"Asphodel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the dead, brings to Pluto's kingdom their psyches, "that gibber like bats, as they fare down the dank ways, past the streams of Okeanos, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, to the meadow of asphodel in the dark realm of Hades, where dwell the souls, the phantoms of men outworn." So begins the twenty-fourth book of the Odyssey. Later poets have Charon, a grim boatsman, receive the dead at the River of Woe; ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... weel befa' the maiden gay, In cottage, bught, or penn, An' weel befa' the bonny May That wons in yonder glen; Wha loes the modest truth sae weel, Wha 's aye kind, an' aye sae leal, An' pure as blooming asphodel Amang sae mony men. O, weel befa' the bonny thing That wons in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... toward the East I turn, Waiting for dawn of day;— And chanting sea, and asphodel and star Are ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... hastened to beautiful Pylos, and came on the track of the cattle. "O Zeus!" he cried, "this is indeed a marvel. I see the footprints of cattle, but they are marked as though the cattle were going to the asphodel meadow, not away from it. Of man or woman, of wolf, bear, or lion, I spy not a single trace. Only here and there I behold the footprints of some strange monster, who has left his mark at random on either side of the road." So on he sped to the woody heights of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the Dutch camp and into the beginning of their real troubles. The refugee steamboat had departed down river from the Asphodel camp; Chill II had disappeared, the superintendent knew not how, along with the body of Peter Tonsburg; and the superintendent ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... commonest objects transfigured into things of beauty. What a delightful thoroughfare, for instance, was Fetter Lane, with its quaint charm and mediaeval grace! I snuffed the cabbage-laden atmosphere and seemed to breathe the scent of the asphodel. Holborn was even as the Elysian Fields; the omnibus that bore us westward was a chariot of glory; and the people who swarmed verminously on the pavements bore the semblance of ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... partial apprehension, and in the imperfections of this outward type, we may see a gracious shadow of what is waiting for us when we shall go no more out, and all empty places shall be filled, and the bitter herbs shall be changed for the asphodel of Heaven and the sweet flowerage round the throne of God, and we shall feast upon the Christ, and in the loftiest experience of the utmost glories of the Heavens, shall remember the bitter Cross and agony as that which has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the deathless gods," she said, but her long lashes drooped on her cheek as she spoke. "I pity you, Milanion, for when thou dost race with me, the goal is assuredly the meadows of asphodel near where sit Pluto and ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... or citrus, and the double-thorned lotus. The juniper, wild pear, and cork trees are to be met with now and again, and the ground is for the most part a sea of flowers almost unknown to me, though I could recognise wild thyme, asphodel, and lavender amid the tamarisk and myrtle undergrowth. At intervals the forest opens, showing some large douar that was built probably on the site of a well, and there industrious village folks have reclaimed the land, raised crops, and planted orchards. Olive, fig, and pomegranate seem ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... bass, the very history of the enchanted island was surely breathed out. Ulysses stood to listen among the flocks of Polyphemus. Empedocles stayed his feet among the groves of Etna to hear it. And Persephone, wandering among the fields of asphodel, paused with her white hands out-stretched to catch its drowsy beauty; and Arethusa, turned into a fountain, hushed her music to let it have its way. And Hermione heard in it the voice of the Bambino, the Christ-child, to whose manger-cradle the shepherds followed the star, and the voice of the ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... skulking, and one goes along the vine-rows to devour the ripe grapes, and the other brings all her cunning to bear against the scrip, and vows she will never leave the lad, till she strand him bare and breakfastless. But the boy is plaiting a pretty locust-cage with stalks of asphodel, and fitting it with reeds, and less care of his scrip has he, and of the vines, than delight ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... spring amain, And seemed with tender irony to flout Man's folly and pain when twixt dead spears sprang out The crocus-point and pied the plain with fires More gracious than his beacons; and from pyres Of burnt dead men the asphodel uprose Like fleecy clouds flushed with the morning rose, A holy pall to hide his folly and pain. Thus upon earth hope fell like a new rain, And by and by the pent folk within walls Took heart and ploughed the glebe and from the stalls Led out their kine to pasture. Goats and sheep Cropt ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Amaryllis Beautiful, but timid. Aster, double Variety. Aster, German Afterthought. Arbutus Thee only do I love. Acacia Friendship. Apple Blossom Preference. Asphodel Remembered after death. Arbor Vitae Unchanging friendship. Alyssum Worth beyond beauty. Anemone Your love changes. Azalea Pleasant recollections. Argeratum Worth beyond beauty. Balsam Impatience. Blue Bell Constancy. Balm Pleasantry. Bay-leaf ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... ascending into wave-like crests, and toppling with awful chasms over the dark waters of Lugano. It is good to be alone here at this hour. Yet I must rise and go—passing through meadows where white lilies sleep in silvery drifts, and asphodel is pale with spires of faintest rose, and narcissus dreams of his own beauty, loading the air with fragrance sweet as some love-music of Mozart. These fields want only the white figure of Persephone to make them poems; and in this twilight one might fancy that ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... amid her charm-built towers, Her meads of asphodel, and amaranth bowers, Where Sleep and Silence guard the soft abodes, 270 In sullen apathy PAPAVER nods. Faint o'er her couch in scintillating streams Pass the thin forms of Fancy and of Dreams; Froze by inchantment ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... hopefully Shines out again, as all the angels see, Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own, Who camest to me when the world was gone, And I who looked for only God, found thee! I find thee: I am safe, and strong, and glad. As one who stands in dewless asphodel Looks backward on the tedious time he had In the upper life ... so I, with bosom-swell, Make witness here between the good and bad, That Love, as strong ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... spend my summers high in air; At least there are no privet-hedges there. But even then I have no doubt the smell From slopes celestial of asphodel Would fill the firmament and ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... really hard become burglars, burgling bacon in the night season, and even being ghoulish enough to visit Indian cemeteries to pick a bone with the dead. A dog in the North Country is surely qualifying for some canine heaven in the asphodel meadows. I know of no created being who is undergoing a sterner probation than this creature forced by man and the exigencies of Fate to work like a horse in winter and live on air ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... of the present tragical history! When the sun of summer beams upon the growing landscape, and, ascending some eminence, you survey the valleys covered over with corn, the hills adorned with verdure, the trees bending their abundant foliage to the gale, the flowers in "yellow meads of asphodel and amaranthine bowers," perfuming the air with their odours, you seem for a moment to inhabit regions of enchantment and perpetual beauty. A month or two intervenes—you reascend your former elevation, once more to feast the senses—to admire ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... eyes behold! These be the tracks of high- horned kine, but all are turned back to the meadow of asphodel. But these are not the footsteps of a man, nay, nor of a woman, nor of grey wolves, nor bears, nor lions, nor, methinks, of a shaggy-maned Centaur, whosoever with fleet feet makes such mighty strides! Dread to see they are ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... air af amethyst I know its racing shadow falls on banks of gold Where rain-rejoicing gravel warms the feeding roots And smells more wonderful than wine. I know the shoots of myrtle and of asphodel now stir the mould Where wee cool noses sniff the early mist. Aye-yee—the sparkle of the little springs I see That tinkle as they hunt the thirsty rill. I know the cobwebs glitter with the jeweled dew. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... can be useful,) and find, under the head of Anthericum, the Savoy Lily indeed, but only the {8} following general information:—"809. Anthericum. A name applied by the Greeks to the stem of the asphodel, and not misapplied to this set of plants, which in some sort resemble the asphodel. Plants with fleshy leaves, and spikes of bright yellow flowers, easily cultivated if ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... it were gross to call food: dainty mysteries of coolness and sudden flavors; a fish salad in which the essences of sea and land are blended in cold, celestial harmony; innermost kernels of the lamb of the salted meadows where must grow the Asphodel on which it fed, in amorous union with what men call a sauce, but really oil and cream and herbs stirred by a god in a dream; peaches in purple ichor chastely clad in snow, melting on the palate as the voice of the divine singer after whom they are ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... cypress. If she were not the wife of Aulus, she might be engaged as a mourner. Since the death of Julius she has not thrown aside dark robes; and in general she looks as if, while still alive, she were walking on the asphodel meadow. She is, moreover, a 'one-man woman'; hence, among our ladies of four and five divorces, she is straightway a phoenix. But! hast thou heard that in Upper Egypt the phoenix has just been hatched out, as 'tis said?—an ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... from that poet which have been so often heard in "the halls of legislation" that they have acquired an infamy which unfits them for publication in a decent family newspaper; and Shakspere himself, reposing in Elysium on his bed of asphodel and moly, omits them when reading his complete works to the shades of Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, for ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... lanes with shade and gleam Where bloomed the fragrant asphodel, Now bleak commercially teem With signs "To Let," "To Buy," "To Sell." And Commerce holds them fierce and fell; With vulgar sport she now combines Sweet Nature's piping voice to quell. Arcadia ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the spirit of the son of Aeacus, fleet of foot, passed with great strides along the mead of asphodel, rejoicing in that I had told him of his ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... (Garden) Forsaken Angelica, Inspiration Angrec, Royalty Apricot Blossom, Doubt Apple, Temptation Apple Blossom, Preference Apple, Thorn, Deceitful Character Arbor Vitae, Live for me Arum (Wake Robin), Zeal Ash, Mountain, Prudence Ash Tree, Grandeur Aspen Tree, Lamentation Asphodel, My Regrets Follow Auricula, Painting Auricula (Scarlet) Avarice Austurtium, Splendour Azalea, Temperance Bachelor's Buttons, Celibacy Balm, Sympathy Balm (Gentle), Pleasantry Balm of Gilead, Cure Balsam, Yellow, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... bottom of the table sat the skeleton, with a wreath of roses round its white forehead. In order to counteract the uncanny feeling likely to be aroused by this unbidden guest, Alcibiades had placed an onion between its front teeth, and in one of its hands an asphodel lily, which the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... region is a plain of rock carved so smoothly, in places, as to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque growths lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue, asphodel, thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as patches of saxifrage that deck the stone with a brilliant enamel of red and yellow. This wild beauty makes one think how much better the graceful wrought-iron balconies of the town would look if enlivened with blossoms, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... devils of our carnival, rather than the majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel and amaranth the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented, in that deep motionless quiet which mortals pity and which the gods enjoy; rather than him who, under the umbrage of Elysium, gazes at once upon all the beauties that on earth were separated—Helena ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... just how courteously Swinburne will bow over my hand, not at all remembering who I am. Watts-Dunton will remember me after a moment: 'Oh, to be sure, yes indeed! I've a great deal of work on hand just now—a great deal of work, but' we shall sit down together on the asphodel, and I cannot but think we shall have whisky-toddy even there. He will not have changed. He will still be shaggy and old and chubby, and will wear the same frock-coat, with the same creases in it. Swinburne, on the other hand, will be quite, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... widely known. She never again struck so deep or so true a note; but if one has lodged such a note in the ear of time, it is enough; and if we are to speak of eternity, one might very well hold up one's head in the fields of asphodel, if one could say to the great others there, "I wrote Hannah Binding Shoes." Her poem is very, very sad, as all who have read it will remember; but Miss Larcom herself was above everything cheerful, and she had a laugh of mellow richness which willingly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and Bombyce, of Corydon and Daphnis, may it please the hierophants of Sanskrit lore, of derivative Aryan philology, of iconoclastic euhemerism, to spare us yet awhile the lovely myths that dance across the asphodel ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... refined pride the gardens used by his wife and children when they come out from Athens,—a fountain feeding a delightful rivulet; myrtles, roses, and pomegranate trees shedding their perfumes, which are mingled with the odors from the beds of hyacinths, violets, and asphodel. In the center of the gardens rises a chaste little shrine with a marble image and an altar, always covered with flowers or fruit by the mistress and her women. "To Artemis," reads the inscription, and one is sure that the virgin goddess takes more ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... understand. It is very foolish, and often suicidal, of men to correct women for going into rapture over mud flats. On that occasion, however, the only resultant harm was the conviction in the girl's heart that the presence of Paul turned mud flats into beds of asphodel. Then, just as she saw outer things through his eyes, she felt herself regarded by outer eyes through him. His rare and absurd beauty made him a cynosure whithersoever he went. London, vast and seething, could produce no such perfect Apollo. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the Stars. All the silver bells that swing with the turning of the great ring of light which lies around that land were softly chiming; and the sound of their commotion went down like dew upon the golden ways of the city, and the long alleys of blossoming trees, and the meadows of asphodel, and the curving shores of the River ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... These need no wreath and no trumpet; like perennial asphodel blossoms, their fame, their glory resounds like the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... never wed anyone. When he was gone, Ginnifer went out over the moor among the heather, where she might fight her grief alone, with only the birds and the flowers to see her weep. She lay on the short moorland grass among the sweet bog-myrtle and asphodel, until the sun was setting in a red ball over the hillside. Then, all of a sudden, she heard a rustling and a whispering like countless leaves ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... the lute throb in low cadence when she sat solitary by her hearth on the rock floor of the grave; and out of doors her eyes filled and her lips laughed when she wandered through the leafy land and found the warbler's nest hung upon the reeds, or the first branching asphodel in flower. She could not have told why these made her happy, why she could watch for half a day untired the little wren building where the gladwyn blossomed on the water's edge. It was only human life that hurt her, embittered her, and filled her with ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... on a Persian loom or blended in a wizard's diadem. The gold and silver of great daisies gleamed in the grass; pimpernel blue and red, mallow red and white, yellow spurge and green mignonette, blue borage and pink asphodel and parti-colored convolvulus, snap-dragon and marigold, violet and dandelion, and that crimson flower which shepherds call Pig's Face and poets call Beard of Jove for its golden change in autumn—all these and a thousand other children of the spring ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy |
