dead over the river Acheron ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of the gods above. It is remarkable that, in order to people their lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon, which play an important ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of remoteness from common life could hardly be greater if one were suddenly swept away to some far star, blazing in the firmament; or if Charon had rowed him over the mystic river and he had entered the abodes of life on the plane beyond. Even the hotel becomes an enchanted palace whose salons, luxuriously decorated, open by long windows on marble balconies overhanging the Grand Canal. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... sable flood we 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... characteristic of him; however, the Tyndals swept all of us, except Mrs. Norton, away to Delabole to see the slate quarries, and to have the adventure of sliding down a fearfully steep incline in a tiny trolley-car—if that's the right word for it. I half expected Charon to meet me with his ferry-boat at the bottom. It wouldn't have seemed much stranger than other ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... some little account of his manners and conversation, which you know very well, or you would not have sent him to me. I only now hope I shall not see him to-morrow; and should I learn that he shall have departed in one of those Plutonian engines to the keeping of Charon himself, I should only regret that I had not put an obol into his hand, lest he should be presented with a return-ticket. What did he say, and what did he not say? He called my daughter "Miss," and said he should like music very well but for the noise ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... this craft had not escaped their vigilance; but he thought, by the liberal use of pitch and cotton, materials easily obtainable in that neighborhood, it could be made sufficiently water-tight to answer their purpose. Accordingly, accompanied by their friendly Charon, with his pitch-pot and cotton, they reached the spot indicated and found ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... with his black stringy hair and his dirty and tattered clothes, such a singularly wild and infernal look, that he actually struck me as a real Charon. His voice, and the questions he asked me, were not of a kind to remove this notion, so that, far from its requiring any effort of imagination, I found it not easy to avoid believing that, at length, I had actually reached Avernus, was ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... rheumatism, at various periods of life; and he had lived freely and joyously, as was natural to a man of his peculiar gifts. But, death! We never thought of the brilliant and radiant Douglas in connection with the black river. He would have sunk Charon's boat with a shower of epigrams, one would have fancied, if the old fellow, with his squalid beard, had dared to ask him into the stern-sheets. To more than one man who knew him intimately the first announcement of his decease ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... barely sketching in the main outlines. It blocked up half the studio with its half-finished, threatening shapes, greater than life-size, and its vast brood of green snakes, each darting forth two sharp, forked tongues. In the foreground, to the left, could be discerned Charon in his boat, a haggard, wild-looking figure,—a powerful and well conceived design, but of the schools, schooly. There was far more of genius and less of artificiality in a canvas of smaller dimensions, also unfinished, that hung in the best lighted corner ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... epicure's acquaintance, I offered to get his friend admittance in an instant; the offer was delightedly accepted, and I soon procured a small piece of pencilled paper from Lady—, which effectually silenced the Charon, and opened the Stygian via to the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tom, descended, as we were told that the boat could not carry a larger fare. After looking down for a few seconds, we distinguished a light; and going down the ladder, we stepped into a boat, in which a man, whom we of course denominated Charon, was seated. Instead of oars, he used a long pole to urge on the boat. We noticed the dark appearance of the water as we made our way through the vaulted chambers. We now found ourselves floating on a lake, the water black as ink, but perfectly smooth. Above our heads was a lofty ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... the brisker inhabitants of Ashbridge, who do not understand its spirit, to substitute for this aged and ineffectual Charon someone who is occasionally awake, but nothing ever results from these revolutionary moves, and the requests addressed to the town council on the subject are never heard of again. "Old George" was ferryman there before any members of the town council were born, and he seems to have established ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Pandarus. I stalk about her door Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon, And give me swift transportance to these fields Where I may wallow in the lily beds Propos'd for the deserver! O gentle Pandar, from Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings, and fly with me ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... the carriage; Henriette's figure in one corner, Hannah, with the child, in another, and the various rugs and trappings of wandering Britons. Everything was contracted, narrow. The sea-passage had the same sinister character. Hadria compared it to the crossing of the Styx in Charon's gloomy ferry-boat. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the half of the great Osage Mine. And he is only twenty-nine. "I kinder felt I ought to see Europe," he said, "never having been further East than Chicago; so I came over at Christmas time and have been around in this machine ever since." He calls his automobile, an immense 90 h.p. Charon, his "machine!" He said all this so simply, as if it were quite natural to tell a stranger his life story, and he is perfectly direct—only you have to speak to him with the meaning you intend in the words. Metaphor is not the least use: he ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... deer to sew on the patches with, together with a kettle and provisions, are still placed in the graves by the North American Indians. The Laplanders lay beside the corpse flint, steel, and tinder, to supply light for the dark journey. A coin was placed in the mouth of the dead by the Greeks to pay Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, and for a similar purpose in the hand of a deceased Irishman. The Greenlanders bury with a child a dog, for they say a dog will find his way anywhere. In the grave of the Viking warrior were buried his horn and armour ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... trees, and gleaming on the fountain of forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth chide even the souls that come from where, "beside the gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough." The Romaic idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence "neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned in autumn, can warrior or maiden escape," is likewise pre-Christian. In Provencal and Danish folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother awaken the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... assures us that by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead—were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal of Acheron, and the Elysian plains; and according to the same equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the waters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue. But previous to the embarkation, appointed judges on the MARGIN of the ACHERON listened to whatever accusations were preferred by the living against the deceased; and if convinced of his mis-deeds, deprived him of the rights ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... and cares. Necessity and the waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—[Greek: hadou mageiros]—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to pick our society, so here we must accept what fellowship the fates provide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen describing his jaunt in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to introduce Rostopchin's witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nizhni by boat, and Rostopchin had said to them in French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n'en faites pas une barque de Charon." * There was talk of all the government offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this Shinshin's witticism was added—that for that alone Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. It was said ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... batteries were opened the next day, and the fire became so heavy that the besieged withdrew their cannon from the embrasures, and scarcely returned a shot. The shells and red hot balls from the batteries of the allied army reached the ships in the harbour, and, in the evening, set fire to the Charon of forty-four guns, and to three large transports, which were entirely consumed. Reciprocal esteem, and a spirit of emulation between the French and Americans, being carefully cultivated by the Commander-in-chief, the siege was carried on with great rapidity. The second parallel ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the son of Gaea or Demeter. As a punishment for supplying the Titans with water in their contest with Zeus, he was turned into a river of Hades, over which departed souls were ferried by Charon. The name (meaning the river of "woe'') was eventually used to designate the whole of the lower world (Stobaeus, Ecl. Phys. i. 41, sec. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... on a time in Charon's wherry Two Painters met, on Styx's ferry. Good sir, said one, with bow profound, I joy to meet thee under ground, And though with zealous spite we strove To blast each other's fame above, Yet here, as neither bay nor laurel Can tempt us to prolong our quarrel, I hope the hand ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... once knew a lady who was separated from her lover, and yielded to her parents' choice, who lived in perpetual torment, surrounded by a profusion of wealth. In a few years she pined away, and died broken-hearted, entered Charon's boat with her first love, and sailed over the River of Death together, to join their friends on the Elysian Fields of Paradise, and left her parents and the man of their choice digging in the mud and dust for gold. But that lady was not Nelly Gordon. She would sooner seek the wild wood's shade; ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... depart there came into my mind the memory of a picture in an old Latin book of my father's, which represented the souls of the dead being paddled by a person named Charon across a river called the Styx. The scene before us bore a great resemblance to that picture. There was Charon's boat floating on the dreadful Styx. Yonder glowed the lights of the world, here was the gloomy, unknown shore. And we, we were the souls of the dead awaiting ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... amused himself with examining these trinkets, he turned to the antiquary and said, "Is that all, sir? Why, where is Charon's flask of wine?" ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... no tempest warring there, No rain-storm beating on them, But Charon sweeping over them, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... the Gothic legends) and the Milky Way; and, since the journey was long, they put boots into the coffin, (for it was made on foot,) and coins to pay the ferrying across a wide sea, even as the Greeks expected to be carried over the Styx by Charon. This abode of the dead, at the end of this long pathway, was an island, a warm, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... funeral blaze. As soon as you can hear his knell This god on earth turns devil in hell; And lo! his ministers of state, Transformed to imps, his levee wait, Where, in the scenes of endless woe, They ply their former arts below; And as they sail in Charon's boat, Contrive to bribe the judge's vote; To Cerberus they give a sop, His triple-barking mouth to stop; Or in the ivory gate of dreams Project Excise and South-Sea schemes, Or hire their party pamphleteers To set Elysium ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... one less than twenty-two inches, with bellies as yellow as marigold and as white as a lily in parts. That I account quite excellent taking for these times, when this stream hath been so roiled and troubled by the passage of Master Charon's barges, he having been so pressed with traffic that he hath discarded his ancient vessel as incommodious and hasteneth to and fro with a ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... far more steadily wrong side up, perhaps because we had lashed all our loads in place and they acted as ballast. Will took the pole and acted the part of Charon, our proper pilot contenting himself with perching on the rear end lamenting the ill-fortune noisily until Kazimoto struck him and threatened to throw ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... please, your will is mine; Enjoy it without fear, And your grave will be this glass of wine, Your epitaph—a tear— Go, take your seat in Charon's boat; We'll tell ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... registers in 1678. The law required (for purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead should be buried in woollen winding-sheets. The price of the wool was the obolus paid to the Charon of the Revenue. After March 25, 1667, no person was to be "buried in any shirt, shift, or sheet other that should be made of woole only." Thus when the children in a little Oxfordshire village lately beheld a ghost, "dressed in a long narrow gown of woollen, with bandages ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... Old Charon by the Stygian coast Take toll of all the shades who land, Your little, faithful, barking ghost May leap ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... surface afloat amid soot and iridescent patches or pools of tar. In the cottage gardens not a soul was at work, nor, by their appearance, had a soul worked in them for years past. The canal, too, was deserted, save for one long monkey-boat, black as Charon's barge, that lay moored to a post on the towpath, some seventy-odd yards up stream, near where the wall of the Orphanage ended. Beyond this, and over a line of ragged thorns, the bulk of a red-brick Brewery—its roof crowned ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have not been vouchsafed the trifling boon of a handful of earth cast upon their bones was very different. They had not yet been admitted to the world below, and were forced to wander for a hundred years before they might enter Charon's boat. AEneas beheld them on the banks of the Styx, stretching out their hands "ripae ulterioris amore." The shade of Patroclus describes its hapless state to Achilles, as does that of Elpenor to Odysseus, when they meet in the lower world. It is not ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... poems, speaks of it as "a most sublime sonnet, full of that antique purity and Dantesque gravity." Dante's influence over the great artist's pictorial imagination is strongly marked in the fresco of the Last Judgment, where Charon's boat, and Minos with his twisted tail, are borrowed direct from the Inferno. Condivi, moreover, informs us that the statues of the Lives Contemplative and Active upon the tomb of Julius were suggested ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... ferry's flow. That is, cross the river of Woe, over which Charon ferried the shades of the dead to Hades. Mythology records several instances, however, of the ferry being passed by mortals. See note, ll. 34-39, Memorial Verses; also ll. 207-210, The Scholar-Gipsy, of ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... of the organisation, had been murdered by a girl's hand; but Charon, Manuel, Osselin had gone the usual way, denounced by their colleagues, Rabaut, Custine, Bison, who in their turn were sent to the guillotine by those more powerful, perhaps more eloquent, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... among the poets of later times, has been, in this respect, neither an allegorist nor an imitator; and, consequently, he alone has introduced the ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon, his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be more beautiful or original than the use which he has made of the River of Lethe. He has never assigned to his mythological characters any functions inconsistent with the creed of the Catholic Church. He has related nothing concerning ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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, whom M.D.'s mostly follow, Quite hollow); Which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... formed of him, which was a very just one. Neither he nor I had much doubt that the ships in sight were British. We hoisted British colours, so did they; and in a short time we were all paying compliments to each other, they being his Majesty's ships Charon, Lowestoffe, and Pomona, under the command of the Honourable Captain Luttrell. He confirmed the account we had received of the attack of the Spaniards on the British territories, and informed us also that he had been in quest of two Spanish galleons which had taken shelter under the strongly-fortified ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... of songs, is dead; flee, O you under earth! Eutychides is coming with his odes; he left instructions to burn along with him twelve lyres and twenty-five boxes of airs. Now Charon has come upon you; whither may one retreat in future, since ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... placed in his hand at time of burial. If he succeeds in hitting the Pandanus, he may then wait until the spirit of his strangled wife comes to join him, after which he boards the canoe of the Fijian Charon and proceeds to Nambanggatai, where until 1847 there dwelt the god Samu, and after his death Samuyalo "the killer ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... lame driver, who will pray thee reach him certain cords to fasten the burden which is falling from the ass: but be thou cautious to pass on in silence. And soon as thou comest to the river of the dead, Charon, in that crazy bark he hath, will put thee over upon the further side. There is greed even among the dead: and thou shalt deliver to him, for the ferrying, one of those two pieces of money, in such wise that he take ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... V. W. Charon was speaking trembled slightly, not from fear of the accountant but under the influence of alcohol. He lifted his weary, glassy eyes to reply, but his lips moved inaudibly and he stared ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... horrible to see) Did giue him leaue to passe in at the gates of Hell: Of which gate he chiefe porter was the Poets thus me tell. And how he past alone through great king Plutos Court 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the spot, the acting of ferryman over this river was not an agreeable post, and Count Stolberg, a German dilettante who has left some memories of his Italian wanderings, relates how a feeble dismal soured old man, a veritable Charon of the upper air, had great difficulty in conveying himself, his horse and his servant across the swollen stream. The old man's age and misery aroused the Count's compassion, so that he asked him why he continued thus to perform a task at once so ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Nature's fairest forms Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst, 10 Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay. I bounded down the hill shouting amain For the old Ferryman; to the shout the rocks Replied, and when the Charon of the flood Had staid his oars, and touched the jutting pier, [B] 15 I did not step into the well-known boat Without a cordial greeting. Thence with speed Up the familiar hill I took my way [C] Towards that sweet Valley ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... that gloomy river's brim, Where Charon plies the ceaseless oar, Two mighty Shadows, dusk and dim, Stood lingering on the dismal shore. Hoarse came the rugged Boatman's call, While echoing caves enforced the cry— And as they severed life's last thrall, Each Spirit spoke one parting sigh. "Farewell ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... plash. Having reached this spot, we may as well pass over into Fowey by the ferry here instead of by that from Polruan. If we had already come from Fowey to Bodinnick we should find that the ferryman would carry us back without further payment; the outward fee included a return—not like the ferry of Charon which had no return for passengers. The oars dip peacefully into the water, breaking its surface of glistening light; a delicious coolness, that phantom fragrance of water to which we can give no name, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... left to dash back to earth the damned, who in their audacity attempt to scale the heavens. Evil spirits drag down these wicked ones into the abyss, the proud by the hair of the head, and so also every sinner by the member through which he sinned. Beneath them is seen Charon with his black boat, just as Dante described him in the "Inferno," on muddy Acheron, raising his oar to strike some laggard soul. As the bark touches the bank, pushed on by Divine justice, all these souls strive to fling themselves ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... persisted the giant. "Eu! don't complain that you've lacked warning, when you sit to-night in Charon's ferry-boat." ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... cowardice makes thee sink under this last danger who hast been so miraculously supported in all thy former?" Then the voice told her how by a certain cave she might reach the realms of Pluto, and how to avoid all the dangers of the road, to pass by Cerberus, the three-headed dog, and prevail on Charon, the ferryman, to take her across the black river and bring her back again. But the voice added, "When Proserpine has given you the box filled with her beauty, of all things this is chiefly to be observed by you, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... wander, And my spirit seems to roll With the tide of swift Scamander Rushing to a viewless goal. In my ears, like distant washing Of the surf upon the shore, Drones a murmur, faintly splashing, 'Tis the splash of Charon's oar. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Devil, "I understand all this; You turned to half a courtier[536] ere you died, And seem to think it would not be amiss To grow a whole one on the other side Of Charon's ferry; you forget that his Reign is concluded; whatsoe'er betide, He won't be sovereign more: you've lost your labour, For at the best he will but ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... mastiff bayed still nearer. Swiftlier now They passed along the bare blunt cliffs and saw The furrow ploughed by that strange cannon-shot Which saved this hour for Bess; down to the beach And starry foam that churned the silver gravel Around an old black lurching boat, a strange Grim Charon's wherry for two lovers' flight, Guarded by old Tom Moone. Drake took her hand, And with one arm around her waist, her breath Warm on his cheek for a moment, in she stepped Daintily o'er the gunwale, and took her seat, His ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... painted red and black, stood on a bier, and showed the dead child dressed in a white shroud. He had a garland on his head, woven of the plant of death, the strong-scented Apium or celery. In his mouth he had an obol as Charon's fee. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy); the judge's ermine; the coxcomb's wig; the snuff-box a la Foppington—all must overboard, he positively swears—and that ancient mariner brooks no denial; for, since the tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown small ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... better in the Middle Ages. For the Greeks and Romans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, and constructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or Menippus, in which the ferryman and the cynic rejoiced together as they saw kings and rich men coming down to the shore of Acheron, in lamenting and lamentable crowds, casting their ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... music, all united to recall with a vivid power, never before felt, the passage of the 'pious AEneas' over the Styx, which I had so often read with delight in my boyhood. I half fancied our Yankee Bob fading into a vision of the classic Charon, and that the ghosts of unhappy spirits were peering ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Charon keeps the ferry across the Styx to the Elysian Fields, past the sunless marsh of Acheron. Yes—I've met him more than once. I met him only last month, and he was very proud of his new electric launch ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... little god crawls near the edge of the island, and by his divine weight nearly overturns it! We should observe the gross materialism of idea which underlies this pretty picture. Not one of the Roman poets is free from this taint. To take a well-known instance from Virgil; when Aeneas gets into Charon's boat ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... than at peace. The great bombs rose in vast curves overhead, with trails of light, and, seeming to hesitate in mid-air, exploded, or fell on town or ship or in the stream between. As we looked, awe-struck, hot shot set fire to the "Charon," a forty-four-gun ship, nigh to Gloucester, and soon a red rush of fire twining about mast and spar rose in air, lighting the sublime spectacle, amid the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, and multitudinous inexplicable noises, through ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... front of the cart, and in a loud and menacing tone, exclaimed, "Carter, or coachman, or devil, or whatever thou art, tell me at once who thou art, whither thou art going, and who these folk are thou carriest in thy wagon, which looks more like Charon's boat ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Charon it is. What with drink an' the sinful climate, I've forgot much that many ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... standeth horribly and gnasheth," condemning the miserable souls before him each to his different circle, his tail wound twice about his middle. Farther back, the Pistoiese, Vanno Fucci, with blasphemous gesture, yells out his challenge to God; Charon plies his boat; and in the background despairing souls follow a mocking demon who runs before them ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... of 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 off ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... 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 pay the fare, Charon, the ferryman, took them across; but if their corpses were in the sea, or on battle-fields, unburied, the poor shades had to flit about vainly begging to be ferried over. After they had crossed, they were judged by three judges, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lower world, Mantus, a winged genius, sits with crown on his head and torch in his hand. Other demons armed with sword or club with serpents in their hands receive the souls of the dead; the principal of these under the name Charun (the Charon of the Greeks), an old man of hideous form, bears a heavy mallet to strike his victims. The souls of the dead (the Manes) issue from the lower world three days in the year, wandering about the earth, terrifying the living and doing them evil. Human victims are offered to appease ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... any man 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
... on the sand the keel of a boat, and someone stepped ashore. From the woods there emerged the shadowy forms of three men. Nothing was said, but they got silently into the boat, which might have been Charon's craft for all he could see of it. The rattle of the rowlocks and the plash of oars followed, while a voice cautioned the rowers to make less noise. It was evident that some belated fugitives were ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... crucial speeches, and when spring came on he had allowed neither work nor social demands to interfere with his attendance at the almost numberless literary readings. His "conscientious and undiscriminating concern for dead matter," Quadratilla once said, "rivalled Charon's." Calpurnia, never strong, but always supplementing at every turn her husband's work, had felt especially this year the strain of Roman life. Tacitus, already a figure in the literary world through his Agricola and Germania, had made a beginning ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... gross simile drawn from occurrences of this outward world and unjustifiably applied to the fortunes of the mind in the invisible sphere of the future. The figment of a judicial transportation of the soul from one place or planet to another, as if by a Charon's boat, is a clattering and repulsive conceit, inadmissible by one who apprehends the noiseless continuity of God's self executing laws. It is a jarring mechanical clash thrust amidst the smooth evolution of spiritual destinies. It compares with the facts as the supposition that the planets ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... person who died, however exalted his position. Characters were given by judges, after inquiry into the life and conduct of the deceased. The judges sat on the opposite side of a lake; and while they crossed the lake, he who sat at the helm was called Charon, which gave rise to the fable among the Greeks, that Charon conducted the souls of deceased ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... sidled away obliquely for mid-stream. I stood at one end of it. The figure of Charon could be seen at the other, of long acquaintance with this passage, using his sweep with the indifference of habitude. Perhaps it was not Charon. Yet there was some obstruction to the belief that we were bound for no more than the steamer Aldebaran, anchored in Bugsby's ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... flowering crest impearled and orient. A sonnet is a coin: its face reveals The soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:— Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, In Charon's palm it pay the toll to ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... aged Charon, when my life shall end, I pass thy ferry and my waftage pay, Thy oars shall fall, thy boat and mast shall rend, And through the deep shall be a dry foot-way. For why? My heart with sighs doth breathe such ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... of conflict and bold emprise. The commonplace assumed an aspect of grandeur and magnificence in harmony with his chivalric mania. The leaky craft in which he sat became a majestic barge; the skipper, some wrinkled Charon who doubtless had ferried many a brave knight to his death beneath yonder castle's walls. That seeming birch-stump on the farther shore was the castle champion, armed cap-a-pie in silver harness and ready with drawn sword to do battle against ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... conception of Nifl-heim we have an almost exact counterpart of the Greek Hades. Moedgud, the guardian of the Giallar-bridge (the bridge of death), over which all the spirits of the dead must pass, exacts a tribute of blood as rigorously as Charon demands an obolus from every soul he ferries over Acheron, the river of death. The fierce dog Garm, cowering in the Gnipa hole, and keeping guard at Hel's gate, is like the three-headed monster Cerberus; and the nine worlds of Nifl-heim ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber |
