"Acheron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with them; at another time {it is} blacker than the Stygian waves. Sometimes it is level, and is white with resounding foam. The Trachinian ship too, is influenced by these vicissitudes; and now aloft, as though from the summit of a mountain, it seems to look down upon the vallies and the depths of Acheron; at another moment, when the engulphing sea has surrounded it, sunk below, it seems to be looking at heaven above from the infernal waters. Struck on its side by the waves, it often sends forth a low crashing sound, and beaten against, it sounds with no less ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Longer, O maiden, arises before me as strange and unlooked for: All things have I foreknown, and in soul have already endured them. One special thing I crave, since here, it is said, that the gateway Stands of the monarch infernal, and refluent Acheron's dark pool: Let it be mine to go down to the sight and face of my cherished Father, and teach me the way, and the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... any clime perhaps Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge Into the burning lake their baleful streams— Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton, Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... was, Jupiter upon her repeated solicitations, promised that Proserpine should be restored, provided she had not yet tasted any thing in hell. Ceres joyfully descended, and Proserpine, full of triumph, prepared for her return, when lo! Ascalaphus, son of Acheron and Gorgyra, discovered that he saw Proserpine, as she walked in the garden of Pluto, eat some grains of a pomegranate, upon which her departure was stopped. At last, by the repeated importunity of her mother to Jupiter, she extorted as a favor, in mitigation of her grief, that Proserpine ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... shapes, and "idols" of the light-bereaved,' Lucretius expressly advances this doctrine of 'films' (an application of the Democritean theory of perception), 'that we may not believe that souls break loose from Acheron, or that shades fly about among the living, or that any part of us is left behind after death'. {341a} Believers in ghosts must have replied that they do not see, in sleep or awake, 'films' representing a mouldering corpse, as they ought to ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... shivering in the thin air, which pinched them severely, now that they had lost the covering of their bodies. Among the group, Larry recognised his old master, by the same means that Ulysses, Aeneas, and others, recognised the bodiless forms of their friends in the regions of Acheron. "What brings a living person," said the man in black, "on this pathway? I shall make legal capture of you, Larry Sweeney, for trespassing. You have no business here." "I have come," said Larry, plucking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... greatly rejoiced at receiving this answer. Acheron was a stream of Epirus, and Pandosia was a town upon the banks of it. He understood the response to mean that he was fated to die quietly in his own country at some future period, probably a remote one, and that there was no danger in his undertaking ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... camping near the dwelling of Acheron, and without paying any attention to the bellowing of the three heads, which was like the echo of fearful resounding thunder, he seized the dog by the legs, put his arms around his neck, and would not let him go, although the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... producing odes and epistles, a little better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the Plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... blades wet with April dew, Nor waits till summer hath o'erpassed her prime? Give back, give back my hope one little day!— Not for a gift, but for a loan I pray. I 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 which charmed thee on that morn When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne! O queen! if ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... spirits of the lost, that dwell Where the black stream of sullen Acheron flows, Rest on that holy night when Christ arose, And for a while 'tis holiday ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of his muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of its muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those who start up, three at a time, and fall upon and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... region was also denominated: for it is certain that it has that name at this [406]day. Cocutus, which we render Cocytus, was undoubtedly a temple in Egypt. It gave name to a stream, on which it stood; and which was also called the Charonian branch of the Nile, and the river Acheron. It was a foul canal, near the place of Sepulture, opposite to Memphis, and not far from Cochone. Cocutus was the temple of Cutus, or Cuth; for he was so called by many of his posterity. A temple of the same was to be found in Epirus, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... keep straight or have no relatives to bear the brunt of their villainies. "But, soft," as they say in the play, "where am I?" I thought I was a virtuous miner again. Here we are at this devil-discovered, demon-haunted old Hollow again—first cousin to the pit of Acheron. There's no help for it, Dick. We must play our parts gallantly, as demons of this lower world, or get hissed ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... that Avernus, if not corrupted from [Greek: aornos], is related to iffrin, the Irish inferi? This derivation is at any rate more probable than that of Grotefend, who connects the word with [Greek: Acheron]. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... remind you of some demon steam-engine on a railroad, some Fire-king or Salmoneus, that had counterfeited, because he could not steal, Jove's thunderbolts; hissing, bubbling, snorting, fuming; demoniac gas, you think—gas from Acheron must feed that dreadful system of convulsions. But pump out the imaginary gas, and, behold! it is ditch-water. Fox, as Mr. Schlosser rightly thinks, was all of a piece—simple in his manners, simple in his style, simple ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... paddles they glided beneath the cliff whose shaggy brows frown across the zenith, and whose base the deep waves wash with a hoarse and hollow cadence; and they passed the sepulchral Bay of the Trinity, dark as the tide of Acheron,—a sanctuary of solitude and silence: depths which, as the fable runs, no sounding line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... that when Beit was buried, the papers said that the mourning-coaches contained everybody of importance, that the floral tributes were sumptuous, splendid, intoxicating; but, for all that, it was a simple and quiet funeral. What, in the name of Acheron, did they expect it to be? Did they think there would be human sacrifice—the immolation of Oriental slaves upon the tomb? Did they think that long rows of Oriental dancing-girls would sway hither and thither in ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... white sails, and sit in your ship in peace: the north wind shall waft you through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the ocean and come to where grow the poplar groves and willows pale of Proserpine: where Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus and Acheron mingle their waves. Cocytus is an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit, and make it a cubit broad and a cubit long, and pour in milk, and honey, and wine, and the blood of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, and turn away thy face while thou pourest in, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... of all men unborn," even for their love's sake; and prayed, "Would, O Father Cronides, and would, ye ageless immortals, that this might be, and that when two generations have sped, one might bring these tidings to me by Acheron, the irremeable stream: the loving-kindness that was between thee and thy gracious friend is even now in all men's mouths, and chiefly on the lips of the young." Hill and fountain and pine, the gray sea and Mother Etna, are here; but no children gather in the land, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... of the earth and return again, in their course forming lakes and rivers, but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on either side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice. These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal ones, Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus is the river which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite direction, and after flowing under the earth through desert places, at last reaches the Acherusian lake,—this is the river at ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... suddenly over. Philip of Hesse retired sullenly to his two wives, as Schartlin put it. As he passed through Frankfurt he hoisted banners with the crucifix, flails, and mattocks, to incite the lower classes to revolt; he had failed to bend the powers above him, he would fain stir Acheron. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... plain, that parted souls Had breathed a life into the guilty soil, That earthly darkness teemed with gibbering ghosts And Stygian terrors. Victory foully won Thus claimed its punishment. The slumbering sense Already heard the hiss of vengeful flames As from the depths of Acheron. One saw Deep in the trances of the night his sire And one his brother slain. But all the dead In long array were visioned to the eyes Of Caesar dreaming. Not in other guise Orestes saw the Furies ere he fled To purge his sin within the Scythian ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... guardian ghost Or godhead of the place: so there he slayeth double host, As custom would; two black-backed steers, and e'en as many swine, And calleth on his father's soul with pouring of the wine, On great Anchises' glorious ghost from Acheron set free. From out their plenty therewithal his fellows joyfully 100 Give gifts, and load the altar-stead, and smite the steers adown. While others serve the seething brass, and o'er the herbage strown Set coaly morsels 'neath the spit, and ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... throughout her whole domain, While he embodied breathed etherial air! Though panting in the play-hour of my youth I drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught, That roused within the feverish thirst of song, Yet never may I trespass o'er the stream Of jealous Acheron, nor alive descend The silent and unsearchable abodes Of Erebus and Night, nor unchastised Lead up long-absent heroes into day. When on the pausing theatre of earth Eve's shadowy curtain falls, can any man Bring back the far-off intercepted hills, Grasp ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... nothing can be known." Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun? Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of Evil all their own. Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron: There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, But Silence spreads the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... which to stretch their limbs—and, for amusement—poor devils!—he swept his eyes whimsically around that dreariest of landscapes—they might exercise their imaginations by pretending, after the manner of John Teach, that they were on an excursion to Hades—this was the famous River Acheron—and so on. But, seriously, he ended, we would find some way of keeping them from committing hari-kari and, meanwhile, we would leave them in peace, and stroll along ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... sisters, the daughters of an eminent publicist who seems to have reared his eminence on bones of talk flung at him by Carlisle, George Eliot, Lewes, Monckton Milnes, and is now, doubtless, recording their toe-prints on the banks of Acheron, I never could and never can abide. My angel of a wife saw good in them, and she loved the tiny Randall, of whom I too was fond; so, for her sake, I always treated them with courtesy and kindness. Also for Randall's father's sake. He was ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... journey; but I shall never again undertake such another. It was one of 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 ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... not Aides asserted his rights. These were, that if any immortal had tasted food in his realms they were bound to remain there for ever. Of course the ruler of the lower world had to prove this assertion. This, however, he found no difficulty in doing, as Ascalaphus, the son of Acheron and Orphne, was his witness to the fact.[25] Zeus, pitying the disappointment of Demeter at finding {56} her hopes thus blighted, succeeded in effecting a compromise by inducing his brother Aides to allow Persephone to spend six months of the year with the gods above, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... said—"Farewell!" and her voice was a sigh of hopeless grief. In mad desperation Orpheus sought to follow her, but his attempt was vain. At the brink of the dark, fierce-flooded Acheron the boat with its boatman, old Charon, lay ready to ferry across to the further shore those whose future lay in the land of Shades. To him ran Orpheus, in clamorous anxiety to undo the evil he had wrought. But Charon ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... of which appear in the Graeco-Roman conceptions of Hades. Homer makes Circe direct Odysseus thus. He is to beach his ship by deep-eddying Oceanus, in the gloomy Cimmerian land. "But go thyself to the dank house of Hades. Thereby into Acheron flow Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx, and there is a rock and the meeting of the two ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... grain of sand between My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence, Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron, Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire! And may this intervening earth be snow, And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna, Plunging me, through it all, into the core, Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds, If I do not—O, but ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... sending Fortnoye to the gloomiest shades of Acheron when a strong hand entered the carriage-door, helped me handsomely down the steps, and then began warmly to shake my own. Fortnoye!—Fortnoye in flesh and blood was before me. While my mouth was yet filled with maledictions he began to pour out a storm of thanks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Louers seeke a place to fight, Hie therefore Robin, ouercast the night, The starrie Welkin couer thou anon, With drooping fogge as blacke as Acheron, And lead these testie Riuals so astray, As one come not within anothers way. Like to Lysander, sometime frame thy tongue, Then stirre Demetrius vp with bitter wrong; And sometime raile thou like Demetrius; And from each other looke thou leade ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... given to the patient constantly. This was a work of no little trouble, for Salvator showed the greatest aversion for—utter loathing of the stuff, which looked, and smelt, and tasted, as if it had been concocted from Acheron itself. Whether it was that the disease, since it had now received a name, and in consequence really signified something, had only just begun to put forth its virulence, or whether it was that Splendiano's potion made too much of a disturbance inside the patient—it is at any rate ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... to see it, never more, For down to Acheron's dread shore, A living victim am I led To Hades' universal bed. To my dark lot no bridal joys Belong, nor e'er the jocund noise Of hymeneal chant shall sound for me, But death, cold death, my ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... voices were heard from the depths below as they passed through this evil doorway, and now they were in a region of murky gloom, where no ray of sunlight ever had entered. All around them were the spirits of the dead. They came flocking to the Acheron or River of Death, where the ferryman named Charon, with eyes like flaming wheels, bore them across. When Charon saw a living man among the dead he sternly ordered Dante to return whence he had come. Vergil interceded for him, and ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... shall reach The oozy shore, where grow the poplar groves And fruitless willows wan of Proserpine, Push thither through the gulphy Deep thy bark, 620 And, landing, haste to Pluto's murky abode. There, into Acheron runs not alone Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud, From Styx derived; there also stands a rock, At whose broad base the roaring rivers meet. There, thrusting, as I bid, thy bark ashore, O Hero! ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... river, of which they foreboded the overflowing. These circumstances, added to the preceding ones, increased the probability of the fiction; and thus to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron, in the boat of Charon the ferryman, and to pass through the doors of horn and ivory, which were guarded by the mastiff Cerberus. At length a civil usage was joined to all these ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... firmament is rott'nness, And earths base built on stubble. But corn let's on. Against th' opposing will and arm of Heav'n 600 May never this just sword be lifted up, But for that damn'd magician, let him be girt With all the greisly legions that troop Under the sooty flag of Acheron, Harpyies and Hydra's, or all the monstrous forms 'Twixt Africa and Inde, Ile find him out, And force him to restore his purchase back, Or drag him by the curls, to a foul ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... hospitals are crammed with beings in human likeness suffering from a thousand obscure and subtly-ineradicable ills, all of whom, if left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth "cured," like missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... the carrion. Perhaps such honours will not prejudice you in a certain house on the Palatine," he added, slyly. "But come! you and I shall join our forces and raid together. We have sent two hundred to Acheron since we left the camp, and birds have been singing on our left ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... hills and frowning forest peaks, lies the pearl of Gerardmer, its sweet lake, a sheet of turquoise in early morn, silvery bright when the noon-day sun flashes upon it, and on grey, sunless days gloomy as Acheron itself. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... And where, prince, will you look for him? Already, to content your just alarm, Have I not cross'd the seas on either side Of Corinth, ask'd if aught were known of Theseus Where Acheron is lost among the Shades, Visited Elis, doubled Toenarus, And sail'd into the sea that saw the fall Of Icarus? Inspired with what new hope, Under what favour'd skies think you to trace His footsteps? Who knows if the King, your father, Wishes the secret of his absence known? ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... continually alert for unknown perils, which any bend in the swift, snake-like river might disclose, and which would make the gloomy groove through which they slipped a black-walled oubliette, or gate to Acheron. ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... 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 thou reject this pleading breath, I will no more ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Comnena's mind, that having first entered while the soldier's shadow was interposed between her and the lamp, it had fully occupied her quick imagination, when, with deep reverence and great surprise at her sudden appearance on the ladder of Acheron, the Varangian advancing, knelt down, and lent his arm to the assistance of the fair lady, in order to help her out ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... thus: "Sir! grant me now to know Whom here we view, and whence impell'd they seem So eager to pass o'er, as I discern Through the blear light?" He thus to me in few: "This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive Beside the woeful tide of Acheron." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... child for a day like this Waits, as is seemly, and shall run By the white waves of Acheron To fold him ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... be your sighs the gale, The smiting of your brows the plash of oars, Wafting the boat, to Acheron's dim shores That passeth ever, with its darkened sail, On its uncharted voyage and sunless way, Far from thy beams, Apollo, god of day— The melancholy bark Bound for the common bourn, the harbour of the dark! Look up, look yonder! from the home Antigone, Ismene come, On ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... direct line the Kings of Epirus. He was also cousin of an Alexander, who, in the year 332, had crossed over from Epirus to help the Tarentines against the Lucanians, had formed an alliance with the Romans, and had finally been killed by a Lucanian on the banks of the Acheron, in 326. After a variety of vicissitudes, Pyrrhus had ascended the throne of his father at the age of twenty-three, and, taking Alexander the Great as his model, had soon become popular and powerful. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... heads, before the gale of sighs, which ever wafts on its passage the bark, on which no sighs are heard, with sable sails, the freighted with the dead, untrodden for Apollo, the sunless, across Acheron, and to the invisible ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... whose care they entrusted their messages and the wand of Hermes, his sire, who had granted him a memory of all things, that never grew dim; and not even now, though he has entered the unspeakable whirlpools of Acheron, has forgetfulness swept over his soul, but its fixed doom is to be ever changing its abode; at one time to be numbered among the dwellers beneath the earth, at another to be in the light of the sun among living men. But why need ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... be." This was the third grand Shadow which the Kaiser chased, shaking all the world, poor crank world, as he strode after it; and this also ended in zero, and several tons of diplomatic correspondence, carried once by breathless estaffettes, and now silent, gravitating towards Acheron all of them, and interesting ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... torment, eternal damnation; lake of fire and brimstone; fire that is never quenched; worm that never dies. purgatory, limbo, gehenna, abyss. [Mythological hell] Tartarus, Hades, Avernus[Lat], Styx, Stygian creek, pit of Acheron[obs3], Cocytus; infernal regions, inferno, shades below, realms of Pluto. Pluto, Rhadamanthus[obs3], Erebus[Lat]; Tophet. Adj. hellish, infernal, stygian. Phr. dies irae dies illa[Lat]; "the hue of dungeons and the scowl of night" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... does; both have alike lost heart and sunk into deepest dejection. Never crossed Acheron two spirits more despairing—less hopeful of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to me, and dismissed me. I slowly ascended a third- class carriage, which was filled with abominable tobacco-smoke that seemed like the fogs of Acheron at the entrance to Hades. I now had the leisure to muse about the riddle of human existence, and about ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... out, and presently, brave in the shirt of Nessus, and mimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgen was playing tag with the three little Eumenides, the daughters of Anaitis by her former marriage with Acheron, the ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... That which in your composition, is of the nature of fire, will return to the element of fire; that which is of the nature of earth, will rejoin itself to the earth; that which is air, will re-unite itself with air; that which is water, will resolve itself into water; there is no Hell, no Acheron, no Cocytus, no Phlegethon." ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... worshipped, and made offerings;—it may be They heard, and did perceive, and were well pleased,— A little music in their ears; perchance, A grain more savor to their nostrils, sweet Tho' scarce accounted of. But when for me The mists of Acheron have striven up, And horror was shed round me; when my knees Relaxed, my tongue clave speechless, they forgot. And when my sharp cry cut the moveless night, And days and nights my wailings clamored up And beat about their golden homes, perchance They shut their ears. No happy music this, Eddying ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... me wrong to feed me with delays. I'll dive into the burning lake below, And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.— Marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we, No big-bon'd men, fram'd of the Cyclops' size; But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back, Yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear: And, sith there's no justice in earth nor hell, We will solicit heaven, and move the gods To send ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... real Charon. His voice, and the questions he asked me, were not of a kind to remove this notion, so that, far from its requiring any effort of imagination, I found it not easy to avoid believing that, at length, I had actually reached Avernus, was about to cross Acheron, and ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... Kypselos had left undone in killing and driving into exile, this Periander completed. And in one day he stripped all the wives of the Corinthians of their clothing on account of his own wife Melissa. For when he had sent messengers to the Thesprotians on the river Acheron to ask the Oracle of the dead about a deposit made with him by a guest-friend, Melissa appeared and said she would not tell in what place the deposit was laid, for she was cold and had no clothes, since those which he had buried with her were of no use to her, not having been burnt; ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... is dissembled. These lovers parled by the touch of hands: True love is mute, and oft amazed stands. Thus while dumb signs their yielding hearts entangled, The air with sparks of living fire was spangled; And night,[13] deep-drenched in misty Acheron, Heav'd up her head, and half the world upon 190 Breath'd darkness forth (dark night is Cupid's day): And now begins Leander to display Love's holy fire, with words, with sighs, and tears; Which, like sweet music, enter'd Hero's ears; And yet at every word she ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... In melancholy moonless Acheron, Farm for the goodly earth and joyous day Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May Chequers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor, Where thrushes never sing, and ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... by the murmuring of fountains. On the west of Epirus is the island of Corcyra (Corfu), famous for the shipwreck of Ulysses, and for the gardens of Aleinous, and for having given rise to the Peloponnesian war. Epirus is also distinguished as the country over which Pyrrhus ruled. The Acheron, supposed to communicate with the infernal regions, was one ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... trying to realize what my life might have been, if Dr. Howe had failed in the great task God gave him to perform. If he had not taken upon himself the responsibility of Laura Bridgman's education and led her out of the pit of Acheron back to her human inheritance, should I be a sophomore at Radcliffe College to-day—who can say? But it is idle to speculate about what might have been in connection with ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... miseries of this life. When Eteoneus, that noble young Greek, was so generally lamented by his friends, Pindarus the poet feigns some god saying, Silete homines, non enim miser est, &c. be quiet good folks, this young man is not so miserable as you think; he is neither gone to Styx nor Acheron, sed gloriosus et senii expers heros, he lives for ever in the Elysian fields. He now enjoys that happiness which your great kings so earnestly seek, and wears that garland for which ye contend. If our present weakness is such, we cannot moderate our passions ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... keys of human eyes. With his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of mortals— herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered from a grove in Heaven; and, from the meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death; expressing from it one single drop only, no bigger than a tear that one might hide. 'With this juice,' he said, 'pour slumber upon the eyelids of mortals. So soon as it hath touched them they will lay themselves down motionless, under thy power. But ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... with me admirably, and I am in wonderful health. We walk a great deal, and musicate ('musiquons') a great deal more. We lay all the elements under contribution for our amusement. We have a gondola for our water parties, a swing for the air, and we only want Torraeus and his Acheron to take a trip through fire. We have made parties to go fishing, and we intend making one to go fowling with nets and looking-glasses, as it is so beautifully described by a poet of my acquaintance, (the Sieur Lebrun himself.) I hope the same accident won't happen to us that befell the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... unequalled interest! the shores of Baia, where Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Pliny, Mecaenas, lived; the white towers of Puzzuoli and the Islands of Ischia, Procida, and Nisida. There was the Sybil's Cave, Lake Acheron, and the fabled Lethe; there the sepulchre of Misenus, who defied the Triton; and the scene of the whole sixth book of the AEneid, which I am now reading in Annibal Caro's translation: there Agrippina mourned Germanicus; ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... like ghosts upon the banks of Acheron? Come, let us to a tavern! (All six go towards ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... mannes dede Acordeth nothing with godhede. Thei hadde of goddes yit an other, Which Pluto hihte, and was the brother Of Jupiter, and he fro youthe With every word which cam to mouthe, Of eny thing whan he was wroth, He wolde swere his commun oth, Be Lethen and be Flegeton, Be Cochitum and Acheron, 1110 The whiche, after the bokes telle, Ben the chief flodes of the helle: Be Segne and Stige he swor also, That ben the depe Pettes tuo Of helle the most principal. Pluto these othes overal Swor of his commun custummance, Til it befell upon a chance, That he for ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... way, I 1 O burghers of my father's land! With one last look on Helios' ray, Led my last path toward the silent strand. Alive to the wide house of rest I go; No dawn for me may shine, No marriage-blessing e'er be mine, No hymeneal with my praises flow! The Lord of Acheron's unlovely shore Shall be mine only ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... woe on thee! thy bridal joy Was death and fire upon thy race and Troy! And woe for thee, Scamander's flood! Beside thy banks, O river fair, I grew in tender nursing care From childhood unto maidenhood! Now not by thine, but by Cocytus' stream And Acheron's banks shall ring ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... souls of the dead, which were universally thought to possess a knowledge of the future, could be called up and consulted—e.g., the temple at Phigalia, in Arcadia, used by Pausanias, the Spartan commander;[53] or the [Greek: nekyomanteion], the oracle of the dead, by the River Acheron, in Threspotia, to which Periander, the famous tyrant of Corinth, had recourse;[54] and it was here, according to Pausanias, that Orpheus went down to the lower ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... though they were flowers plucked by Persephone to be worn by her and light up the greyness of the underworld. Cleodicus, dead before the festival of this third birthday, when the child's hair was cut and he became a boy, lies in his little coffin; but somewhere by unknown Acheron a shadow of him grows fair and strong in youth, though he never may ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... by the poets to the lower world, and over which the souls of the dead were said to be first conveyed, before they were borne the Le'the, or "stream of oblivion," beyond. The true Acheron of Epirus has ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... streams; but among this great number there are four certain streams, of which the largest, and that which flows most outwardly round the earth, is called Ocean; but directly opposite this, and flowing in a contrary direction, is Acheron, which flows through other desert places, and, moreover, passing under the earth, reaches the Acherusian lake, where the souls of most who die arrive; and, having remained there for certain destined periods, some longer and some shorter, are again sent forth into the generations of animals. ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... skimming in the wake it mock'd the care Of the old Boat-God for his farthing fare; Tho' Irus' Ghost itself he ne'er frown'd blacker on The skin and skin-pent Druggist cross'd the Acheron, Styx, and with Periphlegeton Cocytus,— (The very names, methinks, might frighten us) Unchang'd it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... believe she has extended it to include the more depressing forms of drama when she pays her annual visit to London. There was a silence after which she enquired whether I fished. As my ideas of fishing were restricted to the patient hosts—pale shades of Acheron—who have angled off the quays of the Seine for centuries and have till now caught nothing, I smiled ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... they are ever being born again from Hades and returning to life on earth; each man has his daimon,[136] who follows him throughout his existences, and at death takes him to the lower world[137] for Judgment.[138] Many souls enter Acheron,[139] and, after a longer or shorter period, return to earth to be incarnated in new bodies. Unpardonable sins fling ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... Soon as fire was stolen away, Pale Fever's stranger host and wan Decay Swept o'er earth's polluted face, And slow Fate quicken'd Death's once halting pace. Daedalus the void air tried On wings, to humankind by Heaven denied; Acheron's bar gave way with ease Before the arm of labouring Hercules. Nought is there for man too high; Our impious folly e'en would climb the sky, Braves the dweller on the steep, Nor lets the ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... recovery of his chest. It involved peculiar hazards, since it carried the diver below the familiar turret-chamber, through the inextricabilis error of entangling machinery in the engine-room, groping among floating and sunken objects, into a remote state-room, the Acheron of the cavernous hold. He was to find by touch a seaman's chest; handle it in that thickening gloom; carry it, push it, move it through that labyrinthine obscurity to a point from which it could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various |
