"Narcissus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lunch and saw plainly enough that my forebodings were justified. Oscar was more self-confident, more contemptuous of criticism, more gross of body than ever, but his talk did not suffer; indeed, it seemed to improve. At this lunch he told the charming fable of "Narcissus," which is certainly one of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... B. C. instead of the twentieth century A. D. The wild flowers that grew in this plain were gorgeous. There were anemones of all kinds, scarlet, purple, pale pink, and white: irises of many colors, blue pimpernel, yellow salvia, violet grape hyacinths, and clumps of small white narcissus. Above all rose the splendid pale pink blossoms of the asphodel, a striking feature of a ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... and the sunshine flooded her from head to foot; the window and balcony were full of flowers—yellow jonquils and daffodils, white narcissus, and all things fragrant of the spring. The scent of them floated about her like an incense, and a straying zephyr blew great puffs of their sweetness back into the room. Anne felt it all about her, and remembered it until ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... at the foundations,' said I. 'Must not I know which of us ought to yield to the other in behalf of our suffering, or, if you choose, of our mania?—Oh! what a charming clump of narcissus! They are as fresh ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... Poets' narcissus along the edge of the grass above the strawberry bank, and I don't deny I think it would be nice to have a row of wild Daffys (where the red marks are) to precede the same narcissus next spring if we're spared! The Daffys to be planted in the ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... the pious Paul Gerhardt also had its charm for Christophe. It was a rest for him on recovering from his own sorrows. He loved that innocent vision of nature as God, the fresh meadows, where the storks walk gravely among the tulips and white narcissus, by little brooks singing on the sands, the transparent air wherein there pass the wide-winged, swallows and flying doves, the gaiety of a sunbeam piercing the rain, and the luminous sky smiling through the clouds, and the serene majesty of the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... uniform called it) had been received, and his rooms were in order. He pulled out his latch-key and turned it in the lock. The door opened on an interior pleasantly familiar, yet piquantly removed from the dulness of every-day acquaintance. The matting was agreeable to his foot. The green bronze Narcissus in the corner beckoned invitingly; above all, the porcelain tub in the bath-room beyond, with its unlimited supply of water, and sybaritic variety of towels, appealed to him irresistibly. Into it he plunged with all despatch, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... or any other songsters. It seems to us really immodest to keep on spying on the birds in that way. And as for the bushes and trees, what we want to know is, How does one ever get to know them? How do you find out which is an alder and what is an elm? Or a narcissus and a hyacinth, does any one really know them apart? We think it's all a bluff. And jonquils. There was a nest of them on our porch, we are told, but we didn't think it any business of ours to bother them. Let nature alone ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... was given its first presentation in 1777, and increased his fame so much that his bust was placed in the Grand Opera beside those of Lulli, Rameau, and Quinault. "Iphigenia in Tauris" was produced in 1779, with great success, but "Echo and Narcissus," the last opera which Gluck gave in Paris, was a failure. He left France for Vienna in the same year, never to return, though his royal pupil pressed him to do so in the most ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... saw how sweet he breathed, how still he lay, How his fair eyes though closed seemed to smile, At first she stayed, astound with great dismay, Then sat her down, so love can art beguile, And as she sat and looked, fled fast away Her wrath, that on his forehead gazed the maid, As in his spring Narcissus ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... doting pedant Claudius was adding new letters to the alphabet, Messalina was parading with utter shamelessness her last and fatal passion for Silius, and went so far as publicly to marry her paramour. It was the freedman Narcissus who made the outrageous truth known to Claudius, and practically terrorised him into striking. Half measures were impossible; a swarm of Messalina's accomplices in vice were put to death. To her, Claudius showed signs of relenting; but Narcissus gave the orders for her death without ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... are as imposing by the suddenness of their elevation—"pillars of heaven, the fosterers of enduring snows."[25] Rich sheltered plains lie at their feet, covered with an unequally woven mantle of trees, and shrubs, and flowers,—"the verdant gloom of the thickly-mantling ivy, the narcissus steeped in heavenly dew, the golden-beaming crocus, the hardy and ever-fresh-sprouting olive-tree,"[26] and the luxuriant palm, which nourishes amid its branches the grape swelling with juice. But it is the combination of these features, in the most diversified manner, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... II, 47-48: "Plucking pale violets and the tallest poppies, she joins with them the narcissus and the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... was so tenderly attached that her whole life was bound up in her, and she knew no happiness except in her society. One day, however, whilst Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow, attended by the ocean-nymphs, she saw to her surprise a beautiful narcissus, from the stem of which sprang forth a hundred blossoms. Drawing near to examine this lovely flower, whose exquisite scent perfumed the air, she stooped down to gather it, suspecting no evil, when a yawning abyss opened at her feet, and Aides, the grim ruler of the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... he to do—this poor Narcissus? He thought to avoid all such things by going far away from haunts of mankind, where he should never have to face a mirror again. But in the woods to which he retreated a clear rivulet ran. Into this he happened ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... only new, And the untried common; and, whereas An equal seeming danger was Of likeness lacking joy and force, Or difference reaching to divorce, Now can the finish'd lover see Marvel of me most far from me, Whom without pride he may admire, Without Narcissus' doom desire, Serve without selfishness, and love 'Even as himself,' in sense above Niggard 'as much,' yea, as she is The only part ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... The road led almost straight across the level between quickset hedges in white bloom. But when we reached the long steep hill which ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out, and we toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red anemones and sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges replaced the May-thorns of the plain. In course of time our bovi brought us to the Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a further ascent of seven hundred feet to the topmost hawk's-nest or acropolis of the republic. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... beautiful garments? Phyllis's dark eyes held a wonderfully tender light, and the soft, rich pallor of her complexion took just the shadow of color from the dress of pale pink which fell in flowing lines to her small sandaled feet. A few white narcissus were at her belt and in her black hair, and a fairer picture of pure and graceful womanhood never gladdened ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... robin-redbreast will piously cover them with leaves, but that which is done in the ear shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops, nor can they tell from what quarter the trumpet shall sound. The unkempt boy, the sullen girl in the chimney-corner, may be the Narcissus or nymph in whose orisons all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... sea. There were large spaces of fine and solid turf, but, where the little streams flowed from the delicate-tinted distant mountains, there were narrow valleys full of all the flowers of a southern spring. Here grew narcissus and hyacinths, violets and creeping thyme, and crocus and the crimson rose, as they blossomed on the day when the milk-white bull carried off Europa. Beyond the level land beside the sea, between these coasts and the far-off hills, was a steep ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... that Bettina allowed herself to think of these things. But now, in her solitude and idleness, visions would come of the eager lover, strong as a young Narcissus, who represented love in such a simple, wholesome guise—or at least so it had seemed to be. Then she would shake off the image, and tell herself it was but seeming, as the result had proved, and so she would ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... cranesbill in a never-ending dance upon the grassy floor. Happy, too, is he who finds the lilies-of-the-valley clustering about the chestnut boles upon the Colma, or in the beechwood by the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with garnet-coloured columbines and fragrant white narcissus, which the people of the villages call 'Angiolini.' There, too, is Solomon's seal, with waxen bells and leaves expanded like the wings of hovering butterflies. But these lists of flowers are tiresome and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... towards the door, would have wondered to see a man of his type apparently so interested in his own image, repeated by the mirror before him as often as eyesight could trace its give-and-take with the one that faced it on the wall behind him. He was the wrong man for a Narcissus. The strength of his framework was wrong throughout. Narcissus had no bone-distances, as artists say, and his hair was in crisp curls, good for the sculptor. No one ever needed to get a pair of scissors to snip it. But though anyone might have marvelled ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... back for his appointment with Mademoiselle Delaunay's friends of the morning. As he turned into the Rue Chantal he passed a flower-stall aglow with roses from the south and sweet with narcissus and mignonette. An idea struck him, and he stopped, a happy smile softening away the still lingering tension of the face. For a few sous he bought a bunch of yellow-eyed narcissus and stepped gaily home with them. He had hardly time to put them in water and to notice ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enviable family, are they not? Orange-trees are in blossom at Sampaolo the whole year round, in blossom and in fruit at the same time. The olive orchards of Sampaolo are just so many wildernesses of wild flowers: violets, anemones, narcissus; irises, white ones and purple ones; daffodils, which we call asphodels; hyacinths, tulips, arums, orchids—oh, but a perfect riot of wild flowers. In the spring the valleys of Sampaolo are pink with blossoming peach-trees and almond-trees, where they are ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... during his whole life, his ear should not indulge in the music of the tabor, cymbal, and pipe. He could restrain his eyes from enjoying the garden, and gratify his sense of smell without the rose or narcissus. Though he had not a pillow stuffed with down, he could compose himself to rest with a stone under his head; though he had no heart-solacer as the partner of his bed, he could hug himself to sleep ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... certain that I am altogether flattered. Morris is an excellent fellow, and very clever at electrical machines; but I have never considered him remarkable for personal beauty—not exactly an Adonis, or an Apollo, or a Narcissus, you know." ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... man named Tarling—who is in the police force at Shanghai, but too much of a fag. Spent evening at Chu Han's dancing hall. Got very friendly with a pretty little Chinese girl who spoke pigeon English. Am seeing her to-morrow at Ling Foo's. She is called 'The Little Narcissus.' I called her ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... for a public which may value them more highly than in Ruskin's day, but drops in a great many newspapers. Another so-called well—Anne Boleyn's well; her horse put its foot into soft ground above a spring—is a well no longer. Iron railings ward off the profane, and narcissus and ivy cluster round its brim, but below, according to the weather, is ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... worth, (which indeed is no worth) our bounty, favour, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality, beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our [1915] excellent gifts and fortunes, for which, Narcissus-like, we admire, flatter, and applaud ourselves, and think all the world esteems so of us; and as deformed women easily believe those that tell them they be fair, we are too credulous of our own good parts and praises, too well persuaded of ourselves. We brag and venditate ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a doubter to object that many of the poems on the subject show the poet, not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning over the brink of introspection in the attitude of Narcissus. One need seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the conviction that no one ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... double; the fact was to us a never ceasing source of delight. Each seemed to the other created such, expressly that he might love him as a special, individual property of his own. It was as if the image of Narcissus had risen bodily out of the watery mirror, to be what it had before but seemed. It was as if we had been made two, that each might love himself, and yet ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... gone before us, to leave the most perfect roses of Memory, filled with the incense of grateful and loving hearts. We cannot tell with what feeling we added our sprays of blossoms, perennials springing from the garden of the heart, waxen white and fragrant as the narcissus. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Topper! so serenely sleek, So beautifully tall, Wherein I decked me once a week Whene'er I went to call,— No more shall now th' admiring maid, While handing me my tea, View her reflected charms displayed (Narcissus-like) in thee! ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... June lilies are the sweetest flowers the spring brings us. Do you know that their real name is the white narcissus?" She ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... perhaps no country in Europe which has so interesting a flora, especially in spring. In March in the granite north the ground under the pine-trees is covered with the exquisite flowers of the narcissus triandrus,[4] while the wet water meadows are yellow with petticoat daffodils. Other daffodils too abound, but these are ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... of my companions; only now louder or less, more distinct or faint. It had a lonely, plaintive, even melancholy tone, which the Greeks explained was in consequence of an unfortunate love affair with the beautiful Narcissus. It sulked, and hiding in a cave, never spoke again unless first spoken to. I could hardly believe that echo was not the voice of a human being. To satisfy myself I examined the barn and forest for ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... earrings, all of gold, crusted with jewels of price, whose like nor mankind nor Jinn-kind possessed, and an hundred robes of vari-coloured brocades and an hundred thousand ducats, gave the whole to Tohfah. Then she passed the cup to her sister Shararah, who had in her hand a stalk of narcissus; so she took it from her and turning to the Songstress, said to her, "O Tohfah, sing to me somewhat on this." She replied, "Hearkening and obedience," and improvised ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Dyspepsia. And the pair are intended to indicate that you may see yourselves complete by looking at them separately; and so your Royal Standard is your national mirror; and when you gaze on it fondly you're playing the part of a certain Mr. Narcissus, who got liker to the Lion than to the Unicorn in the act. Now will that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... than her second daughter's. She walks a little on one side, which Madame de Ratzenhausen calls walking by ear. She does not think that there is her equal in the world for beauty, wit, and perfection of all kinds. I always compare her to Narcissus, who died of self-admiration. She is so vain as to think she has more sense than her husband, who has a great deal; while her notions are not in the slightest degree elevated. She lives much in the femme-de-chambre style; and, indeed, loves this society better than that of persons of birth. ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... amongst from infancy, makes our love of Nature only a kind of unconscious joy in it; but here even the peasant has that, and the songs of the men that cannot read or write are full of it. If a field labourer sing to his love he will sing of the narcissus and the crocus, as Meleager sang to Heliodora ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... root; transplant such as are rooted, and give frequent gentle waterings to the others in order to promote it. Cut down the stalks of plants that have done flowering, saving the seed that may be wanted, as it ripens, and water the tender annuals every evening. Sow anemones and ranunculuses, tulip, and narcissus seed. Dig up a border for early tulip roots, and others for hyacinths, anemones, and ranunculuses. Sow annuals to stand through the winter, and shift auriculas into fresh pots.——SEPTEMBER. During this month, preparation ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... a bunch of crocuses, blue, yellow, white, and of many colors. Aren't they pretty amid the grass? Then the gorgeous tulips, holding their heads so high, making the earth brilliant with their gay, bright colors. I think the golden daffodils and sweet narcissus are my favorite flowers, though I am very fond of what ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... duster and cloth, Miss Wingate threw her energies with abandon into the accomplishing of a most artistic scheme of decoration. She set tall jars of white locust blossoms in the hall which shone out mystically in the cool dusk. She mingled lilac and red bud, cherry blossoms and narcissus and trailed long vines of honeysuckle ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... is nothing else let there be breeding! But at this thing the world might look and understand and censure if it were not brass-browed and stupid. Sneak! Traitress! Serpent! Oh, Serpent! do you slip into our very Eden? looping your sly coils across our flowers, trailing over our beds of narcissus and our budding rose, crawling into our secret arbours and whispering-places and nests of happiness! Do you flaunt and sway your crested head with a new hat on it every day? Oh, that my Aunt were here, with the dragon's teeth, and the red breath, and whiskers ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... forest. Here nature, in only twenty years has returned to an exuberant savagery, and all was now the wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling through deep-brown shade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, cypress, mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig. Once I stumbled upon a cemetery of old gilt tombs, absolutely overgrown and lost, and thrice caught glimpses of little trellised yalis choked in boscage. With slow ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... horrid from the work all these Sat, and drew breath and drank and made great cheer And washed the hard sweat off their calmer brows. For much sweet grass grew higher than grew the reed, And good for slumber, and every holier herb, Narcissus, and the low-lying melilote, And all of goodliest blade and bloom that springs Where, hid by heavier hyacinth, violet buds Blossom and burn; and fire of yellower flowers And light of crescent lilies, and such leaves As fear the Faun's and know the Dryad's foot; ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... prince will always be governed by his domestics. The power of slaves aggravated the shame of the Romans; and the senate paid court to a Pallas or a Narcissus. There is a chance that a modern favorite may ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Reynolds, and by Barry's feeling some little jealousy of the fame and fortune of his rival "in a humbler walk of the art." About the same time he painted a pair of classical subjects, Mercury inventing the lyre, and Narcissus looking at himself in the water, the last suggested to him by Burke. He also painted a historical picture of Chiron and Achilles, and another of the story of Stratonice, for which last the duke of Richmond gave him a hundred guineas. In 1773 it was proposed to decorate the interior of St Paul's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 1692, and is buried in the vault belonging to the Inner Temple, which is presumably in the ground attached to the Temple Church. The entry in the Register runs as follows: 'John Hoyle, esq., of the Inner Temple was buried in the vault May ye 29, 1692.' Narcissus Luttrell in his Diary, Saturday, 28 May, 1692, has the following entry: 'Mr. Hoil of the Temple on Thursday night was at a tavern with other gentlemen, and quarrelling with Mr. Pitts' eldest son about drinking a health, as they came out Mr. Hoil ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... glistened on the silky fringe of his eyelids,—his lips quivered,—he had the look of a Narcissus regretfully bewailing his own perishable loveliness. On a swift impulse of affection Theos threw one arm round, his neck in the fashion of a confiding school-boy walking with ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of the mountains, the only place out of the valley where any vegetation is to be found, Asphodelus, radicibus luteis, foliis triangularibus, a fine plant coming into flower, Cytisus, Caragana, Narcissus? Cruciferae, among them a small Draba, Cerasus pygmaeus, Peganum, Salsoloid of Mumzil, Trichonema, Myosotis, Gentiana of Chiltera, Buddlaea, Carex; indeed the vegetation is precisely the same as at Chiltera. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... gives the date 1685; but a copy of this rare sheet, clean and perfect as when first printed, was lately discovered in the Stowe Library, among a great number of single-sheet poems, songs, and proclamations; a memorandum on it, in the writing of Narcissus Luttrel, shews that he bought it for one penny, on the 8th of April, 1684. By the liberal permission of Mr. Pickering, of Piccadilly, the present owner of that extraordinary collection, I have been able accurately to correct ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to attempt in a very few words to describe the beauty of Cliges. He was in his flower, being now almost fifteen years of age. He was more comely and charming than Narcissus who saw his reflection in the spring beneath the elm-tree, and, when he saw it, he loved it so that he died, they say, because he could not get it. Narcissus was fair, but had little sense; [227] but as fine gold surpasses copper, so was Cliges better ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Water Eloquence. May Flower Welcome. Marigold Sacred affection. Marigold and Cypress Despair. Mandrake Rarity. Mignonette Your qualities surpass your charms. Morning Glory Coquetry, Affectation. Mock Orange Counterfeit. Myrtle Love in absence. Mistletoe Insurmountable. Narcissus Egotism. Nasturtium Patriotism. Oxalis Reverie. Orange Blossom Purity. Olive Peace. Oleander Beware. Primrose Modest worth. Pink, White Pure love. " Red Devoted love. Phlox Our hearts are united. Periwinkle Sweet memories. Paeony Ostentation. Pansy You occupy ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... long been considered one of the most valuable of the Narciss family for cultivation in pots, and it is also a first-rate border and woodland flower. When forced, the treatment should agree as nearly as possible with that prescribed for the Narcissus. Four or five bulbs may be planted ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... crooked, bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility. As Baron de Slane says of these stock comparisons (Ibn Khall. i. xxxvi.), "The figurative language of Moslem poets is often difficult to be understood. The narcissus is the eye; the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower, and thus recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. Pearls signify both tears and teeth; the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from their whiteness and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the work of education. Clusters of ornamental trees, dotted here and there over its soft green, were interspersed with lovely flower-beds, in which were growing not only rare flowers, but the dear old blossoms,—candytuft, narcissus, clove-pinks, jonquils, heart's-ease, daffodils, and many another to which the eyes of some of the young girls turned lovingly, for they knew they were blossoming ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... from any cue, and the cigarette boxes and match-stands were always kept replenished. In the dining-room the silver was resplendent, until the moment when before dessert the cloth was withdrawn, and showed a rosewood table that might have served for a mirror to Narcissus. ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... statues executed by Cellini, the most important are the silver figure of Jupiter, executed at Paris for Francis I., and the Perseus, executed in bronze for the Grand Duke Cosmo of Florence. He also executed statues in marble of Apollo, Hyacinthus, Narcissus, and Neptune. The extraordinary incidents connected with the casting of the Perseus were peculiarly illustrative of the remarkable character ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... day with heavenly dew I 2 Bright flowers their never-failing bloom renew, From eldest time Deo and Cora's crown Full-flowered narcissus, and the golden beam Of crocus, while Cephisus' gentle stream In runnels fed by sleepless springs Over the land's broad bosom daily brings His pregnant waters, never dwindling down. The quiring Muses love to seek the spot And Aphrodite's golden car ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... fixed their gaze upon the captive king, Loaded with chains; his hands behind his back; The ponderous fetters passing from his neck Down to his feet; oppressed with shame he stood, Like the narcissus bent with heavy dew. Zohak received him with a scornful smile, Saying, "Where is thy diadem, thy throne, Where is thy kingdom, where thy sovereign rule; Thy laws and royal ordinances—where, Where are they now? What change is this that fate Has wrought upon thee?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... hold its fugitive sceptre. The past, however, was theirs also: a past so transformed that he must revisit it with her, joyously confronting her new self with the image of her that met them at each turn. Then he had himself to trace in her memories, his transfigured likeness to linger over in the Narcissus-mirror of her faith in him. This interchange of recollections served them as well as any outspoken expression of feeling, and the most commonplace allusion ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the father. Adler, in his description of the "inferiority" complex, explains it as an effect of the conflict growing out of the contrast between the ideal and the actual status of the person. Other mental conflicts described by the psychoanalysts are referred to the "adopted child" complex, the Narcissus complex, the sex shock, etc. These conflicts which disturb the mental life of the person are all the reflections of social relations and are to be explained in terms of status and the role of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the characteristic of the dupe, so should good-temper be that of the knave; the two fit into each other like joints. Happily, good-nature is a Narcissus, and falls in love with its own likeness. And good-temper is to good-nature what the Florimel of snow was to the Florimel of flesh,—an exact likeness made of the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Persia. Flowers in February and March. Its beauty, early appearance, and fragrant blossoms, make it highly esteemed by all lovers of flowers; like the Hyacinth or Narcissus it will blow within doors in a water-glass, but stronger in a small pot of sand, or sandy loam; a few flowers will scent a whole apartment: it will also blossom in the open air, but requires warmth and shelter; it is propagated by offsets and seeds; the best flowering roots are imported from ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... the autumn of 1741, with fifteen louis in my purse, and with my comedy of Narcissus and my musical project in my pocket. These composed my whole stock; consequently I had not much time to lose before I attempted to turn the latter to some advantage. I therefore immediately thought of ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... images in the windows and attacking them, uttering their peculiar cry, and pecking and fluttering against the glass as earnestly as if the object they saw was a real rival instead of an imaginary one (a friend who observed it, insisted that, Narcissus-like, it was in an ecstasy of self-admiration). What is more remarkable, two of these instances occurred in the autumn, when one would not suppose the same motives for animosity to exist that would probably actuate them ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... was doubtless red, Samson would not have carried away the gates of Gaza. But for his red hair, Jason would not have navigated the Euxine and discovered the Golden Horn. But for the red hair of his mistress, Leander would not have swum the Hellespont. But for his red hair, Narcissus would not have fallen in love with himself, and thereby become immortal in song. But for his red hair we should find nothing in Van Buren to praise. But for red hair, we should not have written this article. And, but for his red hair, William H. Seward might ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Narcissus, sacred to proud Juno once, Was afterwards the flower of cultured France, Then the dynastic emblem of Savoy, Now, the red ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... picking golden narcissus in her lily valley, Mary's heart was gladdened by the sudden outburst of a nightingale in a thicket close at hand. Careful watching was rewarded by a sight, not only of the singer but of a nest with three little ones in it. While she yet peeped at the nestlings, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... frisked about, guinea-pigs ran hither and thither, with as many other pretty little creatures as one could wish to see. The birds called and sang to us as we advanced: the starlings, particularly, chattered the silliest stuff. One always cried, "Paris, Paris!" and the other, "Narcissus, Narcissus!" as plainly as a schoolboy can say them. The old man seemed to continue looking at me earnestly while the birds called out thus; but I feigned not to notice it, and had in truth no time to attend to him, for I could easily perceive that we went round and ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... himself was first poisoned by a cup of wine given to him by his favourite mistress Marcia, on his return weary and thirsty from the Colosseum; and then, as the poison operated too slowly, was strangled in his heavy drugged sleep by his favourite gladiator Narcissus. One could not look upon the bare masses of ruins around without thinking of the terrible orgies that took place there, and of the shout of enthusiastic joy when the news reached Rome that the detested tyrant was no more, and the empire ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... enough to make one want to have all of them. The good old-fashioned Daffodil is an honored member of the family that should be found in every garden. When you see the Dandelion's gleam of gold in the grass by the wayside you get a good idea of the brilliant display a fine collection of Narcissus is capable of making, for in richness of color these ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... our lover From such an illness should recover, Presented always to his eyes The mute advisers which the ladies prize;— Mirrors in parlours, inns, and shops,— Mirrors the pocket furniture of fops,— Mirrors on every lady's zone,[13] From which his face reflected shone. What could our dear Narcissus do? From haunts of men he now withdrew, On purpose that his precious shape From every mirror might escape. But in his forest glen alone, Apart from human trace, A watercourse, Of purest source, While with ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... gay with the lilac, yellow and white of crocus and snowdrop, the smoke-blackened twigs were studded with tiny spikes of tender green, and the air was warm and subtly aromatic with the promise of spring—even in the muddy tainted streets the Lent-lilies and narcissus flowers in the street-sellers' baskets gave touches of passing sweetness ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... slow filmy unveilings, life grew clearer to Gibbie, and he not only knew, but knew that he knew, his thoughts always went back to that day in the meadow with Donal Grant as the beginning of his knowledge of beautiful things in the world of man. Then first he saw nature reflected, Narcissus-like, in the mirror of her humanity, her highest self. But when or how the change in him began, the turn of the balance, the first push towards life of the evermore invisible germ—of that he remained, much as he wondered, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... midst, with arbours and little parks of exotic plants, a palm or two, and a tank where the half-tame water-fowl would plash among the lotus and papyrus plants. In such a nook as this Cornelia would sit and read all the day long, and put lotus flowers in her hair, look down into the water, and, Narcissus-like, fall in love with her own face, and tell herself that Drusus would be delighted that she had not grown ugly since he ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... winds by the Maritime Alps, which form an amphitheatre, to the land-side, around this little territory: but another incontestible proof of the mildness of this climate, is deduced from the oranges, lemons, citrons, roses, narcissus's, july-flowers, and jonquils, which ripen and blow in the middle of winter. I have described the agreeable side of this climate; and now I will point out its inconveniences. In the winter, but especially in the spring, the sun is ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... of spring is seen in all the half-floating, half-dancing, gliding, diaphanous figures of the forest. The flowers of "La Primavera's" crown are blue and white cornflowers and primroses. She scatters over the earth tulips, anemones, and narcissus. The painting is allegorical and unique. Never were such fluttering odds and ends of draperies painted before, nor such fascinating effects had from canvas, paint, or brush. The picture hangs in Florence in the Uffizi Gallery. A German critic tells us that the "Realm of ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... cannot flower from the ice. All the world gleams with the lilies of Death the Unconquerable, but come, give us our turn. Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption, no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation piercing the flesh to blossom of death. Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy. Give us ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... flesh, that it still carried faint whiffs of its owner's personality as if he had a moment before drawn it from his fingers. What maudlin folly seized me, I cannot say. I remember that I exclaimed to myself affectionately, as one might who, like Narcissus, worshiped his own image in a pool. I pressed the glove to my face, delighting in its imagined likeness to myself. I gave it, in my intoxicated fancy, the attributes of a living being. To me it seemed alive with vital warmth. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... his head fell forward against the bed. How long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises—of the tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling—as in a dream—went on about him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of boy for girl which knows so little, hopes ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... agree to refer the question to Tiresias, who has been of both sexes. He gives his decision in favour of Jupiter, on which Juno deprives him of sight; and, by way of recompense, Jupiter bestows on him the gift of prophesy. His first prediction is fulfilled in the case of Narcissus, who, despising the advances of all females (in whose number is Echo, who has been transformed into a sound), at last pines away with love for himself, and is changed into a flower which bears his name. Pentheus, however, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... instantly. Hartley entered without farther opposition, and was now in a grove of mango-trees, through which an infant moon was twinkling faintly amid the murmur of waters, the sweet song of the nightingale, and the odours of the rose, yellow jasmine, orange and citron flowers, and Persian narcissus. Huge domes and arches, which were seen imperfectly in the quivering light, seemed to intimate the neighbourhood of some sacred edifice, where the Fakir had doubtless taken up ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Sparta, and at Lesbos, in the temple of Juno, and among the Parrhasii, there were contests for beauty among women. The general esteem for beauty went so far, that the Spartan women set up in their bedchambers a Nireus, a Narcissus, or a Hyacinth, that they ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... my readers who take an interest in artistic perplexities will understand me best when I point out that I dropped "The Rescue" not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming, but to begin "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" and to go on with it without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of "The Rescue" with any page of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis of my writing life. For it was a ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... For the frequency of trials for words spoken in Charles II.'s reign of terror, see the extracts from Narcissus Luttrel's Brief Historical ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... their first court, know much better how to make love than younger women. An adolescent youth is too like a young woman himself for a young woman to please him. Such a passion trenches on the fable of Narcissus. Besides that feeling of repugnance, there is, as I think, a mutual sense of inexperience which separates them. The reason why the hearts of young women are only understood by mature men, who conceal their cleverness ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Hyacinths, Tulips, and Narcissus should be planted about five inches deep, and about ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... Clematitis. Blitum sp. Chenopodium sp. Rumex sp. Salix cinerea. *Hyacinthus orientalis! Lilium bulbiferum! croceum, et sp. alix, pl. Tulipa, sp. Polygonatum anceps. Fritillaria imperalis! Agave americana. Iris versicolor. sambucina. Crocus, sp. Colchicum autumnale. Narcissus incomparabilis! Tazetta. biflorus. chrysanthus. *Ophrys aranifera! Calanthe vestita! Oncidium ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... time held him in honor among his dearest and closest friends. Then he suddenly killed him. The reason was that Silanus had offended Messalina, the most abandoned and lustful of women, in refusing to lie with her, and by the slight shown the empress had alienated Narcissus, the emperor's freedman. As they had no true charge to bring against him, nor even one that would be believed, Narcissus invented a dream in which he declared he had seen Claudius murdered by the hand of Silanus. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... reports again:—I have just read The Book-bills of Narcissus, An Account rendered by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. (FRANZ MURRAY; Derby. Leicester and Nottingham.) It doesn't make any difference to me whether this dainty little book was actually published at Derby or at Leicester or even at Nottingham, noted of old for lambs. It makes right pleasant reading, ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... rows. The umbel-like peduncles are situated in the axils of the leaves or spring from the nodes of leafless branches. The flesh of the fruit is sweetish and aromatic. The flowers possess a most exquisite perfume, frequently compared with hyacinth, narcissus, and cloves. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... soon after, in 212, was commanded by a revelation from God to go to Jerusalem to visit the holy places.[1] The night before his arrival, St. Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem, and some other saints of that church, had a revelation, in which they heard a distinct voice commanding them to go out of the city and take for bishop him whom God sent them. St. Narcissus was then very ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... were bowls full of clear-coloured spring flowers—early primrose, jonquil, and narcissus. A wood-fire burned upon the blue-and-white tiled hearth. And on the sofa, drawn up at right angles to it, Katherine sat, wrapped in a gray, silk dressing-gown bordered with soft, white fur. She flushed slightly as her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... approached by a path between high clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is one glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and another of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... up the mountain hitherto for little Kirl ended in the grassy pasture where the goats stayed. Here was a pleasant slope thick with globe-flowers and narcissus at the lower end, and fragrant with wild thyme at the upper ridge, where the ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... Lord's Day, and that we should observe the close of the paschal fast on that day only. There is still extant a writing of those who were then assembled in Palestine, over whom Theophilus, bishop of the parish of Caesarea, and Narcissus, Bishop of Jerusalem, presided; also another of those who were likewise assembled at Rome, on account of the same question, which bears the name of Victor; also of the bishops in Pontus, over whom Palmas, as the oldest, presided; and of the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... lead away; And she shall have them, since my gifts you spurn. Come hither, beauteous boy; for you the Nymphs Bring baskets, see, with lilies brimmed; for you, Plucking pale violets and poppy-heads, Now the fair Naiad, of narcissus flower And fragrant fennel, doth one posy twine- With cassia then, and other scented herbs, Blends them, and sets the tender hyacinth off With yellow marigold. I too will pick Quinces all silvered-o'er with hoary down, Chestnuts, which Amaryllis wont to love, And waxen plums withal: this ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... NARCISSUS? He, that foul ill-favoured brute, A fevered age's most repulsive fruit, The murderous coxcomb, the assassin sleek? Stranger comparison ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... names of the men and women who have been metamorphosed and transformed in them, as from Daphne the laurel is called also Daphne; Myrrh from Myrrha, the daughter of Cinarus; Pythis from Pythis; Cinara, which is the artichoke, from one of that name; Narcissus, with Saffron, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... life and symbol of his being, to be rased. I wish that Carlton House were still standing. I wish we could still walk through those corridors, whose walls were 'crusted with ormolu,' and parquet-floors were 'so glossy that, were Narcissus to come down from heaven, he would, I maintain, need no other mirror for his beaute.' I wish that we could see the pier-glasses and the girandoles and the twisted sofas, the fauns foisted upon the ceiling ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the hill, Of the dell and the deep-sounding shelves; If in spite of Narcissus you still Take to fools who are charmed ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... still intent on that study of my robust-looking but slightly weather-beaten map when Dinky-Dunk walked in and caught me in the middle of my Narcissus act. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... own reflection. Perhaps it was mere vanity that drew him closer; perhaps the fancy that he saw a rival; perhaps, but this is not likely, thirst. Close to the margin lay a rough-edged clumsy flint. On this he settled, and, Narcissus like, feasted his eyes on his own beauty. He nearly met Narcissus' fate. It was the flint that saved him. He felt the shadow, almost before it reached him, but even so he rose too late. For half a minute he, the Purple Emperor, was prisoner in a boy's straw hat. Had the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... every branch the nightingale was plaintively warbling. The tall cypress was dancing in the garden; and the poplar never ceased clapping its hands with joy. With a loud voice from the top of every bough the turtle-dove was proclaiming the glad advent of spring. The diadem of the narcissus shone with such splendour that you would have said it was the crown of the Emperor of China. On this side the north wind, on that, the west wind, were, in token of affection, scattering dirhams at the feet of ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... threshold once crossed, the great white-and-gold decorated apartment seemed flooded with sunlight and filled with the fragrance of daffodils and jonquils and narcissus blown in through the open window, and Mistress Anne sate sweet and modest in a fine chair too big for her dear small body; but my lord Duke scarce could see her, for 'twas as if the sun shone in his eyes when there rose ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sea-nymph answered from her cave He called; the naiad left her mountain wave He dreamed of beauty; lo, amidst his dream, Narcissus, mirrored in the breathless stream; And night's chaste empress, in her bridal play, Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay; And ocean dimpled, as the languid swell Kissed the red lip of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... colour does not offend the eye, toned down as it is by the everlasting twilight shed over the mimic palace and garden by overhanging branches of cypress and yew. An expanse of smooth-shaven lawn, white beds of lily and narcissus, marble tanks bubbling over with clear, cold water, and gravelled paths winding in and out of the trees to where, a hundred yards or so distant, a sunk fence divides the garden from a piece of ground two or three acres in extent,—a perfect ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt |
