"Lethe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... political pamphlet, he is probably weaned of revolutions, and possesses all the calmness of a man whose first years have been spent in excitement and troubles, and who at length finds consolation in study alone; the well of science proving to him the waters of Lethe, in which he drinks the oblivion of all his past sorrows. And it is very much the case in Mexico at present, that the most distinguished men are those who live most retired; those who have played their ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... this!' exclaimed the Countess, as the carriage penetrated the deeper recesses of the woods. 'Surely, my lord, you do not mean to pass all the autumn in this barbarous spot! One ought to bring hither a cup of the waters of Lethe, that the remembrance of pleasanter scenes may not heighten, at least, the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... tear, For a brief space, and kindly interpose Thy soothing wings betwixt me and my care. These eyes, which seem in love with weeping, close! And make my senses for a time thy bower, That whilst I sleep I may my sorrows lose. I do not crave that thou the wand of power, Three times in Lethe dipp'd, at me shouldst shake, And all my senses sprinkle o'er and o'er; Let souls, more fortunate, thereof partake— Of languid rest a portion scant and slight, My weary, wandering eyes content will make. Now all the world is hush'd; to sleep invite The falling stars, and lull'd appears ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... unknown. In 1686, when Regnard became an author, the Voitures, Balzacs, and Benserades, the men of fantastic conceits, the vanguard of the grand army of French wits, had marched away to Pluto and to Lethe. One or two stragglers, like Menage and Chapelle, lingered to wonder at the complete change of taste. The age had ripened fast. Not many years before, Barbin the bookseller ordered his hacks to faire du St. Evremond. St. Evremond was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... well— For him no portly paunch can swell; Large though his shop, his trade the same, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite his shop, his trade, his cash, The wretch who knows not ven'son hash, Living, shall forfeit civic fame, And dying, shall descend with shame, In double death, to Lethe's pools, Despis'd by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... he grasped the tiller, nor his hold Relaxed, nor ever from the stars withdrew His steadfast eyes, still watchful when behold! A slumberous bough the god revealed to view, Thrice dipt in Styx, and drenched with Lethe's dew. Then, lightly sprinkling, o'er the pilot's brows The drowsy dewdrops from the leaves he threw. Dim grow his eyes; the languor of repose Steals o'er his faltering sense, the lingering ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... I tremble at thy fatal stream! As Lethe dreadful to the love of fame. What devastations on thy bank are seen, What shades of mighty names that once have been! A hecatomb of characters supplies Thy ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... upon them human form"; and Virgil says: "After death, the souls come to the Elysian fields, or to Tartarus, and there meet with the reward or punishment of their deeds during life. Later, on drinking of the waters of Lethe, which takes away all memory of the past, they return to earth." But it must be admitted that Rome was deficient in spiritual insight and beliefs, on the whole, her material successes having diverted her attention from ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... magnificently performed. Three hours of first-rate music for 7-1/5 cents! And a mass of Loewenbraeu, twice the size of the seidel sold in this country at twenty cents, for forty pfennigs (9-1/2 cents)! An inviting and appetizing spot, believe me. A place to stretch your legs. A temple of Lethe. There, when my days of moneylust are over, I go to chew my memories and dream my dreams and listen to ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... we straight do fly, And forthwith march away; Few towns or cities we come nigh Good liquor us deny; In Lethe deep our woes we steep - Our loves forgotten be, Amongst the jovialst we sing, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... what is written is changelessly written. How different too are the bright sparkling fountains that leap with ever-varying beauty at the foot of the Flaminian obelisk now, from the dull, sleepy monotonous river that, like a Lethe flood, flowed past it in the old days at Heliopolis! Are they not both symbolical of the new and the old world, of the Christian faith, with its progressive thought and varied expanding life, and the stagnant pagan creed, which ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... wan, and meagre let it look, With a pity-moving shape, Such as wander by the brook Of Lethe, or from graves escape. ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... of repetition, as regards the human will, is as sure in Determination as it is in Consciousness. Habit is as inevitable as Memory; and as nothing can be forgotten, but, when once known, is known forever,—so nothing is done but will be done again. Lethe and Annihilation are only myths upon the earth, which men, though suspicious of their eternal falsehood, name to themselves in moments of despair and fearful apprehension. The poppy has only a fabled virtue; but, like Persephone, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the days which once fleeted so cheerily, Floated as though we could never know pain, Drag their dull length along, sadly and drearily, Wearily praying for Lethe in vain! ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... have here dropped off, and left the poor surviving seven unattended! For my own part, four are all I have to take care of; and I'll be judged by you, if any man could live in less compass. Well, for the future, I'll drown all high thoughts in the Lethe of cowslip-wine; as for fame, renown, reputation, take 'em, critics! If ever I seek for immortality here, may I be damn'd, for there's not much danger in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... more than once, and that not over-cheerfully, of what you shall do when you get there. You are half-tired, half-ashamed, of making one more in the ignoble army of idlers, who saunter about the cliffs, and sands, and quays; to whom every wharf is but a "wharf of Lethe," by which they rot "dull as the oozy weed." You foreknow your doom by sad experience. A great deal of dressing, a lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the window with the telescope, an attempt to take a bad ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... gurgling kisses, which made one shudder and think involuntarily of the "slime which the aspic leaves upon the caves of Nile." Many of us have been Anglo-Indian babies. Was there a time when we suffered caresses such as these? What a happy thing it is that Lethe flows over us as we emerge from infancy, and blots out all that was before. Another question has been stirring in my mind since that scene. What feeling or motive prompted those luscious blandishments? Was it simple hypocrisy? I do not think so. The pure hypocrite is much ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... mounds and Aztec relics, Mural signs and hieroglyphics, Toltec remnants and weird mummies, All the arts and queer devices Of a prehistoric people, Have entombed their sylvan phantoms, In an everlasting Lethe. Now the woods and plains are surveys, Of distinctive tracts and precincts, Now the wide, primeval limits Bound neat villages and districts. There are Bryantsville and Fitchport, Buckeye, Logan Town ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... from his loftie steed, He to him lept, in mind to reave his life, And proudly said, Lo there the worthie meed Of him that slew Sansfoy with bloudie knife; Henceforth his ghost freed from repining strife, 320 In peace may passen over Lethe lake,[*] When mourning altars purgd with enemies life, The blacke infernall Furies[*] doen aslake: Life from Sansfoy thou tookst, Sansloy shall ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... it is pretended they lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, treasure, and language, as if they had drunk of the water of oblivion, drawn out of the lake of Lethe. When they have been in this condition as long as their custom directs, they lessen this intoxicating potion; and, by degrees, the young men recover the use of their senses; but before they are quite well, they are shown in their ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the unwelcome and painful impression his account had produced on his young guest, now exerted himself to remove, or at least to lessen it; and turning the conversation into a classical channel, which with him was the Lethe to all cares, he soon forgot that Clarke had ever existed, in expatiating on the unappreciated excellences of Propertius, who, to his mind, was the most tender of all elegiac poets, solely because he was the most learned. Fortunately this vein of conversation, however tedious ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the bitter world that recalled it. He thought of the long days to come, when, forgetting and forgotten, he might find a new life among these simple aliens, themselves forgotten by the world. He had thought of this once before in the garden; it occurred to him again in this Lethe-like oblivion of the little church, in the kindly pressure of the priest's hand. The ornaments no longer looked uncouth and barbaric—rather they seemed full of some new spiritual significance. He suddenly ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... howbeit I were of a sound and strong constitution, and of a tractable and yeelding condition, yet was I so heavie, so sluggish, and so dull, that I could not be rouzed (yea were it to goe to play) from out mine idle drowzinesse. What I saw, I saw it perfectly; and under this heavy, and as it were Lethe-complexion did I breed hardie imaginations, and opinions farre above my yeares. My spirit was very slow, and would goe no further than it was led by others; my apprehension blockish, my invention poore; and besides, I had a marvelous defect ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... light, but, destroyed and overcome by the heat and light, it becomes in substance luminous—all light—so that it is penetrated within the affection and conception. This is not immediately, at the beginning of generation, when the soul comes forth fresh from the intoxication of Lethe, and drenched with the waves of forgetfulness and confusion, so that the spirit comes into captivity to the body, and is put into the condition of growth; but little by little, it goes on digesting, so as to become fitted for the action ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... to me," said Cortlandt, "that no paradise or heaven described in anything but the Bible compares with this. According to Virgil's description, the joys on the banks of his river Lethe must have been most sad and dreary, the general idleness and monotony apparently being broken only by wrestling matches between the children, while the rest strolled about with laurel wreaths or rested in the shade. The pilot Palinurus, who had been drowned by falling overboard while asleep, but ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... hear thy martial footsteps fall— Thine arms shall hang, dull trophies, on the wall— Fallen the stem of Troy! Thou go'st where slow Cocytus wanders—where Love sinks in Lethe, and the sunless air Is dark to light ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... which he alluded to any little acts of kindness which he might have received from any of his friends, in past years. To the discredit of human nature, there is in general a laborious endeavour to bury all such remembrances in the waters of Lethe: Southey's mind was formed ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... at her a moment, dazed. Nothing was further from his mind than ink. Other liquids, tears, waters of lethe, lakes of fire and brimstone would not have sounded foreign to his thought. But ink! how incalculably far was the life of the written word from this raw anguish of reality he was caught in ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... that bring the so nice nose all straight again. This is medicinal, but you do not know how. I put him in your window, I make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so you sleep well. Oh, yes! They, like the lotus flower, make your trouble forgotten. It smell so like the waters of Lethe, and of that fountain of youth that the Conquistadores sought for in the Floridas, and find him all ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the Christ, their power is all gone. Oh, what a relief this is! See how men are driven by an accusing conscience—longing for deliverance from themselves, since in themselves they carry the executioner of broken law. Hear them crying out for waters of Lethe to drown the sting of memory. Again see them courting death in the vain hope of finding deliverance from their shame. But death will bring no deliverance to the impenitent. Behold Dives: "Son, remember!" There are no ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... have drunk from the spring of Lethe," said Benedetto, contemptuously. "Anselmo, have you forgotten our meeting ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... shall some time bear From scenes of mirthfulness or care Each fated human soul,— Shall waft and leave its burden where The waves of Lethe roll. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... the nature of the place, and how the rivulet was the Lethe of Paradise;—Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... 1778, died 1829.] at Dr. Beddoes', who has applied himself much to chemistry, has made some discoveries of importance, and enthusiastically expects wonders will be performed by the use of certain gases, which inebriate in the most delightful manner, having the oblivious effects of Lethe, and at the same time giving the rapturous sensations of the Nectar of the Gods! Pleasure even to madness is the consequence of this draught. But faith, great faith, is I believe necessary to produce any effect upon the drinkers, and I have seen some of the adventurous philosophers ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Round Table were poor day-labourers, employed to row over the rivers of Cocytus, Phlegeton, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when my lords the devils had a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as in the like occasion are hired the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers of Venice, and oars at London. But with this difference, that these poor knights have only for ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... about insane people, except to the man of science; and even he very soon gets to that "ass's bridge," on the other side of which Nature, as the genius of occult things, stands with a satirical smile on her face, as she sees the proud savans toppling over into the Lethe of sheer ignorance, and getting drowned for their insane curiosity. In the asylum in France, mentioned by De Vayer, the inmates enjoyed exceedingly the imputed madness of the visiting physician. The same play is acted in the world all throughout. Our insanity has only a little more method in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... 'fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary.' 'Old age is wisdom's youth, the day of her glorious flower' (Heracles, 8) might have stood as a text for Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra. The brands visible on the tyrant's soul, and the refusal of Lethe as a sufficient punishment (Voyage to the lower World, 24 and 28), have their parallels in our new eschatology. The decision of Zeus that Heraclitus and Democritus are to be one lot that laughter and tears will go together (Sale of Creeds, l3)—accords with our views ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Randolph in those holy meads, His Lovers and Amyntas reads, Whilst his Nightingale, close by, Sings his and her own elegy. From thence dismiss'd, by subtle roads, Through airy paths and sad abodes, They'll come into the drowsy fields Of Lethe, which such virtue yields, That, if what poets sing be true, The streams all sorrow can subdue. Here, on a silent, shady green, The souls of lovers oft are seen, Who, in their life's unhappy space, Were murder'd by some perjur'd face. ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... of coarse, measured life into some out-coast of eternity, and slept in its calm. When, by long degrees, the shock of outer life jarred and woke him, it was feebly done: he came back reluctant, weak: the quiet clinging to him, as if he had been drowned in Lethe, and had brought its calming mist with him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Monsieur, "the waters of Lethe and the elixir vitae have equally to be discovered. I imagine that they belong to Paradise—and we have lost Paradise, you know: though I have found my Eve," added Monsieur, with a gallant bow to his cara sposa; "and have ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... the common belief. But the saying is far from true; and Shakespeare's ghost must have sipped large draughts of Lethe, to be capable of speaking thus. For, though the least that he did is worth more than all that was done before him, and though his poorest performances surpass the best of his models; it is nevertheless certain that his task was but to continue and perfect what was already begun. Not ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... This fine-spun adamant Ithuriel's spear Could never pierce: for other stuff is here! (Points to himself.) No faint 'Alas!' no swift-repented sigh Can heal the cureless wound from which I die. Sure, reason finds that love his easy prey With Lethe aye at hand to point the way; With ordered fires like thine, I too could smother A heart in leash, find solace in another. Too fair, too dear—from whom the Fates me sever! Thou hast no heart to ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... apt But duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe's wharf, Wouldst thou not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... the selves that they have left behind. Each in its day had been a throbbing, vital thing, and though at times he found the past obtrusive and wished to throw it off, he could never utterly do so. There was for him no Lethe. But if he tasted the disadvantages of so compound a self, to others the array enriched the man, making him vibrant of all that had been as well as all that was. It put them, too, to speculation as to how great an army he would gather ere ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... in the covert of the vale a woodland and rustling forest thickets, and the river of Lethe that floats past their peaceful dwellings. Around it flitted nations and peoples innumerable; even as in the meadows when in clear summer weather bees settle on the variegated flowers and stream round the snow-white [709-742]lilies, all the plain ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... and when he had heard me to the end he said: "I might have thought of that. You sometimes need a cup of Lethe water. But now let such things alone, and don't compromise your reputation as a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rest May there be pight for that pure fire pitched. Wherewith thou wontest to inspire All self-dead souls: my life is gone; Sad solitude's my irksome won; dwelling. Cut off from men and all this world, In Lethe's lonesome ditch I'm hurled; Nor might nor sight doth ought me move, Nor do I care to be above. O feeble rays of mental light, That best be seen in this dark night, What are you? What is any strength If it be not laid in one length With pride or love? I nought desire But a new ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... say little, for she was tired, and made haste to get into bed. It was not long before the subject of their plans and problems and visions of spies and "jam-stained fists" were lost in the lethe ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... orchard where grow the golden apples of Hesperides, and the dragon is dead now that used to guard them, and so any one may help himself to the beautiful fruit. And by the side of the orchard flows the river Lethe, of which it is not well for man to drink, though many men would taste it gladly." And again ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... order that he might chain the three necks, shaggy with serpents, of the monster begotten of Medusa. His business also is settled for all time; he is the terrible, fearless, and watchful janitor, or guardian (janitor or custos) of Orcus, the Styx, Lethe, or the black Kingdom.[9] And so he remains for modern poets, as when Dante, reproducing Virgil, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... a strange transitory life was one the slave of these small cares? What if even in that dark pit beneath, which seemed to whisper Lethe to the tumultuous, swirling waters—what if there, too, were merely a beginning again, and to seek a slumbering refuge there merely a blind and reiterated plunge into the heat and tumult of another day? Who was that poor, dark, homeless ghoul, Sabathier? Who was this Helen of an impossible ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... knew we shouldn't get tired; and when two people feel that about each other they must live together—or part. I don't see what else they can do. A little trip along the coast won't answer. It's the high seas—or else being tied up to Lethe wharf. And I'm for the ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy did not assure him that a real deity existed. Death ended all. Was it not better to be done with the sham of life; to drink the Lethe water, and sink into eternal, dreamless slumber? He longed unspeakably to see Cornelia face to face; to kiss her; to press her in his arms; and the desire ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... look; on radiant wings that glow Like Juno's birds, or Iris' flaming bow, She sails; and swifter than the course of light Directs her rapid intellectual flight: The fugitive ideas she restores, And calls the wandering thought from Lethe's shores; To things long past a second date she gives, And hoary time from her fresh youth receives; 100 Congenial sister of immortal Fame, She shares her power, and Memory is her name. O first-born daughter of ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... servants and told them to get ready a grand supper with all kinds of dainty food and sweet things such as children like. "And be sure not to forget a golden cup filled with the water of Lethe," he said ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... at the Cratchits', for both Bob and Master Cratchit have gone to the front. But Tiny Tim is left, and the Christ Child is left, and my child is left, and yours—even your dear dreamchild "upon the tedious shores of Lethe" that always comes back at Christmas. It takes only one little child to make Christmas—one little child, and the angels who companion him, and the shepherds who come to see him, and the Wise Men who worship him and bring ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale, Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... strong, Jenny," he told his niece. "I have been most active in mind and body and am by no means so far down the hill of old age, that ends by the River of Lethe, as I imagined." ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... snow-while, clinging mist, except the very summit, over which the Moon was hanging. The peacefulness of the hour stole into his heart, and his brain calmed down. The mountain suggested to him the past, and the pure, white mist shrouding it seemed like vapour risen from the merciful waters of Lethe. The Moon suggested hope, vague and undefined, lint still hope. With the swing as of a pendulum his consciousness swept back from the dark night of despondency and bathed its wings in light. Then his soothed spirit felt ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... satisfied myself that I had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion of human sorrow. The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life, even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of opium, the only true minister to a mind ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mile in length, 200 feet in width at some points, and from 10 to 30 in depth, and runs beneath an arched ceiling of smooth rock about 15 feet high, while the Styx, another river, is 450 feet long, from 15 to 40 feet wide, and from 30 to 40 feet deep, and is spanned by a natural bridge. Lake Lethe has about the same length and width as the river Styx, varies in depth from 3 to 40 feet, lies beneath a ceiling some 90 feet above its surface, and sometimes rises to a height of 60 feet. There is also a Dead Sea, quite a somber body of water. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... where children weep,— Where girls whom none call maidens laugh, where gain, Hurrying men's steps, is yet by loss o'erta'en:— The bright Castalian brink and Latinos' steep:— Such were his paths, till deeper and more deep, He trod the sands of Lethe; and long pain, Weary with labour spurned and love found vain, In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the long Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe—past the toil Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil, The Stygian web of waters—if your song Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong As ere ye too shook off ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the despatch of business: I had none; therefore he concluded I was an ass, and wondered how he came to be pleased with me. Oh, 'tis a good thing to know what you can do, and to do that, and know what you cannot do, and leave that alone. Dull as weeds of Lethe was my task. 'Twas terrible! I thought it would never end. No greater misery could be imagined than what I endured in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... amount of humanity they possess in common with ourselves. Homer and aeschylus, and Sophocles, and Phidias, live not by the sacred in them, but by the human: and, but for this common bond, Hellenic art would have been submerged in the same Lethe that has drowned the Indian, Egyptian, and Assyrian Theogonies and arts. And, if we except form, what other thing does Hellenic art offer to the modern artist, that is not thoroughly opposed to his faith, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... drear darkness of a murky cell, Scraping for gold as beasts do in the earth For carrion, and counting life-time out By ducats; closing house and heart alike To the benignant sunshine. If our hearts Could lave in Lethe's cleansing stream sometimes, Till evil vanished from its memory, And left a virgin tablet for the pen Of Nature, life would ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... our enemy's territory, rather than leaving it to settle on that of the Confederation. I beg of your Majesty to let me know in Paris your opinion on all those points. Can the waters of the Danube have acquired the property of the river Lethe?" ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... cafe wall, or at a girl in dusty orange filling a goatskin pitcher at a well beneath a palm tree, and she succumbed to the lulling influence, smiling as they smile who hear the gentle ripple of the waters of Lethe. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... all; and where the puzzled dead go wandering futilely through fields of scentless asphodel, and through tall sullen groves of myrtle,—the puzzled quiet dead, who may not even weep as I do now, but can only wonder what it is that they regret. And I too must taste of Lethe, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... flap round them? or because Gold lies along the shallows of the world, And vile hands gather it? My song shall rise, Although none heed or hear it: rise it shall, And swell along the wastes of Nineveh And Babylon, until it reach to thee, Layard! who raisest cities from the dust, Who driest Lethe up amid her shades, And pourest a fresh stream on arid sands, And rescuest thrones and nations, fanes and gods, From conquering Time: he sees thee, and turns back. The weak and slow Power pushes past the wise, And lifts them up in triumph to her ear: They, to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... that cut of roast goose to be had for a shilling at the eating-house near Golden Square. Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Green, Mrs. Walker and all the other mistresses, are too vapid and stupid and humdrum for endurance. The theatres are dull as Lethe, and politics have lost their salt. Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... made from their side. From all this you will understand how the end of last year could have brought with it no gift more welcome to me than this book. The work has become to me as it were a golden net, wherewith I can recover from out the waves of Lethe the shadowy pictures of my past life, and in that rich draught I am ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the fight, there is in you a large feeling that might almost be described as Buddhistic. Time has nothing to do with your problems. The world has quietly run down, and has been embalmed with all its sweetness of light and colour and sound in a warm Lethe bath of sun. This afternoon is going to last for ever. You note and enjoy and savour the little pleasures unhurried by the thought that anything else, whether of pleasure ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... a strength to help the desperate weak. That night he learned how silence best can speak The awful things when Pity pleads for Sin. About the middle of the night her call Was heard, and he came wondering to the bed. 'Now kiss me, dear! it may be, now!' she said. Lethe had passed those ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sun, the awful stillness came stealing to envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines over the way stood transfixed like souls that had drunk of it. Under the spell of the silence they instinctively lowered their voices; and they broke sticks for the fire with reluctance; so painful was ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... sound judgment, or the demand of duty to marry one, because importuned to that step. He, who waits at your feet and implores acceptance, might not be so miserable after all, as he and you imagine, should you decline his overtures. In the cares of a busy world, he may find a draught of the waters of Lethe. His affections,—if it be a pure and deep love that impels him, and not insanity or mental intoxication,—may be turned into other channels, and the remnant of his life prove, after all, an endurable evil. He may be directed to a ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... her—and, alas! for her—she knew also that she loved him. And between them a great gulf was fixed; deep, and wide, and impassable as the waters of Lethe. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... mingled with much that we deplore, and with many actions that we bitterly repent; still, in the most checkered life, I firmly think there are so many little rays of sunshine to look back upon that I do not believe any mortal would deliberately drain a goblet of the waters of Lethe if he ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... as the world counts happiness, and She may be dead—but never forgotten. No real love or hate is wrought upon by Lethe. The thousand dreams of her will send his blood in passionate flow and the thousand memories of her whiten his face with pain. Friendship is intermittent and passion forgets, but man's single ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... scold about, and eagerly pitched upon this. She knew well that she could not comfort her husband in the anxiety that was gnawing at his heart-strings, but she was jealous of comfort that might come to him from any other source, and the Lethe of wine and jolly companionship she dreaded most of all. Long, long before, she had induced him to promise that he would never offer the young officers spirits in his house. She would not prohibit wine at table, she said; but she never thought ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... remember you! Until the waters of Lethe have flowed over the burning torrent of your existence, shame and remorse will cry in your ears, and pursue you with the delirium of fever. Remember you! Do not doubt it, I will remember. And your husband ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... trouble Would break like a bubble, And into the waters of Lethe depart, Did we not rehearse it, And tenderly nurse it, And give it a permanent ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the moment Vane was faced with the latter. The doctor had talked airily of three or four months, and after that in all probability a spell of light duty, and to Vane that seemed like a permanency. It is one thing to drug oneself in the waters of Lethe for a fortnight of one's own free will: it is altogether different to be drugged by others for good. And dimly he felt that either he or they would have to go under. Two totally incompatible people cannot sit next one another at ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... does not attempt to satisfy us with a facile optimism. Life is a conflict, a task, an adventure. And he who would engage in it must make the break between the higher and the lower nature. For Eucken, as for Dante, there must be 'the penitence, the tears, and the plunge into the river of Lethe before the new transcendent love begins.' There is no evasion of the complexities of life. He has a profound perception of the contradictions of experience and the seeming paradoxes of religion. For him true liberty ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... 1789 (in Histoire Parlementaire).) Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall near nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of rifle-pits often but a few feet apart. Bullets flew thick as hail, a tree eighteen inches through being cut clean off by them. Great heaps of dead and wounded lay between the lines, and "at times a lifted arm or a quivering limb told of an agony not quenched by the Lethe of death around." Lee did not give up this death-grapple till three o'clock in the morning, when he fell back to a new position. His losses here in killed and wounded were ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... are sheltered awhile from heaven and hell; then in some moment the bubble bursts, and the god awakens and knows himself, and he rises again with giant strength to conquer; or else he succumbs, and the waves of Lethe, perhaps in mercy, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes, Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks, And, swiftly as a bright Phoebean dart, Strike for the Cretan isle; and here thou art! Too gentle Hermes, hast thou found the maid?" Whereat the star of Lethe not delay'd His rosy eloquence, and thus inquired: "Thou smooth-lipp'd serpent, surely high inspired! Thou beauteous wreath, with melancholy eyes, Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise, Telling me only where my nymph is fled,— Where she doth breathe!" "Bright planet, thou ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... close In terms of friendship with thine enemies. Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart; 205 Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand, Sign'd in thy spoil and crimson'd in thy lethe. O world, thou wast the forest to this hart; And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee. How like a deer, strucken by many princes, 210 Dost thou ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Lethe was Joy's well. The past has floated from me like a bank of mist, I stand flooded in light. And if I look behind me I see nothing. Two phantoms merely,—my love for my mother, my love for you,—all else is gone. Where are they now, the clouds that pressed so close ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... "our identity would change in that repose; it would be a Lethe between the two parts of our being, and with such disconnection a continued life would be equivalent to a new ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... your destruction all his thoughts he bends, Yet if thou thirst of praise for noble stile, If in thy strength thou trust, thy strength that ends All hard assays, fly not, first with his blood Appease my ghost wandering by Lethe flood; ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and reducing to one volume from two (more meo), a trashy Book, 'Bernard's Recollections of the Stage,' with some good recollections of the Old Actors, up to Macklin and Garrick. But, of all people's, one can't trust Actors' Stories. In 'Lethe,' where your Garrick figures in Sir Geoffrey, also figured Woodward, as 'The Fine Gentleman'; so I think, at least, is the Title of a very capital mezzotint I have of him ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... had joined that troop of phantom children who come to us in our lonely hours, saying, "We are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... that to those who have reflected upon it and justly apprehended it, it has become unplayable. As well attempt to score the music of the spheres, or to paint "the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." In "King Lear" there is a personage who may be very instructively compared with others of the same kind by the student of Shakespeare's mental development. This is the Fool. Shakespeare's fools or ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... water, By the sad sweet springs that have salved our sorrow, The fates that haunt us, the grief that grips— Where we walk not to-day nor shall walk not tomorrow The wells of Lethe for wearied lips. With souls nor shaken with tears nor laughter, With limp knees loosed as of priests that pray, We bowed us and bent to the white well-water, We dipped and we ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... slant of the sunrise like dead faces floating to the surface of a river. Dead faces, yes: plaintive spectres of his childish fears and longings, lost in the harsh daylight of experience. He had forgotten the very dreams they stood for: Lethe flowed between and only one voice reached across the torrent. It was that of Saint ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... away! my early dream Remembrance never must awake: Oh! where is Lethe's fabled stream? My foolish ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... the theme shall still belong. When, freed from clay, the flitting ghosts among, My spirit glides the Stygian shores around, Though the cold hand of death has sealed my tongue, Thy praise the infernal caverns shall rebound, And Lethe's sluggish waves move slower to ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... as the Miss-sell-any) was published in 1809, under the title of Imitations and Translations from The Ancient and Modern Classics. Byron contributed nine original poems. The volume was not a success. "It foundered ... in the Gulph of Lethe."—Letter to H. Drury, July 17, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... have always a merry wit. But, indeed, the boy is a brave boy, and a quick boy, Sir Richard, but more forgetful than Lethe; and—sapienti loquor—it were well if he were away, for I shall never see him again without my head aching. Moreover, he put my son Jack upon the fire last Wednesday, as you would put a football, though he is a year older, your worship, because, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... still and let me in my desolation Caress the soft loose hair a moment's span. Since Loveliness is Life's one Consolation, And love the only Lethe ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... smells, has within these few weeks brought many persons of both sexes to an untimely fate; and, what is more surprising, has, contrary to her profession, with the same odours, revived others who had long since been drowned in the whirlpools of Lethe. Another of the professors is to be a certain lady, who is now publishing two of the choicest Saxon novels[6], which are said to have been in as great repute with the ladies of Queen Emma's Court, as the 'Memoirs from the New Atalantis' are with those of ours. I shall make it my business ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Would'st thou not ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... God may let me drink of Lethe, that I may forget all that has ever been! Pray that I may be satisfied with what remains, and that my heart may how in humility ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Shadow"; or Balzac's "Peau de Chagrin"; or later work, some of it manifestly inspired by Hawthorne, like Stevenson's tale of a double personality, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"; or Edward Bellamy's "Dr. Heidenhoff's Process"—a process for ensuring forgetfulness of unpleasant things—a modern water of Lethe. Even some of James's early stories like "The Madonna of the Future" and "The Last of the Valerii," as well as Mr. Howells's "Undiscovered ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... visions, and of Isaiah and Ezekiel and the Revelation. Dante, Blake, Shelley, the best of Lamennais and the best of Hugo excite in me nothing but a passionate reverence. I can walk day-long and night-long by Ulai and Chebar and Lethe-Eunoe and have no thought of sneer or slumber, shrug or satiety. But when you ask me to be agitated at Count Albert of Rudolstadt's violin ventriloquising Satan I really must decline. I do even remember the poor creature Paul de Kock, and would fain turn to one of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... upon facts. So a pair of new shoes for Sarah went down in my list with a large print Testament for Pete. Then I found that some of the people, some of the old ones, who in youth had been accustomed to it, like nothing so well as tea; it was ambrosia and Lethe mingled; and a packet of tea was put in my list next to the Testament. But the tea must have sugar; and I could not bear that they should drink it out of mugs, without any teaspoons; so to please myself I sent for a little delf ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... longing to be clasped in Courtenay's arms which she experienced when she saw him in the canoe, and now, after draining to the dregs the cup of bitterness she had forced on herself during these later days, here she was, ready as ever to quaff the love potion. Poor Elsie! She longed for the waters of Lethe; haply they are denied to young women with live blood in ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... breathe upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and rose; nor call to you, through your casement—call (not giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the name of Dante's great Matilda, who, on the edge of happy Lethe, stood, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... replied Mistress Nutter; "I behold the subterranean chamber beneath Malkin Tower, with its nine ponderous columns, its altar in the midst of them, its demon image, and the well with waters black as Lethe ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I, Obscurity, The son of Darkness and forgetful Lethe; I, that envy thy brightness, greet ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... figure and sleeping features of this most beautiful young man, who lies watched by angels beneath a heavy-curtained canopy. The genii of eternal repose modelled by Greek sculptors are twin-brothers of Love, on whom perpetual slumber has descended amid poppy-fields by Lethe's stream. The turmoil of the world is over for them; they will never wake again; they do not even dream. Sleep is the only power that still has life in them. But the Christian cannot thus conceive the mystery of the soul "fallen on sleep." His art must suggest a time ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... that was of Themistocles," said Kennedy, "who rejected the offer of a Memoria Technicha, with the aspiration that some one could teach him to forget. Lethe is the grandest of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of pleasure, we are often unconscious of pain while the devil amputates the fingers, the feet and hands, or even the arms and legs of our character. But oh, the anguish that visits the sad heart when the lethe passes away, and the soul becomes conscious of virtue sacrificed, of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... retrieve the fates, Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie Great heaps of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... mind of a contemplative observer many possible events which remain unrealized because only one or two of the necessary three elements are present,—events that are waiting, like unborn children on the other side of Lethe, until the necessary conditions shall call them into being. We observe a man who could do a great thing of a certain sort if only that sort of thing were demanded to be done at the time and in the place in which he loiters wasted. We grow aware of a great thing longing to be done, when there ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... "I regret, Miss 'Lethe," said the Colonel, turning to the disappointed lady at his side, after having completed his inquiries, "that there is no good hotel heah. If there were a good hotel heah, I would take you to it, ma'am, and make you comfortable. Then, ma'am, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the Gates with the light and the cloud of his song, Dry-shod over Lethe he passed to the chasms of hell; And the hosts of the dead made mock at him, crying, How long Have we dwelt in the darkness, oh fool, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... At the same theatre, in the opera "Nerone Infante," the interior of hell was shown. Here part of the stage opened, and discovered a scene underneath, representing several caves, full of infernal spirits, that flew about, discharging fire and smoke, on another side the river of Lethe and Charon's boat. Upon this landing a prodigious monster appeared, whose mouth opening to the great horror of the spectators, covered the front wings of the remaining part of the stage. Within his jaws was discovered a throne of fire, and a multitude of monstrous ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... having once tasted the Lethe of Cherbourg, remained in Paris until the last minute, and stepped from the boat-train to the waiting tender. But the less well-informed came on the day before—and never, for the remainder of their lives, forgot ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... looked like a mountain in that subterranean region, rising from the ground, with a stream running at its base. We crossed several rivers; besides the "Echo," one called the "Styx," the other the "Lethe." Our guide had brought a net, with which he caught some fish and crawfish. On examining them we could discover no appearance of eyes, while, from being deprived of the warm rays of the sun, they were perfectly ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... those persons now living who would give their own weight in sovereigns, though drawing against thirteen to sixteen stone, that all of this dreadful subject might be swallowed up by Lethe; that darkness might settle for ever upon the insanities of Cabool; and the grave close finally over the carnage of Tezeen. But it will not be. Blood will have blood, they say. The madness which could sport in levity with a trust of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... over the wrongs, wounds, and afflictions of others, in the mind of the person who inflicts those wrongs and oppressions! The oppressor soon forgets. This robbery took place in 17[81]; it was in the year 1783 when he asserted that the waters of Lethe had been poured over all their wrongs and oppressions. Your Lordships will mark this insulting language, when he says that both the order of the Directors and the application of the Begums for redress must be solicitations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... world, that ne'er think'st on that aged man— That Ariosto's old swift-paced man, Whose name is Time, who never lins to run, Loaden with bundles of decayed names, The which in Lethe's lake he doth entomb, Save only those which swan-like scholars take, And do deliver from that greedy lake. Inglorious may they live, inglorious die, That suffer learning ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... grace, When grosser eyes are clos'd in sleep, The gentle spirits of the place 35 Waft up the insuperable steep, On whose vast summit broad and smooth Her nest the Phoenix Bird conceals, And where by cypresses o'erhung The heavenly Lethe steals. 40 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and turned in to take my snooze. We weighed again about two in the morning. As the day dawned the dull grey steamy clouds settled down on us once more, while the rain fell in a regular waterspout. It was anything but a cheering prospect to look along the dreary vistas of the dull brimful Lethe—like stream, with nothing to be seen but the heavy lowering sky above, the red swollen water beneath, and the gigantic trees high towering overhead, and growing close to the water's edge, laced together with black snake—like withes, while the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... more difficult to see how such a memory can be a source of gladness; and yet it can. The old Greeks were pressed with that difficulty: they said to themselves, If a man remembers, there can be no Elysium for him. And so they put the river of forgetfulness, the waters of Lethe, betwixt life and the happy plains. Ah, we do not want any river of oblivion betwixt us and everlasting blessedness. Calvary is on this side, and that is enough! Certainly it is one of the most ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Steals drowsily and musically Into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave; The lily lolls upon the wave; Wrapping the fog about its breast, The ruin moulders into rest; Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take, And would not, for the world, awake. All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies (Her casement open to the skies) Irene, with ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... rock before us, and sometimes rowing near enough to a cottage on the bank, though they were few and far between, to see the sunflowers, and the seed vessels of the poppy, like small goblets filled with the water of Lethe, before the door, but without disturbing the sluggish household behind. Thus we held on, sailing or dipping our way along with the paddle up this broad river, smooth and placid, flowing over concealed rocks, where we could see the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... invite us to repose, and the waters of Lethe swept over us. As the Angel of Dreams threw his mantle over me, through this gauzy mantle I seemed to trace the Queen of the Falls from earth, with her guardian angels, to the fields of Paradise, which appeared in my dream as described by the Jesuit ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... I ever received from the Government, though I had some claim to the royal favour; for in 1710, when the enemies to our constitution were contriving its ruin, I wrote a pamphlet entitled "Lethe," which was published in Holland, and afterwards translated into English, and twice printed in London; and being reprinted in Dublin, proved so offensive to the ministry in Ireland, that it was burnt by the hands of the hangman. But so it is, that after having showed on all occasions ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in the reed-bed with my kind, Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn There came a groping shape of mystery Moving among us, that with random stroke Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe, Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice, Laughing on Lethe-bank—and in my throat ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... souls. Very probably similar instruction was given to the initiate at Eleusis. But the Fijians also have a regular theory of what is to be done and avoided on "The Path of the Shades." The shade is ferried by Ceba (Charon) over Wainiyalo (Lethe); he reaches the mystic pandanus tree (here occurs a rite); he meets, and dodges, Drodroyalo and the two devouring Goddesses; he comes to a spring, and drinks, and forgets sorrow at Wai-na-dula, the "Water ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall |
