"Lethe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not over-cheerfully, of what you shall do when you get there. You are half-tired, half-ashamed, of making one more in the ignoble army of idlers, who saunter about the cliffs, and sands, and quays; to whom every wharf is but a "wharf of Lethe," by which they rot "dull as the oozy weed." You foreknow your doom by sad experience. A great deal of dressing, a lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the window with the telescope, an attempt to take a bad sketch, a walk up one parade and down another, interminable ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... impression of the light, but, destroyed and overcome by the heat and light, it becomes in substance luminous—all light—so that it is penetrated within the affection and conception. This is not immediately, at the beginning of generation, when the soul comes forth fresh from the intoxication of Lethe, and drenched with the waves of forgetfulness and confusion, so that the spirit comes into captivity to the body, and is put into the condition of growth; but little by little, it goes on digesting, so as to become fitted for the action of ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary.' 'Old age is wisdom's youth, the day of her glorious flower' (Heracles, 8) might have stood as a text for Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra. The brands visible on the tyrant's soul, and the refusal of Lethe as a sufficient punishment (Voyage to the lower World, 24 and 28), have their parallels in our new eschatology. The decision of Zeus that Heraclitus and Democritus are to be one lot that laughter and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... is it from us; exotic, extraneous; in all ways, coming from far abroad! The language of it is not foreign only but dead: Monk-Latin lies across not the British Channel, but the ninefold Stygian Marshes, Stream of Lethe, and one knows not where! Roman Latin itself, still alive for us in the Elysian Fields of Memory, is domestic in comparison. And then the ideas, life-furniture, whole workings and ways of this worthy Jocelin; covered ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... before when they had been at school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... invite us to repose, and the waters of Lethe swept over us. As the Angel of Dreams threw his mantle over me, through this gauzy mantle I seemed to trace the Queen of the Falls from earth, with her guardian angels, to the fields of Paradise, which appeared in my dream ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... noiseless falls a star. Meseems, her heart Was never close united with the world. And what have I of her, except this glance, Whose closing was involved in rigid Lethe, And in such words as by false breath of life Were made to sound so strong, e'en while they faded, Just as the wind, ere he lies down to sleep, Deceitful swells the sails as ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the swain stray Who is by thy beauties undone? To wash their remembrance away, To what distant Lethe must run? The wretch who is sentenced to die May escape, and leave justice behind; From his country perhaps he may fly, But oh! can he ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Elmore, perceiving the unwelcome and painful impression his account had produced on his young guest, now exerted himself to remove, or at least to lessen it; and turning the conversation into a classical channel, which with him was the Lethe to all cares, he soon forgot that Clarke had ever existed, in expatiating on the unappreciated excellences of Propertius, who, to his mind, was the most tender of all elegiac poets, solely because he was the most learned. Fortunately this vein of conversation, however ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to honour train'd, Who spread, when other methods fail'd, War's bloody banner, and prevail'd. Shall men like these unmention'd sleep Promiscuous with the common heap, And (Gratitude forbid the crime!) Be carried down the stream of time In shoals, unnoticed and forgot, On Lethe's stream, like flags, to rot? 200 No—they shall live, and each fair name, Recorded in the book of Fame, Founded on Honour's basis, fast As the round earth to ages last. Some virtues vanish with our breath; Virtue like this lives after death. Old Time himself, his ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... grasped the tiller, nor his hold Relaxed, nor ever from the stars withdrew His steadfast eyes, still watchful when behold! A slumberous bough the god revealed to view, Thrice dipt in Styx, and drenched with Lethe's dew. Then, lightly sprinkling, o'er the pilot's brows The drowsy dewdrops from the leaves he threw. Dim grow his eyes; the languor of repose Steals o'er his faltering sense, the lingering ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... that was of Themistocles," said Kennedy, "who rejected the offer of a Memoria Technicha, with the aspiration that some one could teach him to forget. Lethe is the grandest of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... (perhaps that also), at least a lover of visions, and of Isaiah and Ezekiel and the Revelation. Dante, Blake, Shelley, the best of Lamennais and the best of Hugo excite in me nothing but a passionate reverence. I can walk day-long and night-long by Ulai and Chebar and Lethe-Eunoe and have no thought of sneer or slumber, shrug or satiety. But when you ask me to be agitated at Count Albert of Rudolstadt's violin ventriloquising Satan I really must decline. I do even remember the poor creature Paul de Kock, and would fain turn ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton 580 Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Farr off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe the River of Oblivion roules Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks, Forthwith his former state and being forgets, Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain. Beyond this flood a frozen Continent ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... it. He thought of the long days to come, when, forgetting and forgotten, he might find a new life among these simple aliens, themselves forgotten by the world. He had thought of this once before in the garden; it occurred to him again in this Lethe-like oblivion of the little church, in the kindly pressure of the priest's hand. The ornaments no longer looked uncouth and barbaric—rather they seemed full of some new spiritual significance. He suddenly lifted his eyes to Padre Esteban, and, half ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... compressed lips and gloomy eyes. Finally he came to a stand before a card table, set full in the ruddy light of the fire, and taking up the cards ran them slowly through his fingers. "When the lotus was all plucked and Lethe drained, then cards were born into the world," he said sententiously. "Come, my friend, let us ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... gave to each his guardian or defender, who guided and guarded him during the course of his life. Eros was then led to the river of oblivion (Lethe), which takes away all memory of the past, but he was prevented from drinking of its water. Lastly, he said he could not tell how he came ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Perceval (pere, vol. viii., p. 40-46) declared the version eloignee du gout Orientale; yet he re-translated the tales from the original Arabic (Continues, Paris, 1806), and in this he was followed by Gauttier, while Southey borrowed the idea of his beautiful romance, "Thalaba the Destroyer," now in Lethe from the "History of Maughraby." Mr. A. G. Ellis considers these tales as good as the old "Arabian Nights," and my friend Mr. W. F. Kirby (Appendix to The Nights, vol. x. p. 418), quite agrees with him that Chavis ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... steps of the timid wayfarer. No noise was there, but from far down the valley there came a murmur so faint and so infinitely soothing that it was less a sound than of a lullaby remembered in dreams. For past the valley of Sleep flow the waters of Lethe, the river of Forgetfulness. Close up to the door of the cave where dwelt the twin brothers, Sleep and Death, blood-red poppies grew, and at the door itself stood shadowy forms, their fingers on their lips, enjoining silence on all those who ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... soon gets to that "ass's bridge," on the other side of which Nature, as the genius of occult things, stands with a satirical smile on her face, as she sees the proud savans toppling over into the Lethe of sheer ignorance, and getting drowned for their insane curiosity. In the asylum in France, mentioned by De Vayer, the inmates enjoyed exceedingly the imputed madness of the visiting physician. The same play is acted in the world all throughout. Our insanity has only a little more ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,[105] Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear: 'Tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,[106] A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process[107] of my death Rankly abus'd: but ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... out my swaggering arrogance, or when he stood as now, staring at the far-off smoky wall of the Hills, as though he hoped to find there, some day farther on, a wonderful message awaiting him, or some friend whom he had lost when he swam Lethe, or some ancient enemy. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... refers to the description of the House of Somnus, in Ovid's "Metamorphoses," 1. xi. 592, et seqq.; where the cave of Somnus is said to be "prope Cimmerios," ("near the Cimmerians") and "Saxo tamen exit ab imo Rivus aquae Lethes." ("A stream of Lethe's water issues from ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... darkness of a murky cell, Scraping for gold as beasts do in the earth For carrion, and counting life-time out By ducats; closing house and heart alike To the benignant sunshine. If our hearts Could lave in Lethe's cleansing stream sometimes, Till evil vanished from its memory, And left a virgin tablet for the pen Of Nature, life would be as ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... plains, Loire locked her embracing dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale, Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... where are Phlegethon and Lethe found, for of the one thou art silent, and of the other thou sayest that it is formed ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... is pretended they lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, treasure, and language, as if they had drunk of the water of oblivion, drawn out of the lake of Lethe. When they have been in this condition as long as their custom directs, they lessen this intoxicating potion; and, by degrees, the young men recover the use of their senses; but before they are quite well, they are shown in their towns; ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... he rebuked her, "it was not that which troubled you? For my part I have walked through Lethe. The past has melted like a cloud before the moon. I never lived until ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... with an air of enthusiasm on the virtues of Sultan Mahmoud, all the cruelty, indignity, and outrage committed on her countrymen and relations, by his orders, seemed to vanish from the old lady's recollection, as though she had tasted of the fabled Lethe. ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... with dule assiduous grieving, Me from the Learned Maids (Hortalus!) ever seclude, Nor can avail sweet births of the Muses thou to deliver Thought o' my mind; (so much floats it on flooding of ills: For that the Lethe-wave upsurging of late from abysses, 5 Laved my brother's foot, paling with pallor of death, He whom the Trojan soil, Rhoetean shore underlying, Buries for ever and aye, forcibly snatched from our sight. * * * * I can address; no more ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks, And, swiftly as a bright Phoebean dart, Strike for the Cretan isle; and here thou art! Too gentle Hermes, hast thou found the maid?" Whereat the star of Lethe not delay'd His rosy eloquence, and thus inquired: "Thou smooth-lipp'd serpent, surely high inspired! Thou beauteous wreath, with melancholy eyes, Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise, Telling me only where my nymph is fled,— Where she doth breathe!" "Bright ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the characteristics of the inhabitants, who seemed overdressed and vulgarly ostentatious. The gaudily trapped saloons, cafes, and music halls, spoke a similar message. This was the recreation spot of the people of the quarter; their land of lethe. So near were the saloons and drinking gardens that from their open doorways there came a pungent odor of beer. Every place had instrumental music of some kind. Mandolins and guitars, in the hands of gentlemen of color, were the favorites. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... to the myth that when souls are sent to occupy a body again they drink of Lethe that they may forget their previous existence. See the famous passage towards the end of the tenth book of ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... happily married, as the world counts happiness, and She may be dead—but never forgotten. No real love or hate is wrought upon by Lethe. The thousand dreams of her will send his blood in passionate flow and the thousand memories of her whiten his face with pain. Friendship is intermittent and passion forgets, but man's single ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... LETHE (i. e. oblivion), in the Greek mythology a stream in the nether world, a draught of the waters of which, generally extended to the ghosts of the dead on their entrance into Pluto's kingdom, obliterated all recollection of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tremble at thy fatal stream! As Lethe dreadful to the love of fame. What devastations on thy bank are seen, What shades of mighty names that once have been! A hecatomb of characters supplies Thy ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... has drank of the waters of Lethe, how can he possibly look, now, in the face of, for instance, Fessenden of Maine, to whom he has said so many bitter things against the now belauded "Secretary Seward!" Bah! Chase most certainly must have ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... in water to his chin, yet tormented with unquenchable thirst; Sisyphus despairingly labouring at his ever-descending stone. Warned by such examples, we may learn not to contemn the gods. Beyond these sad scenes, extending far to the right, are the plains of pleasure, the Elysian Fields; and Lethe, the river of oblivion, of which whoever tastes, though he should ascend to the eastern boundary of the earth, and return again to life and day, forgets whatever he ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... those limbs o' thine from wheel and pulley, from flame and gibbet, and set thee free within a world which I do hold a fair world. Yet first—those fetters—behold hammer and chisel! Oswin, thy gaoler, sleepeth as sweet as a babe, and wherefore? For that I decocted Lethe in his cup. Likewise the guard below. My father, that lived here before me (and died of a jest out of season), was skilled in herbs—and I am his son! My father (that bled out his life 'neath my lord's supper table) knew divers secret ways within the thickness of these walls—so do ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... of some artificial poisons conveyed by smells, has within these few weeks brought many persons of both sexes to an untimely fate; and, what is more surprising, has, contrary to her profession, with the same odours, revived others who had long since been drowned in the whirlpools of Lethe. Another of the professors is to be a certain lady, who is now publishing two of the choicest Saxon novels[6], which are said to have been in as great repute with the ladies of Queen Emma's Court, as the 'Memoirs from the New Atalantis' ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... think of it. When they knelt upon the turf beside some crystal brook, and drank of the water which seemed red wine or molten gold according to the nature of the trees above it, it might have been the water of Lethe. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... tasted the Lethe of Cherbourg, remained in Paris until the last minute, and stepped from the boat-train to the waiting tender. But the less well-informed came on the day before—and never, for the remainder of their ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... days? Or call you that A life of conscious happiness and joy, When every hour, dream'd listlessly away, Leads to those dark and melancholy days, Which the sad troop of the departed spend In self-forgetfulness on Lethe's shore? A useless life is but an early death; This, woman's ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... two in the morning. As the day dawned the dull grey steamy clouds settled down on us once more, while the rain fell in a regular waterspout. It was anything but a cheering prospect to look along the dreary vistas of the dull brimful Lethe—like stream, with nothing to be seen but the heavy lowering sky above, the red swollen water beneath, and the gigantic trees high towering overhead, and growing close to the water's edge, laced together with black snake—like withes, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... every now and then emitted its feeble cry. Up here the heat was tempered by a pleasant breeze. Mr. Hoopdriver was possessed by unreasonable contentment; he lit himself a cigarette and lounged more comfortably. Surely the Sussex ale is made of the waters of Lethe, of poppies and pleasant dreams. Drowsiness coiled ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... in.' But there's a strength to help the desperate weak. That night he learned how silence best can speak The awful things when Pity pleads for Sin. About the middle of the night her call Was heard, and he came wondering to the bed. 'Now kiss me, dear! it may be, now!' she said. Lethe had passed those ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drunk from the spring of Lethe," said Benedetto, contemptuously. "Anselmo, have you forgotten ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... rising barrister; a third a respectable country gentleman, justice of the peace, "and quorum;" a fourth, they tell me, a semi Papist, but set us all down together in that same room, draw the champagne corks, and let some Lethe (the said champagne, if you please) wash out all that has passed over us in the last five years, and my word on it, three out of four of us are but boys still; and though much shaving, pearl powder, and carmine, might fail to make of any of the party a heroine of any more delicate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... was dead, an hour or more. I woke when I'd already passed the door That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed. Above me, on my stretcher swinging by, I saw new stars in the subterrene sky: A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars, And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars. ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... owner, but not in time, as Willis complained, to keep him from going down to posterity astride the finis to Pericles and Aspasia. Long afterwards he expressed his hope that Landor's biographers would either let him slip off at Lethe's wharf, or else do him justice in a note. Before this unfortunate incident, Landor and Willis had corresponded on cordial terms. The old poet wrote to say how much he envied his correspondent the evenings he passed in the society ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Hollander, carried thither originally from China, seems to thrive particularly well in this part of the world; the little pug dog, or Dutch mastiff, which our English ladies were once so fond of, that poor Garrick thought it worth his while to ridicule them for it in the famous dramatic satire called Lethe, has quitted London for Padua, I perceive; where he is restored happily to his former honours, and every carriage I meet here has a pug in it. That breed of dogs is now so near extirpated among us, that I recoiled: only Lord Penryn who possesses ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... through fields of scentless asphodel, and through tall sullen groves of myrtle,—the puzzled quiet dead, who may not even weep as I do now, but can only wonder what it is that they regret. And I too must taste of Lethe, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... leaves, & painted birds Wailing for food sail through the piercing air; Then you descend to deepest night and reign Great Queen of Tartarus, 'mid [Footnote: MS. mid] shadows dire, Offspring of Hell,—or in the silent groves Of, fair Elysium through which Lethe runs, The sleepy river; where the windless air Is never struck by flight or song of bird,— But all is calm and clear, bestowing rest, [28] After the toil of life, to wretched men, Whom thus the Gods reward for sufferings Gods cannot know; ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... beautiful young man, who lies watched by angels beneath a heavy-curtained canopy. The genii of eternal repose modelled by Greek sculptors are twin-brothers of Love, on whom perpetual slumber has descended amid poppy-fields by Lethe's stream. The turmoil of the world is over for them; they will never wake again; they do not even dream. Sleep is the only power that still has life in them. But the Christian cannot thus conceive the mystery of the soul "fallen on sleep." ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the Perfect His eyes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... grim, stern ruler over hell. He is also called Hades and Orcus. He has a throne of sulphur, from beneath which flows the Rivers Lethe, or "Oblivion," Phlegethon, Cocytus and Acheron. In one hand he holds his fork and in the other the keys of hell, and beside him is the dog with three heads. He is described as being well qualified for his position, being ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... animals which have acquired goodness will take upon them human form"; and Virgil says: "After death, the souls come to the Elysian fields, or to Tartarus, and there meet with the reward or punishment of their deeds during life. Later, on drinking of the waters of Lethe, which takes away all memory of the past, they return to earth." But it must be admitted that Rome was deficient in spiritual insight and beliefs, on the whole, her material successes having diverted her ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... strong, Jenny," he told his niece. "I have been most active in mind and body and am by no means so far down the hill of old age, that ends by the River of Lethe, ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... early dream Remembrance never must awake: Oh! where is Lethe's fabled stream? My foolish heart, be still, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... is his worthy bride. Dying, bitten by a snake in the grass as she flees from danger, she descends to Hades. But the surpassing love of the sweet singer dares to enter that august shadow, not to drink the Waters of Lethe only and to forget, but also to drink the waters of Eunoe and to remember. His music charms the dead, and those who have the power of death. Even the hard-hearted monarch of hell is moved for ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... return to Liberty with more Joy, and with more lingering expectation, than I do to my escape from this maternal bondage, and this accursed place, which is the region of dullness itself, and more stupid than the banks of Lethe, though it possesses contrary qualities to the river of oblivion, as the detested scenes I now witness, make me regret the happier ones already passed, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... beheld in vain: Like Tantalus, who in the realms below Sees blushing fruits, which to increase his pain, When he attempts to eat, his taste forego. O Venus! give me more, or let me drink Of Lethe's fountain, and forget ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... dove— Oh! wing'd she ever from my longing heart, The waters of my life would quick subside, And leave me stranded on the shoals of Time. What if God saw her hovering aloft, And smiled her in amongst his cherubim? What if the draught of bliss should, Lethe-like, Blot me for ever from her memory, So that she sought me never, never more? Oblivion! take again this fearful power— No more shall Fate be tempted with my wealth, Lest covetous it rob ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... down where I have trod, And they remain, and they remain, Etched in unutterable pain, Loved lips and faces now apart, That once were closer than my heart — In agony, in agony, And horribly a part of me.... For Lethe is for no man set, And in ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... easy to explain, and when he had heard me to the end he said: "I might have thought of that. You sometimes need a cup of Lethe water. But now let such things alone, and don't compromise your reputation as a scientist by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rear, galloping across pastures, trotting through bridle gates, creeping through gaps, and cantering along the green rides of a wood, thus causing a healthy excitement, with no painful reaction: and if, unhappily, soured or overpressed by work and anxious thoughts, drinking in such draughts of Lethe as can no ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... Abbé I delighted in the confessions of this young man, a naïf young man, a little vicious in his naïveté, who says that his soul must have been dipped in Lethe so deeply that he came into the world without remembrance of previous existence. He can find no other explanation for the fact that the world always seems to him more new, more wonderful than it did to anyone he ever met on his faring; every wayside acquaintance ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... miles under the hardest of circumstances. The Trail was the home of the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Arapahoes, the Otoes, Omahas, Utes, and others, who knew neither law nor mercy. The waters were often alkaline and deadly as Lethe. A thousand miles afoot was the record some had to make. They appealed to the government, then at war with Mexico, to permit a number of their men to enlist as soldiers to be marched over the ancient Santa Fe Trail, and thus be able to ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... which I could reason calmly, and trace dispassionately its light and shadow. Having satisfied myself that I had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion of human sorrow. The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life, even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of opium, the only true minister to a mind diseased, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Very probably similar instruction was given to the initiate at Eleusis. But the Fijians also have a regular theory of what is to be done and avoided on "The Path of the Shades." The shade is ferried by Ceba (Charon) over Wainiyalo (Lethe); he reaches the mystic pandanus tree (here occurs a rite); he meets, and dodges, Drodroyalo and the two devouring Goddesses; he comes to a spring, and drinks, and forgets sorrow at Wai-na-dula, the "Water ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks have already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... the river Lethe," observed King Pluto. "Is it not a very pleasant stream?" "I think it a very dismal one," said Proserpina. "It suits my taste, however," answered Pluto, who was apt to be sullen when anybody disagreed with him. "At all events, its water has one very excellent quality; for a single ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... are the sham-sentiments, the temptations to look back and pose. The music of our lyre is the love and thought we bring to our every-day life. Let us keep steadily on with the music, and lead our Eurydice right through Hades until we have her safely over the Lethe, and we know sentimentality ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... memory of the crime committed the previous evening, change his deed or its results in the slightest degree? Rebirths are nothing more than the morrows of former lives, and though the merciful waters of Lethe have effaced their memory, the forces stored up in the soul, during the ages, perform their work all ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... for him. He had joined that troop of phantom children who come to us in our lonely hours, saying, "We are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... pitched upon this. She knew well that she could not comfort her husband in the anxiety that was gnawing at his heart-strings, but she was jealous of comfort that might come to him from any other source, and the Lethe of wine and jolly companionship she dreaded most of all. Long, long before, she had induced him to promise that he would never offer the young officers spirits in his house. She would not prohibit wine at table, ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... the common belief. But the saying is far from true; and Shakespeare's ghost must have sipped large draughts of Lethe, to be capable of speaking thus. For, though the least that he did is worth more than all that was done before him, and though his poorest performances surpass the best of his models; it is nevertheless certain that his task was but to continue and perfect what was already begun. Not ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... bold, shy, pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress; and every fancy was as dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as if the three old aqueducts that still remain entire had brought Lethe into Rome, upon their sturdy ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... 7-1/5 cents! And a mass of Loewenbraeu, twice the size of the seidel sold in this country at twenty cents, for forty pfennigs (9-1/2 cents)! An inviting and appetizing spot, believe me. A place to stretch your legs. A temple of Lethe. There, when my days of moneylust are over, I go to chew my memories and dream my dreams and listen to my ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... say little, for she was tired, and made haste to get into bed. It was not long before the subject of their plans and problems and visions of spies and "jam-stained fists" were lost in the lethe of dreamland. ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... plunged under, arms wide and eyes staring, and heart bursting with despair. Everything in him seemed bursting—an agonising sensation—as his overstrained lungs collapsed, and the power of his strong limbs failed him; then everything seemed to break away and let in the floods of Lethe with a rush—confusion and forgetfulness and a whirl of dreams, settling to a strange peace, an irresistible sleep, as if he had swallowed a magic opiate. The sea took him, as a nurse takes a helpless child, and floated him up from ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... twitting me for a broken promise in not joining him: "We are reasonably jolly, but rurally so; going to bed o' nights at ten, and bathing o' mornings at half-past seven; and not drugging ourselves with those dirty and spoiled waters of Lethe that flow round the base of the great pyramid." Then, after mention of the friends who had left him, Sheriff Gordon, the Leeches, Lemon, Egg and Stone: "reflection and pensiveness are coming. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... servants and told them to get ready a grand supper with all kinds of dainty food and sweet things such as children like. "And be sure not to forget a golden cup filled with the water of Lethe," ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... a time and oft had Harold loved, Or dreamed he loved, since rapture is a dream; But now his wayward bosom was unmoved, For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream: And lately had he learned with truth to deem Love has no gift so grateful as his wings: How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem, Full from the fount of joy's delicious springs Some bitter o'er the flowers ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe's flood, at last he restores them to the primordial human shapes." ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Women with faded eyes, all spent of tears; Men who have lived for love, yet lived alone; And worse than so, whose grief cannot be said. O God, thou hast a work to do indeed To save these hearts of thine with full content, Except thou give them Lethe's stream to drink, And that, my God, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... of the same kind happens with himself. Had he, on his way hither from the convent, passed unwittingly through some river or rivulet of Lethe, that had carried away from him all his so carefully accumulated intellectual baggage of fact and theory? The hard and abstract laws, or theory of the laws, of music, of the stars, of mechanical structure, in hard and abstract formulae, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... as regards the human will, is as sure in Determination as it is in Consciousness. Habit is as inevitable as Memory; and as nothing can be forgotten, but, when once known, is known forever,—so nothing is done but will be done again. Lethe and Annihilation are only myths upon the earth, which men, though suspicious of their eternal falsehood, name to themselves in moments of despair and fearful apprehension. The poppy has only a fabled virtue; but, like Persephone, we have all tasted ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... conception that man has returned into this life from anterior experiences of it is met by the opposing fact that he does not remember any preceding career. The explanatory idea is at once hit upon of a fountain of oblivion a river Lethe from which the disembodied soul drinks ere it reappears. Once establish in the popular imagination the conception of the Olympian synod of gods, and a thousand dramatic tales of action and adventure, appropriate to the characters of the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of Trophonius in Boeotia, though he was nothing more than a hero, was in great reputation.(83) After many preliminary ceremonies, as washing in the river, offering sacrifices, drinking a water called Lethe, from its quality of making people forget every thing, the votaries went down into his cave, by small ladders, through a very narrow passage. At the bottom was another little cavern, the entrance of which was also exceeding small. There they lay down upon the ground, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... had, what looked like a mountain in that subterranean region, rising from the ground, with a stream running at its base. We crossed several rivers; besides the "Echo," one called the "Styx," the other the "Lethe." Our guide had brought a net, with which he caught some fish and crawfish. On examining them we could discover no appearance of eyes, while, from being deprived of the warm rays of the sun, they were perfectly white. Uncle Denis remarked that as they had no lamps down there, eyes would ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... his loftie steed, He to him lept, in mind to reave his life, And proudly said, Lo there the worthie meed Of him that slew Sansfoy with bloudie knife; Henceforth his ghost freed from repining strife, 320 In peace may passen over Lethe lake,[*] When mourning altars purgd with enemies life, The blacke infernall Furies[*] doen aslake: Life from Sansfoy thou tookst, Sansloy shall ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... zig-zag passage so narrow and winding that the one behind cannot see his neighbor a yard ahead; and then out into the ample comfort of Great Relief. Merrily they filled the little boats and sailed down Echo River, where abound the eyeless fish; crossed Lake Lethe, where all care is said to be left behind; passed the huge Granite Coffin; stood wondering before the Great Eastern; shuddered beside the Dead Sea and the Bottomless Pit; climbed Martha's Vineyard, where huge bunches of grapes in stone looked as natural ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... launches forth some political pamphlet, he is probably weaned of revolutions, and possesses all the calmness of a man whose first years have been spent in excitement and troubles, and who at length finds consolation in study alone; the well of science proving to him the waters of Lethe, in which he drinks the oblivion of all his past sorrows. And it is very much the case in Mexico at present, that the most distinguished men are those who live most retired; those who have played their part on the arena of public life, have seen the inutility of their efforts in favour ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... always a merry wit. But, indeed, the boy is a brave boy, and a quick boy, Sir Richard, but more forgetful than Lethe; and—sapienti loquor—it were well if he were away, for I shall never see him again without my head aching. Moreover, he put my son Jack upon the fire last Wednesday, as you would put a football, though he is a year older, your worship, because, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... he heed them. So low he fell that all means for his salvation were already short, save showing him the lost people.[32] For this I visited the gate of the dead, and to him, who has conducted him up hither, my prayers were borne with weeping. The high decree of God would be broken, if Lethe should be passed, and such viands should be tasted without any scot of repentance ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the soft machine: How two red lips affected zephyrs blow, To cool the Bohea, and inflame the beau: While one white finger, and a thumb, conspire To lift the cup, and make the world admire. Tea! how I tremble at thy fatal stream! As Lethe, dreadful to the love of fame. What devastations on thy banks are seen! What shades of mighty names which once have been! An hecatomb of characters supplies Thy painted altars' daily sacrifice. H——, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... be remembered, but to be forgotten, and forgotten thus; for if they were forgotten they would be everlastingly re-discovered and re-read. It is a monotonous memory which keeps us in the main from seeing things as splendid as they are. The ancients were not wrong when they made Lethe the boundary of a better land; perhaps the only flaw in their system is that a man who had bathed in the river of forgetfulness would be as likely as not to climb back upon the bank of the earth ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... forward and back in his world-experience, calling into vague, drowsy, fluttering response things that would later awaken to full life, and reanimating the dim and beautiful instincts that are an heritage of that time when the soul is passing the lethe of earliest childhood and retains still a wavering iridescence of the glory from which it has come. The question rose to his lips ready for the asking. He wanted to turn track on the instant, to call for Celia, to demand of her the response to ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... ground. From ev'ry turret, ev'ry vanquish'd tower, In heaps confused the broken fragments pour; And, as they plunge toward the pebbly grave, Like wizard wand, draw circles in the wave. Meand'ring stream! thy liquid jaws extend, Anoint with Lethe now thy fallen friend. Again the heralds of the thunder fly, In forky squadrons, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... thoughtfully I went, Gazing on him; and, only for the fire, Approach'd not nearer. When my eyes were fed By looking on him, with such solemn pledge, As forces credence, I devoted me Unto his service wholly. In reply He thus bespake me: "What from thee I hear Is grav'd so deeply on my mind, the waves Of Lethe shall not wash it off, nor make A whit less lively. But as now thy oath Has seal'd the truth, declare what cause impels That love, which both thy looks and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... cool and dewy fingers press My mortal-fevered brow, while in my heart She poured with tender love Her healing Lethe-balm! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Knights of the Round Table were poor day-labourers, employed to row over the rivers of Cocytus, Phlegeton, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when my lords the devils had a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as in the like occasion are hired the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers of Venice, and oars at London. But with this difference, that these poor knights have only for their fare a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... into the pockets of his shiny trousers and slouched along towards the next village. About a mile ahead was an inn he knew of where he might enjoy a great refreshment, and drink the waters of Lethe. He jingled the silver in his pocket and reflected that for one night at least he could eat strongly, and ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... greatest book, ever written; so great is it, in fact, so vast in its style, so lofty in its ideal, that to those who have reflected upon it and justly apprehended it, it has become unplayable. As well attempt to score the music of the spheres, or to paint "the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." In "King Lear" there is a personage who may be very instructively compared with others of the same kind by the student of Shakespeare's mental development. This is the Fool. Shakespeare's fools or clowns (such as those in "Love's Labor's Lost" ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... is this!' exclaimed the Countess, as the carriage penetrated the deeper recesses of the woods. 'Surely, my lord, you do not mean to pass all the autumn in this barbarous spot! One ought to bring hither a cup of the waters of Lethe, that the remembrance of pleasanter scenes may not heighten, at least, the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... afflictions of others, in the mind of the person who inflicts those wrongs and oppressions! The oppressor soon forgets. This robbery took place in 17[81]; it was in the year 1783 when he asserted that the waters of Lethe had been poured over all their wrongs and oppressions. Your Lordships will mark this insulting language, when he says that both the order of the Directors and the application of the Begums for redress must ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... a periodical without being exhorted to train one's memory for a variety of reasons. The neuropath needs a system of forgetfulness. Lethe is often a greater friend ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... could not die. Lethe was only a fable of the olden times. A place of safety is not always a place of freedom from pain. It could not be so in this instance. Yet, for a time, like the exhausted prisoner borne back from torture to his cell, the crushed members reposed in delicious insensibility. The hard pallet ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... three elements conspire can something happen. Life suggests to the mind of a contemplative observer many possible events which remain unrealized because only one or two of the necessary three elements are present,—events that are waiting, like unborn children on the other side of Lethe, until the necessary conditions shall call them into being. We observe a man who could do a great thing of a certain sort if only that sort of thing were demanded to be done at the time and in the place in which he loiters wasted. We grow aware of a great thing longing to be done, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... forth thy blood, It would become me better than to close In terms of friendship with thine enemies. Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart; 205 Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand, Sign'd in thy spoil and crimson'd in thy lethe. O world, thou wast the forest to this hart; And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee. How like a deer, strucken by many princes, 210 ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... could in any wise be hoped for — of the things that must be gained and the things that must be lost before that 'for ever' rest could in any sort be looked forward to, — and dismissing the thought, Elizabeth blessed her fragrant moss pillow of Lethe and went to ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... quarter-deck until regularly relieved. Yet drowsiness being incidental to all natures, even to Napoleon, beside his own sentry napping in the snowy bivouac; so, often, in snowy moonlight, or ebon eclipse, dozed Mark, our harpooneer. Lethe be his portion this blessed night, thought I, as during the morning which preceded our enterprise, I eyed the man who might possibly cross ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... one, because importuned to that step. He, who waits at your feet and implores acceptance, might not be so miserable after all, as he and you imagine, should you decline his overtures. In the cares of a busy world, he may find a draught of the waters of Lethe. His affections,—if it be a pure and deep love that impels him, and not insanity or mental intoxication,—may be turned into other channels, and the remnant of his life prove, after all, an endurable evil. He may be directed to a companion, who will render his lot far ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... weeping mute, To angry gods the scorn and prey, But tasted of the charmed fruit, And cast despair itself away; So, while unto thy lips, its shore, This stream of life enchanted flows, Remember'd grief, that stung before, Sinks down to Lethe's calm repose. So, while unto thy lips, its shore, The stream of life enchanted flows— Drown'd deep in Lethe's calm repose, The grief that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... my lord, you'll call him to the helm."— "Doctor—a glorious scheme to ease your grief! When cures are cross, a school's a sure relief. You cannot fail of being happy there, The lake will be the Lethe of your care: The scheme is for your honour and your ease: And, doctor, I'll promote it when you please. Meanwhile, allowing things below your merit, Yet, doctor, you've a philosophic spirit; Your wants are few, and, like your income, small, And you've enough to gratify them ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... aching gratefully in many joints, I had plunged into the hammock's Lethe, swooning shamelessly to a benign oblivion. Dreamless it must long have been, for the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn, corral, and bunk house were long to the east when next I observed them. But I fought to this wakefulness through one of those dreams of a monstrous futility that ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... skalds. We have not a single proof that they were acquainted with any saga or any skaldic composition. All remembrance of their national poetry was as completely obliterated among the posterity of the Northmen in France, as if, in traversing the ocean, they had drank of the water of Lethe. This total oblivion of their original home they have in common with the West Goths, who in Castilian poesy have not left the faintest trace of their original manners and opinions. The same remark has been applied to the Vareger, who founded a royal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... nose all straight again. This is medicinal, but you do not know how. I put him in your window, I make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so you sleep well. Oh, yes! They, like the lotus flower, make your trouble forgotten. It smell so like the waters of Lethe, and of that fountain of youth that the Conquistadores sought for in the Floridas, and find him ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... involuntarily of the "slime which the aspic leaves upon the caves of Nile." Many of us have been Anglo-Indian babies. Was there a time when we suffered caresses such as these? What a happy thing it is that Lethe flows over us as we emerge from infancy, and blots out all that was before. Another question has been stirring in my mind since that scene. What feeling or motive prompted those luscious blandishments? Was it simple hypocrisy? I do ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... job began. In the excitement of a hunt, as if for ancient treasure, for a long time, through many ten hour shifts, Frank Nelsen found a perhaps unfortunate Lethe of forgetfulness for his worries, and for the mind-poisoning effects of the silence and desolation in this remote part ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... me about Dante's Hell—and Lethe. Two books in my childhood gave the outward and visible signs of that inward and spiritual interest in Death and the Life to Come which is one of the most vehement ones of childhood (and which breaks out QUITE as strongly ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... whose head Calm days have flown and closed the sixtieth year, Back on this flight he looks and feels no dread To think that Lethe's waters flow so near. There is no day of all the train that gives A pang; no moment that he would forget. A good man's span is doubled; twice he lives Who, viewing his past life, enjoys ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Both can bear witness of my lamentation; All day sad sighing Corin you shall see, All night he spends in tears and exclamation. Thus still I live although I take no rest, But living look as one that is a-dying; Thus my sad soul with care and grief oppressed, Seems as a ghost to Styx and Lethe flying. Thus hath fond love bereft my youthful years Of all good hap before ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... declination Of adjectives they've derivation: PulchrE and doctE, are the kind Of adverbs that I have in mind. FermE is long, and ferE also— Ben{e}, and mal{e}, not at all so. Lastly, each final eta Greek, Is long on all days of the week— To wit— (for thus we render nempe) LethE, AnchisE, cetE, TempE. Those words as long we classify Which end, like egotists, in i, Rememb'ring mihi, tibi, sibi Are common, so are ubi, ibi; Nis{i} is always short, and quas{i}'s Short also, so are certain cases In i— Greek vocatives and ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... player left for America, where she procured an engagement in New York City, and, so far as London was concerned, she might have found rest and retiredness in the waters of Lethe. Of her reception in the old New York Theater; the verdict of the phalanx of critics assembled in the Shakespeare box which, according to tradition, held more than two hundred souls; the gossip over confections or tea in the coffee room of the theater—it is unnecessary to dwell upon. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... see The valley of sweet waters, were to know Earth paved like Heaven; and to seem such to me Even now what wants thy stream?—that it should Lethe be: * * * * * * * But o'er the blacken'd memory's blighting dream Thy waves would vainly roll, all ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... some time bear From scenes of mirthfulness or care Each fated human soul,— Shall waft and leave its burden where The waves of Lethe roll. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... Young Betty {21} doth he flee! Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam, He liveth only in man's present e'e; His life a flash, his memory a dream, Oblivious down he drops in Lethe's stream. Yet what are they, the learned and the great? Awhile of longer wonderment the theme! Who shall presume to prophesy THEIR date, Where nought is certain, save the uncertainty ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... (such is rumour's tale), Faced with a rude financial deadlock, Is bent on mulcting every male Who shirks the privilege of wedlock; With such a hurt Time cannot deal, And Lethe here affords no tonic; Nothing but Death can hope to heal What looks as if it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... power of nature had been harnessed to do man service in his utmost extremity; science had perfected its instruments, but one link in the chain was fallible man. The bell would tinkle—the watcher would be laughing out of earshot—and the life would sink back into Lethe ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Then, again, let us never forget that the temptation to drink is strongest when want is sharpest and misery the most acute. A well-fed man is not driven to drink by the craving that torments the hungry; and the comfortable do not crave for the boon of forgetfulness. Gin is the only Lethe of the miserable. The foul and poisoned air of the dens in which thousands live predisposes to a longing for stimulant. Fresh air, with its oxygen and its ozone, being lacking, a man supplies the want with spirit. After a time the longing for drink becomes a mania. Life seems as insupportable without ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... our arms we straight do fly, And forthwith march away; Few towns or cities we come nigh Good liquor us deny; In Lethe deep our woes we steep - Our loves forgotten be, Amongst the jovialst we sing, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... dissolv'd, Fed with the fresh supply of earthly dregs, Threatening a dearth [107] and famine to this land! Flying dragons, lightning, fearful thunder-claps, Singe these fair plains, and make them seem as black As is the island where the Furies mask, Compass'd with Lethe, Styx, and Phlegethon, Because my dear ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... watching; accordingly we took it turn about, two at each entrance for two hours at each time, a little one and a big one always together. The remainder went about their usual occupations, all except lessons, about which Madame seemed to have tasted the waters of Lethe. We suffered rather in point of meals, as we dared not light a fire for fear of the smoke discovering us. Besides our kitchen apparatus was all in the house, so that altogether, what with fatigue, worry, and discomfort, we were getting unanimous ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... stranger! Who can escape? To live is to remember. To die—oh, who would forget! Even had I been weeping, and not merely mocking time away, would my tears be of Lethe at my mouth's corners? No," said Anthea, "why feign and lie? All I am is but ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, That all knowledge was but remembrance; so Solomon giveth his sentence, That all novelty is but oblivion. Whereby you may see, that the river of Lethe runneth as well above ground as below. There is an abstruse astrologer that saith, If it were not for two things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever stand a like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... tens of thousands of occupants. The houses are a little too good for artisans, too small and too silent to be the abode of various lodgers, and too mean for clerks who live on salaries. They are as dull-looking as Lethe itself, dull and silent, dingy and repulsive. But they are not discreditable in appearance, and never have that Mohawk look which by some unknown sympathy in bricks and mortar attaches itself to the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... men and barbarous laws; These were the rough ways of the world till now. Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free: For she that out of Lethe scales with man The shining steps of Nature, shares with man His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, Stays all the fair young planet in her hands— If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow? but work no more alone! ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... my amber Pipe awhile And from its Bowl narcotic Joys beguile, Suck Lethe from its Stem - what though I trace A certain greenish Pallour in ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... No happy peasant, o'er his blazing hearth, Devotes the supper hour to love and mirth; No flowers on Piety's pure altar bloom; Alas! they wither now, and strew her tomb! From the Great Book of Nations fiercely rent, My country's page to Lethe's stream is sent— But sent in vain! The historic Muse shall raise O'er wronged Sarmatia's cause the voice of praise,— Shall sing her dauntless on the field of death, And blast her royal robbers' ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... because we knew we shouldn't get tired; and when two people feel that about each other they must live together—or part. I don't see what else they can do. A little trip along the coast won't answer. It's the high seas—or else being tied up to Lethe wharf. And I'm for the ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... from out her golden rim, And, softly dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain top. Steals drowsily and musically Into the univeral valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave; The lily lolls upon the wave; Wrapping the fog about its breast, The ruin moulders into rest; Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take, And would not, for the world, awake. All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies (Her easement open to the skies) Irene, with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Lethe was Joy's well. The past has floated from me like a bank of mist, I stand flooded in light. And if I look behind me I see nothing. Two phantoms merely,—my love for my mother, my love for you,—all else is gone. Where are they now, the clouds that pressed so close upon me? Three words, and ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... little star-like purple flower, such as never grew on land or sea, nestling in the golden darkness of the fur. It seemed to April a flower that might have been plucked from the slopes of the blue hills of Nirvana, or found floating on the still waters of Lethe in that land where it is always afternoon. It brought dreams of romance to her heart, and made starry flowers of its own colour blossom in her eyes. She crushed the hat softly down upon her dark, winging hair, crinking and shaping it to frame her face ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... minutes of walking brought them to its banks. The stream flowed greasily and dark, some forty yards wide, but in the middle it forked about a spit of sand not more than ten paces broad. It was a very Lethe of a river, running oilily and with a slumberous sound, and its reputation for crocodiles ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... an undivided impulse, the more than woman born to represent her age. Nor was it without reason that Dante symbolised in her the love of Holy Church; though students of the 'Purgatory' will hardly recognise the lovely maiden, singing and plucking flowers beside the stream of Lethe, in the stern and warlike chatelaine of Canossa. Unfortunately we know but little of Matilda's personal appearance. Her health was not strong; and it is said to have been weakened, especially in her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Even all I have; ay, and myself and all Will I withal endow a child of thine; So in the Lethe of thy angry soul Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs Which thou supposest I have done ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... he answered; "and on the way there is the orchard where grow the golden apples of Hesperides, and the dragon is dead now that used to guard them, and so any one may help himself to the beautiful fruit. And by the side of the orchard flows the river Lethe, of which it is not well for man to drink, though many men would taste it gladly." And again ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... 'Lethe' is another classic myth. It is [Greek: ho tes lethes potamos]—the river of forgetfulness, 'the oblivious pool.' Perhaps is it that all of us, as well as the son of Thetis, had a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Yes, Lethe," smiled Wiesike. "It's a pity that while the ancient Swedes, the Greeks, were leaving us the name they did not leave us also the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... kindly interpose Thy soothing wings betwixt me and my care. These eyes, which seem in love with weeping, close! And make my senses for a time thy bower, That whilst I sleep I may my sorrows lose. I do not crave that thou the wand of power, Three times in Lethe dipp'd, at me shouldst shake, And all my senses sprinkle o'er and o'er; Let souls, more fortunate, thereof partake— Of languid rest a portion scant and slight, My weary, wandering eyes content will make. Now all the ...
— Targum • George Borrow |
