"Styx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saying to the helm he clung, nor ever left his hold, And all the while the stars above his eyen toward them drew. But lo, the God brought forth a bough wet with Lethean dew, And sleepy with the might of Styx, and shook it therewithal Over his brow, and loosed his lids delaying still to fall: But scarce in first of stealthy sleep his limbs all loosened lay, When, weighing on him, did he tear a space of stern away, And rolled him, helm and wrack and all, into the flowing wave Headlong, and crying ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the river came in sight, growing slate-colour in the earliest dawn. He could see the boat nuzzling up against the pier, and snoring in its sleep. He said to himself that this was Styx and the fare an obolus. As he jumped on board, with hot face and hotter heart, Charon clicked his signal to the engines; the boat slowly snuffled itself half awake, and shoved out ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the trees along their crests making fantastic pictures against the sky. Beyond the land of living men, it seemed, an owl hooted, and a belated dove called and called like a moaning spirit wandering in some lost tarn of the Styx. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... d'Alcacer, in the same tone. "Crossing the Styx—perhaps." He heard Mr. Travers utter an unmoved "Very likely," which he did not expect. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat like ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... picture, book, or vestal boredom, such awful, solemn, impenetrable blue, as in that same sea. It has such an absorbing, silent, deep, profound effect, that I can't help thinking it suggested the idea of Styx. It looks as if a draught of it, only so much as you could scoop up on the beach in the hollow of your hand, would wash out everything else, and make a great blue blank of your intellect. . . . When the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... reached me at last from the opposite shore, faint with distance and terror. The warning from an unseen steamer going out was as if a soul, crossing this Styx, now knew all. There is no London on the Thames, after sundown. Most of us know very little of the River by day. It might then be no more native to our capital than the Orientals who stand under the Limehouse gas lamps ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... which now indicates a slow movement, had at that time its original signification, meaning "going." It was an "allegro moderate." Haendel often wrote "andante allegro." Through ignorance of that fact the beautiful air of Gluck, "Divinities of the Styx," is sung too slowly and the air of Thaos in the "Iphigenia in Tauris" equally so. Berlioz recollected having heard at the opera in his youth a much more animated ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... of these joints," Billy was saying vehemently to his harassed guide. "It's dark as the Styx ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... his feet as well as a rod and staff to his hands? Armed with it he might boldly confront the dreadful spectres that would cross his path on his adventurous journey. Hence when Aeneas, emerging from the forest, comes to the banks of Styx, winding slow with sluggish stream through the infernal marsh, and the surly ferryman refuses him passage in his boat, he has but to draw the Golden Bough from his bosom and hold it up, and straightway the blusterer quails at the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a more ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... all the letters of the alphabet, and each only once. No one has done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell and I amused ourselves some years ago with attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words he gave me Phiz, styx, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Principe, which contains the practical issue toward which the whole treatise has been tending, the patriotic thought that reflects a kind of luster even on the darkest pages that have gone before. Like Thetis, Machiavelli has dipped his Achilles in the Styx of infernal counsels; like Cheiron, he has shown him how the human and the bestial natures should be combined in one who has to break the teeth of wolves and keep his feet from snares; like Hephaistos, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... only wish you were not, for there's nothing I should enjoy more than taking on another Neapolitan or two. You see, I owe them something still! I didn't settle in full. I owe them more than ever I shall pay them on this side Styx!" ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... often chooses its victims among the conquerors which it has crowned, reflect with pride upon those ages which beheld the new birth of the arts. Dante, the modern Homer, the hero of thought, the sacred poet of our religious mysteries, plunged his genius into the Styx to land in the infernal regions, and his mind was profound as the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... dwelt on the tilth about lovely Titaresios that poureth his fair-flowing stream into Peneios. Yet doth he not mingle with the silver eddies of Peneios, but floweth on over him like unto oil, seeing that he is an offspring from the water of Styx, the dread river ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... walk over that work of our own mind, but no one's hands, the bridge prove to be objectively false, and we, walking over the bank into the water, be set free from that which is subjectively on the farther bank of Styx." ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... perhaps," answered the Chian; "and any friend will give me enough to pay Charon's fee across the Styx." ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Charon was a god of hell. It was his business to carry the dead across the river Styx. People thus carried over the Stygian ferry paid Charon by a small coin put ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... sloped up to a weed-grown dyke; behind lay the same flat country, colourless, humid; and opposite us, two miles away, scarcely visible in the deepening twilight, ran the outline of a similar shore. Between rolled the turgid Elbe. 'The Styx flowing through Tartarus,' I thought to myself, recalling some ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... are instances in the Divina Commedia which, taken by themselves, would lead one to so superficial an estimate of the man. In Canto VIII of the Inferno Dante with his guide, Virgil, enters a bark on the Styx and sails across the broad marsh. During the passage a spirit all covered with mud addresses Dante, who recognizes him as Filippo Argenti, a Florentine notorious for his arrogance and brutal violence. "Master," says Dante to Virgil, "I should be glad to ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... baleful and unearthly a light that only the slightest effort of the imagination was needed to fancy ourselves a phantom ship, manned by ghosts of the unquiet dead, floating upon the sooty flood of the Styx, with the adamantine foundations of the world arching ponderously and menacingly over our heads and reflecting from their rugged surfaces the flashing of the flames ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... wicket; Lord KINNAIRD, who once was hot upon the ball, Give our Arabs chance of football and of cricket. And you'll fairly earn the hearty thanks of all; For the young City Children, doomed to rummage In dim alleys foul as Styx, Never else may know the rapture of a "scrummage," Or "a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... converted into a system of canals filled with a substance varying in consistency from coffee to glue. Hic, Haec and Hoc, owing to the wear and tear of constant traffic, became especially gluey, and after a time we rechristened them respectively the Great Ooze, the Little Ooze and the River Styx—the last not solely in reference to its adhesive qualities, but also because such a number of things went West in it. Some time after the original duck-boards had sunk out of our depth we could still move along Styx ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... in heaven. That will put the matter beyond a doubt." Semele was persuaded to try the experiment. She asks a favor, without naming what it is. Jove gives his promise, and confirms it with the irrevocable oath, attesting the river Styx, terrible to the gods themselves. Then she made known her request. The god would have stopped her as she spake, but she was too quick for him. The words escaped, and he could neither unsay his promise ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Hill, I'll fill my lungs with heaven's own air And pay the cabman twice his fare, Then, looking far and looking nigh, Bare-headed and with hand on high, "Hear ye," I'll cry, "the vow I make, Familiar sprites of byre and brake, J'y suis, j'y reste. Let Bolshevicks Sweep from the Volga to the Styx; Let internecine carnage vex The gathering hosts of Poles and Czechs, And Jugo-Slavs and Tyrolese Impair the swart Italian's ease— Me for Boar's Hill! These war-worn ears Are deaf to cries for volunteers; No Samuel Browne or British warm Shall drape this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... at all times been forward in owning the Egyptians as their teachers in religion; and in the dog Cerberus, the judge Minos, the boat of Charon, and the river Styx of their mythology, we see a clear proof that it was in Egypt that the Greeks gained their faint glimpse of the immortality of the soul, a day of judgment, and a future state of rewards and punishments; and, now that Rome was in close intercourse with Egypt, the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... word. The same silence reigned in the vessel. No cry from the child to the men—no farewell from the men to the child. There was on both sides a mute acceptance of the widening distance between them. It was like a separation of ghosts on the banks of the Styx. The child, as if nailed to the rock, which the high tide was beginning to bathe, watched the departing bark. It seemed as if he realized his position. What ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Yale; Amherst and Williams bid their flambeaus shine, And Bowdoin answers through her groves of pine; O'er Princeton's sands the far reflections steal, Where mighty Edwards stamped his iron heel; Nay, on the hill where old beliefs were bound Fast as if Styx had girt them nine times round, Bursts such a light that trembling souls inquire If the whole church of Calvin is on fire! Well may they ask, for what so brightly burns As a dry creed that nothing ever learns? ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Stygian darkness. The Styx ( 'the abhorred') was the chief river in the lower world. Milton here speaks of darkness as something positive, ejected from the womb of Night, Night being represented as a monster of the lower regions: comp. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... something else to happen. The bread-pan seen through the dim and dismal light was a tempestuous lake, with an island of dough in it, while Andy the undaunted stood grimly gazing at it, the rain dribbling from his hat and shoulders till he resembled the fabled ferryman of the River Styx. The situation was so ludicrous that every one laughed, and the Weather God finding that we were not downcast slackened the downpour immediately. Then we put some oars against the wall and stretched a paulin to ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... me (which is not unfrequently) I comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these Trans-Atlantic visits, 'few and-far between' make me feel as if talking with posterity from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two, the new English and Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older or earlier ages, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... bequeath my little fortune, my sisters having each married rich men. I shall not need even Charon's obolus when I am dead, for we have ceased to believe in him—which is a pity, as the trip across the Styx must have been picturesque. Why, then, should I not deal myself a happy lot and portion by squandering my ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... flour to their soldiers. To the last, women would go distances to carry the modicum of food between themselves and starvation to a suffering Confederate. Should the sons of Virginia ever commit dishonorable acts, grim indeed will be their reception on the further shores of Styx. They can expect no recognition from the mothers who ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... it," said the friar, "or it will give us no peace. I would all my customers were of this world. I begin to think that I am Charon, and that this river is Styx." ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... watched that craft depart there came into my mind the memory of a picture in an old Latin book of my father's, which represented the souls of the dead being paddled by a person named Charon across a river called the Styx. The scene before us bore a great resemblance to that picture. There was Charon's boat floating on the dreadful Styx. Yonder glowed the lights of the world, here was the gloomy, unknown shore. And we, we were the souls of the dead awaiting the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... glided, I thought of the Styx, and of Charon rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions, whose insane oaths still tortured my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... are said (I know not how truly) to change their places and number, we came to the very fountains of Styx, to that part of the lake where the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... prospective nephew-in-law, "what can Cornelia be wanting of us both? And in this place? I can't imagine. Ah! Those were strange doings yesterday up in Praeneste. I would hardly have put on mourning if Drusus had been ferried over the Styx; but it was a bold way to attack him. I don't know that he has an enemy in the world except myself, and I can bide my time and pay off old scores at leisure. Who could have been back of Dumnorix when he ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... interested me; but I could not help being impressed with a slight feeling of awe. Classic memories, too, stirred within me. The fancies of the Roman poet were here realised. I was upon the Styx, and in my rower ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... subterranean Osiris; Mercury psychopompos, with Anubis, "the usher of souls;" Aacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthos, with the three assistant gods who help in weighing the soul and present the result to Osiris; Tartarus, to the ditch Tartar; Charon's ghost boat over the Styx, to the barge conveying the mummy to the tomb; Cerberus, to Oms; Acheron, to Acherusia; the Elysian Fields, to Elisout.12 Kenrick thinks the Greeks may have developed these views for themselves, without indebtedness to Egypt. But the notions were in existence among the Egyptians at ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester . . . Still in the dawnlit waters cool His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx; Dan Chaucer hears his river still Chatter beneath a phantom mill; Tennyson notes, with studious eye, How Cambridge waters hurry by . . . And in that garden, black and white Creep whispers through the grass all night; And spectral dance, before the dawn, A hundred Vicars ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... sails anew, And trace the course I left behind. For lo! the Sire of heaven on high, By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven, To-day through an unclouded sky His thundering steeds and car has driven. E'en now dull earth and wandering floods, And Atlas' limitary range, And Styx, and Taenarus' dark abodes Are reeling. He can lowliest change And loftiest; bring the mighty down And lift the weak; with whirring flight Comes Fortune, plucks the monarch's crown, And decks therewith some ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... my idea of General Morris, is like asking the left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the 'Brigadier'—know him so intimately—worked so constantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance—hard to shut my own partial eyes, and look at him through other people's. I will try, however; and, as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill of my ceaseless ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... throne: But Zeus is soon subdued by beauty's tears. Thou smilest?—Be it so! Is, then, the scholar Wiser, perchance, than she who teaches her?— Then thou must pray the god one little, little Most innocent request to grant to thee— One that may seal his love and godhead too. He'll swear by Styx. The Styx he must obey! That oath he dares not break! Then speak these words: "Thou shalt not touch this body, till thou comest To Cadmus' daughter clothed in all the might Wherein thou art embraced by Kronos' daughter!" Be not thou terrified, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to ask, seeing thou art a party interested in the matter. The emperor in whose care the jewel was left, hath sworn by the river Styx that unless the cup be brought back to the palace ere to-morrow's dawn, he will punish the innocent with the guilty, and that with no sparing hand. He hath already laid hands on some of the more wealthy citizens, and amerced ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... he has been sucked in by the mud-nymphs, and how they have shown him a branch of Styx which here pours into the Thames, and diffuses its soporific vapours over the Temple and its purlieus. He is solemnly welcomed by Milbourn (a reverend antagonist of Dryden), who tells him to "receive these ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... even when the sun shone. The walls had lost their brighter reds, and what colour they had was dark and sombre, a dirty brown and dark green predominating. The mythology of the ancients, with their Inferno and their River Styx, could hardly conjure anything more supernatural or impressive than this ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... [1384]old poet scoffed, calling it Stygiae monstrum conforme paludi, a monstrous drink, like the river Styx. But let them say as they list, to such as are accustomed unto it, "'tis a most wholesome" (so [1385] Polydore Virgil calleth it) "and a pleasant drink," it is more subtle and better, for the hop that ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... him the nectar! Pour out for the poet, 20 Hebe! pour free! Quicken his eyes with celestial dew, That Styx the detested no more he may view, And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be! Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Paean, I cry! 25 The wine of the Immortals ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... who rule the soul! Styx, through hell whose waters roll! Let me be allowed to tell What I heard in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... [Moore] ('Horresco referens') defied his reviewer [Jeffrey] to mortal combat. If this example becomes prevalent, our Periodical Censors must be dipped in the river Styx: for what else can secure them from the numerous host of their enraged assailants? [Cf. 'English Bards', ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... but a baby, to the river Styx, for it was said that those who bathed in its waters could ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... and coteries know not how to mix. A barrier more impassable than Styx Is Philistine stupidity. Were mutual amusement meeting's aim, Mind must move maidenhood inert and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... Mr. Bentley used to say I invited company hither that I did not care for, that I might enjoy the pleasure of their going away. My health is certainly amended, but I did not feel the satisfaction of it till I got home. I have still a little rheumatism in one shoulder, which was not dipped in Styx, and is still mortal; but, while I went to the rooms, or stayed in my chambers in a dull court, I thought I had twenty complaints. I don't ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... responding "Yes," to both interrogatories, on the principle that it is sometimes just as well to cut the Gordian knot as to waste precious time trying to untie it. The burrowing owl makes me think of a denizen of the other side of the river Styx, and why should one try to love that which nature has made unattractive, especially when one ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... business. The tears shed in that House on the occasion to which he alluded, were not the tears of patriots for dying laws, but of Lords for their expiring places. The iron tears, which flowed down Pluto's cheek, rather resembled the dismal bubbling of the Styx, than the gentle murmuring streams ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Calypso, glorious goddess, smiled, And smoothed his forehead with her hand, and said: "Perverse! and slow to see where guile is not! How could thy heart permit thee thus to speak? Now bear me witness, Earth, and ye broad Heavens Above us, and ye waters of the Styx That flow beneath us, mightiest oath of all, And most revered by all the blessed gods, That I design no other harm to thee; But that I plan for thee and counsel thee What I would do were I in need like thine. I bear a juster mind; my bosom holds A pitying ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... catch and cherish; Follow where her currents flow; Sure to prosper—or to perish, Follow, though to Styx we go! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Thou must meet inevitable ruin. Neptune has sworn by Styx—to gods themselves A dreadful oath,—and he will execute His promise. Thou canst not escape his vengeance. I loved thee; and, in spite of thine offence, My heart is troubled by anticipation For thee. But thou hast earn'd thy doom too ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... is your device. You turn the leaves of dead books; you are too young for antiquities. Look about you, the pale throng of men surrounds you. The eyes of life's sphynx glitter in the midst of divine hieroglyphics; decipher the book of life! Courage, scholar, launch out on the Styx, the deathless flood, and let the waves of sorrow waft you to ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... was the sole survivor of a once famous trio. Two out of the three, Doc Dickson and Pap Spooner, had passed to the shades, and the legend ran that when their disembodied spirits reached the banks of Styx, the ruling passion of their lives asserted itself for the last time. They demurred loudly, impatiently, at the exorbitant fee, ten cents, demanded ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... pair of oars On cis-Elysian river-shores. Where the immortal dead have sate, 'Tis mine to sit and meditate; To re-ascend life's rivulet, Without remorse, without regret; And sing my ALMA GENETRIX Among the willows of the Styx. ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Indians. The Laplanders lay beside the corpse flint, steel, and tinder, to supply light for the dark journey. A coin was placed in the mouth of the dead by the Greeks to pay Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, and for a similar purpose in the hand of a deceased Irishman. The Greenlanders bury with a child a dog, for they say a dog will find his way anywhere. In the grave of the Viking warrior were buried his horn and armour in ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... to think of passing the Styx, lest Charon should touch me; he is so old and wilful, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... system of the Signs. And as toward Scythia and Rhipaean heights The world mounts upward, likewise sinks it down Toward Libya and the south, this pole of ours Still towering high, that other, 'neath their feet, By dark Styx frowned on, and the abysmal shades. Here glides the huge Snake forth with sinuous coils 'Twixt the two Bears and round them river-wise- The Bears that fear 'neath Ocean's brim to dip. There either, say they, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... something going on somewhere all the time, and queens in demand. With a queen quoted so low as $100 a night, Henry can make nearly $5000 a week, or $260,000 a year, out of evening chaperonage alone; and when, in addition to this, yachting-parties up the Styx and slumming-parties throughout the country are being constantly given, the man's opportunity to make half a million a year is in plain sight. I'm told that he netted over $500,000 last year; and of course he had to advertise ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... like a fine old discontented retainer as he is, complains bitterly of the attempt made years ago by the late Knight of Kerry to establish a steam ferry. But ferrymen are always stern sticklers for vested rights. Doubtless Charon claimed heavy compensation when the Styx Ferry was disestablished. Apart from the ferryman, however, the Valentians are by no means enamoured of their insular position. "That ould blackgyard of a ferry" is, in fact, just now a serious ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... again the same sort of writer will assert that he can quit one "boarding-house" when he pleases, whereas he must eat the cold roast beef and cranberry sauce of the other until he crosses the creek called Styx. Let me call this young man Mr. Bachelor, and reply to him in about his ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... unhurt to this very hour. But to see her every day, to converse with her at all opportunities, to be regarded by her as her only friend and chosen protector, tell me, ye gods, what heart, that was not perfectly invulnerable, that was not totally impregnated with the waters of the Styx, could have come off victorious ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... for fear lest we should fall into it again in the darkness. So after Good had rested a while, and we had drunk our fill of the water, which was sweet and fresh, and washed our faces, that needed it sadly, as well as we could, we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to retrace our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in front of us. At length we came to another ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... things, like disembarking from the Styx into the desolated underworld, was this landing at night. There was the raw, half-lighted, covered-in vastness of the dark place, boarded and hollow underfoot, with only desolation everywhere. Ursula had caught sight of the big, pallid, mystic letters ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... gay old misogynist Arthur Schopenhauer persuaded to cross the Styx and revisiting the earth. Apart from his disgust if forced to listen to the music of his self-elected disciple Richard Wagner, what painted work would be likely to attract him? Remember he it was who named Woman the knock-kneed sex—since the new woman is here it matters ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... whirlwinds make among the shattered branches and bruised stems of forest-trees; and Dante, looking out with fear upon the foam and spray and vapour of the flood, saw thousands of the damned flying before the face of one who forded Styx with feet unwet. 'Like frogs,' he says, 'they fled, who scurry through the water at the sight of their foe, the serpent, till each squats and hides himself close to the ground.' The picture of the storm ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... be Styx's dark, Sullen flood? Hath Proserpine, In the absence of her Charon Sent her ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... but we cannot stay here any longer. We want to reach the underground stream of which we have heard so much—the "River Styx." ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stands, Each part except the gold, is rent throughout; And from the fissure tears distil, which join'd Penetrate to that cave. They in their course Thus far precipitated down the rock Form Acheron, and Styx, and Phlegethon; Then by this straiten'd channel passing hence Beneath, e'en to the lowest depth of all, Form there Cocytus, of whose lake (thyself Shall see it) I here give ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his, and clasping with her small, firm hand his cold and clammy fingers. "By the memory of Rome, and the dark-rolling waters of the Tiber, from which you rescued me that night, I promise. And now let us pledge each other in a draught from the depths of the Styx. Look around you, Carl, and realize that all this magnificence is ours, and to-night I play the hostess to the proud aristocracy of Vienna. But one question before the curtain rises. How goes the affair ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Edward Lear?" "What wages do they give you here?" "What dictionary is the best?" "Did Brummell wear a satin vest?" "How do you spell 'anemic,' please?" "What is a Gorgonzola cheese?" "Who ferried souls across the Styx?" "What is the square of 96?" "Are oysters good to eat in March?" "Are green bananas full of starch?" "Where is that book I used to see?" "I guess you don't remember me?" "Haf you Der Hohenzollernspiel?" "Where shall I put this apple peel?" "Ou est, m'sie, la grand Larousse?" "Do you say 'two-spot,' ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... nothing to confess," he spoke, "nothing. I know nothing of this Persian spy. Can I swear the god's own oath—by Earth, by Sky, by the Styx—" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... 370: Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces Consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in austros. Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi. Georg., ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders. The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind carried their call away until it died off into ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... You're not the man who misses A chance! You caught the wariest with your smile! "CARON!" The "h" is dropped, or we could fix (And so we can if Greek the name we make) You as the ancient Ferryman of Styx, Punting the Ghosts across the Stygian lake. The simile is nearly perfect, note, For you, with your Conspirators afloat, Were, as you've shown us, all in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... Semele, suspecting no treachery, followed the advice of her supposed nurse; and the next time Zeus came to her, she earnestly entreated him to grant the favour she was about to ask. Zeus swore by the Styx (which was to the gods an irrevocable oath) to accede to her request whatsoever it might be. Semele, therefore, secure of gaining her petition, begged of Zeus to appear to her in all the glory of his divine power and majesty. As he had sworn to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... but nobody goes near the stream on the other side of the tomb, because its water is said to be death-dealing. In Arcadia there is a tract of land called Nonacris, which has extremely cold water trickling from a rock in the mountains. This water is called "Water of the Styx," and no vessel, whether of silver, bronze, or iron, can stand it without flying to pieces and breaking up. Nothing but a mule's hoof can keep it together and hold it, and tradition says that it was thus conveyed by Antipater through his ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... other side of Styx could not have been much worse than this, though, by his account, when he got back to earth, it appears that he had fallen in with "Bellua Lernae, horrendum ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... could be more certain? Had not even the heathens said so, by the mouth of the poet Virgil? What could be more simple, rational, orthodox, than to adopt (as they actually did) Virgil's own words, and talk of Tartarus, Styx, and Phlegethon, as indisputable Christian entities. They were not aware that the Buddhists of the far East had held much the same theory of endless retribution several centuries before; and that Dante, with his various bolge, tenanted ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... an octavo? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may be,' and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through life with a sort of eclat is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child. Now, might not some of this 'sutor ultra crepidam's' friends and seducers have done a decent action without ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... up. "It is," I said, "just conceivable that I have that power. I do not recollect my immersion in the Styx, but it is, I suppose, not impossible that, although I am not actually invulnerable, my sterling qualities may yet be so apparent to the bee mind that, even were I so indiscreet as to lay hands upon their hive, they would not so far ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... all it does, but it is enough. Look at it, and it is harmless enough. But tread on it, touch it, disturb it never so slightly, and instantly the whole surrounding atmosphere is permeated with a stench more infernally and awfully horrible than anything else this side of the Styx! ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... combine the Arcadians against Sparta; and besides other oaths with which he caused them to swear that they would assuredly follow him whithersoever he should lead them, he was very desirous also to bring the chiefs of the Arcadians to the city of Nonacris and cause them to swear by the water of Styx; for near this city it is said by the Arcadians 63 that there is the water of Styx, and there is in fact something of this kind: a small stream of water is seen to trickle down from a rock into a hollow ravine, and round the ravine runs a wall of rough stones. Now Nonacris, where it happens that ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... December 1st, 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 to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... length being about half a mile. It contained many other rooms or caves, into which he conducted us, the first being known as the Bell House, and here the path we had been following suddenly came to an end at an arch about five yards wide, where there was a stream called the River Styx, over which he ferried us in a boat, landing us in a cave called the Hall of Pluto, the Being who ruled over the Greek Hades, or Home of Departed Spirits, guarded by a savage three-headed dog named Cerberus. The only way of reaching the "Home," our guide told us, was by means of the ferry ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... "He means the River Styx, Martha," she explained. "Don't you know? The river of the dead, that the ancients believed in, where ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Prophecy, where it is represented as being full of mud and swords. Sylg (from svelgja to swallow) the devourer; Ylg (from yla to roar) the roaring one; Leipt the glowing, is also mentioned in the Lay of Helge Hunding's Bane, where it is stated that they swore by it (compare Styx); Gjoll (from gjalla to glisten and clang) the shining, clanging one. The meaning of the other words is not clear, but they doubtless all, like those explained, express cold, violent motion, etc. The most noteworthy of these rivers are Leipt and Gjoll. In the Lay of Grimner they are ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... Across the Styx, past the dread Cerberus, Aeneas and the Sibyl went, through the abode of babes and those who died for deeds they did not do, and into the mourning fields, where the disappointed in love were hedged in with myrtle sprays. Here Aeneas descried Dido dimly through the clouds, and wept to see her fresh ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... in a day's march, M'sieu," said De Courtenay, "and the sweet spirit of Ma'amselle is like to cross the Styx with us." ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Omar is two-thirds Fitzgerald and one-third Omar. In his books, Plato modestly puts his wisest maxims into the mouth of his master, and just how much Plato and how much Socrates there is in the "Dialogues," we will never know until we get beyond the River Styx. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... us and leads us away to that city turreted by giants where great Nimrod blows his horn. Terrible things are in store for us, and we go to meet them in Dante's raiment and with Dante's heart. We traverse the marshes of the Styx, and Argenti swims to the boat through the slimy waves. He calls to us, and we reject him. When we hear the voice of his agony we are glad, and Virgil praises us for the bitterness of our scorn. We tread upon the cold crystal of Cocytus, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... you all struck dumb, amici, that you stared at the table-cloth so persistently and with such admirable gravity? May Saint Anthony and his pig preserve me, but for the time I fancied I was attending a banquet on the wrong side of the Styx, and that you, my present companions, were all ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Rome held her fleets, and thence Pliny took the water, to get a nearer view of the labors of the volcano, after its awakening from centuries of sleep. In the hollow of the ridge, between that naked bluff and the next swell of the mountain, lie the fabulous Styx, the Elysian fields, and the place of the dead, as fixed by the Mantuan. More on the height and nearer to the sea, lie, buried in the earth, the vast vaults of the Piscina Mirabile—and the gloomy caverns of the Hundred Chambers; places that ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... hill above the Styx, The bruised Christ upon his crucifix, And racked in anguish on his either side Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified. Their heavy blood falls in a monotone Like deep well-water dropping on a stone. None moves, none breaks the silence; on those roods Eternal suffering ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... which they had replenished from its depths. From this lake diverging streams of the same mysterious flood penetrated like mighty rivers the cavernous distance. As they walked by the banks of this glittering Styx, Father Jose perceived how the liquid stream at certain places became solid. The ground was strewn with glittering flakes. One of these the Padre picked up and curiously examined. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... "and dreadful Styx, ye sufferings of the damned, and Chaos, for ever eager to destroy the fair harmony of worlds, and thou, Pluto, condemned, to an eternity of ungrateful existence, Hell, and Elysium, of which no Thessalian witch shall partake, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... again our mountains and heard the joyful cries of welcome from my tribe. About that time your people came. I paid little attention to them at first, but because one of my men killed a Kanacka who was a protege of the missionaries there came a great ship (the Styx) into my port. The captain sent for me. I went on board without fear, but my confidence was betrayed. I was made a prisoner and transported to Tahiti. It was six years before I saw my tribe again: they had already mourned me as dead. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... world. D'Arthez was dumbfounded. In his eyes convicts sent to the galleys for murder, or aggravated robbery, or for putting a wrong name to checks, were saints compared to the men and women of society. This atrocious elegy, forged in the arsenal of lies, and steeped in the waters of the Parisian Styx, had been poured into his ears with the inimitable accent of truth. The grave author contemplated for a moment that adorable woman lying back in her easy-chair, her two hands pendant from its arms like dewdrops from ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... a certain moment in my growth, so that the scale may be exaggerated, and the trees on the steep opposite side may seem to climb to heaven, and the sand by the water-door, where I am standing, seem as low as Styx. And I must choose the season also, so that the valley may be brimmed like a cup with sunshine and the songs of birds;—and the year of grace, so that when I turn to leave the river-side I may find the old manse and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only a dream, Unbroken good fellowship but an idea. Old NEP knows his great Naval Show is now on, And ARMSTRONG and WHITWORTH's huge works he's aware on; He sees what our shipwrights and gunsmiths have done To send foes o'er the Styx in the barque of old Charon. At sight of War's murderous monsters half frighted, E'en valour may pause, And drink deep to the Cause, Of Good-will among Nations ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... never attempt against me the treasons which thou hast practised upon my friends." The enchantress, won by the terror of his threats, or by the violence of that new love which she felt kindling in her veins for him, swore by Styx, the great oath of the gods, that she meditated no injury to him. Then Ulysses made shew of gentler treatment, which gave her hopes of inspiring him with a passion equal to that which she felt. She called her handmaids, four ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with angry Neptune after leaving Calypso. No wonder that Ulysses shuddered at the proposition; truly he has the choice between the devil and the deep sea, and he manfully chooses the latter. First, however, the Goddess has to take the great oath "by Earth, by Heaven above and Styx below," the sum total of the physical universe, from whose presence the perjurer cannot escape, though a God, that she is not practicing any hidden guile against her much-desired guest. Always the doubter, the skeptic Ulysses will show himself, even toward a divinity. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... a great favourite with the ladies from his very birth. He was a fine strapping boy; and his mother was so proud of him, that she readily encountered the danger of being drowned in the river Styx herself, that she might dip her darling in it, and thereby render him invulnerable. Accordingly, every part of the hero was safe, except his heel by which his mother held him amidst the heat of battle; and, like his renowned antitype, the immortal Duke of Wellington, he was never ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... It will be only too brief at the best, and the day is at hand when its inequalities will be redressed, and king and peasant, pauper and millionaire, be huddled, poor shivering phantoms, in one undistinguishable crowd, across the melancholy Styx, to the judgment-hall of Minos. To this theme many of Horace's finest Odes are strung. Of these, not the least graceful is that addressed to ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... quasi-scientific gentlemen to gather round, and express, with cheery capable look, their opinions,—still legible in the vanished JUGEMENS LIBRES (of Hamburg), GAZETTE DE SAVANS (Leipzig), and other poor Shadows of JOURNALS, if you daringly evoke them from the other side of Styx. Which, the whole matter being now so indisputably extinct, shadowy, Stygian, we will not here be guilty of doing; but hasten to the catastrophes, that have still ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... aside the beams that shone around his head, bade him approach, embraced him, owned him for his son, and swore by the river Styx that whatever proof he might ask should be granted. Phaethon immediately asked to be permitted for one day to drive the chariot of the sun. The father repented of his promise and tried to dissuade the boy ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he shouted, "a man may not fight cowards, but he can cudgel them! An I have to wait for you on the River Styx, I'll punish you for making me break promise to these ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... nature-worship to the worship of the divine in human form seems to be indicated in the war which Olympian Zeus waged with Cronos and the Titans. The origin and development of the various elements and powers of nature, Chaos, Eros, Uranus, Gaea, the Giants, Styx, Erebus, Hemera, AEther, &c, became, with the poets and philosophers after Homer, matters of speculation, of which the theogonies of Hesiod, Orpheus, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... have sworn to water his horse in the Tennessee, or in Hell, on that night. It is certain that the animal did not quench his thirst in the terrestrial stream. If he drank from springs beyond the Styx, I am not informed. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Latian shore, Whatever ships escape the raging storms, At my command shall change their fading forms To nymphs divine, and plow the wat'ry way, Like Dotis and the daughters of the sea." To seal his sacred vow, by Styx he swore, The lake of liquid pitch, the dreary shore, And Phlegethon's innavigable flood, And the black regions of his brother god. He said; and shook the skies with his ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... rounded side of the chain. But all east was a bare, bleak, black plateau, as hideous as desolation could render it, according well with the scenery of the desolate grave-stones we had just seen, and the woeful tales about them we had heard. It was the veritable beach of the river Styx. I turned with a chill of horror from the waste back again upon the valley which we had left. How different the view! Here we beheld the ten thousand fair waving palms, which cover the green bosom of The Wady,—a paradise encircled with ridges and outlines of the most frightful sterility. We now ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Palinurus as begging to be allowed to cross the Styx, while his body was still unburied and without due funeral rites. To this petition the Sibyl answers:—Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando:—Cease to hope that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayer."—Aeneid, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... 'Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate, Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep, Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, Whose waves of torrent fire ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... some sort of a festival every month, such as the 'Feast of Lanterns,' on the full moon, of the tombs, 'Dragon Boats,' and 'All Souls,' in honor of departed relatives, when the supposed hungry spirits from the other side of the Styx are fed at the cemeteries. The people are extravagantly fond of theatricals; and a kind of bamboo tent is erected for the performance, which is usually of inordinate length. Females, as in India, do not appear ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... cards, we know, are Pluto's books.) If Florimel had found her love, For whom she hang'd herself above? How oft a-week was kept a ball By Proserpine at Pluto's hall? She fancied those Elysian shades The sweetest place for masquerades; How pleasant on the banks of Styx, To troll it in a coach and six! What pride a female heart inflames? How endless are ambition's aims: Cease, haughty nymph; the Fates decree Death must not be a spouse for thee; For, when by chance the meagre shade ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Jove has passed the water-carrier's sign, And Saturn's light, for five-and-twenty days Has lightened up the maid; the king divine Of Asia's land shall enter on the ways That painful lead to death and Styx's gloomy maze." ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of Tartarus moved the royal procession, until it reached the first winding of the river Styx. Here an immense assemblage of yachts and barges, dressed out with the infernal colours, denoted the appointed spot of the royal embarkation. Tiresias, dismounting from his chariot, and leaning on Manto, now approached her Majesty, and ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... this the rather, Since some one had hinted, the youth to annoy, That he wasn't by any means PHOEBUS'S boy! Intending, the rascally son of a gun, To darken the brow of the son of the SUN! "By the terrible Styx!" said the angry sire, While his eyes flashed volumes of fury and fire, "To prove your reviler an infamous liar, I swear I will grant you whate'er you desire!" "Then by my head," The youngster said, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... merrily at the prow, you may launch forth like a cucullo into the night. The dullest soul cannot go upon such an expedition without some of the spirit of adventure; as if he had stolen the boat of Charon and gone down the Styx on a midnight expedition into the realms of Pluto. And much speculation does this wandering star afford to the musing nightwalker, leading him on and on, jack-o'lantern-like, over the meadows; or, if he is wiser, he amuses himself with imagining ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... and brought before the general, finding that all his asservations of innocence could not be understood "leva sa chemise bleue, et prenant son phallus à la poignée, resta un moment dans l'attitude théatrale d'un dieu jurant par le Styx. Sa physionomie semblait me dire: Après la serment terrible que je fais pour vous prouver mon innocence, osez-vous en douter? Son geste me rappela que du tems d'Abraham on jurait vérité en portant la main aux organes de la génération." The vast antiquity of this custom among the ancient ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... down through the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of hay might be driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six" and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... supposing that one can not "be sure" of anything except the love of God, supposing that one looks out through the tangled limbs of the olive trees of a Gethsemane to a sky studded with pitiless stars, supposing that the future is obscure and the present black as Styx, supposing that even the face of the Father Himself is palled and curtained—then must one be content ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees |
