"Stygian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scene, and asked the Sibyl to explain to him its meaning. "You see before you," she replied, "the deep pools of Cocytus, and the Stygian lake, by which the Gods are accustomed to swear when they take an oath which they dare not violate. All that crowd which Charon will not ferry across is composed of persons who after death received not the ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... which we stept became hotter and hotter, while around us rolled an oppressive steam, which obscured and hid the sun; the guide, who was a few steps in advance of me, presently turned back, and seizing hold of me, hurried out of this Stygian exhalation. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... comfort in the boast which he nursed to his heart, that his exit from the world, with which he had played ducks and drakes, was to be entirely voluntary and in no wise forced: that though he was closing life's door upon himself he was still crossing the Stygian threshold ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... we part to meet no more This side the misty Stygian river, Be sure of this: On yonder shore Sweet cheer awaiteth such as we— A Sabine pagan's heaven, O friend— And fellowship that knows ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... dark horizon. The master gave another order into the speaking tube and their ship shot forward, faster and yet faster, with a speed that pressed them heavily into their seats. Behind them was the glory of the sunlit clouds; ahead the gloomy gray-black masses that must make a stygian night sky over this lonely world—a world cut off by that vaporous shell from all ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... almost over, when, between us and the border of the basin, arose a long neck, on the top of which, like the blossom of some Stygian lily, sat what seemed the head of a corpse, its mouth half open, and full of canine teeth. I went on; it retreated, then drew aside. The lady stepped on the firm land, but the leopardess between us, roused ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... the Stygian tide, Strayed her dear feet, the shadow of his own, Since, 'mid the desolate millions who have died, Each phantom walks its crowded path alone; And there her head, that slept upon his breast, No more had such sweet harbour for its ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... Welcome an owner, not a sojourner. This peaceful seat my poverty secures; War seldom enters but where wealth allures: Nor yet despise it; for this poor abode Has oft received, and yet receives a God; A God victorious of the Stygian race Here laid his sacred limbs, and sanctified the place, 710 This mean retreat did mighty Pan contain: Be emulous of him, and pomp disdain, And dare not to debase ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... vainly-conceived terrors! You shall behold only a living and a human figure, whose accents you may listen to with perfect security. If this alarms you, what would you say if you should have seen the Stygian lakes, and the shores burning with sulphur unconsumed, if the Furies stood before you, and Cerberus with his mane of vipers, and the Giants chained in eternal adamant? Yet all these you might have witnessed unharmed; for all these would quail at ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... gleam of light! Could a man choke himself with his own fingers if the worst came to the worst? The Digger and Stygian darkness—now—when he was going mad! Men could not be so cruel.... But they'd say he was drunk. He would lie still and cling with all his strength and heart and soul to sanity. He would think of That Evening with Lucille—and of her kisses. He would recite the Odes of Horace, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... caught the branch was such a physical relief that he almost forgot his errand. He slid quietly down the tree, pausing as he reached the bottom of it. The moon was just rising above the horizon, but under the trees the darkness was Stygian. John pushed quietly through the shrubberies, treading as lightly as possible. Every moment he expected to see the flash of a lantern, to hear Warde's voice, to feel an arresting hand upon the shoulder. It was quite impossible to guess with any reasonable accuracy what part of the garden ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... has been the friend and confidant of Four Dogs who have helped to humanize him for a quarter of a century and more, and who have souls to be saved, he is sure. And when he crosses the Stygian River he expects to find, on the other shore, a trio of dogs wagging their tails almost off, in their joy at his coming, and with honest tongues hanging out to lick his hands and his feet. And then he is going, with these faithful, devoted dogs at his heels, to ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... enthralled. His shade from Hades upon that dread day Bursting to light in terrible array! What! could not Pluto spare the Chief once more, To scare a second robber from his prey? Idly he wandered on the Stygian shore, Nor now preserved the walls he loved ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... blood of Hydra, Lerna's bane, The juice of Hebon, and Cocytus breath, And all the poison of the Stygian pool." ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... as Dido, Fat Clemitson's widow Flits now a small shadow By Stygian hid ford; And good Master Clapton Has thirty years nap't on The ground he last hap't on, Intomb'd ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... methinks, to me Belongs the office; Lady, when my tongue Is cold in death, believe me, unto thee My voice shall raise its tributary song. My soul, from this strait prison-house set free, As o'er the Stygian lake it floats along, Thy praises singing still shall hold its way, And make the waters ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the night without closing an eye, in such a flutter of spirits as rendered me the most miserable wretch in being. I should certainly have run distracted, if the rarefaction of my blood, occasioned by that Stygian bath, had not burst the vessels, and produced a violent haemorrhage, which, though dreadful and alarming, removed the horrible disquiet — I lost two pounds of blood, and more, on this occasion; and find myself still weak and languid; but, I believe, a little exercise ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... who would not Lament him save this wretch alone? Dear son, Must I then never, never see thee more? O me! too well I see thee crossing now The Stygian stream to clasp thy father's shade: Both turn your frowning eyes askance on me, Burning with dreadful wrath! Yea, it was I, 'T was I that slew you both. Infamous mother And guilty wife!—Now art ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... Before the Sun, Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... Gautier's golden tomb: Here in spirit now I stand and mourn at thine. Yet no breath of death strikes thence, no shadow of gloom, Only light more bright than gold of the inmost mine, Only steam of incense warm from love's own shrine. Not the darkling stream, the sundering Stygian ford, Not the hour that smites and severs as a sword, Not the night subduing light that perisheth, Smite, subdue, divide from us by doom abhorred, Life so sweet as this that ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... some sort of nameless death for the diversion of a savage horde, but the morrow held fewer terrors for me than the present, and I submit to any fair-minded man if it is not a terrifying thing to lie bound hand and foot in the Stygian blackness of an immense cave peopled by unknown dangers in a land overrun by hideous beasts and reptiles of the greatest ferocity. At any moment, perhaps at this very moment, some silent-footed beast of prey might catch my scent where it laired in some contiguous ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
