"Styx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, wrong, buck, flame, quiz. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Question of MINIMUM; and 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 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... pray not to you by the waves forlorn Of marshy Styx or dismal Acheron, By Chaos, where the mighty world was born, Or by the sounding flames of Phlegethon; But by the fruit that charmed thee on that morn When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne! O queen, if ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... the loved ones who have gone before, I do not know but that I should look forward with pleasure to the "passing across." Not having this belief, I am quite content to stay where I am as long as I can; and finally, when old Charon appears to row me over the river Styx, I shall be ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... had a childhood. Devoted life to his business. Has navigated more people than all the Atlantic liners combined. Ambition: A launch. Recreation: None. Address: The Styx. ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... 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 robes which once ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... of delight was too extreme to pause for explanation with Janet. On I pushed through the groups of children, of whose sports I had been so often a lazy, lounging spectator. I sprung over the gutter as if it had been the fatal Styx, and I a ghost, which, eluding Pluto's authority, was making its escape from Limbo lake. My friend had difficulty to restrain me from running like a madman up the street; and in spite of his kindness and hospitality, which soothed me for a day or two, I was not quite happy until I found myself ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 riverside I may find the old manse and ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all at their posts, I shall be allowed, employed or not employed, to take the brush, and dip into the first colour, and put the first touch on the first intonaco. If that is not granted, I'll haunt every noble Lord and you, till you join my disturbed spirit on the banks of the Styx.' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... ALFRED LYTTLETON, so keen behind the 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 slashing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... 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, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... truth, this smooth, oleaginous, and delicately odorous employment for the silver spoon, was unknown. Should the knowledge of his loss reach him in the fields of Elysium, will not his steps be incontinently turned towards the borders of the Styx—his plaintive voice hail the grim ferryman, while in his ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... began to dip, and fifteen minutes' ride brought them to a low-lying region of swamp, sentinelled with dismal larches. Close at hand they heard the moaning of a slow stream; beyond was the muffled thunder of some tremendous waterfall. They were soon convinced that they were on the confines of the Styx River, a dreary, forbidding stream of ink-black water which wallowed through a larch swamp for many miles till it reached the face of a bold cliff down which its flood went booming with the sound of thunder. At ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... original Polly: Steele and Addison left their cards as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley: Swift came in and sat down without speaking a word, and quitted the room as abruptly: Otway and Chatterton were seen lingering on the opposite side of the Styx, but could not muster enough between them to pay Charon his fare: Thomson fell asleep in the boat, and was rowed back again—and Burns sent a low fellow, one John Barleycorn, an old companion of his who had conducted him to the other world, to say ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... assembled crowd, and Lygia, listening with her whole soul to the words of the old man, as he narrated the passion, death, and resurrection of the God-man, who had redeemed the world, and promised it happiness on the other shore of the Styx. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... seated or lying on putrid earth and exposed to lashing rain; the misusers of wealth, with all human lineaments effaced, and engaged in a foolish and wearisome scuffle; the ill-tempered, floating on the surface of the foul marsh of Styx or lying submerged in it according as their disposition was to fierce wrath or sullen brooding—all these are not merely tormented but degraded ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... 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
... 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 protect our noble chef, who ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... which 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 at night. It surprises us. We turn ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... 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
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... guided by the Sibyl, after a great sacrifice, AEneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sibyl, however, made him take AEneas across, his boat groaning under ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... power and glory, well knowing that this would cause her instant death. 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 grant whatever she asked of him, he was compelled to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... impudent, shameless, threefold rascal, the most rascally of rascals. Ah! 'tis you who hunted out our dog Cerberus, whose keeper I was! But I have got you to-day; and the black stones of Styx, the rocks of Acheron, from which the blood is dripping, and the roaming dogs of Cocytus shall account to me for you; the hundred-headed Hydra shall tear your sides to pieces; the Tartessian Muraena[438] shall fasten itself on your lungs and the Tithrasian[439] Gorgons shall ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... 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 ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... no one had the will to forbid him entrance; and at length he found unguarded that very cave that leads to the Underworld, where Pluto rules the spirits of the dead. He went down without fear. The fire in his living heart found him a way through the gloom of that place. He crossed the Styx, the black river that the Gods name as their most sacred oath. Charon, the harsh old ferryman who takes the shades across, forgot to ask of him the coin that every soul must pay. For Orpheus sang. There in the Underworld the song of Apollo ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... in one corner, Hannah, with the child, in another, and the various rugs and trappings of wandering Britons. Everything was contracted, narrow. The sea-passage had the same sinister character. Hadria compared it to the crossing of the Styx in Charon's gloomy ferry-boat. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... me; and if I get no more, I'm sure of that. But soft; Now I must try my cunning, for here he sits.— The high commander of the damned souls, Great Dis, the duke of devils, and prince of Limbo lake, High regent of Acheron, Styx, and Phlegeton, By strict command from Pluto, hell's great monarch, And fair Proserpina, the queen of hell, By full consent of all the damned hags, And all the fiends that keep the Stygian plains, Hath sent me ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... on the top of a certain mountain, adorned as for the bed of marriage and of death. Look not for a son-in-law of mortal birth; but for that evil serpent-thing, by reason of whom even the gods tremble and the shadows of Styx are afraid." ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... heath than his soul in 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 inveigling Pratt ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... appear in all companies as if it were at the head of their regiments, with a sort of deportment that ought to have been dropt behind, in that short passage to Harwich. It puts me in mind of a dialogue in Lucian,[11] where Charon wafting one of their predecessors over Styx, ordered him to strip off his armour and fine clothes, yet still thought him too heavy; "But" (said he) "put off likewise that pride and presumption, those high-swelling words, and that vain-glory;" because they were of no use on the other side ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... see any sticks," said ignorant Maurice, who had never learned that the old heathens believed the souls of dead people went in a ferryboat across a dark river called the Styx, and that the old man who rowed the boat ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... lymph sym'me try cyst syn'tax nymph syn'co pe tymp phys'ic tryst syn'dic ate Styx lyr'ic rynd ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Dodona, and 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 of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... the god with his mace, Shall strike the quick rock; and the gods shall deliver The sentence as Justice shall order; and thou Shalt see thy loved city established forever, With Jove for a judge, and the Styx for ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Of course you're right. I 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
... they call foxes crossed our path at intervals. Owls the size of a robin, only vastly fluffier, screamed from the rocks as we passed them. Otherwise, it was like a soul's last journey, eerie, lonely and awful, down toward River Styx. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... affairs in order against a hasty exit from this vale of hatreds, Mr. Reardon, in unconscious imitation of all the condemned men who had preceded him on the voyage across the Styx, repaired to the dining saloon and partook of a hearty meal. He realized he had undertaken a contract that would require the employment of weapons more formidable than his hard fists, and devoutly ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... grapes the 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
... more of these joints," Billy was saying vehemently to his harassed guide. "It's dark as the Styx now—let's ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and soft eyed Pluto, Perseis, Ianeira, Acaste, Xanthe, Petraea the fair, Menestho, and Europa, Metis, and Eurynome, and Telesto saffron-clad, Chryseis and Asia and charming Calypso, Eudora, and Tyche, Amphirho, and Ocyrrhoe, and Styx who is the chiefest of them all. These are the eldest daughters that sprang from Ocean and Tethys; but there are many besides. For there are three thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far and wide, and in every place alike serve the earth and the deep waters, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... like that of her father, would appear, and a voice would issue from the dead man's mouth, begging for the other piece of money, that he might pay for his passage, and get released from the doom of floating for ever in the grim flood of Styx. But still she was to keep silence, and to let the dead man cry out in vain; for all these, the voice told her, were snares prepared by Aphrodite, to make her let go the money, and to let fall the pieces of bread. Then, at the gate of the palace of Persephone she would meet the great three-headed ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... had, what looked like a mountain in that subterranean region, rising from the ground, with a stream running at its base. We crossed several rivers; besides the "Echo," one called the "Styx," the other the "Lethe." Our guide had brought a net, with which he caught some fish and crawfish. On examining them we could discover no appearance of eyes, while, from being deprived of the warm rays of the sun, they were perfectly white. ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... 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 ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... perfectly dry. The excitement and warmth of the body had acted like a drying-room in a laundry. Then I laid down under a fence and went to sleep, and dreamed I was in hades, building a corduroy bridge across the Styx, and that the devil repremanded me for building it in the wrong place. When I awoke I was so stiff with rheumatism that I had to be helped up from under the fence, and they put me in an ambulance with a soldier who had his jaw shot off. ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... passage from the earlier poetical 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, Pherecydes, and ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... Pluto was easy enough; the lighthouse station at Styx broadcast a strong beep sunward every ten seconds. They could also pick up the radio lighthouses on Eros, Ceres, Luna, and Mimas. Evidently, the one on Titan was behind the ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... since thou hast been so slack To wound her heart whose eyes have wounded me And suffered her to glory in my wrack, Thus to my aid I lastly conjure thee! By hellish Styx, by which the Thund'rer swears, By thy fair mother's unavoided power, By Hecate's names, by Proserpine's sad tears, When she was wrapt to the infernal bower! By thine own loved Psyche, by the fires Spent on thine altars flaming up to heaven, By all true ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... self-interest! His doctor, his friend, or his valet will be sorry for his death merely from the amount of money interest that they have in his life. Bare and grim unto tears, even if he had any, is the life of such a man. With him, sadder than Lethe or the Styx, the river of time runs between stony banks, and, often a calm suicide, it bears him to the Morgue. Happier by far is he who, with whitened hair and wrinkled brow, sits crowned with the flowers of illusion; and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... at the opposite wall, but seeing nothing,—listening, however, to Birotteau. Evidently he heard and judged, and weighed the pros and cons with the inflexibility of a Minos who had crossed the Styx of commerce when he quitted the Quai des Morfondus ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... 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. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... place, 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
... the tame country faces, the aggressive stillness and the silent noise, the sentiment and the sheep of it. Give me the streets and the yellow gas, the roar of the City, smoke, haggard faces, flaming omnibuses, parched London, and the river rolling oilily by the embankment like Styx at night ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... God' are these priests called, and truly he is a jester, for certainly is he no true monk. But Nanette, nevertheless, asserts she is the lawful partner of my sorrows. So work your will on me. A stroke, and the shivering spirit is wafted across the Styx." ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... A bard [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 ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... might believe that we were indeed come to the country beyond the Styx. The prospector renders that theory untenable—it, certainly, could never have gone to heaven. However I am willing to concede that we actually may be in another world from that which we have always known. If we are not ON earth, ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Heaven!" replied the old man, whose occupation, combined with his great age and flowing gray locks, yet stalworth form and unbroken strength, had conferred upon him the name of his infernal predecessor—the navigator of the River Styx. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... 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 on a solid bottom composed of lost gum-boots, abandoned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... this, I snatched the golden branch from its ancient trunk and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... torment, and sin? What 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 each by its various species ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... greatly are my parents and my kin to blame for giving me to this jealous old man, and making us one flesh. I cannot even look to become a widow, for he will never die. In place of the waters of baptism, certainly he was plunged in the flood of the Styx. His nerves are like iron, and his veins quick with blood as those of a young man. Often have I heard that in years gone by things chanced to the sad, which brought their sorrows to an end. A knight would meet with a maiden, fresh and fair to his desire. ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... 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 ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... it is so. Not only does a man tell us that when a taper burns the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he likes, that Charon is punting his ferry-boat on the river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of statesmen; but we are made to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and water does actually happen. This reality of natural knowledge it is, which makes ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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, in which traitors ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... gentlemen, ranging in ages from a fortnight to three or four (years, not fortnights) kept reasoning people awake o' nights, it was protested; and other inconveniences like the water—tributaries of the Styx—in the mines made the atmosphere, and the blankets sometimes, rather humid. These little discomforts, however, were felt only on one or two floors; and the fair sex in the main were grateful for the efforts made to make things cosy for everybody. Sanitation ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... 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 ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... dragon-womb Of 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. Par. Lost, i. 63. The pronoun 'her' shows ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... like old Pluto, Persephone's prigger; You'll follow Apollo the Younger—that's me! He's sombre as Styx, and as black as a nigger. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... 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, Proserpine, for ever cut off ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... sable flood we glided, I thought of the Styx, and of Charon rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... figures flitted, bearing ladles filled with the yellow fluid, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Christianlike names for their moving power? What connexion is there between a beautiful new engine, shining in all its finery—the personification of obedient and beneficent strength—with the "Infernal," or the "Phlegethon," or the "Styx?" Are they aware what a disagreeable association of ideas is produced in the students of Lempriere's classical dictionary by the two last names? or the Charon or Atropos? Let these things be mended, and let them be called by some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Pritchett, with such a look of surprise, with such an awe-struck tone, as might have suited some acquaintance of Aeneas's, on hearing that gentleman tell how he had travelled beyond the Styx. Mr. Pritchett was rather fat and wheezy, and the effort made him sigh gently ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... quarrel with destiny. 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 Dellius ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... poet Virgil? He had declared that the mouth of Tartarus lay in Italy, hard by the volcanic lake Avernus; and after the unexpected eruption of Vesuvius in the first century, nothing seemed more clear than that Virgil was right; and that men were justified in talking of Tartarus, Styx, and Phlegethon as indisputable Christian entities. Etna, Stromboli, Hecla, were (according to this cosmogony) in like wise mouths of hell; and there were not wanting holy hermits, who had heard, from within those craters, shrieks, and clanking chains, and the ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... 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 ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... scarf about her as I saw her tread the carpets in her mansion and led her out to her splendid carriage! In such guise I should have adored her. I endowed her with all the pride she lacked, stripped her of her virtues, her natural simple charm, and frank smile, in order to plunge her heart in our Styx of depravity that makes invulnerable, load her with our crimes, make of her the fantastical doll of our drawing-rooms, the frail being who lies about in the morning and comes to life again at night with the dawn of tapers. Pauline was fresh-hearted ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Post," all my visionary guineas, the deceitful wages of unborn scandal. In truth, I wonder you took it up so seriously. All my intention was but to make a little sport with such public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c.—gentry dipped in Styx all over, whom no paper javelin-lings can touch. To have made free with these cattle, where was the harm? 'twould have been but giving a polish to lampblack, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After all, I cannot but regret my involuntary virtue. Damn virtue that's thrust upon us; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... brother pagans beyond the Styx; but Lisette blooms in evergreen youth. This young French person's theory of woman's rights is different from the one which obtains in New England; nor does she trouble herself at all to seek for woman's mission. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... The young soldier had no physical hurt that might appeal to the professional sympathies of the senior surgeon, and he turned away with a half laugh. "Let him go along! He can't rally Dovinger's Rangers this side of the river Styx, it seems." ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 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
... 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 ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... in the steps Of Dr. Epps, And eke that cannie man Old Dr. Hanneman— Two individuals of consummate gumption, Who declare, That whensoe'er The patient's labouring under a consumption, To save him from a trip across the Styx, To ancient Nick's In Charon's shallop, If the consumption be upon the canter, It should be put upon the gallop Instanter; For, "similia similibus curantur," Great medicinal cod (Beating the mode Of old Hippocrates, whom M.D.'s mostly follow, Quite hollow); Which would make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... aloft and at the jib-boom end, and suffusing everything with so 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 ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... that he will despise my hard and barren land, and go to some other country where he will build a more glorious temple, and grant richer gifts to the people who come to worship him." But Leto swore by the dark water of Styx, and the wide heaven above, and the broad earth around her, that in Delos should be the shrine of Phoebus, and that there should the rich offerings burn on his altar ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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 ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... those things that have to be done once, to learn not to do it again. My only reading between Columbus and Pittsburgh is to be here in Zanesville, a town as black as Acheron, and where one might expect to see the river Styx. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... 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. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... he exclaimed uneasily, shifting in his seat. "If the Styx be more gloomy than this accursed stream, then Jesu pity its voyagers. Never have I put in so miserable a night, to say nothing of a strained back, and a pair of sore hands. What are those black, crawling things ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... slashed and swollen company. Now ought you in charity,' he continued, addressing a half-naked savage, who was helping to drag the bodies from the cart, 'to have these trunks well washed ere you bury them, or pitch them into the Tiber, else they will never get over the Styx—not forgetting too the ferriage—' what more folly he would have uttered, I know not, for the wretch to whom he spoke suddenly seized the lash of the driver of the cart, and laid it over Milo's shoulders, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... right foot of potter's clay, on which Than on the other more erect he 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 thee no account." Then I to him: ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... but a visit afterwards to this spot convinced me that one's existence is often a sort of size-ace throw; and whether the six or the one comes up or goes down, is a miracle. I never had a nearer leap for clearing Styx than this, excepting one shortly afterwards upon the timber-slides of ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... 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
... her his niece; but I should doubt if he had any relation on this side the Styx so human ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... tradition of the place wore so gloomy and stern a hue; why, in those smiling plains, for miles around—to Baiae and Misenum—the poets had imagined the entrance and thresholds of their hell—their Acheron, and their fabled Styx: why, in those Phlegrae, now laughing with the vine, they placed the battles of the gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have sought the victory of heaven—save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared and blasted summit, fancy might think to read the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... river, mournful and terrible as Styx, river of the dead, ended, that night, the story of many a life; and why not that of the child so strangely lost, so nearly recovered, and now, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... 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 son Iollas into the province ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... slowly get ahead, Even when the right is visibly unclouded, That if all men are classed as quick and dead, The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded. Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight, His bark prove ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... those of wailing were heard. Only the voice of Psyche was silent among them. She moved about as one that was sleeping, and indeed she felt as if the boat, with its grim ferryman, had already borne her across the Styx. So the days passed on, and one evening a white-clad priest arrived from the shrine to bid the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... 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 abyss which ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... inception of whose ancestors, themselves wholly blind, probably took place thousands of years ago, show by their actions that light is exceedingly unpleasant to them. Thus, I have seen actinophryans taken from the River Styx in Mammoth Cave (which is their natural habitat), seeking to hide themselves beneath a grain of sand which happened to be drawn up in the pipette and dropped upon the glass slide beneath the object-glass ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... talk business, Ram, to-night" sternly said Hawke, who had inwardly decided not to taste food or drink with the past master of villainy. "He might give me a gentle push into the Styx," acutely reflected the Major. "Sit down right there where I can see you," said Hawke, his hand firmly grasping the revolver, as he indicated a corner of the table, after satisfying himself that the shop door was locked. He then quickly locked the garden door and ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... amongst their ancestors; Here Goths have given me leave to sheathe my sword. Titus, unkind, and careless of thine own, Why suffer'st thou thy sons, unburied yet, To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx?— Make way to lay them by ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... what a religious oath was Styx, that the gods never durst swear by, and violate! Oh, that we had such an oath to minister, and to be so well kept ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... 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
... carried the souls of the dead over the River Styx, and to whom they were obliged to pay an obolus—son of Erebus and Nox. He is represented as an old man with a hideous face and long ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... scene 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 I recognised ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... a brace of woodcocks, with iron skewer piercing the tender sides of both. Joined in their lives, joined in their death, so closely joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare." Such is the candour of wit! The great qualities of an adversary, as in Bentley, are distorted into disgraceful attitudes; while the suspicious virtues of a friend, as in Boyle, not passed over in prudent silence, are ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Ganymede holding in his hand a wooden dish with circles and semicircles marked on it in chalk. He put it down on the table and stood silent, sad, and sombre, as Charon by Styx waiting for his boat-load of souls. Then pouches and purses were rummaged, and each threw a coin into the dish. Gerard timidly observed that he had drunk next to no beer, and inquired how much less he was ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... over the world, And of late he his water-pot strangely has twirl'd; Or he's taken a cullender up by mistake, And unceasingly dips it in some mighty lake; Though it is not in Lethe—for who can forget The annoyance of getting most thoroughly wet? It must be in the river called Styx, I declare, For the moment it drizzles it makes the men swear. "It did rain to-morrow," is growing good grammar; Vauxhall and camp-stools have been brought to the hammer; A pony-gondola is all I can keep, And I use my umbrella and pattens in ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... explanation is the grosbeak was singing. They are as motionless and apparently lifeless as if they had been mummified or petrified for a thousand years. Their mottled back and rusty feathers, their heads drawn down and eyes almost closed, make them look like uncanny visitants from beyond the Styx. Poe's raven was not so ominous and strangely silent; these will not say even the one word, "Nevermore." They look like relics of a Saturnian reign before beauty and music and joy were known upon the earth. If there were charred ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... And 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 ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... credit. The notions of future life were hazy, uncertain, doubtful and contradictory. Everybody knows Juvenal's famous lines: "That there are manes, a subterranean kingdom, a ferryman with a long pole, and black frogs in the whirlpools of the Styx; that so many thousand men could cross the waves in a single boat, to-day ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... fire crackling 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 what of human life, far in the silent night, is flitting ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... of westerly winds* brought us in sight of St. Jago and Bravo, of the Cape de Verd Group; on passing which we got the North-East trade, and, after staying a part of the 10th and 11th at Fayal, where we met Her Majesty's Steamer Styx, Captain Vidal, who, on parting, gave us three hearty farewell cheers, we did not, in consequence of easterly winds, arrive at Spithead until the 30th day of September, after an absence of upwards of six years. During ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... far from realising. Of what value, indeed, is money to me? There is none to whom I can usefully bequeath my little fortune, my sisters having each married rich men. I shall not need even Charon's obolus when I am dead, for we have ceased to believe in him—which is a pity, as the trip across the Styx must have been picturesque. Why, then, should I not deal myself a happy lot and portion by squandering my money benevolently during ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... only on the verdureless banks of the Styx. When Proserpine, who was gathering flowers, was carried away to the dark Avernus, all the other blossoms which she had woven in her garland withered and died, but the Poppy; and that the goddess planted in the land of darkness ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... to doubt if this stream whereon we floated, whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris, or the Styx. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... it was both the rainbow (as in the Gothic legends) and the Milky Way; and, since the journey was long, they put boots into the coffin, (for it was made on foot,) and coins to pay the ferrying across a wide sea, even as the Greeks expected to be carried over the Styx by Charon. This abode of the dead, at the end of this long pathway, was an island, a warm, fertile ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... they had no burying tools, stumbling on a limestone slab at last, that lay amid rank weeds near a tomb hollowed out of the rock that had been rifled, very likely, centuries ago. They lowered the already stiffened body into it, with a coin in its fingers for Charon's ferry-fare across the Styx, then set the heavy slab in place, all four of them using ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... I am in deep wonder at seeing your hilarity, when, by all flea-analogies, you ought to be either be howling your fate like Achilles on the shores of Styx, or pretending to grin and bear it, as I was taught to do when I played at Stoicism. You are not of that sect certainly, for you confessed yourself a fool ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... verse between the fingers of the statue, addressed to Rogers; in which the goddess entreats him not to come there ogling every day;—for though "partial friends might deem him still alive," she knew by his looks that he had come from the other side of the Styx; and retained her antique abhorrence of the spectral dead, etc. etc. She concluded by beseeching him, if he could not desist from haunting her with his ghostly presence, at least to spare her the added misfortune of being be-rhymed ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... them moving slimily about in the black water, and, in the dim mysterious light, tree-stems and other objects assumed the appearance of hideous living forms, so that he was enabled to indulge the uncomfortable fancy that they were traversing some terrestrial Styx into one of ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... throne, That in despite of all the Muses' laws, He may revenge his injured father's cause, Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go, And view your monarch in the shades below, Who takes not now from Helicon his drink, But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink; Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns, And in a pile of his own labours burns; Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise, Supplied with fuel from his impious plays; And when he fain would ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... '75, across the Styx! Make way for stately '76, Who comes with mincing, minuet pace, Well-powdered hair and patch-deckt face— An antiquated kerchief on: White-capped, like Martha Washington; Clock-hosed and high-heeled slipper-shod, To give no Nineteenth Century nod; Nay, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... forlorn soul waiting by the Styx Dimly expectant of lands yet more dim, Might peer afraid where shadows change and mix Till the dark ferryman shall come ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... boxes, terra-cotta lamps, and a terra-cotta doll, is a curious vase containing bones, with a silver Athenian coin, attached to the jar by careful relatives, to pay for the deceased's transit across the Styx. A collection of terra-cotta figures are arranged upon the four shelves of case 37. These include an ancient comic actor as Hercules; Athenian ladies bearing water jugs, called Hydriophorae; Ceres; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... bough that would be a lamp to 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 sight and meekly ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... another Oedipus could have conjectured. The young master very obviously did not wish to be observed, and in such times Peters at could be blinder than the bat noon-day and more secret than the River Styx. He turned away, unhurried, the fold of that double chin a little more pronounced over the severe correctness of ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... of the evil-looking thing—and the sudden metamorphosis of its sleek sides into mouths belching forth humanity. I think of Hades. This, by the way, isn't a bad representation of it—the up-to-date Hades. They've got a railway bridge now across the Styx, and Charon has a gold band around his cap, and this might be the arrival ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... craftiest hero yields to you in guile. You touch the gold! 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
... 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? Thus link by link is knit the flaming chain ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... above all 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 'OSTEND,' ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... (alone) Wretch! 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 well. Had father ever greater cause ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... procession to destruction, because he must make his living in that way. He is a sort of clean-aproned Charon on a whiskey Styx, ferrying the multitude to perdition on the other side of the river. But what ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... to 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, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox |
