"Styx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 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, and was greeted by the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... 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
... 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 ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... 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
... Ganymede to the joys of their sublime society, the encouraging thoughts of the more religious and cheerful of the philosophers, these facts, together with a natural shrinking from the dismal gloom of the life of shades around the Styx, and a native longing for admission to the serene pleasures of the unfading life led by the radiant lords of heaven, in conjunction, perhaps, with still other causes, effected an improvement of the old faith, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sound and 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 from trials ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... kingdoms of infernal rule, Of Styx, of Acheron, and the fiery lake Of ever-burning Phlegethon, I swear That I do long to see the [109] monuments And situation of bright-splendent ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... river came a sound like that which 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 among the trees might well have occurred to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;—'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx—and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't—but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... "I don't believe I could if I tried. But there's something evidently troubling you. Let's have it. Oh, don't be afraid. You've no idea what an—Olympian position one finds himself in when he has got half-way across the Styx and come back. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of the war.... Oh, such a weariness! So many times had hopes been destroyed! Hundreds of tomorrows just like yesterday and today followed on, each similarly devoted to emptiness and waiting—to waiting for emptiness. Time no longer ran. The year was like a river Styx which encircles life with the circuit of its black and greasy waters, with its somber, watery, silky flood that seems no longer to move. Tomorrow? Tomorrow ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... 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 platform of the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... and the same place, on the other side of the Vistula. I saw the poor captain arrested by some Prussians, who made themselves the blood-hounds of the Russians. When we have fished a man out of the Styx we cling to him. This new danger for poor Paz made me so unhappy that I let myself be taken too, thinking I could help him. Two men can get away where one will perish. Thanks to my name and some family connections in Prussia, the authorities shut their eyes to my escape. I got my dear captain ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... I broke in laughing. "I don't mind being made a composite epitome of all the vices of the race, but I object to your crossing the Styx on my behalf." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... 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. I will tell ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... 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 ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... for cherishing *that same Or dread of father, or of other wight, Or for estate, delight, or for wedding, Be false to you, my Troilus, my knight, Saturne's daughter Juno, through her might, As wood* as Athamante do me dwell *mad Eternally in Styx ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... noble princess! Thy will was good, and be that sufficient. I shall not want materials to write a commentary on the history of Frederic, when, in company with thee, I shall wander on the banks of Styx; there the events that happened on this earth may be written ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... other harm to me." He spake; 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 heart, and not a heart of ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... 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 ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... ahead," said Tennesseean Crockett; but 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 to trust and ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... 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 ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... to bind us to St. Roch, for we kept missing our way and getting into "streams as black as Styx." But at length the city of Quebec, with its green glacis and frowning battlements, was left behind, and we drove through flat country abounding in old stone dwelling-houses, old farms, and large fields of stubble. We neared the blue ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... 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 ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... existence of a man who is talking to me. He seems altogether incredible. He might be talking across the Styx; and I am not sure at the moment on which side of that river I stand. Is he on the right side or am I? Which of us has got the place where a daily sun still rises? Yes, it is the living men here who ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... 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 examined. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... domes, and bottomless pits; heard the voice of unseen waterfalls; paddled three quarters of a mile in the deep Echo River, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish; crossed the streams "Lethe" and "Styx"; plied with music and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries; saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted chambers,—the icicle, the orange-flower, the acanthus, the grapes, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the Styx, which ninefold her infoldeth Hems not Ceres' daughter in its flow; But she grasps the apple—ever holdeth Her, sad Orcus, down below." SCHILLER, Das Ideal ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... and now creeps along, leaden and inert, half solid, like a torrent of liquid mud—irresolute whether to be earth or water; whether to stagnate here for ever at my feet, or crawl onward yet another sluggish league into the sea. So may Lethe look, or Styx: the nightmare of a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... assert, that he had predicted Gataker's death! But the truth is, it was an empty epitaph to the "Lodgings to let:" it stood empty, reader, for the first passenger that the immortal ferryman should carry over the Styx. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... that, David, I 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, there is every reason to believe ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cruise. It should be a warm and still evening; and then with a 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 ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... for poetic effect, yet ever with an undertone of sadness and alarm. Not Orpheus' self, he says (I, xxiv, 13), in his exquisite lament for dead Quinctilius, can bring back life-blood to the phantom pale who has joined the spectral band that voyage to Styx: the gods are pitiless—we can only bear bereavements patiently (II, iii). You must leave, my Dellius, your pleasant groves and your cottage upon Tiber's banks, since Orcus, ruthless king, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... Wherefore I fear 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
... 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, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... shades with which it is covered by a surrounding wood, and the pestilent odour which this water exhales, characterize it very justly as the Tartarus of the poets. There wants only the boat of Charon, which, however, would be unnecessary, as there is only a shallow ford to pass over. The Styx and the kingdom of Pluto are now hid from our sight. Awed by what I had heard and read of these mournful approaches to the dead, I was contented to view them at my feet from the top of a high mountain. The labourer, the shepherd, and the sailor, dare ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... monsters of the rocks awoke, glaring and blinking, to menace the voyagers in the depths below. The contrast between this supereminent brilliancy and the sullen obscurity of the subterranean river made the latter seem more than ever like Styx or Acheron. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... her, and a dead face, 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
... anything in my life. We stopped, and I examined my clothes, and they were 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. He was not good company, because I had to do all the talking. ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... cant, Confess'd his flame, and swore by Styx, Whate'er she would desire, to grant— But wise Ardelia knew ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... and wait a 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. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... earth was the kingdom of darkness, and 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 ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is so," said Yen Wang, "let forty-eight flag-bearers escort her across the Styx Bridge [Nai-ho Ch'iao], that she may be taken to the pine-forest to reenter her body, and resume her life in ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... might take refuge, with small chance of being discovered, or defend themselves against any force sent in pursuit, provided they had food to hold out until their enemies had grown weary of looking for them. Charon—unlike his namesake—had no objection to ferry us back across the Styx; and having made our way into the upper air, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... howling of so many young ladies and 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 ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... purblind boy, 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 lovers' sighs, vows, and ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... for you, sir," said Johnson, handing in the third of the missives to come in that day's mail from beyond the Styx. It was inscribed: ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... 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, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... 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, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... redundantly. The airboat crossed a fair-sized river. "That's the Styx," Alexander said. "Grandfather named it. He was a classicist in his way—spent a lot of his time reading books most people never heard of. Things like the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. The mountains he called the Apennines, and that volcano's Mount Olympus. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... They are denizens of a country, a fairy realm, which figures partly as an abode of the dead, and which we are certainly justified in identifying with the Celtic Otherworld. The river which the fairy-woman crosses bears a certain resemblance to the Styx, or she tells Graelent plainly that should he reach its opposite bank he is as good as dead. Fairyland in early Celtic lore may be a place of delight, but it is none the less one of death ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... 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
... 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 Bards', l. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... that this particular "jeu d'esprit obtained great celebrity." But the happiest stroke in the controversy— as it seems to us—is one which escaped Mr. Lawrence, and occurs in the paper already referred to, where Charon and Mercury are shown denuding the luckless passengers by the Styx of their surplus impedimenta. Among the rest, approaches "an elderly Gentleman with a Piece of wither'd Laurel on his head." From a little book, which he is discovered (when stripped) to have bound close to his heart, and which bears ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... overmastered. But in a twinkling our Dante was as calm as a tempered veteran, and in the thickest of the scrimmage he urged himself as indifferent to peril as if, like Achilles in the old story, he had been dipped in Styx. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... how 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 robes which once ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... that 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 little ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... is so, but we can be made to see that 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 the friends ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Mayyan, or Tippet Town. The depot lies a little above the confluence of the Mbokwe and the Londo, or south-eastern fork of the latter. A drunken pilot and a dark and moonless night, with the tide still running in, delayed us till I could hardly distinguish the sable human masses which gathered upon the Styx- like stream to welcome their new Matyem—merchant or white man. Before landing, all the guns on board the steamer were double- loaded and discharged, at the instance of our host, who very properly insisted upon this act of African courtesy—"it would ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... is easy. Speak; everything waits on your will. If you cannot trust my words without oaths, I swear by those beautiful eyes, those lords of my heart, those divine authors of my passion; and if it be not sufficient to swear by your beautiful eyes, I swear by the Styx, by which all the gods ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... me, who am lifeless and dead, back from the abode below, and hath brought me again into upper air, let him pay full penalty with his own death in the dreary shades beneath livid Styx. Behold, counter to my will and purpose, I must declare some bitter tidings. For as ye go away from this house ye will come to the narrow path of a grove, and will be a prey to demons all about. Then she who hath brought our death back from out of void, and has given us a sight of this light once ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... 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 ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... bow; This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit, To teach all craft upon the earth below; Thieves love and worship thee—it is thy merit 695 To make all mortal business ebb and flow By roguery:—now, Hermes, if you dare By sacred Styx ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... is a common joke against the Irish vessels, to say they are loaded with fruit and timber, that is, potatoes and broomsticks. Irish assurance; a bold forward behaviour: as being dipt in the river Styx was formerly supposed to render persons invulnerable, so it is said that a dipping in the river Shannon totally annihilates bashfulness; whence arises the saying of an impudent Irishman, that he has been ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... 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 finally got the wet firewood once more ignited, ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... 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 who, with the ear of age, still ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Derwent there is a fall of some magnificence, and the scenery on the banks of the river is various and beautiful. The Derwent receives in its course the waters of the Dee, (flowing from Lake Esk) Clyde, Jones, Ouse, Styx, Plenty, and Thames. From its source to Hobart it is about 70 miles long, and to its entrance at Storm Bay ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... alive as ever— As each wades through that ghastly stream, The satins that rustle and gems that gleam, Will grow pale and heavy, and sink away To the noisome River's bottom-clay! Then the costly bride and her maidens six, Will shiver upon the banks of the Styx, Quite as helpless as they were born— Naked souls, and very forlorn; The Princess, then, must shift for herself, And lay her royalty on the shelf; She, and the beautiful Empress, yonder, Whose robes are now the wide ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... I am," replied the sun-god; "and that your mates may never have chance to doubt it more, I swear by the terrible Styx [Footnote: The Styx was one of the great rivers of Hades. The oath by the Styx was regarded as so binding that even a god could not break it without being punished severely for his perjury. Any god who broke his oath was obliged to drink of the black waters of the Styx which kept him in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of our having left the body of troops and would try the metal of our steel, we at first agreed that neither of us should go to sleep, but it was later decided that probably the driver had no greater desire to cross the Styx than his passengers had and that in case of danger he would awaken us, so both took a revolver in each hand, stretched out ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... infernal Styx she goes, She takes the fogs from thence that rose, And in a bag doth them enclose, When well she had them blended. She hies her then to Lethe spring, A bottle and thereof doth bring, Wherewith she meant to work the thing Which only ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... that he was ready to pay almost any price for the article. He saw it at a glance. Emily had high-flown notions, and would not yield; he feared that she would not yield, let Cousin George's delinquencies be shown to be as black as Styx. But if Cousin George could be made to give her up,—then Emily must yield; and, yielding in such manner, having received so rude a proof of her lover's unworthiness, it could not be but that her heart would be changed. Sir Harry's first idea of a price was very noble; all debts to be paid, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... religious. In the very case which we have chosen, philosophical mythology sprang up by the side of religious mythology. The religious mythology consisted in speaking of the spirits of the departed as ghosts, as mere breath and air, as fluttering about the gates of Hades, or ferried across the Styx in the boat ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... cries, "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 ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... would be rather an undertaking, Menippus. However, you shall see the principal things. Cerberus here you know already, and the ferryman who brought you over. And you saw the Styx on your way, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... a draught from a cup of "cold pizen!" And oh for a resting-place in the cold grave! With a bath in the Styx, where the thick shadow lies on And deepens the chill ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... boat, (the ship Argo) and the dog Sirius, both relative to this river, whose inundation they foretold. These circumstances, added to the preceding, and still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a civil use, and ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... whit more pluckily than his opponent. In the end the dog won, but he was the most devastated small dog that I have ever seen, before or since, and had it not been for prompt surgical aid at his home nearby I dare say Charon might have ferried both shades over the Styx together. No, the woodchuck is not so easy to get. He is quite likely to whip his own weight in most anything that forces him to ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... 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 of the flames ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... that people always kissed at such affairs, and there was general jollification and cake, but this seemed more like a newfangled funeral, with the dear departed acting as his own Charon and steering himself across the Styx." ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Higgs sotto voce to me, "and that's first-rate so far as they are concerned. But what I should jolly well like to know is how they are going to end for us who haven't got a charming lady to see us across the Styx." ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... every pore into a luxuriant maze of vines and orange trees, and all manner of lovely and fruitful vegetation. Still farther behind is the Acherusian Marsh of the poets, now called the Lake of Fusaro, because hemp and flax are put to steep in it; and the river Styx itself, by which the gods dare not swear in vain, reduced to an insignificant rill flowing into the sea. It is most interesting to think of the apostle Paul being associated with this enchanted region. His presence on the scene is ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... fierce, in a mantle black as night, with a tiara of diamonds and a sceptre of ebony, is in the midst of an isle enclosed by the windings of the Styx;—and this ghostly stream rushes into the darkness, which forms under the cliff a great black gap, a ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... with a spirit of enterprise and 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
... agents of locomotion. Why can't the directors have more 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... 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
... veines did moove, his life came again and he held up his head and spake in this sort: Why doe you call mee backe againe to this transitorie life, that have already tasted of the water of Lethe, and likewise been in the deadly den of Styx? Leave off, I pray, leave off, and let me lie in quiet rest. When these words were uttered by the dead corps, the Prophet drew nigh unto the Biere and sayd, I charge thee to tell before the face of all the people here the occasion ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... 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
... 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 was ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... would as soon have suspected him of being the Khann of Tartary! Nay, candid readers, are there not some of you who refuse to the last to recognize the maa of genius, till he has paid his penny to Charon, and his passport to immortality has been duly examined by the customhouse officers of Styx! When one half the world drag forth that same next-door neighbour, place him on a pedestal, and have him cried, "Oyez! Oyez! Found a man of genius! Public property! open to inspection!" does not the other half the world put on its spectacles, turn up its nose, and cry, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 into biography? And then, his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... adventure to discover wide That dismal world, if any Clime perhaps Might yeild them easier habitation, bend Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams; Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate, Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton 580 Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Farr off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe the River of Oblivion ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... tilling my soil. As he had lately come from Philadelphia, Boston, &c. he was able to give me a great deal of information of what is passing in the world, and I pestered him with questions pretty much as our friends Lynch, Nelson, &c. will us, when we step across the Styx, for they will wish to know what has been passing above ground since they left us. You hope I have not abandoned entirely the service of our country. After five and twenty years' continual employment in it, I trust it will be thought I have ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Plod-all has given 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 ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... sharp 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, ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... fortunes vary let all be merry, And then if e'er a disaster befall, At Styx's ferry is Charon's wherry ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... paid to funeral ceremonies. Many people believed that the souls of the unburied were not admitted into the abodes of the dead before they had wandered about the Styx at least a hundred years. If one happened to discover an unburied body and did not throw earth on it, he was compelled to expiate his crime by sacrificing a hog to Ceres. When persons were at the point of death, their nearest relation present endeavoured to catch the expiring ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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 ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... (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 ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... islands, which 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 asphalt is still ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... were travelling directly west again, and no sunlight entered here, 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 ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... 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
... was known, by the protection of his mother, who was always at hand to guide and support him in the conflict, and to succor him in danger. Achilles, on the other hand, possessed a charmed life. He had been dipped by his mother Thetis, when an infant, in the river Styx, to render him invulnerable and immortal; and the immersion produced the effect intended in respect to all those parts of the body which the water laved. As, how ever, Thetis held the child by the ankles when she plunged him in, the ankles remained unaffected by the magic influence ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... on a time in Charon's wherry Two Painters met, on Styx's ferry. Good sir, said one, with bow profound, I joy to meet thee under ground, And though with zealous spite we strove To blast each other's fame above, Yet here, as neither bay nor laurel Can tempt us to prolong our quarrel, I hope the hand ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... city no sounds but 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 king tarry ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... slave States and zealous Democratic partisans, and that only hard practical experience and the testimony of their own eyes had forced them to join their predecessors in the political "graveyard." "The ghosts on the banks of the Styx," said Seward, "constitute a cloud scarcely more dense than the spirits of the departed Governors of Kansas, wandering in exile and sorrow for having certified the truth against falsehood in regard to the elections between Freedom and Slavery ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... 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, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... Destiny, like a novelist who does not know what to do with a character, sent him on an excursion across the River Styx. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... 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
... about to rush on these monsters with his sword, when the Sibyl informed him that they were no real beings but merely phantoms. Then they came to the Styx—the river of Hades, over which the ferryman Cha'ron, grim and long-bearded, conveyed the departed spirits, in his iron-colored boat, using a pole to ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... they have more to overcome, probably, than in any other matter, for here they carry an inheritance of great weight, from the old slave days. Why should they be grateful? What chance to exercise the feeling! It became, like the eyes of the fish in the Styx of Mammoth Cave, useless, and to all appearances disappeared. But the germ is there, and with light it will again ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... desolate 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, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... 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 on a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... it becometh thee 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, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... gifts, then, catch and cherish; Follow where her currents flow; Sure to prosper—or to perish, Follow, though to Styx ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... was 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 wounded. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is! To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon, Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary, Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage, He would grant his son's petition, whatsoever the sign thereof. Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: 'Rule of day give me; give it me, Give me place that men may see ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... moon. Unmoved by civic pride, unchecked by taste, They 'd smear the general sky with poster's paste And at Dan Phoebus seem to "take a sight." Colossal bottles blot the air, to tell That MUCKSON's Temperance drink is a great sell. Here's a huge hat, as black as sombre Styx, Flanked by the winsome legend, "Ten and Six." Other Sky-signs praise Carpets, Ginghams, Socks, Mugg's Music-hall, and "Essence of the Ox." Bah! GAY's trim Muse might sicken of her rhymes Had she to read these Sky-signs ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... 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
... 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
... withall its power of suffering mysteriously transferred to the presence, so known, yet so unknown, at the opposite corner of herhearth. She was still Lizzie West, and he was still Vincent Deering; but the Styx rolled between them, and she saw his face through its fog. It was his face, really, rather than his words, that told her, as she furtively studied it, the tale of failure and slow discouragement which had so blurred its ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the first time I have had to ask myself, seriously, "Why this mania for possession?" The ferryman on the Styx is as likely to take it across as our railroad is to "handle" it today. Yet nothing seems able to break a person born ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... lady were the hosts; The party we have touched on were the guests. Their table was a board to tempt even ghosts To pass the Styx for more substantial feasts. I will not dwell upon ragouts or roasts, Albeit all human history attests That happiness for Man—the hungry sinner!— Since Eve ate ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... fly. Now, by way of a pleasant change, an icy north wind is blowing, with gusts of snow, not snow enough to swell the loch that feeds the river, but just enough snow (as the tourist said of the water in the River Styx) "to swear by," or at! The Field announces that a duke, who rents three rods on a neighbouring river, has not yet caught one salmon. The acrimoniously democratic mind may take comfort in that intelligence, but, if the weather will not improve ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... resist the belief that he saw 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 Dante's regions ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... lilac and such purple as float between me and the distant hills; nor yet in anything, 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
... city of Troy was built upon the ruins of a city that throve and pulsed with life and pride, a thousand years or more before Thetis, the mother of Achilles, held her baby by the heel and dipped him in the River Styx. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... should follow you. It would be just lovely to be rowed across the Styx together. Of course, I should have to pay ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... continuation 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 this period ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... in the Southron's Fatherland Is that last ditch—his final stand? Knowest thou a stream folks call the Styx, Round a plantation of Old Nick's, In which, as Beauregard once swore, His horse should drink when all is o'er? There, there, my Southern friend, you'll find A ditch exactly to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... eyes, grave in his demeanor, and concise in his conversation. He tells me of two routes by which I can make a tour through his dominions. The shortest one will require six hours to travel, and at the farthest will take me to the banks of the river Styx, six miles from the entrance to the cave. The other route will take the whole day, and will lead as far as the so-called "Maelstroem,"—a singular pit, a hundred and seventy-five feet deep,—and place ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... 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 into the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... about thee—who are they? And canst thou be that fabled boat, that waits On the dark banks of Styx for souls? Oh, say! Let me not burst ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... mean to build a monument to my fame with the stones thrown at me to break my bones; nor yet pretend to the art of Swift's German Wonder-doer, who promised to make them fall about his head like so many pillows. Ink, as it resembles Styx in its colour, should resemble it a little in its operation too; whoever has been once dipt should become invulnerable: But it is not so; the irritability of authors has long been enrolled among the comforts of ill-nature, and the triumphs of stupidity; ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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
... 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 ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... weep; and if I weep, 'T is that our nature cannot always bring Itself to apathy, for we must steep[dh] Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring,[di] Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep: Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; A mortal mother would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... should meet 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 ready ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... For 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 Upon thy hand his finger laid, Thy hand ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... rectangular Schloss with the four big lindens at the corners, are surrounded by a Moat; black abominable ditch, Wilhelmina calls it; of the hue of Tartarean Styx, and of a far worse smell, in fact enough to choke one, in hot days after dinner, thinks the vehement Princess. Three Bridges cross this Moat or ditch, from the middle of three several Terraces or sides of the Schloss; and on the fourth it is impassable. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... That 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... key to the whole contraption. For one period he could talk of nothing but dried milk; for another, acetic acid was the thing. Rub yourself with acetic acid and you would be as invulnerable to the ills of the body as Achilles was after he had been dipped by Thetis in the waters of Styx. The stars tell him anything he wishes to believe, and he can conjure up spirits as easily as another man can order a cab. It is not that he is a fool. In practical affairs he is astonishingly astute. It is that he has an illimitable capacity for ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... of which Beecher speaks as an emanation from God himself, is but a higher wisdom taught the longing heart by those it has loved and lost. The souls of the dead scratch no messages on greasy slates for stupid eyes, shout none across the Styx that can be heard by vulgar ears; but there be men who can hear in the silent watches of the night the music of lips long mute. There be those for whom the veil that separates the two eternities is no black inpenetrable pall, but an Arachne's ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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
... gale, A brighter radiance gilds the roofs of 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? Thus link by link is knit the flaming chain Lit ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... beautiful scene lies before them. No longer the styx-like waters; the funereal realms of Pluto have vanished, and an elevated plateau appears, partially cleared. Here and there graceful palms, tall, slender cocoanut and orange trees laden with fruit; sparkling springs; abundant harvests of varied crops; picturesque wigwams ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... and twenty-three pits,—many of which are grand in the extreme. Some of the rivers are navigated by boats, and, as may be supposed, they have obtained appropriate names. Here we find the Dead Sea and the River Styx. One of the streams disappears beneath the ground, and then rises again in another portion of the cavern. But after all, as naturalists, the little eyeless fish should ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport |
