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Narcissus   /nɑrsˈɪsəs/   Listen
Narcissus

noun
(pl. narcissuses)
1.
Bulbous plant having erect linear leaves and showy yellow or white flowers either solitary or in clusters.
2.
(Greek mythology) a beautiful young man who fell in love with his own reflection.



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"Narcissus" Quotes from Famous Books



... is the true fable of that beautiful youth, Narcissus, who had a twin sister of remarkable loveliness, strongly resembling himself, and to whom he was most tenderly attached. She dies young. He frequents fountains to gaze upon his own image reflected in the waters, it seeming to him the likeness of her he has lost. He is in pity transformed into ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... days was rather a passion than a sentiment. Their "beauty of holiness" was rather an active emotional impulse than a passive spiritualization, and was incomplete without a material expression, a tangible demonstration of itself. Like the fabled Narcissus, it yearned for its own image. Hence the joy and luxury of the ecclesiastical buildings of that period. They were the very blossoming of the tree of knowledge. This was, indeed, an unenlightened, perhaps a superstitious principle of worship; but it was enthusiastic, self-sacrificing, and chivalrous. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... A mass corrupt." To whom the coiner thus: "Thy mouth gapes wide as ever to let pass Its evil saying. Me if thirst assails, Yet I am stuff'd with moisture. Thou art parch'd, Pains rack thy head, no urging would'st thou need To make thee lap Narcissus' mirror up." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... when she smiled, the sunlight seemed to have darted one of its brightest beams into the shop. The gentleman was elegant and melancholy: he looked like Endymion on Latmos trying to recall his dream, or like Narcissus fading into shadow. His costume resembled a variegated Dutch tulip; his hair was powdered to excess; he sighed and whispered sadly, and looked ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... tenderly attached that her whole life was bound up in her, and she knew no happiness except in her society. One day, however, whilst Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow, attended by the ocean-nymphs, she saw to her surprise a beautiful narcissus, from the stem of which sprang forth a hundred blossoms. Drawing near to examine this lovely flower, whose exquisite scent perfumed the air, she stooped down to gather it, suspecting no evil, when a yawning abyss opened at her feet, and Aides, the grim ruler of the lower world, appeared from its ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... which may value them more highly than in Ruskin's day, but drops in a great many newspapers. Another so-called well—Anne Boleyn's well; her horse put its foot into soft ground above a spring—is a well no longer. Iron railings ward off the profane, and narcissus and ivy cluster round its brim, but below, according to the weather, is ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... as well as in his lightest satire, one might imagine that he had set himself to work out the problem, how much antithesis might be got out of a given subject. And there he completely succeeds. His neatest portraits are all wrought on this plan. "Narcissus," for ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... brief outline of our quarrel and war. Dined on board the Chinese gunboat Kwang-Tung, Commander Young. This is one of Laird's side-wheel steamers, built for Captain Sherrard Osborne's fleet. Capt. Bickford, of the Narcissus, and Lieut. Wood, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... beauty of Cliges I will limn you a portrait, the traits of which shall be very briefly told. He was in the flower of his youth, for he was about fifteen years old. He was fairer and more comely than Narcissus' who saw his own reflection in the fountain beneath the elm, and loved it so much when he saw it that he died—so folk say—because he could not have it. Much beauty had he, and little wit, but Cliges had greater store of both, just as fine gold surpasses copper, and yet more than I can say. His ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... The descendant of an obscure centurion, he had been a veterinary surgeon; then, having got Caligula's ear, he flattered it abominably. Caligula disposed of, he flattered Claud, or what amounted to the same thing, Narcissus, Claud's chamberlain. Through the influence of the latter he became a lieutenant, fought on remote frontiers—fought well, too—so well even that, Narcissus gone, he felt Agrippina watching him, and knowing the jealousy of her eyes, prudently kept quiet until ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... four or five intelligent and unscrupulous freedmen, hedged Claudius about, and there began the period of their common government—a government of incredible waste and extortion. Among these freedmen there were, to be sure, men like Narcissus and Pallas, intelligent and sagacious, who did not aim merely at putting money into their purses, but who helped Claudius to govern the empire properly. Messalina, on the other hand, thought only of acquiring wealth, that ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... May Flower Welcome. Marigold Sacred affection. Marigold and Cypress Despair. Mandrake Rarity. Mignonette Your qualities surpass your charms. Morning Glory Coquetry, Affectation. Mock Orange Counterfeit. Myrtle Love in absence. Mistletoe Insurmountable. Narcissus Egotism. Nasturtium Patriotism. Oxalis Reverie. Orange Blossom Purity. Olive Peace. Oleander Beware. Primrose Modest worth. Pink, White Pure love. " Red Devoted love. Phlox Our hearts are united. Periwinkle ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... garden and caught the flash of the big new leaves of the magnolia which shadowed the rear wall. The early honeysuckle had begun to blossom on the south side, and the violet beds were a solid mass of gorgeous blue. Through the open window came the rich odor of the long rows of narcissus in full white glory where the jonquils had ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... that liv'st unseen 230 Within thy airy shell By slow Meander's margent green, And in the violet imbroider'd vale Where the love-lorn Nightingale Nightly to thee her sad Song mourneth well. Canst thou not tell me of a gentle Pair That likest thy Narcissus are? O if thou have Hid them in som flowry Cave, Tell me but where 240 Sweet Queen of Parly, Daughter of the Sphear, So maist thou be translated to the skies, And give resounding grace to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... for his verses in the Quartier Latin, had stood beside her for a few moments in the Rue de Rivoli, and had gone home to his garret inspired to produce some lines in which he compared her to the delicate narcissus blooms that died so quickly ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... of soft skirts and she was there—in the hall. Helbeck could see her quite plainly as she stood by the oak table in her white dress. There was just room at the throat of it for a pearl necklace, and at the wrists for some thin gold bracelets. The narcissus were in her hair, which she had coiled and looped in a wonderful way, so that Helbeck's eyes were dazzled by its colour and abundance, and by the whiteness of the slender neck below it. She meanwhile was quite unconscious of his neighbourhood, and he saw that she was all in a happy flutter, hastily ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden armour, marching down the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... violin solos, kept pouring from a pen whose apparent ease concealed a vast deal of studious labor, until the lucky 13, the opus-number of a bundle of "Water Scenes," brought Nevin the greatest popularity of all, thanks largely to "Narcissus," which has been as much thrummed and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... flat, and which seemed to be about five hundred stadia off; as we approached near to it, a sweet and odoriferous air came round us, such as Herodotus tells us blows from Arabia Felix; from the rose, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the lily, the violet, the myrtle, the laurel, and the vine. Refreshed with these delightful odours, and in hopes of being at last rewarded for our long sufferings, we came close up to the island; here we ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... younger ones dressed in white, with veils and chaplets of roses, blue cornflower, and pheasant's eye Narcissus, while the older women were more soberly attired. The Bank Managers and the banner headed the men, who were mostly peasants, but among them were a few who seemed to be of higher rank, and these, for the most part, though by no means all of them, wore their clothes reversed—as I have forgotten ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... young animal, a being so physically perfect as to be what the good vicar of Bludston had called him in tired jest—a lusus naturae. But though proud of his body as any finely formed human may honorably be, a far higher arrogance saved him from Narcissus vanity. It was the inner and essential Paul and not the outer investiture that was ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... them in the garden, too—tulips and hyacinths and daffodils and narcissus and, jonquils. They come so early and give you a feeling ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... Carlton House, that dear structure, the very work of his life and symbol of his being, to be rased. I wish that Carlton House were still standing. I wish we could still walk through those corridors, whose walls were 'crusted with ormolu,' and parquet-floors were 'so glossy that, were Narcissus to come down from heaven, he would, I maintain, need no other mirror for his beaute.' I wish that we could see the pier-glasses and the girandoles and the twisted sofas, the fauns foisted upon the ceiling and the rident goddesses along the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... loved her once and dropped her without offence in a quiet and to some extent friendly manner, a certain respect was retained for her. Nero, when he had freed her, let her live in the palace, and gave her special apartments with a few servants. And as in their time Pallas and Narcissus, though freedmen of Claudius, not only sat at feasts with Claudius, but also held places of honor as powerful ministers, so she too was invited at times to Caesar's table. This was done perhaps because her beautiful form was a real ornament ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... plants of Azaleas, Hyacinths, Heliotropes, Hydrangeas, Kalmias, Sedums, Lilacs, Narcissus, Pelargoniums, Pinks, Rhododendrons, and Roses in varieties. A batch of last year's young Fuchsias, Erythrinas, and Salvia patens, to be shaken out, repotted, and placed in bottom heat. Sow ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane

... one, in the work of education. Clusters of ornamental trees, dotted here and there over its soft green, were interspersed with lovely flower-beds, in which were growing not only rare flowers, but the dear old blossoms,—candytuft, narcissus, clove-pinks, jonquils, heart's-ease, daffodils, and many another to which the eyes of some of the young girls turned lovingly, for they knew they were blossoming ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... all the haste that was compatible with gathering a handful of wild hyacinth and meadow narcissus for poor Maria. He found himself farther from success than ever, when he would have again urged Margaret to marry at once. A new duty seemed to have sprung up to keep her at Deerbrook. Maria wanted her. Her summer work lay clear before her. She must nurse and cheer ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl—a marvellous, radiant flower. It was a thing of awe whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred blooms, and it smelled ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... warm spring morning, and Sheba, having made herself ready, wandered into the garden to wait among the flowers. The rapturous first scents of the year were there, drawn by the sun and blown by vagrant puffs of wind from hyacinths and jonquils, white narcissus and blue violets. Sheba walked among the beds, every few minutes kneeling down upon the grass to bury her face in pink and yellow and white clusters, inhaling the breath of flowers and the pungent freshness of the sweet brown earth at the same time. She had lived among leaves and growing things ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... I do," he answered, his mouth twisting into its sad and gentle smile. He had come bringing a sheaf of spring flowers, narcissus, and golden daffodils, which she was holding in her lap. He thought as he said good-bye that she looked much more like Persephone than ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... work is his treatise "De Origine Mali," published in 1702, and received with respectful consideration by the eminent thinkers of the day. He wrote other minor works, but none of any distinguished merit. He succeeded Narcissus Marsh as Archbishop of Dublin in 1702-3 (March 11th). Swift's letters to King during the former's embassy on the matter of first-fruits, make a most interesting chapter in the six volumes which Scott devotes to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... himself was first poisoned by a cup of wine given to him by his favourite mistress Marcia, on his return weary and thirsty from the Colosseum; and then, as the poison operated too slowly, was strangled in his heavy drugged sleep by his favourite gladiator Narcissus. One could not look upon the bare masses of ruins around without thinking of the terrible orgies that took place there, and of the shout of enthusiastic joy when the news reached Rome that the detested tyrant was no more, and the empire was free to breathe again. The fate of Ahab, who ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... that he did not make himself, and that he never was solicitous about the case of his soul (as Shakespeare calls it) only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never once heard that he hung over the glassy stream, like another Narcissus, admiring the image in it, nor that he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain while it is capable of giving so much pleasure to others. I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay {62} cottage to which he ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the Narcissus") was the name of a Cretan girl wedded to one Iphis (vid. Ovid., Metamorph., ix. 714). Perhaps Byron's dedication was responsible for the Ianthe of Queen Mab (1812, 1813), who in turn bestowed her name on Shelley's eldest daughter ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... "Even at my age I am not certain that I am altogether flattered. Morris is an excellent fellow, and very clever at electrical machines; but I have never considered him remarkable for personal beauty—not exactly an Adonis, or an Apollo, or a Narcissus, you know." ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... hitherto for little Kirl ended in the grassy pasture where the goats stayed. Here was a pleasant slope thick with globe-flowers and narcissus at the lower end, and fragrant with wild thyme at the upper ridge, ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head. On the table stood a flat ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... characteristic of the dupe, so should good-temper be that of the knave; the two fit into each other like joints. Happily, good-nature is a Narcissus, and falls in love with its own likeness. And good-temper is to good-nature what the Florimel of snow was to the Florimel of flesh,—an exact likeness made of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... minion of Caesar from Caesar and made him my playfellow. He came to me at night in a litter. He was pale as a narcissus, and ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde

... The road led almost straight across the level between quickset hedges in white bloom. But when we reached the long steep hill which ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out, and we toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red anemones and sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges replaced the May-thorns of the plain. In course of time our bovi brought us to the Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a further ascent of seven hundred feet to the topmost ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... about, guinea-pigs ran hither and thither, with as many other pretty little creatures as one could wish to see. The birds called and sang to us as we advanced: the starlings, particularly, chattered the silliest stuff. One always cried, "Paris, Paris!" and the other, "Narcissus, Narcissus!" as plainly as a schoolboy can say them. The old man seemed to continue looking at me earnestly while the birds called out thus; but I feigned not to notice it, and had in truth no time to attend to him, for ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... ask, the Seine? And yonder sylvan lane, Is it the Bois? Ma foi! Comme elle est chic, my Paris, my grisette! Yet may I not forget That London still remains the missus Of this Narcissus. ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... Bettina allowed herself to think of these things. But now, in her solitude and idleness, visions would come of the eager lover, strong as a young Narcissus, who represented love in such a simple, wholesome guise—or at least so it had seemed to be. Then she would shake off the image, and tell herself it was but seeming, as the result had proved, and so she would accuse herself of weakness and ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... my dole although I deale my alms ill, Narcissus cannot love with any damzell; Although, for most part, men to love encline all, I will not, I, this is ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... ever there, With that fair mountain throng, Who his sweet nurses were, [the nymphs of Nisa] Wild Bacchus holds his court, the conscious woods among! Daintily, ever there, Crown of the mighty goddesses of old, Clustering Narcissus with his glorious hues Springs from his bath of heaven's delicious dews, And the gay crocus sheds his rays of gold. And wandering there for ever The fountains are at play, And Cephisus feeds his river From their ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... low-browed room at the "George," pouring in at the long windows and spilling in pools of hazy yellow upon the polished boards. Spring was in the old garden outside, touching the warm tangle of gillyflowers to fire, transmuting the pallor of the narcissus to light itself, making the very shadows more luminous than a winter's shining. The freakish sun, lit this and left that, after its habit, for nowhere is more mysterious alchemy than the mixing of sun and shadow in the spaces ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does,—she will wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath, as a narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough; she may fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at some moments of her life; but you cannot fetter her; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take any, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... by Cellini, the most important are the silver figure of Jupiter, executed at Paris for Francis I., and the Perseus, executed in bronze for the Grand Duke Cosmo of Florence. He also executed statues in marble of Apollo, Hyacinthus, Narcissus, and Neptune. The extraordinary incidents connected with the casting of the Perseus were peculiarly illustrative of the remarkable character of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... spring which already in happier lands was drawing veils of peach and cherry blossom, over the red Sienese earth or the green terraces of Como. The fire crackled in the grate. The pretty, old-fashioned room was fragrant with hyacinth and narcissus; Julie's books lay on the tables; Julie's hand and taste were already to be felt everywhere. And Lord Lackington with the kitten, beside the fire, gave the last touch of home ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of prints and sketches. A large writing-table, untidily heaped with papers, stood conspicuous on the blue self-coloured carpet, which over a great part of the floor was pleasantly void and bare. Flat earthenware pans, planted with hyacinths and narcissus, stood here and there, and filled the air with spring scents. Books ran round the lower walls, or lay piled where-ever there was a space for them; while about the fire at the further end was gathered a circle of chintz-covered chairs—chairs of all shapes and sizes, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... below the high terrace of the hotel, the green and azure of the Salernian gulf shone and danced in the sun, to her right a wood of oak and arbutus stretched up into a purple cliff—a wood starred above with gold and scarlet berries, and below with cyclamen and narcissus. From the earth under the leafy oaks—for the oaks at Amalfi lose and regain their foliage in winter and spring by imperceptible gradations—came a moist English smell. The air was damp and warm. A convent bell tolled from invisible heights ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs, of the Crown-Imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus and others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch more or less according to the size of the bulb; put all these pretty promiscuously but pretty thickly ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... master's field, I strike up an acquaintance with the frog. Flayed and stuck at the end of a split stick, he serves as bait to tempt the crayfish to come out of his retreat by the brook side. On the alder trees I catch the Hoplia, the splendid scarab who pales the azure of the heavens. I pick the narcissus and learn to gather, with the tip of my tongue, the tiny drop of honey that lies right at the bottom of the cleft corolla. I also learn that too long indulgence in this feast brings a headache; but this discomfort in no way ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... hues barbaric gloom— Pomegranate, quince and peach and plum, Mandarine, grape, and cherry clear Englobe each glassy chandelier, Where nectarous flowers their sweets distil— Jessamine, tuberose, chamomill, Wild-eye narcissus, anemone, Tendril of ivy ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... with a fever, his nurse, an expert on the accordeon, can bring him back to health again with three bars of Under the Bamboo Tree after each meal. Instead of dosing kids with cod liver oil when they need a tonic, they will be set to work at a mechanical piano and braced up on Narcissus. There'll Be a Hot Time In The Old Town To-Night will become an effective remedy for a sudden chill. People suffering from sleeplessness can dose themselves back to normal conditions again with Wagner the way I did. Tchaikowski, to be well Tshaken before taken, will be an effective remedy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... that it is a marvel why we do not see it, as 'spring-bedding,' in every British garden. The heath is almost hidden, in places, by the large white flowers and trailing stems of the sage-leaved Cistus. Delicate purple Ixias, and yet more delicate Hoop-petticoat Narcissus, spring from the turf. And here and there among furze and heath, crop out great pink bunches of the Daphne Cneorum of our gardens, perfuming all the air. Yes, we are indeed in foreign parts, in the very home of that Atlantic flora, of which only a few species have reached ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... the ostensible purpose of calling on John Barton. He was dressed in his best—his Sunday suit of course; while his face glittered with the scrubbing he had bestowed on it. His dark black hair had been arranged and rearranged before the household looking-glass, and in his button-hole he stuck a narcissus (a sweet Nancy is its pretty Lancashire name), hoping it would attract Mary's notice, so that he might have the ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the head that aches, And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus Thou wouldst not want ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... Emperor saw, from on high, his own reflection. Perhaps it was mere vanity that drew him closer; perhaps the fancy that he saw a rival; perhaps, but this is not likely, thirst. Close to the margin lay a rough-edged clumsy flint. On this he settled, and, Narcissus like, feasted his eyes on his own beauty. He nearly met Narcissus' fate. It was the flint that saved him. He felt the shadow, almost before it reached him, but even so he rose too late. For half a minute he, the Purple Emperor, was prisoner in a boy's straw hat. Had ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... cathedral. A mortal sadness encompassed him, and his nerves were like taut violin strings. It was within the walls of his skull, that he saw—his mundane surroundings did not disturb his visions. And the waves of dolour swept over his consciousness. A mingling of tuberoses, narcissus, attar of roses, and ambergris he detected in the air—as triste as a morbid nocturne of Chopin. This was followed by a blending of heliotrope, moss-rose, and hyacinth, together with dainty touches of geranium. He dreamed of Beethoven's manly music when whiffs of apple-blossom, white rose, cedar, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... sea-nymph answered from her cave He called; the naiad left her mountain wave He dreamed of beauty; lo, amidst his dream, Narcissus, mirrored in the breathless stream; And night's chaste empress, in her bridal play, Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay; And ocean dimpled, as the languid swell Kissed the red lip of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... England's gentry, though including among its noble trees such un-English specimens as the sprawling and moss-draped live-oaks and the curious Monterey pines and cypresses. Its gardens offer a continual feast of colour, with their solid acres of roses, violets, calla lilies, heliotrope, narcissus, tulips, and crocuses; and one part of them, known as "Arizona," contains a wonderful collection of cacti. The hotel itself has no pretension to rival the Ponce de Leon in its architecture or appointments, and is, I think, built of wood. It is, however, very large, encloses a spacious ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... keep for you; which Thestilis Implores me oft to let her lead away; And she shall have them, since my gifts you spurn. Come hither, beauteous boy; for you the Nymphs Bring baskets, see, with lilies brimmed; for you, Plucking pale violets and poppy-heads, Now the fair Naiad, of narcissus flower And fragrant fennel, doth one posy twine- With cassia then, and other scented herbs, Blends them, and sets the tender hyacinth off With yellow marigold. I too will pick Quinces all silvered-o'er with hoary down, Chestnuts, which Amaryllis ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... Narcissus cries And Echo answers from her dark retreat, While Zephyr heavy-laden with the sweet, Fresh scent of blooms across the pasture hies; Above, the blueness of the April skies, Matched by the lure unto the wandering feet That e'er must go ere Spring could ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones

... love's rewards to tell the happy hour, Daphne a tree, Narcissus make a flower, And by what means the eclogue yet has power To make the woods worthy a conqueror; This of their writings is the grace and flight; Their risings lofty, yet not out ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... stretch out the splendour of the spoil; And hot and horrid from the work all these Sat, and drew breath and drank and made great cheer And washed the hard sweat off their calmer brows. For much sweet grass grew higher than grew the reed, And good for slumber, and every holier herb, Narcissus, and the low-lying melilote, And all of goodliest blade and bloom that springs Where, hid by heavier hyacinth, violet buds Blossom and burn; and fire of yellower flowers And light of crescent lilies, and such leaves As fear the Faun's and know the Dryad's foot; Olive and ivy and ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... verily written in the hearts of millions of his fellow-creatures, for who has not sung "Old Folks at Home," "Nelly Bly," "My Old Kentucky Home," and the others? Ethelbert Nevin is the strongest name among our musical composers, his "Narcissus," "The Rosary," and many others being known ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... to be wonderful, to be young, with pale gilt hair and blue eyes, and a face in which the shadows of fleeting expressions come and go, and a mouth like the mouth of Narcissus. It is so interesting to oneself. Surely one's beauty, one's attractiveness, should be one's own greatest delight. It is only the stupid, and those who still cling to Exeter Hall as to a Rock of Ages, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... in the autumn of 1741, with fifteen louis in my purse, and with my comedy of Narcissus and my musical project in my pocket. These composed my whole stock; consequently I had not much time to lose before I attempted to turn the latter to some advantage. I therefore immediately thought of ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... while picking golden narcissus in her lily valley, Mary's heart was gladdened by the sudden outburst of a nightingale in a thicket close at hand. Careful watching was rewarded by a sight, not only of the singer but of a nest with three little ones in ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... first presentation in 1777, and increased his fame so much that his bust was placed in the Grand Opera beside those of Lulli, Rameau, and Quinault. "Iphigenia in Tauris" was produced in 1779, with great success, but "Echo and Narcissus," the last opera which Gluck gave in Paris, was a failure. He left France for Vienna in the same year, never to return, though his royal pupil pressed him to do so in the ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... which in his heart he was half ashamed. St Roque's was very fair to see that Easter morning. Above the communion-table, with all its sacred vessels, the carved oaken cross of the reredos was wreathed tenderly with white fragrant festoons of spring lilies, sweet Narcissus of the poets; and Mr Wentworth's choristers made another white line, two deep, down each side of the chancel. The young Anglican took in all the details of the scene on his way to the reading-desk as the white ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... between the will and the intelligence. Here is the tesselation of mean and tragic happenings in the vast mosaic we call Life. And the force of fatuity in the case of Almayer—a book which has for me the bloom of youth. Sheer narrative could go no further than in The Nigger of the Narcissus (Children of the Sea), nor interior analysis ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... library, on the right, you reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is one glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and another of the Michaelmas ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... foot on a bridge could pass that scaly hulk unmoved. Matt Peasley said uncomplimentary things about the owners of the vessel and directed the launchman to pass in under her stern, in order that he might read her name. She proved to be the Narcissus, of London. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... forward against the bed. How long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises—of the tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling—as in a dream—went on about him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the down off for the world, and must become ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... plaintively warbling. The tall cypress was dancing in the garden; and the poplar never ceased clapping its hands with joy. With a loud voice from the top of every bough the turtle-dove was proclaiming the glad advent of spring. The diadem of the narcissus shone with such splendour that you would have said it was the crown of the Emperor of China. On this side the north wind, on that, the west wind, were, in token of affection, scattering dirhams at the feet ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... praised the historical fidelity of the picture. Nero, Agrippina, Narcissus, and Burrhus, are so accurately sketched, and finished with such light touches and such delicate colouring, that, in respect to character, it yields, perhaps, to no French tragedy whatever. Racine has here possessed the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... personages—sometimes with the same names, sometimes with different—follow in the train; Cupid watches the Lover that he may take shot at him, and the tale is interrupted by an episode giving the story of Narcissus. Meanwhile the Lover has seen among the flowers of the garden one rose-bud on which he fixes special desires. The thorns keep him off; and Love, having him at vantage, empties the right-hand quiver on him. He yields himself prisoner, and a dialogue between captive ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... should have taken this so personally—whether she thought he was alluding to her Narcissus-like complexion, or her wealth of luminous hair—I cannot say. At any rate—though I would not have it even whispered to poor little JIM, who, being far from well, had been quite unable to leave his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 26, 1891 • Various

... borrowed nothing, but the Persians much, from Greek Mythology. Hence the eye of Narcissus, an idea hardly suggested by the look of the daffodil (or asphodel)-flower, is at times the glance of a spy and at times the die-away look of a mistress. Some scholars explain it by the form of the flower, the internal calyx resembling the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... with heavenly dew I 2 Bright flowers their never-failing bloom renew, From eldest time Deo and Cora's crown Full-flowered narcissus, and the golden beam Of crocus, while Cephisus' gentle stream In runnels fed by sleepless springs Over the land's broad bosom daily brings His pregnant waters, never dwindling down. The quiring Muses love to seek the spot And Aphrodite's golden ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... the obvious privileges of woman. To be a living rose, with bosom of gold and petals of lace, a rose each passer-by longs to pluck from its husband-stem, but dare not for fear of the husband-thorns. To be privileged to play Narcissus all day long with your mirror, to love yourself so much that you kiss the cold reflection, yet fear not to drown. To reveal yourself to yourself in a thousand lovely poses, and bird-like poises of the head. To kneel to yourself in adoration, to ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... like most of the clever girls of that generation, had Scudery's romances always in her head. She is Dorinda: her correspondent, supposed to be her cousin Jane Allington, is Sylvia: William is Ormanzor, and Mary Phenixana. London Gazette, Feb. 14 1688/9; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. Luttrell's Diary, which I shall very often quote, is in the library of All Souls' College. I am greatly obliged to the Warden for the kindness with which he allowed me access ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of auto-erotism is the tendency for the sexual emotion to be absorbed and often entirely lost in self-admiration. This Narcissus-like tendency, of which the normal germ in women is symbolized by the mirror, is found in a minor degree in some men, and is sometimes well marked in women, usually in association with an attraction for other persons, to which attraction it is, of course, normally subservient. "The mirror," ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the question to Tiresias, who has been of both sexes. He gives his decision in favour of Jupiter, on which Juno deprives him of sight; and, by way of recompense, Jupiter bestows on him the gift of prophesy. His first prediction is fulfilled in the case of Narcissus, who, despising the advances of all females (in whose number is Echo, who has been transformed into a sound), at last pines away with love for himself, and is changed into a flower which bears his name. Pentheus, however, derides ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... obiect of their paine, With no contentment can themselves suffize; But having, pine, and having not, complaine. For lacking it, they cannot lyfe sustayne; And having it, they gaze on it the more, In their amazement lyke Narcissus vaine, Whose eyes him starv'd: so plenty makes me poore. Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store Of that faire sight, that nothing else they brooke, But lothe the things which they did like before, And can no more endure on them to looke. All this worlds ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... the bulkhead at last. Those were stout planks. She was a ship, well finished in every detail—the Narcissus was. They were the stoutest planks ever put into a ship's bulkhead—we thought—and then we perceived that, in our hurry, we had sent all the tools overboard. Absurd little Belfast wanted to break it down with his own weight, and with both feet leaped straight up ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... of belated justice brought the Jews small comfort; Cumanus was succeeded by Felix, an even worse creature. He was the brother of the Emperor's favorite Narcissus, "by badness raised to that proud eminence," and the husband of the Herodian princess Drusilia, who had become a pagan in order to marry him. Tacitus, the Roman historian, says[1] that "with all manner of cruelty he exercised royal functions in the spirit of a slave." Under his rapacious ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... The finished picture so delighted amateurs at Paris that large sums were offered in vain to divert it from the fortunate possessor; 711, L. wall, is the famous Judgment of Solomon (1649). On the same wall are 731, Echo and Narcissus; 734, his masterpiece, Shepherds of Arcady—a group of shepherds of the Vale of Tempe in the heyday of health and beauty, are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning inscription on a tomb: ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... is a subject of considerable attraction, and wigs of every nature, style, and fashion, are in high request for the occasion—The Bob, the Tye, the Natural Scratch, the Full Bottom, the Queue, the Curl, the Clerical, the Narcissus, the Auricula, the Capital, the Corinthian, the Roman, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch—oh! we are full of business just now. Speaking of the art, by the by, reminds me of a circumstance which occurred a very 55short time back, and which ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... leafy bower, attracted every ear and thrilled every heart. The south wind—"breeze of the south,[FN145] the friend of love and spring" blew with a voluptuous warmth, for rain clouds canopied the earth, and the breath of the narcissus, the rose, and the citron, teemed with ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... sometimes replied to by both! And she, in an effort to seem Oriental, calls the Dervish, "My Syrian Rose," "My Desert Flower," "My Beduin Boy," et cetera, always closing her message with either a strip of Syrian sky or a camel load of the narcissus. Ah, but not thus will the play close. True, Khalid alone adorns her studio for a time, or rather adores in it; he alone accompanies her to Bohemia. But the Dervish, who was always going wrong in Bohemia,—always at the door of the Devil,—ventures one night to escort another woman to her studio. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... begun at the foundations,' said I. 'Must not I know which of us ought to yield to the other in behalf of our suffering, or, if you choose, of our mania?—Oh! what a charming clump of narcissus! They are as fresh ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... taste for the good things of this world; and our traveller, on partaking of the Nawab's hospitality, records with infinite zest the glories of a peculiar preparation of lamb, called nargus, or the narcissus. But, alas! the reminiscences of the nargus were less grateful than the fruition, and the remorse of the colonel's guilty stomach (as poor Theodore Hooke, or some one else, used to call indigestion) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... this thing the world might look and understand and censure if it were not brass-browed and stupid. Sneak! Traitress! Serpent! Oh, Serpent! do you slip into our very Eden? looping your sly coils across our flowers, trailing over our beds of narcissus and our budding rose, crawling into our secret arbours and whispering-places and nests of happiness! Do you flaunt and sway your crested head with a new hat on it every day? Oh, that my Aunt were here, with the dragon's teeth, and the red breath, and whiskers to match! Here Mrs. Morrissy ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... really immodest to keep on spying on the birds in that way. And as for the bushes and trees, what we want to know is, How does one ever get to know them? How do you find out which is an alder and what is an elm? Or a narcissus and a hyacinth, does any one really know them apart? We think it's all a bluff. And jonquils. There was a nest of them on our porch, we are told, but we didn't think it any business of ours to bother them. Let nature alone and ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... honored member of the family that should be found in every garden. When you see the Dandelion's gleam of gold in the grass by the wayside you get a good idea of the brilliant display a fine collection of Narcissus is capable of making, for in richness of color these two flowers are ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... with a very clean, rosy-cheeked old woman in a white cap. Behind Constance stood a servant carrying a basket and as the girls watched she purchased an enormous bunch of daffodils, a sheaf of calla lilies, and a quantity of narcissus. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... representation an object in itself, independently of its spiritual significance. Next, under the influence of the classical revival, they brought home again the old powers of the earth—Aphrodite and Galatea and the Loves, Adonis and Narcissus and the Graces, Phoebus and Daphne and Aurora, Pan and the Fauns, and the Nymphs of the woods and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... NARCISSUS? He, that foul ill-favoured brute, A fevered age's most repulsive fruit, The murderous coxcomb, the assassin sleek? Stranger comparison could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various

... and clothed with a mass of luxuriant creepers; whilst on the opposite side was a low woody patch, partly immersed by the lake-like glassy water of the river, into which one slender tree dipped its feathery crest, appearing like another Narcissus, to admire its own beauty in the stream. In front, the eye could penetrate far down the reach hemmed in as it was by trees that clustered thick ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... studying hard—over it, rather than in preparation for it. Jones talking with me once on this subject, and about agape as against gnosis in art, said, "Oh that men should put an enemy into their brains to steal away their hearts." At any rate he and I have written "Narcissus" on these principles, and are not without hope that what it has lost in erudition it may have gained in freshness. I have, however, dealt with the question of how to study painting more at length in the chapter on the Decline of Italian ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... perhaps no country in Europe which has so interesting a flora, especially in spring. In March in the granite north the ground under the pine-trees is covered with the exquisite flowers of the narcissus triandrus,[4] while the wet water meadows are yellow with petticoat daffodils. Other daffodils too abound, but these are ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... fugitive sceptre. The past, however, was theirs also: a past so transformed that he must revisit it with her, joyously confronting her new self with the image of her that met them at each turn. Then he had himself to trace in her memories, his transfigured likeness to linger over in the Narcissus-mirror of her faith in him. This interchange of recollections served them as well as any outspoken expression of feeling, and the most commonplace allusion ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... young men pay their first court, know much better how to make love than younger women. An adolescent youth is too like a young woman himself for a young woman to please him. Such a passion trenches on the fable of Narcissus. Besides that feeling of repugnance, there is, as I think, a mutual sense of inexperience which separates them. The reason why the hearts of young women are only understood by mature men, who conceal their cleverness under a passion real or feigned, is precisely the same (allowing ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... they now began to fear that the violent vomiting which succeeded might throw off the poison. There was no time to be lost; and the barbarous Marcia, who had so often slept in the arms of the young emperor, was the person to propose that he should now be strangled. A young gladiator, named Narcissus, was therefore introduced into the room; what passed is not known circumstantially; but, as the emperor was young and athletic, though off his guard at the moment, and under the disadvantage of sickness, and as he had himself been regularly trained in the gladiatorial ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... (carrying budded boughs of trees; they march and countermarch in simple march figures, while piano plays "Campbells are coming," or "Narcissus." They form in line, each saluting queen as ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various

... Trovatore," a Hungarian "Czardas," Mendelssohn's "Fruehlingslied" and the overture from "William Tell." She followed these with the "Intermezzo" and the "Pizzicato" from "Sylvia," and then with "Narcissus" and "Sans Souci." And at the end of this, she paused again; for now her father had arisen and come close to her. With a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with stern yet kindly ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... quite as before, but the feeling vanished with the disappearance of the car, leaving him merely glad of the solitude. Soon he came to a spring, a placid basin of water canopied by an artificial grotto of rock, and kneeling down he gazed intently at his own reflection. But no thought of Narcissus, or of Horace's fountain of Bandusia, intervened to substitute literary memories for the reality of sensation; he was too genuine a lover of nature to interpret it in ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... again:—I have just read The Book-bills of Narcissus, An Account rendered by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. (FRANZ MURRAY; Derby. Leicester and Nottingham.) It doesn't make any difference to me whether this dainty little book was actually published at Derby or at Leicester or even at Nottingham, ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand

... will tear the full flowers and the little heads of the grape-hyacinths. I will strip the life from the bulb until the ivory layers lie like narcissus petals on the ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington

... the vault belonging to the Inner Temple, which is presumably in the ground attached to the Temple Church. The entry in the Register runs as follows: 'John Hoyle, esq., of the Inner Temple was buried in the vault May ye 29, 1692.' Narcissus Luttrell in his Diary, Saturday, 28 May, 1692, has the following entry: 'Mr. Hoil of the Temple on Thursday night was at a tavern with other gentlemen, and quarrelling with Mr. Pitts' eldest son about drinking a health, as they came out ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... first. "My story," it said, with dignity, "will be historical. I am a descendant from the great Narcissus family, and the Narcissus, as you know, is a very beautiful flower; it grows in wild profusion among the stony places along the great Mediterranean and eastward to China. All that you may have heard, but do you know why Narcissus loves to be near ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker

... comforts Heaven can grant! While they the bitter tear in secret pour, Smote by the death of Friends, Disease, or Want, Slight wrongs if thy self-valuing soul deplore, Thou but resemblest, in thy lonely haunt, Narcissus ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... tears glistened on the silky fringe of his eyelids,—his lips quivered,—he had the look of a Narcissus regretfully bewailing his own perishable loveliness. On a swift impulse of affection Theos threw one arm round, his neck in the fashion of a confiding school-boy walking ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Spring wild, and she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown, For whom should she have waked the sullen year? To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear 140 Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere Amid the faint companions of their youth, With dew all turned to tears; odour, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Sgan. Narcissus, sir, at your service. You must know that while in his study I upset two bottles full of essence, which were on the edge of his table. Will you believe that he was so furious with me, that he actually drove ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere

... entered without farther opposition, and was now in a grove of mango-trees, through which an infant moon was twinkling faintly amid the murmur of waters, the sweet song of the nightingale, and the odours of the rose, yellow jasmine, orange and citron flowers, and Persian narcissus. Huge domes and arches, which were seen imperfectly in the quivering light, seemed to intimate the neighbourhood of some sacred edifice, where the Fakir had doubtless taken up ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... remember it, the complex state of my feelings; but those of my readers who take an interest in artistic perplexities will understand me best when I point out that I dropped "The Rescue" not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming, but to begin "The Nigger of the Narcissus" and to go on with it without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of "The Rescue" with any page of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... Narcissus loved himself we know, And you, perhaps, have cause to show Why you should do the same; But he was wrong: and, if I may, Philautus, I will freely say, I think you more to blame. He loved what others loved; while you Admire what ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... light in the low-roofed damp rooms was dull and gray. Along the walls were ranged various pieces of carved furniture, several large diptychs and triptychs of the Tuscan school of the fourteenth century; four pieces of Flemish tapestry representing the Story of Narcissus hung from ceiling to floor; Metaurensian majolicas occupied two long shelves; stuffs—for the most part ecclesiastical—lay spread out on chairs or heaped up on tables; antiquities of the rarest kind—ivories, enamels, crystals, engraved gems, medals, coins, breviaries, illuminated manuscripts, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... of the Angel of the Annunciation even by Florentine artists, in their general design, the fleur-de-lys is given to him by Giovaiini Pisano on the facade of Orvieto; and that the flower in the crown-circlets of European kings answers, as I stated to you in my lecture on the Corona, to the Narcissus fillet of early Greece; the ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... metamorphoses to 'the general savage habit of "levelling up,"' of regarding all things in nature as all capable of interchanging their identities. I gave, as classical examples, Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus, and the sisters of Phaethon. Next I criticised Mr. Max Muller's theory of Daphne. But I never hinted that the isolated Mangaian story of Tuna, or the stories of plants sprung from mangled men, 'accounted,' by themselves, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... the door, and led him into the drawing-room, all fragrant with spring flowers and plants. She looked like a flower herself, with her soft pink and white colouring, and to the last day of his life Ned Talbot could never inhale the fragrance of a narcissus or a hyacinth without a spasm of painful remembrance. It brought back so vividly the intoxicating joy of that meeting. They talked together in lover-like fashion, Lilias alternately shy and reticent, and queening it over him with absurd little airs of authority, at ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... century A. D. The wild flowers that grew in this plain were gorgeous. There were anemones of all kinds, scarlet, purple, pale pink, and white: irises of many colors, blue pimpernel, yellow salvia, violet grape hyacinths, and clumps of small white narcissus. Above all rose the splendid pale pink blossoms of the asphodel, a striking ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... never come between him and her, and, as the close-followed thought of what these last days had brought, rose in his mind, the wonder of it overwhelmed him. He told himself that the only possible explanation of her caring for such as he, was that Narcissus-like, she had seen her own image reflected in his heart, and had fallen in love with it. The fancy attracted him; he rode on, his mind set on a sonnet that should fitly enshrine the thought, and politics and religion, symbols and ideals, faded, as the stars ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... Providence design'd, Rather in pity, than in hate, That he should be, like Cupid, blind, To save him from Narcissus' fate. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... of the hill, Of the dell and the deep-sounding shelves; If in spite of Narcissus you still Take to fools ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... 4 in a bar, is principally suitable for Ballet, while the Song and Dance ("Narcissus"), on account of its rhythm, is mainly adapted for the soft shoe and its kindred dances. It is also in 4-4. The Fox Trot is written "Alla Breve," 2 in a bar in moderate tempo. It has a somewhat strict rhythm, while the "Charleston," played usually in ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... bottom, and green higher up, and hath growing from it two tier of leaves of an oval figure, the lowest consisting of three leaves, the uppermost of four, in the form of a cross; from the top of the stalk grows a single flower, of an exceedingly dark red colour, in shape resembling the flower, of the narcissus, only much smaller; from the centre of the flower rises a style of a triangular form, and obtuse at the end, which is surrounded by six white stamina, whose extremities are yellow. The root is of the bulbous kind, and resembles in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... during his whole life, his ear should not indulge in the music of the tabor, cymbal, and pipe. He could restrain his eyes from enjoying the garden, and gratify his sense of smell without the rose or narcissus. Though he had not a pillow stuffed with down, he could compose himself to rest with a stone under his head; though he had no heart-solacer as the partner of his bed, he could hug himself to sleep with his arms across his breast. If he could not ride an ambling nag, he ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... sun is as potent as the glamour of the moon at Wellesley. High noon is magical on Tree Day, for then the mythic folk of ancient Greece, the hamadryads and Dian's nymphs, Venus and Orpheus and Narcissus, and all the rest, come out and dream a dance of old days on the great green billows of the lawn. To see veiled Cupid, like a living flame, come streaming down among the hillside trees, down, swift as fire, to the waiting ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... fresh and green today, Tomorrow will be mowed away Narcissus so white, The meadows' delight, The hyacinthias pale And morning-glories frail— ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... rule Hyacinths, Tulips, and Narcissus should be planted about five inches deep, and ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... easy for a doubter to object that many of the poems on the subject show the poet, not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning over the brink of introspection in the attitude of Narcissus. One need seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the conviction that no ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... creed; He almost thinks he disbelieves indeed; But only thinks so; to give both their due, Satan, and he, believe, and tremble too. Of some for glory such the boundless rage, That they're the blackest scandal of their age. Narcissus the Tartarian club disclaims; Nay, a free-mason, with some terror, names; Omits no duty; nor can envy say, He miss'd, these many years, the church, or play: He makes no noise in parliament, 'tis true; But ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... handsome—like the Narcissus of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley? What? Is that worth nothing? Perhaps you will say that He is old and useless, and that Judas is trying to dispose ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... in such situations as the tops and sides of hedges, banks, &c. They can scarcely be grown too extensively. Of the various sorts, and exclusive of the ordinary double form, few are more beautiful or more desirable than that known as the Poet's Narcissus (N. poeticus). The pure white of the segments and the delicate bright scarlet centre are best when the plant is grown sheltered from strong winds. Another favourite narcissus of ours, and which we can confidently recommend to our readers, is that known as "Orange Phoenix;" ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... should pick "Midshipman Easy" and "Peter Simple" as his samples. Then throw in one of Melville's Otaheite books—now far too completely forgotten—"Typee" or "Omoo," and as a quite modern flavour Kipling's "Captains Courageous" and Jack London's "Sea Wolf," with Conrad's "Nigger of the Narcissus." Then you will have enough to turn your study into a cabin and bring the wash and surge to your cars, if written words can do it. Oh, how one longs for it sometimes when life grows too artificial, and the old Viking blood begins to stir! Surely it must linger in all of us, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... here and there I warm into a little sympathy, as I catch sight, in his Latin dress, of our old friend Curculio; here and there I sniff a fruit that seems familiar,—as the fraga, or a morum; and here and there comes blushing into the crabbed text the sweet name of some home-flower,—a lily, a narcissus, or a rose. The chief value of the work of Columella, however, lies in its clear showing-forth of the relative importance given to different crops, under Roman culture, and to the raising of cattle, poultry, fish, etc.; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... there was the greater merit in your obedience on that account; and urged, that there hardly ever was a very handsome and a very sprightly man who made a tender and affectionate husband: for that they were generally such Narcissus's, as to imagine every woman ought to think as highly of them, as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... of planting to be done now is by no means extensive, but it should only be done in dry weather. Narcissus, crocus, hyacinths, and tulips should be all in the ground by the end of this month at the very latest, and will produce bloom in very desirable succession to those planted a month or two previously. A surfacing of cocoanut-fibre ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... loin of fat veal to be roasted, With lemons, and butter, and sippets well toasted: Some larks that descended, mistaking the skies, Which Stella brought down by the light of her eyes; And there, like Narcissus,[3] they gazed till they died, And now they're to lie in some crumbs that are fried. My wine will inspire you with joy and delight, 'Tis mellow, and old, and sparkling, and bright; An emblem of one that you love, I suppose, Who gathers more lovers the older she grows.[4] Let me be your Gay, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... chance In heedless play to flutter hither And stop in momentary trance Where the narcissus blossoms wither; A dove that through the grove has flown Above this dell no more will utter Her coo, one can but hear her flutter And see ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... establish cheapness. Cheap books are those which are obtained by accident under the current value. In the time of the later Stuarts, Narcissus Luttrell found from one penny to sixpence sufficient to satisfy the shopkeepers with whom he dealt for some of the most precious volumes in our language; and a shilling commanded a Caxton. The Huths of those days could not lay out their money in these things; ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... and in harmony with the situation. They did not want this ending, which was in Orfeo and which Gluck retained in Orphee, at the old Theatre-Lyrique and the Opera-Comique, and they replaced it with a chorus by Echo and Narcissus. This chorus is charming, but that does not excuse it. Joy was what the author wanted and this does not give joy at all. Gluck's finale is regarded as not sufficiently distinguished, but this is wrong. The real finale was sung at Mezieres and it was found that it was not at all common, but that ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... indeed is no worth) our bounty, favour, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality, beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our [1915] excellent gifts and fortunes, for which, Narcissus-like, we admire, flatter, and applaud ourselves, and think all the world esteems so of us; and as deformed women easily believe those that tell them they be fair, we are too credulous of our own good parts and praises, too well persuaded of ourselves. We brag and venditate our ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... 'Tis a sad thing, that these bodies will grow up to the stature of men, when the minds improve not at all with them, but are still those of boys and children. Yet, he would certainly make a fond husband: for he has no very bad qualities. But is such a Narcissus!—But this between ourselves, for his uncle is wrapt up in the fellow—And why? Because he is good-humoured, that's all. He has vexed me lately, which makes me write so angrily about him—But 'tis not worth troubling you with the particulars. I hope ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... tesselated floor. Strangely enough, this garish mixture of colour does not offend the eye, toned down as it is by the everlasting twilight shed over the mimic palace and garden by overhanging branches of cypress and yew. An expanse of smooth-shaven lawn, white beds of lily and narcissus, marble tanks bubbling over with clear, cold water, and gravelled paths winding in and out of the trees to where, a hundred yards or so distant, a sunk fence divides the garden from a piece of ground ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... The long narcissus-blades appear; The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, And lights her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various



Words linked to "Narcissus" :   mythical being, genus Narcissus, bulbous plant, jonquil, Greek mythology, daffodil



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