"Hellespont" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keenest weapon to her heart. Upon the opposite bank she stood and smil'd through her graceful fingers shifted still The intermingling dyes, which without seed That lofty land unbosoms. By the stream Three paces only were we sunder'd: yet The Hellespont, where Xerxes pass'd it o'er, (A curb for ever to the pride of man) Was by Leander not more hateful held For floating, with inhospitable wave 'Twixt Sestus and Abydos, than by me That flood, because ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... great respect by the authorities, and went her own way in defiance of all native customs and prejudices. At Athens her party was joined by Lord Sligo, who was making some excavations in the neighbourhood, and by Lord Byron, who had just won fresh laurels by swimming the Hellespont. Lady Hester formed but a poor opinion of the poet, whose affectations she used to mimic with considerable effect. 'I think Lord Byron was a strange character,' she said, many years later. 'His generosity ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... gain support while they endeavored to swim across the current. The covering of one of the docks afforded the means for this purpose. It was a very risky method of navigation, and it is generally supposed that several of the Fenian "Leanders" who attempted the passage of the Niagara "Hellespont" in this way lost their lives in doing so, as ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... was on the ancient Hellespont and my fellow-travellers, grouped about the deck of our vessel, were trying to make out on the receding coast of Asia the sites of Troy and of the tumuli which were then still supposed to have been the tombs of Achilles, Patrokles, and Hector, but which are now, thanks to the able ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... who resign'd his life To save his country at th' Oetaen straits, Thermopylae, when all the peopled east In arms with Xerxes filled the Grecian plains, O Muse record! The Hellespont they passed O'erpowering Thrace. The dreadful tidings swift To Corinth flew. Her Isthmus was the seat Of Grecian council. Orpheus thence returns To ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... extensive countries of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, preserves the memory of their ancient state under the Roman empire. In the time of the Antonines, the martial regions of Thrace, from the mountains of Haemus and Rhodope, to the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, had assumed the form of a province. Notwithstanding the change of masters and of religion, the new city of Rome, founded by Constantine on the banks of the Bosphorus, has ever since remained the capital of a great monarchy. The kingdom of Macedonia, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... rifle. The second was that there was no fear of my losing my path for in the mouth of the cave I could see the glow of the fires which burned on either side of the Motombo's seat. They served the same purpose to me as did the lamp of the lady called Hero to her lover Leander when he swam the Hellespont to pay her clandestine visits at night. But he had something pleasant to look forward to, whereas I——! Still, there was another point in common between us. Hero, if I remember right, was a priestess of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Helle, and sailed for Colchis, where he met with a kind reception from his kinsman AEetes. The young princess, however, either becoming sea-sick, and leaning over the bulwarks of the vessel, fell overboard and was drowned, or died a natural death in the passage of the Hellespont, to which she gave its name from that circumstance. Athamas, having discovered the deceitful conduct of Ino, in his rage killed her son Learchus, and sought her, for the purpose of sacrificing her to his vengeance. To avoid his fury, she fled with her son Melicerta, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... come into my life, and on a night like this I had to speak. I had to thank you. On such a night as this," Roddy cried breathlessly, "Jessica stole from Shylock's house to meet her lover. On such a night as this Leander swam the Hellespont. And on this night I had to tell you that to me you are the most wonderful and ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... in ancient history, but somehow they all paled into insignificance when with his own eyes he saw this wonderful exhibition of valor unparalleled. The heroic defense of the Pass of Thermopylae; the swimming of the Hellespont by Leander, yes, and other instances made famous in the annals of history had once struck the boy as wonders in their way, but somehow seeing things was a great deal more impressive than ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... believed to have accumulated a treasure of fifteen millions sterling, and Buonaparte had actually duped him into a treaty, by which the French were to be permitted to erect a fort on the very spot where the ancient Hippo stood, the choice between which and the Hellespont, as the site of New Rome, is said to have perplexed the judgment of Constantine. To this he added an additional point of connection with Russia, by means of Odessa, and on the supposition of a war in the Baltic, a still more ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was not called after the priestess at Sestos. It means hero the common noun, not Hero the proper name. Holding torches to guide people across the Hellespont ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... swimming, and in so doing touched a passer-by. The man, taking him for a thief, seized him, crying, "What, so young and so wicked!" "I am not a pickpocket," replied the boy; "I only thought I was Leander swimming the Hellespont!" After making some inquiries, his chance acquaintance subscribed to a library for him, and the story runs that in a short time the young bookworm had read "right ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... Hatchard, Mr. John Hawke (Edward Harvey), third Lord Hay, Captain Hayley, his 'Triumphs of Temper,' Lord Byron's eulogy of Hayreddin Hazlitt, William, his style Headfort, Marchioness of 'HEBREW MELODIES' Helen, 'LINES on Canova's bust of' Hellespont, Lord Byron's swimming feat from Sestos to Abydos Hemans, Mrs., her 'Restoration' Character of her poetry Henley, Orator Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, his life much interested Lord Byron Hero and Leander Hill, Aaron 'Hills of Annesley, bleak and barren.' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... then, he died, Otranto was lost, and the enterprise was not renewed. His people were a nation of soldiers, not a nation of sailors. For operations beyond sea they relied on the seamen of the AEgean, generally Christians, as they had required the help of Genoese ships to ferry them over the Hellespont. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... sport. It was claimed for him that, any time between twelve and sixteen years of age, he could have swam across the Hellespont. Here, as well as elsewhere, his inventive genius was devising ways to promote ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... greatest part to resume the same life of incursion and adventure. But they changed the scene of operations. Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace were exhausted by pillage, and made a league to resist. About 278 B.C. the Gauls crossed the Hellespont and passed into Asia Minor. There, at one time in the pay of the kings of Bithynia, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and Syria, or of the free commercial cities which were struggling against the kings, at another carrying on wars on their own account, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... THE GREEKS: The origin of the Greek race is not positively known. It is reasonably supposed that the early settlers in Greece came from the region of Asia Minor, either across the Hellespont or the sea, and populated the Greek islands and the mainland. When this was done has been matter of much conjecture. The early history is lost, but art remains show that in the period before Homer the Greeks were an established race with habits and customs distinctly individual. Egyptian ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... [symbol for GEMINI])—A zodiacal constellation, visible in May, containing the two bright stars Castor and Pollux, the fabled sons of Leda and Jupiter, who during their lives had cleared the Hellespont and neighboring seas of pirates, and were therefore deemed the protectors of navigators ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... that you will not say: for whoever contrives and prepares the means for my conquest, is at war with me before he darts or draws the bow. What, if anything should happen, is the risk you run? The alienation of the Hellespont, the subjection of Megara and Euboea to your enemy, the siding of the Peloponnesians with him. Then can I allow that one who sets such an engine at work against Athens is at peace with her? Quite the contrary. From the day that he destroyed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... but stuck to his pig-trough like a man. "I'm Jason," he replied, defiantly; "and this is the Argo. The other fellows are here too, only you can't see them; and we're just going through the Hellespont, so don't you come bothering." And once more he plied the ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... in reptiles and amphibians, on the contrary, we have always been weak, seeing that most reptiles are bad swimmers, and very few can rival the late lamented Captain Webb in his feat of crossing the Channel, as Leander and Lord Byron did the Hellespont. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... for stage effect, and we see how industrious he was, and read of his training vigorously to reduce corpulence, and of his being such an exceptionally experienced swimmer as to rival Leander in crossing the Hellespont.... The machinery of sensitive souls is as delicate as it is valuable, and cannot bear the rough usage which coarse customs inflict upon it. It is broken to pieces by blows which common natures laugh at. The literary ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... fallen on the common chances of mortal life. We have been set to bequeath a story of marvels to posterity. Is not the king of Persia, he who cut through Athos, and bridged the Hellespont, he who demands earth and water from the Greeks, he who in his letters presumes to style himself lord of all men from the sunrise to the sunset, is he not struggling at this hour, no longer for authority over others, but for his own life? Do you not see the men who delivered the Delphian temple ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... did what hee could to die before, and he is one of the patternes of loue. Leander, he would haue liu'd manie a faire yeere though Hero had turn'd Nun; if it had not bin for a hot Midsomer-night, for (good youth) he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken with the crampe, was droun'd, and the foolish Chronoclers of that age, found it was Hero of Cestos. But these are all lies, men haue died from time to time, and wormes haue eaten them, but ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... as resistlessly drawn up to a new life as the Greeks were drawn from clear beyond the blue waters of the Hellespont into His presence. The crowds were irresistibly drawn to follow on that last eventful journey to Jerusalem even while ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... Sestos joined unto Abydos strand; That on their march his Medes but passing by Drank thee, Scamander, and Melenus dry; With whatsoe'er incredible design Sostratus sings, inspir'd with pregnant wine. But what's the end? He that the other day Divided Hellespont, and forc'd his way Through all her angry billows, that assign'd New punishments unto the waves, and wind, No sooner saw the Salaminian seas But he was driven out by Themistocles, And of that fleet—supposed to be so ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... improvement of the human mind, shall occupy one foot of that classic ground which once was yours. Let the young seamen of the islands emulate the glory that awaits the military force. Let them hasten to join the national ships, and, if denied your independence and rights, blockade the Hellespont, thus carrying the war into the enemy's country. Then the fate of the cruel Sultan, the destroyer of his subjects, the tyrant taskmaster of a Christian people, shall be sealed by the hands of the executioners who yet obey his bloody commands. Then shall prophecy be fulfilled, and Moslem sway ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane |
