"Circe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with her eyes fixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you realize that, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas before us, and we shall see the sights they saw,—Circe's Cape and the Isles of the Sirens, and ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... Flora's flute, and Hautia's dragoman? Held aloft, the Iris signified a message. These purple-woven Circe flowers mean that some spell is weaving. That golden, pining jonquil, which you hold, buried in those wormwood leaves, says plainly to you— Bitter ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... He fished by obstinate isles; Observed the elegance of Circe's hair Rather than the mottoes ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... Lord Nelson—"the maid of all work, model, mistress, ambassadress, and pauper"—scores of times, and in different attitudes and a variety of characters, as Hebe, a Bacchante, a Sibyl, as Joan of Arc, as "Sensibility," as a St. Cecilia, as Cassandra, as Iphigenia, as Constance, as Calypso, as Circe, and as Mary Magdalen, and in some of these characters many times. He often worked thirteen hours a day, and did his fancy sketches when sitters disappointed him. He would paint a portrait of a gentleman in four sittings. He was extremely ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... those feelings he was the master, and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the song of the Sirens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman was proof against ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... clash of spears, From camp and field to echoing verse transferred, Swelled the proud song that listening nations heard. Why floats the amaranth in eternal bloom O'er Ilium's turrets and Achilles' tomb? Why lingers fancy where the sunbeams smile On Circe's gardens and Calypso's isle? Why follows memory to the gate of Troy Her plumed defender and his trembling boy? Lo! the blind dreamer, kneeling on the sand To trace these records with his doubtful hand; In fabled tones his own emotion flows, And other ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... weary space has lain Lull'd by the song of Circe and her wine In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, Where that Aeaean isle forgets the main, And only the low lutes of love complain, And only shadows of wan lovers pine— As such an one were glad ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... records an invitation which he received from Circe to take a part of her bed. How this illustrates the above conjecture, we are at a loss to divine: but we suppose that some numerical error has occurred in the reference, as we have detected a trifling mistake or two of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... out from the heavy hangings behind her chair of state, and stood, a vision of majestic loveliness, on the dais. Clad in her short tunic, her hair bound to her brow by the gold circlet that Milo had made, she had calculated effects with the art of a Circe. Her rounded arms and bare shoulders, faultless throat and swelling bosom, radiant enough in their own fair perfection, she had embellished with such jewels as subtly served to accentuate even that perfection. Upon one polished forearm a bracelet was pressed, a gaud formed from one immense ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... badly shaved daily and taught the two-step imperfectly by ex-pupils of Bastien Le Page and Gerome? The most pathetic sight in New York—except the manners of the rush-hour crowds—is the dreary march of the hopeless army of Mediocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and Tabbies who linger about the doorsteps of her abode, unmindful of the flying brickbats and boot-jacks of the critics. Some of us creep back to our native villages to the skim-milk of "I told you so"; but most of us prefer to remain in the cold ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... man beside him, and the chap got up as if her motion had been Circe's and disappeared. Through the roof or somewhere. I don't know. Anyway, he vanished. And she took his place and sat down beside Sabre and poor old Sabre crouched away from her as if he was stung, and old Buddha, reaching out for his dignity, said, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... and in which, as two self-devoted men, they walked alone. More than that, he believed he had acquired some understanding of the temptations that assailed his brother, and the poor little vanities of the "Marysville Pet" were transformed into the blandishments of a Circe. Rand, who would have succumbed to a wicked, superior woman, believed he was a saint in withstanding the foolish weakness of a ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... right FIST with a stuffed glove at the end of it,—SO help me Beelzebub (or whoever is the recording Angel here)! [Helden-Geschichte, v. 141-149: Preuss, ii. 145, iii. 578, iv. 477, &c.] And thus does Preussen, with astonishment, as by the spell of a Czarina Circe, find itself changed suddenly to Russian: and does not recover the old human form till four years hence,—when, again suddenly, as we shall see, the Circe and her wand ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... out of the cracks in the stone flagging—and, of course, he needn't have done this, unless he had an abnormal sense of humour—he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of 'A Modern Circe,' with a bow that wouldn't have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after Aunt Celia and ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... many rules of probation and admission; and not the best alone. There is not only the right of conquest, which genius pretends,—the individual, demonstrating his natural aristocracy best of the best;—but less claims will pass for the time; for Fashion loves lions, and points, like Circe,[431] to her horned company. This gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord Ride, who came yesterday from Bagdad; here is Captain Friese, from Cape Turnagain, and Captain Symmes,[432] from the interior ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is in No-man's-land, and nothing can be inferred from the fact that their fountain was called Artacia, and that there was an Artacia in Cyzicus. In Lamos a very important adventure befel Odysseus. The cannibals destroyed all his fleet, save one ship, with which he made his escape to the Isle of Circe. Here the enchantress turned part of the crew into swine, but Odysseus, by aid of the god Hermes, redeemed them, and became the lover of Circe. This adventure, like the story of the Cyclops, is a fairy tale of great antiquity. Dr. Gerland, in his Alt Griechische ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... standard? Man himself seems to have vanished from the scene,—his soul stolen from him, his form gone away with the fumes of the smoke, and the nauseous steam from that fiery bowl. And Leonard looked round, and saw but the swine of Circe,—some on the floor, some staggering against the walls, some hugging each other on the tables, some fighting, some bawling, some weeping. The divine spark had fled from the human face; the Beast is everywhere growing more and more out of the thing that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Hecate! to the end be thou of our company, and make this medicine of mine no weaker than the spells of Circe, or of Medea, or of Perimede of the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... and for all from Circe's magic, vowing that never again should the sorceress work her charm upon him; and that vow he intended to keep. Nevertheless, it did not prevent him from stealing an occasional peep at the enchantress, if only to assure himself that her spell was as potent and deadly as he had supposed it. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... loving, boar-like eyes upon her as a preternaturally innocent and trusting companion of Ulysses might have regarded the transforming Circe. Rosey turned away with the faintest sigh. The habitual look of abstraction returned to her eyes as if she had once more taken refuge in her own ideal world. Unfortunately the change did not escape either the sensitive observation or the fatuous misconception of the sagacious ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Neria flourished in those days; E'en Circe, she excelled in Satan's ways; The storms she made obedient to her will, And regulated with superior skill; In chains the destinies she kept around; The gentle zephyrs were her sages found; The winds, her lacqueys, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... at Fellside. He had gone forth from that house full of passionate indignation, shaking off the dust from his feet, sternly resolved never again to cross the threshold of that fateful cave, where he had met his cold-hearted Circe. And now, because Circe was safe out of the way, he had come back to the cavern; and he was feeling all the pain that a man feels who beholds again the scene of a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to produce, and Sir William Davenant had given performances of musical dramas 'after the manner of the Ancients' during the closing years of the Commonwealth, but it is probable that spoken dialogue occurred in all these entertainments, as it certainly did in Locke's 'Psyche,' Banister's 'Circe,' in fact, in all the dramatic works of this period which were wrongly described as operas. In 'Dido and AEneas,' on the contrary, the music is continuous throughout. Airs and recitatives, choruses and instrumental pieces succeed each other, as in the operas of the Italian ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... divide, and many a pathless mere. First must Trinacrian waters bend the oar, Ausonian waves thy vessels must explore, First must thou view the nether world, where flows Dark Styx, and visit that AEaean shore, The home of Circe, ere, at rest from woes, Thou build the promised walls, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... name of Gryll!; sighed the squire to himself. 'What if it should pass away in the nineteenth century, after having lived from the time of Circe!' ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... difficulty by Leucothea, who conveyed me to the country of the Phaeacians, and from thence I got home; where I found a number of suitors about my wife, revelling there at my expense. I destroyed every one of them, and was afterwards slain myself by Telegonus, a son whom I had by Circe. I still lament the pleasures which I left behind at Ogygia, and the immortality which you promised me; if I can ever find an opportunity, I will certainly make my escape from hence, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... well-devised and efficient machinery, which requires and rewards intelligent oversight and skilful direction, the more you increase the love of labor. We have already manufacturing communities so well supplied with tasks for brains and hands, that everybody works, or would do so but for Circe and her seductive hollow-ware. We are beginning to push machinery into agriculture, where it will have still greater scope. With the means we now have, in the enormously increased production of iron, our almost omnipresent and omnipotent machine-shops, our railroads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... declared that he had handed her into her carriage when she was literally sobbing at her losses. Fanny gives us a hint, slight but unmistakeable. At their first meeting the duchess was accompanied by another lady—a beautiful, alluring woman, with keen dark eyes, who smiled, some one said, "like Circe." Lady Spencer introduced her daughter to Miss Burney with warm pleasure, and then, "slightly and as if unavoidably," named the beautiful enchantress—Lady Elizabeth Foster. It is only necessary to add that in 1809, some three years after ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... fell to encouraging the animal," she continued, almost plaintively, yet with a note of veiled laughter in her voice. "Reversing the order of Circe—Naples inclines one to classic illustration, sometimes a little hackneyed—by the way, speaking of Naples, look at the glory of it all just now, Richard!—I tried to turn, not men to swine, but swine to men. And ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... thee out, and moralize— Thus 'tis with mortals, as it is with flies, Forever hankering after Pleasure's cup: Though Fate, with all his legions, be at hand, The beasts, the draught of Circe can't withstand, But in goes every nose—they must, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his almightiness. Mais nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... now sent to H.M.S 'Circe,' the outfitting ship for young recruits, to get my uniform. On reaching the top of the companion ladder a ship's corporal (i.e. a naval policeman) approached me and asked, "Had I any money or jewellery?" If so, it must be kept in his custody until such time as I should be prepared to join the mother-ship, ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... step-brother, comes, it is said, with Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe absolves them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly good dish, but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render Jason and Medea more honourable people, unless they avow a sincere ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... position of her own easel so that he and she could not see each other. Meanwhile Madame took not the smallest notice of Mr. Bentley's niece, and Doris made no advances to the young man, to whom her name was clearly quite unknown. Had Circe really got him in her toils? Doris judged him soft-headed and soft-hearted; no match at all for the lady. The thought of her walking the lawns or the drawing-rooms of Crosby Ledgers as the betrothed of the heir stirred in Arthur Meadows's wife a silent, and—be it confessed!—a ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... Circe, The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, And downward fell into ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... went on to live at Nice, where he had bought a villa in foresight for some such day of disgrace. The Circe was to follow him, but, instead of that, she has shaken off the golden links and condescends to stay a week in Munich to amuse us coarse ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... heart hath caught the siren's doom-sweet cries, And sips oblivion at fond Circe's nod. Oh! for a seer whose soul is lightning-shod, To stand imperial 'gainst th' impervious skies, As Lincoln stood, with brave heaven-gazing eyes, To appeal from ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... summoned, from mystic communion with her own perfection, from majestic labours in the Sistine Chapel of the Stars,—yea, she must put aside her gold-leaf and purples and leave unfinished the very panels of the throne of God,—that Circe shall have her palace, and her worshippers their ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... solved the enchantment. Victor, I have told you of her. Sometimes it seems that I must wake to find it all a dream. For nearly a year she has kept me dangling in mid air. She is as learned as Aspasia, as holding as Calypso, as fascinating as Circe. She is loveliness and wisdom; ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... equally condemn all the Deities from which they proceed. Shall Ino, whom the Greeks call Leucothea, and we Matuta, be reputed a Goddess, because she was the daughter of Cadmus, and shall that title be refused to Circe and Pasiphae,[256] who had the sun for their father, and Perseis, daughter of the Ocean, for their mother? It is true, Circe has divine honors paid her by our colony of Circaeum; therefore you call her a Goddess; but what will ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... but makes the fish poor to eat and insipid, so those wives that lay traps for their husbands by philtres and charms, and become their masters by pleasure, have stupid senseless and spoiled husbands to live with. For those that were bewitched by Circe did her no good, nor could she make any use of them when they were turned into swine and asses, but she was greatly in love with the prudent Odysseus who ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... charm. The air is yet plangent with echoes of the leaguer of Troy, and Odysseus the ready-at-need goes forth upon his wanderings: into the cave of Polypheme, into the land of giants, into the very regions of the dead: to hear among the olive trees the voice of Circe, the sweet witch, singing her magic song as she fares to and fro before her golden loom; to rest and pine in the islet of Calypso, the kind sea-goddess; to meet with Nausicaa, loveliest of mortal maids; to reach ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe. When it corrals man in lonely ranches, mountain cabins, and forest huts, the snow makes apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the bosoms of weaker ones to glass, their tongues to infants' rattles, their hearts to lawlessness and spleen. It is not all ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... are CERTAINLY others," laughed the captain. "Peggy, my child, to play Circe and still smile is absolutely cruel. The ancient ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... since solved Napoleon's dilemma: "Dans cinquante ans l'Europe sera republicaine ou cosaque." [1 Within fifty years Europe will be either republican or Cossack.] It found the solution in the "republique cosaque." [2 Cossack republic.] No Circe distorted with wicked charms the work of art of the bourgeois republic into a monstrosity. That republic lost nothing but the appearance of decency. The France of to-day was ready-made within the womb of the Parliamentary republic. All that was wanted ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... of probation and admission, and not the best alone. There is not only the right of conquest, which genius pretends,—the individual demonstrating his natural aristocracy best of the best;—but less claims will pass for the time; for Fashion loves lions, and points like Circe to her horned company. This gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord Ride, who came yesterday from Bagdat; here is Captain Friese, from Cape Turnagain; and Captain Symmes, from the interior of the ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... patron, Pasley, who had hoisted his broad pennant as commodore on the Bellerophon, was actively engaged in this service. In October, 1793, he was detached by Howe to look for five French vessels that had some time before chased the British frigate Circe into Falmouth. Howe himself, with a fleet of 22 sail, put to sea later in the same month. On November 18 his squadron sighted six French ships of the line and some frigates, and gave chase. But they were seen late in the day, and soon darkness prevented an engagement. On the following morning the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Island of AEolus with heavy hearts. Next we came to the AEean Island, where we met with Circe, the Enchantress. For two days and two nights we were on that island without seeing the sign of a habitation. On the third day I saw smoke rising up from some hearth. I spoke of it to my men, and it seemed good to us ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... of Phorcus, or Phorcys, by Ceto. Glaucus, being passionately fond of Scylla, after vainly endeavoring to gain her affections, applied to Circe, and besought her, by her art, to induce her to return his affection. On this, Circe disclosed to him her passion, but Glaucus remaining inexorable, the enchantress vowed revenge, and by her magic ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... all recollect the classical story of Scylla and Charybdis, the former a maiden changed by Circe into a hideous sea-monster, who threw herself into the sea and became a rock, the latter changed by Jupiter into a foaming whirlpool. Vessels which avoided the rock of Scylla were oft-times prone to fall into the dangerous ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... another shallow bay, with about ten miles of chord, in every way a copy of its northern neighbour— the same scene of placid beauty, the sea rimmed with opalline air, pink by contrast with the ultramarine blue; the limpid ether overhead; the golden sands, and the emerald verdure—a Circe, however, whose caress is the kiss of death. The curve is bounded south by Point Dyanye, which appeared to retreat as we advanced. At 2 P.M., when the marvellous clearness of the sky was troubled by a tornado forming in the north-east, we turned towards a little inlet, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... deplorably filthy surroundings; he looks at you, up to the knees in ooze, out of his little eyes as if he would live in a more cleanly way if he were permitted. Pigs always remind me of the mariners of Homer, who were transformed by Circe; there is a dreadful humanity about them, as if they were trying to endure their base conditions philosophically, waiting for their release.' All this I entreat my critic to lay well to heart before he judges me too severely for selecting ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Circe conquered. Webs of filmiest white clung to the rose-leaf body. Twisted through the corn-silk hair a threaded circlet of pale sapphires shone; but they were pale beside Yolara's eyes. O'Keefe bent, kissed her hands, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... flirtation with Jos and the ludicrous end of that adventure. He and George had often laughed over it subsequently, and until a few weeks after George's marriage, when he also was caught in the little Circe's toils, and had an understanding with her which his comrade certainly suspected, but preferred to ignore. William was too much hurt or ashamed to ask to fathom that disgraceful mystery, although once, and evidently with remorse on his mind, George had alluded ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Passages are astonishing, but not credible; the Reader cannot so far impose upon himself as to see a Possibility in them; they are the Description of Dreams and Shadows, not of Things or Persons. I know that many Criticks look upon the Stories of Circe, Polypheme, the Sirens, nay the whole Odyssey and Iliad, to be Allegories; but allowing this to be true, they are Fables, which considering the Opinions of Mankind that prevailed in the Age of the Poet, might possibly have been according to the Letter. The Persons are such as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... She was Circe—but Circe conquered. Webs of filmiest white clung to the rose-leaf body. Twisted through the corn-silk hair a threaded circlet of pale sapphires shone; but they were pale beside Yolara's eyes. O'Keefe bent, kissed her hands, something ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices. The mightiest conquerors have been conquered by these unarmed foes: the flowery setters are fastened, before they are felt. The blandishments of Circe were more fatal to the mariners of Ulysses, than the strength of Polypheme, or the brutality of the Laestrigons. Hercules, after he had cleansed the Augean stable, and performed all the other labours enjoined him by ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... which bears the silken knot Of dusky hair, is it more free from blot Than is her soul who slumbers? Her visions? Of 'desirable young men,' Who crowd round her like swine round Circe's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... appearance of art and worldliness in the expression of her countenance that was only so much the more striking when placed in obvious contrast to the ingenuous nature and calm purity that shone in every lineament of the face of Ghita. One might very well have passed for an image of the goddess Circe; while the other would have made no bad model for a vestal, could the latter have borne the moral impression of the sublime and heart-searching truths that are inculcated by the real oracles of God. Then the lady ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... if the reader, too, knows and loves, that strange fragmentary unrhymed poem, called "the Strayed Reveller," with its vision of Circe and the sleeping boy-faun, and the wave-tossed Wanderer, and its background of "fitful earth-murmurs" and "dreaming woods"—Strangely down, upon the weary child, smiles the great enchantress, seeing the wine stains on his white skin, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Twilight on Tweed * Metempsychosis * Lost in Hades * A star in the night * A sunset on yarrow * Another way Hesperothen: The seekers for Phaeacia A song of Phaeacia The departure from Phaeacia A ballad of departure They hear the sirens for the second time Circe's Isle revisited The limit of lands Verses: Martial in town April on Tweed Tired of towns Scythe song Pen and ink A dream The singing rose A review in rhyme Colinette * A sunset of Watteau * Nightingale weather * Love and wisdom * Good-bye * An old prayer * A la belle Helene * Sylvie et Aurelie ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... had never, since becoming a man, looked even so low as to the level of a Lady Constantine. His heaven at present was truly in the skies, and not in that only other place where they say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of Eve. Would any Circe or Calypso—and if so, what one?—ever check this pale-haired scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and stellar fire into Limbo? Oh, the pity of it, if such ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... see you as Circe," she commented, "quite well." She tucked her arm into Gillian's and, as they moved away together, threw back over her shoulder: "By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of the model for ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... may have helped to curtail Byron's life, but it does not seem to have seriously impaired his powers. Among these adverse surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off Beppo, Mazeppa, and the early books of Don Juan. The first canto of the last was written in November, 1818, the second in January, 1819, the third and fourth towards the close of the same year. Beppo, its brilliant prelude, sparkles ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... (pyxidatus) Lima fragilis and squamosa, Hippopus and Tridacna, the former detached on coral reefs, the latter embedded in the coral, Corbis fimbriatus in sand among coral reefs; species of Venus, Cytherea, Circe, and Tapes in mud, Artemis sculpta at Port Essington on sand, Lucinae on sand or reefs, Crassatella on mudflats at Port Curtis, where Cypricardia vellicata occupies the fissures of rocks with Carditae; several species of Cardium in mud or sand, including C. fragum, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... Mormo, and other products of an affrighted imagination familiar to the students of Greek literature in the comic pages of Aristophanes.[18] From the earliest literary records down to the latest times of paganism as the state religion, from the times of the Homeric Circe and Ulysses (the latter has been recognised by many as a genuine wizard) to the age of Apollonius or Apuleius, magic and sorcery, as a philosophical science or as a vulgar superstition, had apparently more or less distinctly a place in the popular mythology of ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... the second group represented Circe with the companions of Ulysses changed into swine. The marvellous Lady Rupper was to represent Circe. She entered dramatically, half nude, her tunic open to her waist, caught at intervals by diamond clasps, her peplum held in place by a garland of bay leaves. She was very beautiful. Her husband, ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... daughter of Italus and Leucaria; or, by another account, of Telephus, Hercules's son, and that she was married to Aeneas, or, according to others again, to Ascanius, Aeneas's son. Some tell us that Romanus, the son of Ulysses and Circe, built it; some, Romus the son of Emathion, Diomede having sent him from Troy; and others, Romus, king of the Latins, after driving out the Tyrrhenians, who had come from Thessaly into Lydia, and from thence ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... much as anyone pleases, but he cannot attend properly to his dinner and cry at the same time. Well, there is no lady provided either for this nice young man or for Telemachus. They are left high and dry as bachelors. Two goddesses indeed, Circe and Calypso, do one after the other take possession of Ulysses, but the way in which he accepts a situation which after all was none of his seeking, and which it is plain he does not care two straws about, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... heard a voice, and he knew that it was the voice of no mortal, but of a goddess. For the speech of goddesses was not strange in his ears; he knew the clarion cry of Athene, the Queen of Wisdom and of War; and the winning words of Circe, the Daughter of the Sun, and the sweet song of Calypso's voice as she wove with her golden shuttle at the loom. But now the words came sweeter than the moaning of doves, more soft than sleep. So came the golden voice, whether he woke or ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... happier times was wont to laugh at love, And those who suffer'd that blind boy abuse The noble gifts were given them from above. What metamorphose strange is this I prove I Myself now scarce I find myself to be, And think no fable Circe's tyranny, And all the tales are told of changed Jove; Virtue hath taught with her philosophy My mind into a better course to move: Reason may chide her fill, and oft reprove Affection's power, but what is that to me? Who ever think, and never think on ought ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of life's pilgrimage. Physical force or the lower nature has to be overcome. It devours any one who does not take away its power, who does not blind it. Odysseus next comes to the island of the enchantress Circe. She changes some of his companions into grunting pigs. She also is subdued by Odysseus. Circe is the lower mind-force, which cleaves to the transitory. If misused, it may thrust men down even deeper into bestiality. Odysseus has to overcome it. Then he is able to descend into ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... way lay plain before him. He began to perceive that the cementing of a close union between a man and woman, two beings with so abundant a capacity for misunderstanding each other, is a complex and delicate affair. That to marry is to be a kind of Odysseus advancing into the palace of a Circe, nobler and more humane than the enchantress of old, yet capable also of working strange and terrible transformations. That many go in there carrying in their hands blossoms which they believe to be moly; but the true moly is not ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... painting pictures from the divine lady. I cannot give her any other epithet; for I think her superior to all womankind.' For a long time he seemed to be able only to paint Emma Lyon. His son enumerates some two dozen portraits, in which she appears as Circe, Iphigenia, St. Cecilia, Sensibility, a Bacchante, Alope, the Spinstress, Cassandra (for the Shakespeare Gallery), Calypso, a Pythoness, Joan of Arc, a Magdalen, etc.; some of these were left unfinished. But at ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... divided than about the date. Many of the grounds on which their opinions rest appear unstable. The relations of Aphrodite to the wild beasts under her wondrous spell, for instance, need not be borrowed from Circe with her attendant beasts. If not of Homer's age, the Hymn is markedly successful as a continuation of the Homeric ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... committed to the theory that Beaumont and Fletcher "created" a new type of drama, he asserts that "'Pericles' is doubtless earlier than Shakspere's romances, but there is no probability that it preceded all of Beaumont and Fletcher's." Dryden in his Prologue to Davenant's "Circe" says: "Shakspere's own muse his Pericles first bore," and the great weight of opinion is that it was a very early production. The "Story of Marina" is as romantic as "Cymbeline," and is of the same "type" as "Philaster," and therefore, if Dryden is right, there is a strong probability ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... to believe that he had seen last evening the extremity of fear expressed in a man's face: he had now to admit that he had been wrong. Mr. Lance's terror was a Circe to him and sunk him into something grotesque and inhuman; he ran once or twice in a little tripping, silly run backwards and forwards like an animal trapped and out of its wits; and his face had the look of a man suffering ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... could be bequeathed to the nation, something might, perhaps, be gained, but the nation would complain of the draughts and the absence of chairs. But no matter. In another world we shall see certain gentlemen set to tickle the backs of Circe's swine through all eternity. Also, they will have to tickle with their ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... Davenant, indeed, first brought upon the English stage what were then called "dramatic operas," but what we should now rather designate "spectacles," including Dryden's version of "The Tempest," the "Psyche" of Shadwell, and the "Circe" of Charles Davenant, "all set off," as Cibber writes of them, "with the most expensive decorations of scenes and habits, with the best voices and dancers." Sir John Hawkins describes these productions as "musical dramas," or "tragedies ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... supplied by the beautiful undulations of the coat, and the graceful fall of the pantaloons. And all this is by the potency of your tailor. His necromantic skill, unlike that of too many practisers of supernatural arts, is exercised only for the benefit of the world: and whilst Circe transformed the companions of Ulysses into brute beasts, the benevolent enchanter of our day transforms brute beasts into handsome and attractive men. Nay, had Olympus been furnished with a tailor, Brotheus would have had no necessity to burn himself to death for the purpose of escaping ridicule ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... arrival of the hero on the island of the Sea Kings! I fear it would have taxed even our talents to have shown the enchanted spots where Odysseus was held enslaved by Calypso with the beautiful hair, who sang sweetly as she wove at her loom with the golden shuttle, or Circe, the sorceress, who mixed the drink in a golden cup that turned men into swine. Representing these Goddesses would have taxed our powers. Except for Kara we are ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... all your own fault," goes on Circe, strong in argument. "When I provoke you I care nothing for Philip Shadwell, or your Mr. Potts, or any of them: but when you are uncivil to me, what am I to do? I am driven into speaking to some one, although ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... in brown, from Flaxman's designs for the Odyssey.] madness so strong upon me, that I am out of my dear bed regularly at half-past seven in the morning, and never find it more than half an hour till breakfast time, so happy am I daubing. On one side I have Ulysses longing to taste Circe's cakes, but saying, "No, thank you," like a very good boy: and on the other side I have him just come home, and the old nurse washing his feet, and his queen fast asleep in her chair by a lamp, which I hope will not set her on fire, though ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... north, looking from the promontory of Antium, the eye follows the line of the coast away to the mouth of the Tiber; while, on the south, the view is terminated, at about the same distance, by the promontory of Circe, which is the second cape, or promontory, that marks the shore of Italy in going southward from Rome. Toward the interior, from Antium, there extends a broad and beautiful plain, bounded by wooded hills toward the shore, and by ranges of mountains in the distance beyond. On the southern ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Circe, Goddess, Let the wild, thronging train, The bright procession Of eddying forms, Sweep through ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... novel-sense[495]) any "lover" at all. For a long time Mariolle has, from whim, refused introduction to her, but at last he consents to be taken to the house by his friend the musician Massival, and of course falls a victim. It cannot be said that she is a Circe,[496] nor that, as perhaps might be expected, she revenges herself for his holding aloof by snaring and throwing him away. Quite the contrary. She shows him special favour: when she has to go to stay with friends at Avranches she privately asks him to follow her; and finally, when ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to Circe. Not willingly do they become flunkeys to Fido, bell boys to bull terriers, and toddlers after Towzer. Modern Circe, instead of turning them into animals, has kindly left the difference of a six-foot leash between them. Every one of those dogmen ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... which woos the sun in the spring, but whose love is fatal, for after a few months the sun's power begins to wane. Gilgamesh, who in incantation hymns is invoked in terms which show that he was conceived as a sun-god, [117] recalls to the goddess how she changed her lovers into animals, like Circe of Greek mythology, and brought them to grief. Enraged at Gilgamesh's insult to her vanity, she flies to her father Anu and cries for revenge. At this point the episode of the creation of the bull is introduced, but if the analysis above given is correct it is Enkidu who is ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... allure them to eat if not hungry or to drink if not thirsty. (7) Such things are ruinous to the constitution, he said, bad for stomachs, brains, and soul alike; or as he used to put it, with a touch of sarcasm, (8) "It must have been by feasting men on so many dainty dishes that Circe produced her pigs; only Odysseus through his continency and the 'promptings (9) of Hermes' abstained from touching them immoderately, and by the same token did not turn into a swine." So much for this topic, which he touched thus ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... he asked: Where are the great souls, the great men and women? He found them not among the careless, gross, and stupid intelligences that answered the call of vision to his narrow room. He felt a loathing for them such as Circe must have felt for her swine. When he had dismissed the last one and thought himself alone, a late-comer entered, unexpected and unsummoned. Martin watched him and saw the stiff-rim, the square-cut, double-breasted coat and the swaggering shoulders, of the youthful hoodlum ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... carry her into port. The French captain being sent on board the Crescent, they began to remove the prisoners and repair damages. When the action began, a ship had been seen under the land to the eastward, about four leagues distant; this was supposed to be an enemy: but it turned out to be the Circe, Captain Yorke, who joined four hours after the action, and took part of the prisoners. In the mean time the cutter made off towards Cherbourg, out of which harbour the wind and adverse tide prevented ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... manners and the towns of men; On the broad ocean, while he strives to win For him and his return to home and kin, He braves untold calamities, borne down By Fortune's waves, but never left to drown. The Sirens' song you know, and Circe's bowl: Had that sweet draught seduced his stupid soul As it seduced his fellows, he had been The senseless chattel of a wanton queen, Sunk to the level of his brute desire, An unclean dog, a swine that loves ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... was the thought of springing once more, like the beasts of Circe, from a walrus into a man. At this time I was tearing my bear's-meat just like a bear; I was washing my hands in walrus-blood to produce a glairy sort of pink cleanliness, in place of the black grease which ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... skins... but they did not last for long, and to dispel these moments of sadness all that was needed was a look from Baia or a spoonful of her diabolic confections, scented and bewitching like some brew of Circe's. ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... was vicious, and practised "such villainy as is abominable to declare," for in Italy he had served Circes, who turns men into beasts.[107] "But I am afraid," says Ascham, "that over many of our travellers unto Italy do not eschew the way to Circe's Court: but go and ryde and runne and flie thether, they make great hast to cum to her; they make great sute to serve her: yea, I could point out some with my finger that never had gone out of England, but onlie to serve Circes in Italie. Vanitie ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... effeminization of music? Was art a woman's sigh? A new, selfish goddess was about to be placed upon high and worshipped—soon the rustling of silk would betray her sex. Released from the wise bonds imposed upon her by Mother Church, music is a novel parasite of the emotions, a modern Circe whose feet "take hold on hell," whose wand transforms men into listening swine. Gigantic as antediluvian ferns, as evil-smelling and as dangerous, music in the hands of this magician is dowered with ambiguous attitudes, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Giraldi Cinthio (a Ferrarese, and fond of romance, too) describes in the prologue of his "Ecatomiti:" gentle and sprightful ladies, with the splendid brocaded robes, and the gold-filleted golden hair of Dosso Dossi's wonderful Alcina Circe; graceful youths like the princely St. John of Benvenuto Garofalo; jesters like Dosso's at Modena; brilliant captains like his St. George and St. Michael; and a little crowd of pages with doublets and sleeves laced with ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Charpillon, dressed in black, standing by the hearth, made me shudder. I felt cured, certainly; but the wounds she had given me were not yet healed, and I cannot say what might have happened if the Circe had had the presence of mind to throw her arms about my neck and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fellow!" But since this cannot be, I am pleased that he should have been so kindly treated on the occasion of the reading of his paper. If he saw Number Five's tear, he will certainly fall in love with her. No matter if he does Number Five is a kind of Circe who does not turn the victims of her enchantment into swine, but into lambs. I want to see Number Seven one of her little flock. I say "little." I suspect it is larger than most of us know. Anyhow, she can spare him sympathy and kindness and encouragement ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mischievously crushed his companion against the wall in mock virtuous indignation. "Eh, sir," he whispered, with an accent that broadened with his feelings. "Eh, but look at the puir wee lassie! Will ye no be ashamed o' yerself for putting the tricks of a Circe on sic a honest gentle bairn? Why, man, you'll be seein' the sign of a limb of Satan in a bit thing with the mother's milk not yet out of her! She a flirt, speerin' at men, with that modest downcast air? I'm ashamed ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... all the earth equal to it. No man has, or has had, or will have, anything that can compete with it. Gold could not buy it. I was obliged to seduce the girl that worked it; and then, like Ulysses with Circe, I bound her to perform what task I liked. 'Produce me,' I exclaimed, 'a dressing-gown!' and, lo! it ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... one of my pretty sweethearts against Monna Vittoria. But somehow in that fantastic palace of hers, with its enchanted atmosphere and its opulent surroundings, my cool reason of the meadows and the open air seemed at a loss, and I found myself ready, as it were, to surrender to Circe like any ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... old city of the Volscians subdued by Rome even before Samnium. The Appian Way and the rail soon run across the Pontine marshes, scourged by malaria at all seasons of the year but winter. Down past Piperno the Monte Circello is visible. This was the fabled seat and grove and palace of Circe the enchantress. One might imagine that her influence has not departed with her ruined shrine. Fear and desolation and degradation exist in scenes of exquisite and silent beauty. From Circello's height one sees Mount Vesuvius, the dome of St Peter's, the islands ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... as keen and practiced as that of any modern observer. He enjoys with rapture the panoramic splendor of the view from the summit of the Alban Hills—from the Monte Cavo—whence he could see the shores of St. Peter from Terracina and the promontory of Circe as far as Monte Argentaro, and the wide expanse of country round about, with the ruined cities of the past, and with the mountain-chains of Central Italy beyond; and then his eye would turn to the green woods in the hollows beneath and ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... and the Circe-breasted pillows that supported his head were his undoing. The morning after Shan Tung's visit he awoke to find the sun flooding in through the eastern window of his room, The warmth of it as it fell full in his face, setting ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... character which every age has reproduced, varying externally with climates and conditions, but materially the same from fabled Circe down to Lola Montes, or some less famous syren whose subjects are not kings. The same passions that in ancient days broke out in heaven-defying crimes; the same power of beauty, intellect, or subtlety; the same untamable spirit and lack of moral sentiment are the attributes of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... rejoined Edwin, smiling, "if you do not mean to play Circe to our Ulysses, give us ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... with Circe and her leisure hours of weaving, with Helen and her heroic canvas, and the army of grandiose Biblical folk, and let us come westward into Europe in short review of the textiles called tapestry which were produced from the early Christian centuries to the time of the Crusades, and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Jason," answered Medea, with a smile, "you have hit upon the truth. I am an enchantress. Circe, my father's sister, taught me to be one, and I could tell you, if I pleased, who was the old woman with the peacock, the pomegranate and the cuckoo staff, whom you carried over the river; and likewise, who it is that speaks through the lips of the oaken image that stands in the prow of your ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... sound; The nimble waiters to that sound from far Sprang to the call, then hasteri'd to the bar, Where a glad priestess of the temple sway'd, The most obedient, and the most obey'd; Rosy and round, adorn'd in crimson vest, And flaming ribands at her ample breast: She, skill'd like Circe, tried her guests to move, With looks of welcome and with words of love; And such her potent charms, that men unwise Were soon transform'd and fitted for the sties. Her port in bottles stood, a well-stain'd ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Africa, and is entertained by Dido. Passing by the islands called Pithecusae, where the Cecropes have been transformed from men into apes, he comes to Italy; and landing near the spot which he calls Caicta, he learns from Macareus many particulars respecting Ulysses and the incantations of Circe, and how king Picus was changed into a woodpecker. He afterwards wages war with Turnus. Through Venulus, Turnus asks assistance of Diomedes, whose companions have been transformed into birds, and he is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Each empire froths a raving hound That storms each zone of purple doom. And scarlet foam and hiss of oils,— Abhorrent signs of yawning hell! 'Mid roaring winds and echoes loud As beaches ring with Torture's hold, Dim shapes writhe in a cauldron's coils While cancered ghouls sound Circe's bell; Where hideous screes stem the crowd, Faffling gawks ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... coarse jest, of the kind the Andalusians permit themselves so frequently to employ, does he ever indulge in. Hardly does he dare say to Pepita, "What beautiful eyes you have!" and, indeed, should he say so, he would only speak the truth, for Pepita's eyes are large, green as those of Circe, expressive, and well shaped. And what enhances their beauty is that she seems unaware of all this, for there is not to be detected in her the slightest wish to please or attract any one by the sweetness of her glances. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... As in the old legend, a drop of scalding sweat from the damned soul must shrivel the very skin of those for whom he wrote, to make them wince if not to turn them away from evil doing. To consider his hell a place of physical torture is to take Circe's herd for real swine. Its mouth yawns not only under Florence, but before the feet of every man everywhere who goeth about to do evil. His hell is a condition of the soul, and he could not find images loathsome enough to express the moral deformity which is ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... for his model the favourite drawing-room ballad of the period, "She wore a wreath of roses the night that first we met," he made a parody of its rhythmical cadence the medium for presenting some leading incidents in the career of a Circe of ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... by art I am out of my way. I believe nothing more certainly than this, that I cannot be hurt by the use of things to which I have been so long accustomed. 'Tis for custom to give a form to a man's life, such as it pleases him; she is all in all in that: 'tis the potion of Circe, that varies our nature as she best pleases. How many nations, and but three steps from us, think the fear of the night-dew, that so manifestly is hurtful to us, a ridiculous fancy; and our own watermen and peasants laugh at it. You make a German sick if you lay him upon a mattress, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... cardamom seeds out of the cracks in the stone flagging, he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of "A Modern Circe" with a bow that wouldn't have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after aunt ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... amongst those caves, and many other circumstances of the locality and the season combined, made them feel inspired; and one of them I will tell thee, more bold than the others, spoke these words: "Oh might it please heaven that in these days, as in the past more happy ages, some wise Circe might make herself present who, with plants and minerals working her incantations, would be able to curb nature. I should believe that she, however proud, would surely be pitiful unto our woes. She, solicited by our supplications ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... part, however whimsical it may appear, I confess I have thought the strange story of Circe in the Odyssey no other than an ingenious allegory, in which Homer intended to convey to his countrymen the same kind of instruction which we intend to communicate to our own in this digression. As teaching the art of war to the Greeks was the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... return for a few francs, and there were long lines of men—English, Irish, and Scottish soldiers—who waited their turn to get that vile imitation of life's romance from women who were bought and paid for. Our men paid a higher price than a few francs for the Circe's cup of pleasure, which changed them into swine for a while, until the spell passed, and would have blasted their souls if God were not understanding of human weakness and of war. They paid in their bodies, if not in their souls, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... I have only to say that, poor fellow, he spent but a short life of pleasure and of pain. What became of his Circe I never sought to know. It was a clear case of "Ne ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... inspire. Not pale "Thou fadest, as, when nearer whirl'd to earth, "Faint Luna's shadow o'er thy surface glooms: "But love, and only love the paleness gives. "Her only, now thy amorous soul pursues; "Rhodos, nor Clymene, nor Perse fair, "Of Colchian Circe mother, tempt thee now; "Nor Clytie, whom thy cold neglect still spurns; "Yet still she burns to clasp thee: deep she mourns, "Stung more acutely by this fresh amour. "Now in Leucothoe, every former love "Is lost. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... voluptuous ecstasy than to the severe and grave warfare of the true Christian soldier. The sunny plains of Capua demoralized the soldiers of Hannibal, and it was not without a reason that ancient poets made those lovely regions the abode of Sirens whose song maddened by its sweetness, and of a Circe who made men drunk with her sensual fascinations, till they became sunk to the form of brutes. Here, if anywhere, is the lotos-eater's paradise,—the purple skies, the enchanted shores, the soothing gales, the dreamy mists, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... It did not return by the same route, but went to the north, and came to the isle of the goddess Circe, who purified Jason and Medea from the blood of the poor boy. Then they came to the isle of the Sirens, creatures like fair maidens, who stood on the shore singing so sweetly that no sailor could resist the charm; but the moment any man reached the shore, they strangled ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Ceylon is related in the 7th chapter of the Mahawanso, and Mr. TURNOUR has noticed the strong similarity between this story and Homer's account of the landing of Ulysses in the island of Circe. The resemblance is so striking that it is difficult to conceive that the Singhalese historian of the 5th century was entirely ignorant of the works of the Father of Poetry. Wijayo and his followers, having made good their landing, are met by a "devo" (a ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the friend of Edgar ... hostility will certainly come. Friendship is too feeble a sentiment to struggle against love. This passion is more violent than tropical storms—I have felt it—I am one of its victims now! There lives another woman—half siren, half Circe—who has crossed my path in life, as you well know. If I had collected in my house as many friends as Socrates desired to see in his, and all these friends were to become my rivals, I feel that my jealousy would fire the house, and I would ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... until seven this morning. Walter, Walter—" she had never used his Christian name before, and at the moment it struck him only as one of her Circe arts—"you are cruel! What do you mean by this? Why ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... woe is many a passer by Who as he goes turns half an eye, To see the human form divine Thus Circe-wise changed into swine! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Quixote-Tartarin had some twinges at whiles on thinking of Tarascon and the promises of lion-skins; but this remorse did not last, and to drive away such dampening ideas there sufficed one glance from Baya, or a spoonful of those diabolical dizzying and odoriferous sweetmeats like Circe's brews. ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... I do better," he said to himself, "than have a dance with Rosa Milburn?" So he carried his handsome pupil into the next room and took his place with her in a cotillon. Whether the breath of the Goddess of Love could intoxicate like the cup of Circe,—whether a woman is ever phosphorescent with the luminous vapor of life that she exhales,—these and other questions which relate to occult influences exercised by certain women, we will not now discuss. It is enough that Mr. Bernard was sensible of a strange fascination, not wholly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... is true, that he cared nothing for it, that it was nothing to him, that it never affected him, and all those things that young men always say when the cup of Circe is beginning its work with them. Friends were annoyed, became anxious, remonstrated; but he laughed at their fears, and insisted on knowing himself best. At last, with a sudden start and shiver of his moral nature, he was awakened to a dreadful perception of his danger, and resolved on decided and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... recoiling. But those that love to hold it at a higher rate, and prize it according to its value, for their own greater profit do the very same which is told us of the recreation of the three fatal sister Parcae, or of the nocturnal exercise of the noble Circe, or yet of the excuse which Penelope made to her fond wooing youngsters and effeminate courtiers during the long ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... describe the dancing of a red-haired lady at the last charity ball you can either say—"The ruby Circe, with the Titian locks glowing like the oriflamme which surrounds the golden god of day as he sinks to rest amid the crimson glory of the burnished West, gave a divine exhibition of the Terpsichorean art which ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... to go with him the sons of Phrixus, and Telamon and Augeias; and himself took Hermes' wand; and at once they passed forth from the ship beyond the reeds and the water to dry land, towards the rising ground of the plain. The plain, I wis, is called Circe's; and here in line grow many willows and osiers, on whose topmost branches hang corpses bound with cords. For even now it is an abomination with the Colchians to burn dead men with fire; nor is it lawful to place them in the earth ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... among courtiers; and wearing the haggard air of the man who toils at his art, and cannot achieve his incommunicable hopes or capture his divine dreams. He came up to me, smiling, in a secluded corner. "Hullo," he said, "mon vieux! who would have thought of finding you here in the island of Circe?" ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that of Homer, might indeed defy time; but the setting of his pathetic tales, the misery of the poor, the wrongs of power, the pitiless cruelty of the system of society, had passed away as utterly as Circe and the ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... this book, Marquise Tullia Fabriana, reputed to have assimilated the Chaldean science of the women of Edgar Allen Poe, and the diplomatic sagacities of Stendhal, had the enigmatic countenance of Bradamante abused by an antique Circe. These insoluble mixtures developed a fuliginous vapor across which philosophic and literary influences jostled, without being able to be regulated in the author's brain when he wrote the prolegomenae of this work which could not have embraced less ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Circe, all swathed up in a billowy white mosquito netting, that might never again be used as a bed canopy. She found her "rock" on a third floor landing, and clung frantically to the stairs post, while the wild sea of perfectly good oak steps dashed savagely at her uncovered ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... appearance was, from the same cause, moist and spongy, expressed much gratitude for the contents of the basket, made a pathetic apology to the night-cap, tried to ignore the imbibing propensity of her better half; but, when pressed home upon the point, declared that when he was not engaged in the Circe-like operation of "making a beast of hisself," he was one of the most virtuousest of men; and finally wound up by a minute medical detail of Johnny's chilblain, accompanied by a slight retrospective sketch of Mary ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... sailed on till he came to the home of Circe, a beautiful but wicked enchantress. Here he divided his crew into two parties, and while one half rested, the others went to find what place this was. Circe welcomed them in her palace, feasted them, and gave them a magic ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... what is crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh, ye demons, can ye not at all WAIT? The uncertain also has its charms, the Sphinx, too, is a Circe, and Circe, too, was a philosopher."—Thus does a skeptic console himself; and in truth he needs some consolation. For skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological temperament, which in ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche |
