"Vestal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... listening to the sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, voracious, votive, vulnerable, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... me of his wife, the daughter of Carlo Maratti, the painter. She was so beautiful that she was her father's favourite model for his Nymphs, Madonnas, and Vestal Virgins; and to her charms she added virtue, and to her virtue uncommon musical and literary talents. Among her poems, there is a sonnet addressed to a lady, once beloved ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... His latest victories still thickest came, As near the centre motion doth increase; Till he, press'd down by his own weighty name, Did, like the vestal,[13] under spoils decease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... realities, so religion witnessed the foundering of a system of ethics contrary to the moral code that had slowly been established. The idea of collective responsibility contained in a number of beliefs is one instance. If a vestal violated her vow of chastity the divinity sent a pest that ceased only on the day the culprit was punished. Sometimes the angry heavens granted victory to the army only on condition that a general or soldier ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... my heart I have never doubted my mother's faith. When I imagined I did I was self-deceived. Everything here confirms it, and Miss Walton more than all. I will consult the divine oracle. She shall be the fair vestal, the gentle priestess. She lives near to heaven, and knows its mind. If her kind and womanly nature shrinks from me, if she coldly draws her skirts aside that I pollute them not even with a touch—if she by word or even manner proves ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... whose half-sister was a Vestal, seems to have taken sanctuary with the Vestals, as did the mother and sister of Augustus in B.C. 43. The special indignity of which Cicero complains is that she had been forced to leave the sanctuary and appear at the bank of Valerius, but for what purpose we cannot now tell. It is suggested ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... won her, do I woo? Because her spirit's vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... after year, one of these—to whom the seed sown in London ball-rooms and German watering-places had produced nothing yet but those tiresome garlands of the vestal—I look curiously to see how she wears, thinking of the courtier's answer to Louis XIV. when the latter asked if he was looking older: "Sire, I see some more victories written on your forehead." It is more defeats that one can read so plainly ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... having long selected the more beautiful women.) Here is a more curious case; the priestesses who attended the temple of Venus Erycina at San- Giuliano in Sicily, were selected for their beauty out of the whole of Greece; they were not vestal virgins, and Quatrefages (3. 'Anthropologie,' 'Revue des Cours Scientifiques,' Oct. 1868, p. 721.), who states the foregoing fact, says that the women of San-Giuliano are now famous as the most beautiful in the island, and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the vestal fire begun, Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame, Devised a vessel to receive the sun, Being stedfastly opposed to the same; Where with sweet wood laid curiously by art, On which the sun ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... ideas, twists the meaning of these names, trying to reconcile them with some system, though Hesiod merely gave his maidens their names from his own fancy. So Homer altered the name of one of them, naming her Pasithea, and betrothed her to a husband, in order that you may know that they are not vestal virgins. [Footnote: i.e. not vowed ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... to immortalize—Alexander was begot by a Salamander, that visited his Mother in the form of a Serpent, because he would not make King Philip jealous; and that famous Philosopher Merlin was begotten on a Vestal Nun, a certain King's Daughter, by a most beautiful young Salamander; as indeed all the Heroes, and Men of mighty ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... that of the women at the tomb of Christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The Golden Stairs," and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... wouldst thou talk of love To Marcia, whilst her father's life's in danger? Thou might'st as well court the pale, trembling vestal, When she beholds ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... OF PRIMEVAL FIRE! YOUR vestal train Hung with gold-tresses o'er the vast inane, Pierced with your silver shafts the throne of Night, 100 And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with light; When LOVE DIVINE, with brooding wings unfurl'd, Call'd from the rude abyss the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the old Greek observance of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the Athena of Corinth; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristic difference in every conception of the schools, the Greek never representing expression, the Italian primarily seeking ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... French painter, decorated the foyer of the Grand Opera in Paris; is best known as the author of the "Punishment of a Vestal Virgin" and the "Assassination ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of these fifteen was Amulius, who took the throne from his brother Numitor, who had a daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin. In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta was tended by good men, but in Italy it was the charge of maidens, who were treated with great honor, but were never allowed to marry under pain of death. So there was great anger when ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... women who haunt the tables d'hote of every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere their fantastic manias, their petrified vestal manners, their indescribable toilettes, and a certain odor of india-rubber, which makes one believe that at night they slip themselves into a case of that material. When I meet one of these people in a hotel, I act like birds which see ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... amphitheatre, among the youth of his own age! with what an appetite for every detail of the entertainment, and its various accessories:—the sunshine, filtered into soft gold by the vela, with their serpentine patterning, spread over the more select part of the company; the Vestal virgins, taking their privilege of seats near the empress Faustina, who sat there in a maze of double-coloured gems, changing, as she moved, like the waves of the sea; the cool circle of shadow, in which the wonderful toilets of the fashionable told so effectively around the blazing arena, covered ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... stage of beauty, from the hint that a tiny spot of green and white, bursting through the dark earth, might give, to the fully-developed blossoms, hanging lightly on its graceful stalks, robed in its vestal garb of white, and shedding its own peculiar fragrance on the pure air. I gathered large supplies—enough to make me the envy of all the lovers of spring-flowers whom I met; enough to fill my moss-basket, and vases, and glasses without end for myself; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... the cloud of some darkening hour O'ershadows the soul with its gloom, Then where is the light of the vestal pow'r, The lamp of pale Hope to illume? Oh! the light ever lies In those bright fond eyes, Where Heaven has impressed its own blue As a seal from the skies As my heart relies On that gift of its ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... many changes for the better in the lives of these people. Her very presence in a room was an inspiration for cleanliness. Her clothes were no better than theirs but she stood out among them like a vestal virgin. She came into their quarters and made the women ashamed that the rooms were not better fitted to receive so pure a being. You would scarcely have recognized Michele's rooms at the end of the first year. The windows were cleaned, the floors ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... furious over the thought of a woman learning much, and still more, venturing to use such acquirement; but heretical Christians insisted that the respect which Romans had paid to the Vestal Virgin was her right, and each founder of a new sect had some woman as helper. But as a rule, her highest post during the first three centuries of Christianity was that of doorkeeper or message-woman, her economic dependence upon man being absolute. ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... said the father—and his eyes shone—'rise and look yonder. Do you see the citadel? Under its marble floor there is a grave. It is that of one who kissed a vestal and was buried alive. There are sacred people in Rome, and among them is this daughter of my beloved Publius. Go you to your palace, son of Herod, and, hereafter, forget not that ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... through the buzz of the crowd, The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud Some comment upon his gay humor that day? He never was gayer: what makes him so gay? 'Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune, Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be nameless, That vestal that yields to Mars ONLY is blameless! Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled, stirs All his heart into tumult?... ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... own hands? Oh, am I worthy of such kindness; have I done any thing entitling me to such a proof of condescension on her part, and am I thus honored by her who is the guardian angel of Prussia!—whom Napoleon hates, because he fears her zeal and fidelity. As a vestal, she has kept alive the fire of patriotism on the altar of her country. When all despair, she still hopes for the redemption of her people from a victorious but merciless enemy. I will consecrate my life anew to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... conventional sailor suit, but without color, and this effect of purity, the inscrutable delicacy of her, seemed to set her apart from these dark, materialistic sisters as though she had strayed like a lost vestal into the wrong atmosphere. His brows relaxed. For a moment the censor that had come to hold dominion in his heart was off guard. He felt the magnetism of her personality drawing him once more; he desired to cross ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to protect them from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many signal inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early days had been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue had been ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... representation.' All this is very true, but not at all applicable in this instance. This time Racine is well judged. The denouement is the most ridiculous I ever heard. Imagine that silly, conceited Junia turning vestal, as if Madame de Sennes were to enter the Ursuline Convent. Heaven forbid that I should play the scholar; but I have read in Menage that it required other formalities to take the veil in the convent of ladies of the society of Vesta. I forgot the most essential. Your little ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... must needs be perfect, clearly indicating its origin by an exemption from all that besets ordinary human feelings, that it must be a strong, uniform, never flickering, never darkening, and perpetual light, a kind of vestal fire burning always on the altar of the heart! The passage before us, and all others that speak about the matter, give us the directly opposite notion. The Divine Spirit, when it enters into the narrow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... round, rough logs on the outside, and the weeds and wild vines each year grew still more ambitious to get quite to the top of the cabin, and peep down into the mysterious crater of a chimney that forever smoked in a mournful and monotonous sort of way, as if watchers were there—Vestal virgins, who dared not let their fires perish, on penalty ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... Troy. Numitor chose the kingdom; but Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than human size and beauty, whom Amulius, becoming yet more ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... saw (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid, allarm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the west; And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial vot'ress passed on, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... its port Pyrgos (q.v.), was of considerable importance. It fought with Rome in the time of Tarquinus Priscus and Servius Tullius, and subsequently became the refuge of the expelled Tarquins. After the invasion of the Gauls in 390 B.C., the vestal virgins and the sacred objects in their custody were conveyed to Caere for safety, and from this fact some ancient authorities derive the word caerimonia, ceremony. A treaty was made between Rome ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... closed thy wings For ever. When the happy living things Of the old world come forth upon the new I know my heart shall miss thee; and the dew Of summer twilights shall shed tears for me —Tears liker thee, ah, purest! than mine own— Upon thy vestal grave, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... thing well. I told the furniture people I wanted it just as it stood in the picture: "Design for bedroom and boudoir combined, suitable for young girl, in teak, with sparrow blue hangings." We had everything: the antique fire arrangements that a vestal virgin might possibly have understood; the candlesticks, that were pictures in themselves, until we tried to put candles in them; the book-case and writing-desk combined, that wasn't big enough to write on, and out of which it was impossible ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... to imagine the lady to have been of the vestal kind when his amour began; yet, as he was thoroughly ignorant of the town, and had very little acquaintance in it, he had no knowledge of that character which is vulgarly called a demirep; that is to say, a woman who intrigues with every man she likes, under the name and appearance ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... imprisoned in the aching heart, Lest the freed malefactors should dispread Infamous ruin with their liberty. There's not a man—the fairest of ye all— Who is not fouler than he seems. This life Is one unending struggle to conceal Our baseness from our fellows. Here stands one In vestal whiteness with a lecher's lust;— There sits a judge, holding law's scales in hands That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;— Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul Is Satan's council-chamber;—there ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... for the first time in fiction, a correct and adequate account of the Vestal Virgins, their powers and privileges, as well as of many strange Roman ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... have in this conception as perfect an instance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with another which I was watching in its reality; namely, a group of gentle ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... lead my freend Horatio through those feeldes Where neuer-dying warres are still inurde; Ile lead faire Isabella to that traine Where pittie weepes but neuer feeleth paine; Ile lead my Bel-imperia to those ioyes That vestal virgins and faire queenes possess; Ile lead Hieronimo where Orpheus plaies, Adding sweet pleasure to eternall daies. But say, Reuenge,—for thou must helpe or none,— Against the rest how shall ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... American long-distance records for insect voices. To another group, known as Fulgorids, gigantic heads and streamers of wax have been allotted. Those possessing the former rejoice in the name of Lantern Flies, but they are at present unfaithful vestal bugs, though it is extremely doubtful if their wicks were ever trimmed or lighted. To see a big wax bug flying with trailing ribbons slowly from tree to tree in the jungle is to recall the streaming trains of a flock ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... grave where Laura lay, Within that temple where the vestal flame Was wont to burn: and, passing by that way To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept, All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and came to a great city, where, upon his arrival, he understood there was a great and solemn procession, in order to shut up a young woman against her will among the vestal-nuns. The prince was touched with compassion; and thinking the best use he could make of his cap was to redress public wrongs and relieve the oppressed, he flew to the temple, where he saw the young woman, crowned with flowers, clad in ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... athletes, another court for gladiators. Highly carved marble columns supported the roofs and the rarest statues stood in niches. The bathing capacity was the largest ever planned. To sit there alone and people it, as when it was at its best, with all the glory of the emperor, the court ladies, the vestal virgins, senators, warriors, artists, men of letters and the rest, is a treat to the imagination that cannot be realized ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... kingship among the ancient Latins, the state of things in this respect would be somewhat as follows. The political and religious centre of each community would be the perpetual fire on the king's hearth tended by Vestal Virgins of the royal clan. The king would be a man of another clan, perhaps of another town or even of another race, who had married a daughter of his predecessor and received the kingdom with her. The children whom he had by her would inherit their mother's name, not his; the daughters would ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... features were sweet, and her limbs perfectly turned; but, I think, rather in a subdued glow from the soul outward. This was not an opaque vase, of material however costly, but a lamp chastely lucent, guarding from extinction, yet not hiding from worship, a flame vital and vestal. In speaking of her attractions, I would not exaggerate language; but, indeed, they seemed to me very real and engaging. What though all was on a small scale, it was the perfume which gave this white violet distinction, and made it superior to the broadest camelia—the fullest ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... hair and by his mincing walk got charged with effeminacy: and Pompey's scratching his head with one finger was construed in the same way, though both these men were very far from effeminacy or wantonness. And Crassus was accused of an intrigue with one of the Vestal Virgins, because he wished to purchase from her a pleasant estate, and therefore frequently visited her and waited upon her. And Postumia, from her readiness to laugh and talk somewhat freely with men, got accused and even had to stand her trial for incest,[521] but was, however, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... inconsistency will be afterwards explained, and the English and French forms given in each case are the terms which would be used in answering the rapid question, 'Of what order is this flower?' the answer being, It is a 'Cyllenid,' a 'Pleiad,' or a 'Vestal,' as one would answer of a person, he is a Knight of St. John or Monk of St. Benedict; while to the question, of what gens, we answer, a Stella or an Erica, as one would answer of a person, a ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence, they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and vestal severity, that captivated ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... robe floating, the dejection worn On the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes It pays Affection's debt, is due concern To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame Memory shou'd hourly feed;—if, thro' each day, She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame, O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Pleasure! you are indeed a pleasant thing, Although one must be damn'd for you, no doubt: I make a resolution every spring Of reformation, ere the year run out, But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing, Yet still, I trust it may be kept throughout: I 'm very sorry, very much ashamed, And mean, next ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of the entrails of animals capital offences, he proceeded to prohibit sacrifices, A.D. 391, and even the entering of temples. He alienated the revenues of many temples, confiscated the estates of others, some he demolished. The vestal virgins he dismissed, and any house profaned by incense he declared forfeited to the imperial exchequer. When once the property of a religious establishment has been irrevocably taken away, it is needless to declare its worship a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... reached the street, Benda said in a tone of compassion: "They are three delicate creatures; they live their lonely lives like vestal ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... typical variations of the scene galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works executed with wonderful sleight of hand, 292-301. The prevailing ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... eastern horizon a thin, fleecy scarf of clouds was silvered by the rising moon, the west was a huge shrine of beryl whereon burned ruby flakes of vapor, watched by a solitary vestal star; and the sapphire arch overhead was beautiful and mellow as any that ever vaulted above the sculptured marbles of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... vexed him exceedingly. He was not sure, indeed, but that he ought to go straight to Norbanus and tell him what had happened, yet he feared that in such a case the anger of the magistrate would be so great that Ennia would be forced by him into becoming one of the vestal virgins, or be shut up in strict imprisonment. Scarce a word was spoken as they passed down the hill and into the streets, now almost deserted. At last Ennia stopped at the entrance used by the slaves to ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... that are but thoughts, found her a Vestal Virgin in Pagan Rome when brutes were kings, and lust stalked rampant through the streets. She was the bride of Christ, and her fair, frail body was flung to the wild beasts, and torn limb from limb while the multitude feasted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Winchmore's verdant hill, Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk: The fair Maria, as a vestal, still; And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. With soft and Lady speech the first applies The mild correctives that to grace belong To her redundant friend, who her defies With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. O differing Pair, yet sweetly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... most serious delay arose, during the first act, through the evolutions of a triumphal march. With the most vociferous emphasis the master expressed intense dissatisfaction with the apathetic demeanour of our populace during the procession of vestal virgins. He was quite unaware of the fact that, in obedience to our stage manager's instructions, they had fallen on their knees upon the appearance of the priestesses; for he was so excited, and withal so terribly short-sighted, that nothing which appealed to the eye alone was perceptible to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... imaginations. Error has never yet made a complete and universal conquest. In the darkest ages and most benighted regions, it has been found impossible utterly to extinguish the light of reason. There always have been some in whose souls the torch of truth has been kept burning with vestal watchfulness: we can discern its glimmer here and there through the deepest night that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... earlier kings by later were o'erthrown: One half the mighty Roman work, and more, Fell to the ground: Columba's Irish monks The ruin raised. From Canterbury's towers, 'Rome of the North' long named, from them alone Above sea-surge still shone that vestal fire By tempest fanned, not quenched; and at her breast For centuries six were nursed that Coelian race, The Benedictine Primates ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... house, and discontinue his visits to Madame Lebrun. This simple proceeding let loose all the winds of heaven; poor Lebrun was pounced upon by the whole female sex. Even his old mother turned against him; even his sister, a sour vestal of thirty-seven, sided with her injured sister-in-law; and what had the wretched poet to say for himself? He suspected nothing improper—a good easy man—he adored his "Fanny"—he wanted her to come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... who had helped to crystallise her strange views. His lurking fear that she might one day marry and leave him was aroused at the thought, and his heart contracted with jealousy. She possessed in his eyes something of the sanctity of a vestal virgin, one who must not be profaned by marriage. In such an event, also, his cherished hope that she might complete the quadrangle of St. George's Hall was likely to be frustrated forever. These fears moved him to argue with a bitterness that ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the dear ones gathered nightly round the shining household hearth, What to them is brighter, better than the choicest things of earth? Ask that dearer one, whose loving, like a ceaseless vestal flame, Sets my very soul a-glowing at the mention of her name; Ask her why the loved, in dying, feels her spirit linked with his In a union death but strengthens? she will ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... man of simple mind, Gamaliel Nibbs by name, Whose early faith in human kind Burned like a Vestal flame; No wind of doubt that stirs the dust Fluttered that bright and constant taper; But oh, he had his dearest trust Pinned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... carried down some basket chairs, tacked a few coloured pictures from annuals on its bare walls, and made it look quite pretty. Tom lighted them a blazing fire every day, and tended it during their absence with the care of a vestal virgin, so they were extremely cosy and jolly there. The joiner's bench and the glue-pot gave facilities for any hobbies they wished to carry on; they could make as much noise as they liked, and walk in and out with ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... coarseness; although he wrote a century and a half ago, there is less of the low and indelicate than in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of Wycherley, Cibber, Vanbrugh, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... we see in the case of the Salii and the Luperci. Finally, in the great community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, he—like the pater familias—leaves the worship of Vesta in the hands of his 'daughters,' the Vestal virgins. And so, when the Republic is instituted, a special official, the rex sacrorum, inherits the king's ritual duties, while the superintendence of the Vestals passes to his representative in the ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... decayed fellow, they are in a worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows. We think them well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her: but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as the touch and company ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Light to a Cigar Evening Amusement Trip to MATANZAS—El Casero Slave Plantation Sugar Making Luxuriant Vegetation Punic Faith and Cuban Cruelty H.M.S. "Vestal" Bribery Admiralty Wisdom Cigars and Manufactory Population—Chinese Laws of Domicile—Police and Slavery Increase of Slaves and Produce Tobacco, Games, and Lotteries Cuban Jokes Sketch of Governors The ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... The vestal virgins, whose duty it was to keep the fire burning on the altar in the temple of Vesta. Vesta was the goddess of the home, and the vestal virgins were bound by oath ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... of veil some get born with. I know a girl carried hers around in a little wooden box for luck. Well, you got that white-veil kind of look that would blacklist you for the Vestal Virgin Sextet. I can pick 'em every time. You look to me like—say, I got a little mud puddle of my own to play in without wetting my feet ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... and there are many strokes of the most melting tenderness. Cartesmunda, the Fair Nun of Winchester, inspires the King with a passion for her, and after a long struggle between honour and love, she at last yields to the tyrant, and for the sake of Canutus breaks her vestal vows. Upon hearing that the enemy was about to enter the Cloister, Cartesmunda breaks out ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... might be; not a villainous rush, just drifting. That was it, the superlative excellence of the Gulab; the very quality that attracted, was the shield, the immaculate robe that clothed her and preserved her like a vestal virgin from such violation. Barlow could not word all these things; subconsciously they swayed him—like the magnetic needle, always toward the pole ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... very time I saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair Vestal throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon, And the Imperial Votress passed on, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... crown upon her head, pauses and wonders: had she any love for children? He finds in her "a plentiful lack of inborn baby-worship"; she is unworthy to compare in this with George Eliot, "the spiritual mother of Totty, of Eppie, and of Lillo". "The fiery-hearted Vestal of Haworth," he says, "had no room reserved in the palace of her passionate and high-minded imagination as a nursery for inmates of such divine and delicious quality." There was little Georgette in Villette, to say nothing of Polly, and there was Adele in Jane Eyre. But ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... out with their milk-pails, carried on yokes from the shoulder: Leopoldine, Jensine, and little Rebecca. All three barefooted. The Margravine, Inger herself, is not with them; she is indoors preparing the meal. Tall and stately, as she moves about her house, a Vestal tending the fire of a kitchen stove. Inger has made her stormy voyage, 'tis true, has lived in a city a while, but now she is home; the world is wide, swarming with tiny specks—Inger has been one of them. All but nothing in all ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... and the resurrection. And they have also got a new goddess. Have you heard of Cybele, the mother of the gods, a virgin, who is worshipped in Rome like Vesta by vestal priests." ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the days of the republic, every famine, pestilence, or drought was followed by a searching investigation of the sacred rites, to ascertain what irregularity or neglect had caused the divine anger, and two instances are recorded in which vestal virgins were put to death because their unchastity was believed to have provoked a national calamity."[517] In the Roman law is found a proposition which was often quoted in the Middle Ages: "That which is done against divine religion is done to the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... be above even his courage. All must be done within the next month. If on Miss Baker was to fall the honour of being Lady Bertram, she must not only receive him within the month, but, having done so, must also agree to wear her vestal zone yet a little longer, till that troublesome old gentleman should ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... to-day, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to interpret the meaning of this gift to the nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from age to age be rekindled? For these hopes must constantly be rekindled, and only those who live can rekindle them. ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his face with vestal ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... general in his chiselled corselet and dyed mantle faces the Greek actor in his tinsel; the band of painted, half-clad, bedizened dancing-girls falls back cowering in awestruck silence as the noble Vestal passes by, high-browed, white-robed, untainted, the incarnation of purity in an age of vice. And the old Senator in his white cloak with its broad purple hem, his smooth-faced clients at his elbows, his silent slaves before him and behind, meets the low-chattering knot ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... In every other respect, too, the pomp and circumstance of the funeral was past description. In awe of the veterans all the priests of all the sacred fraternities were there in full robes, with the Vestal Virgins, and all the senators, and all the magistrates, each in his garb of office. Next, in array that contrasted with theirs, came the knights of Rome in column; then all the men whom Sulla had commanded in his wars, and who had vied with each other in hastening there, carrying ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... A vestal virgin with a husband and two children, a Roman Lothario, with an Irish friend, a Druidical temple, a gong, and an auto-da-fe, mix up charmingly with Bellini's quadrille-like music to form a pathetic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... distinguished from Portia, and strongly individualized by a certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is "severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in such a man ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... second-rate article, a bungling piece of work, and naturally felt his disadvantages more keenly in the presence of those upon whom Nature had expended all her best art. He was, according to his own assertion, an idealist by temperament, and had kept a sacred chamber in his heart where the vestal fire burned with a pure flame. Now the deepest strata of his being were stirred, and he loved with an overwhelming fervor and intensity which fairly frightened him. In a moment of abject despair he proposed to Emily, and to his surprise was accepted. And what was more, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and moreover, she is not a woman, but a noble virgin. I discern a distinction, though you may not. The Vestal's fire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the parson's busy daughter in her cooking and cleaning; from all alike we hear of an active, genial, warm-hearted girl, full of humour and feeling to those she knew, though shy and cold in her bearing to strangers. A different being to the fierce impassioned Vestal who has seated herself in Emily's place ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... say that Christ was miraculously born of a virgin, the Pagans had said before them that Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome, were miraculously born of a vestal virgin named Ilia, or Silvia, or Rhea Silvia; they had already said that Mars, Argus, Vulcan, and others were born of the goddess Juno without sexual union; and, also, that Minerva, goddess of the sciences, sprang ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... filled the sail of the Trojan for Latium bound; Her favour that won her AEneas a bride on Laurentian ground; And anon from the cloister inveigled the Vestal, the Virgin, to Mars, As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew From Romulus down to our Ceesar—last, best of that ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat from ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... of Love is not destined to be solved so easily; nor had it ever been solved in centuries dead by Egyptian, Mongol, or Greek—by priest or princess, prophet or singer, or by any vestal or acolyte ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Antony, having been ill-used by Cleopatra, whom they had most resisted in her design of being present in the war, came over to Caesar, and gave information of the contents of Antony's will, with which they were acquainted. It was deposited in the hands of the vestal virgins, who refused to deliver it up, and sent Caesar word, if he pleased, he should come and seize it himself, which he did. And, reading it over to himself, he noted those places that were most for his purpose, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... besides ourselves and a lady the places occupied by a Dutch officer, who sat gasping without his coat, and so far exhausted by the heat, though he had been ten years in Batavia, that his pipe hung dangling as if he had not breath sufficient to keep its vestal fire alive, and a lady with two children besides living intruders. A net from the top was filled with bags, baskets, and band-boxes. Our night was sad indeed, and the groans of our fellow-travellers and the ineffectual fluttering of a fan which the Officer used ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... sea-god Glaucus, but changed into a monster through the jealousy and enchantments of Circe. The mother of Romulus: Silvia, daughter and only living child of Numitor, whom her uncle Amulius made a vestal virgin, to preclude the possibility that his brother's descendants could wrest from him the kingdom of Alba Longa. But the maiden was violated by Mars as she went to bring water from a fountain; she bore Romulus and Remus; and she was drowned in the Anio, while ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of the village, and there he walked up and down for hours. The sun set, and the night came, and the stars glittered; but still he walked alone, inspired, exalted, full of generous and loving schemes: of sweet and tender fancies: a heart on fire; and youth the fuel, and the flame vestal. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... sought! Perhaps the act which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity with which she undertook its performance. No priestess ever entered an oracle, no vestal virgin a temple, nor saint a shrine with more reverence than she felt, as she passed into the silence of this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... rapidly through the streets, of what had occurred. The soldiers whom Claudius had sent forward, were making arrests in the streets, and searching the houses. In the midst of this excitement, Messalina, with her children, attended by one of the vestal virgins, named Vibidia, whom she had prevailed upon to accompany her and plead her cause, came forth from her palace on foot, and proceeded through the streets, her hair disheveled, her dress in disorder, and her whole appearance marked by every characteristic of ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... fellow-actors at her palaces on the banks of the Thames. When Shakespeare was penning his new play of A Midsummer Night's Dream next year, he could not forbear to make a passing obeisance of gallantry (in that vein for which the old spinster queen was always thirsting) to "a fair vestal throned by the West," who passed her life ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... of February, captain Hood, of his majesty's frigate the Vestal, belonging to a small squadron commanded by admiral Holmes, who had sailed for the West Indies in January, being advanced a considerable way ahead of the fleet, descried and gave chase to a sail, which proved to be a French frigate called the Bellona, of two hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of his private life. That Csar should have escaped destruction in this unequal contest with an enemy then wielding the whole thunders of the state, is somewhat surprising; and historians have sought their solution of the mystery in the powerful intercessions of the vestal virgins, and several others of high rank amongst the connections of his great house. These may have done something; but it is due to Sylla, who had a sympathy with every thing truly noble, to suppose him struck with powerful ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... among them; and seeing that the worship had been carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways without high principle. To this religion they had all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered in upon his domain without other ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... in Rome of the domus or private house. Two, however, have left remarkably interesting ruins—the Atrium Vest, or House of the Vestal Virgins, east of the Forum, awell-planned and extensive house surrounding a cloister or court; and the House of Livia, so-called, on the Palatine Hill, the walls and decorations of which are excellently preserved. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... bedaubed, by way of insignia, with red and white chalk or clay, follow her from the village to some remote nook in the jungle, where the lodge is tiled. Sentinels are stationed around whilst business is transacted before a vestal fire, which must burn for a fortnight or three weeks, in the awe- compelling presence of a brass pipkin filled with herbs, and a basin, both zebra'd like the human limbs. The Rev. William Walker was once detected playing "Peeping Tom" by ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... wicked as you imagine, continued the gentleman; for I assure you they were all vestal virgins for anything which I knew to the contrary. The reputation of intriguing with them was all I sought, and was what I arrived at: and perhaps I only flattered myself even in that; for very probably the persons to ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... "England's queen" with her maids of honour were not, if we may credit the existing memoirs of her court, precisely such as modern fastidiousness would assign to the "fair vestal throned by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... you back into this realm, my hero, my troubadour?" inquired Mr. Kecskerey. "Some love-adventure, some notable affair, I'll be bound. I'll dare to guess that you have abducted some Hindu vestal from Budhur?" ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... thou principle of life! precious flame over which all nature, like a careful vestal, incessantly watches in the temple of God! Center of all, by whom all exists! The spirit of destruction would itself die, blowing at thy flame! I am not astonished that thy name should be blasphemed, for they do not know who thou art, they who think ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... is proportionately cheaper, for the feathers are infinitely better. Long, white, full, and curly feathers can be bought for much less than you give for them in England. We drove down to the town, finished our business transactions, and then went in the 'Vestal's' steam launch on board the 'Gamma,' one of the new Chinese gunboats on her way ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... walls were overrun with flowering vines, and whose cells were pretty vestal bowers, entered the bard and the young girl, to be met on the front porch by the wardeness herself, a mite of a woman, with wavy yellow hair, fine complexion and washed-out blue eyes. Sensitive almost to shyness, Mademoiselle de Castiglione appeared more ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... right-hand side of the slope, which the via Sacra now follows, and reach the Forum by the fornix Fabiana. Close by to our left is the round temple of Vesta, where the sacred fire of the State is kept ever burning by its guardians, the Vestal Virgins, and here too is their dwelling, the Atrium Vestae, and also that of the Pontifex Maximus (Regia), in whose potestas they were; these three buildings, then insignificant to look at, constituted the religious focus of the oldest Rome.[31] A little ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... am Sargon, the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited the mountain.... When my mother had conceived me, she bare me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped the door thereof with ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... no. I mean ancient Rome. [He seats himself on the edge of the table]. Ive just come to the period when the propertied classes refused to get married and went in for marriage settlements instead. A few of the oldest families stuck to the marriage tradition so as to keep up the supply of vestal virgins, who had to be legitimate; but nobody else dreamt of getting married. It's all very interesting, because we're coming to that here in England; except that as we dont require any vestal virgins, nobody will get married at all, except the ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... of, there was something in the very unapproachableness of her state which both commanded the respect and excited the imagination of her people. As a woman, they regarded her just as she wished them to regard her, as the throned Vestal, the watery Moon, whose chaste beams could quench the fiery darts of Cupid. She was to them, in fact, the Belphoebe of Spenser, "with womanly graces, but not womanly affections—passionless, pure, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... clearly on the sandstone, not upon the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated farms—all were English in their details. Only the vines, and mulberries, and wattled waggons drawn by oxen, most Roman in aspect, reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such carpenta may the vestal virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the primitive war-chariot also, capable of holding four with ease; and Romulus may have mounted with the images of Roman gods in even such a vehicle to Latiarian Jove upon the Alban hill. Nothing changes in Italy. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very time I marked—but thou could'st not— Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow As he would pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But I might see young Cupid's fiery dart Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on In ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... at this critical moment, so the Mystic Seven filed off like vestal virgins to feed the fire which Miss Gibbs, with her accustomed energy, had already lighted. Their contribution of wood was so substantial that it drew comment from the rest of the party, but they received the congratulations with due modesty, and did not divulge the source of their ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... theatre, which must have been of vast extent,(209) as at Athens it was capable of containing above thirty thousand persons; and the orchestra, which amongst the Greeks was the place assigned for the pantomimes and dancers, though at Rome it was appropriated to the senators and vestal virgins. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... more virgin-proud. The maiden-moon, new-seated on a cloud That seems her throne where she receives the stars,— The moon who holds her court beyond the jars Of land and sea,—the moon, the vestal moon, Has kept thee cold since the transcendant noon Of that wild day when I thy hand did claim, And when thy ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... gold shall hem his ashes in: The vestal virgins with their holy notes Shall sing his famous, though too fatal, death. I and my Fulvia with dispersed hair Will wait upon this noble ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Sanctuaries are forsaken now; Dark mould and moss cling to thy fretted towers; Deep rents and seams, where struggling lichens grow, And no sweet voice of prayer at vestal hours; But voice of screaming shot and bursting shell, Thy deep damnation and thy doom foretell. The 'fire' has left a pile of broken walls, And Night-hags revel ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... cells of her heart, and brought forth thoughts in sparkling words, which otherwise might have remained concealed; but there was nothing in what she thought or spoke calculated to give umbrage either to an anchorite or to a vestal. A word or two she said or sung about the flowing bowl, and once she called for Falernian; but beyond this her converse was chiefly of the rights of man and the weakness of women; of the iron ages that were past, and of the golden ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... is the Roman goddess of the hearth, worshiped in a temple containing the sacred fire tended by the vestal virgins. ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... publication to me. There was but a slight fee to pay, a matter of fifty dollars or upwards, and for this trifling sum you were furnished with your rightful coat-of-arms and with papers clearly tracing your family to the Druids, the Vestal Virgins, and all the best people in the world. Therefore I felicitated the Boadicean lady upon the illustrious progenitrix with whom the Almanach de Gotha had provided her for so small a consideration, and observed that for myself I supposed ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the pain of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... pony up the avenue; and while she was receiving the salutations of the rest of the family, he took occasion to notice the fat coachman, to pat the sleek carriage-horses, and, above all, to say a civil word to my lady's gentlewoman, the prim, sour-looking vestal ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... what wisdom the Vestal Virgins showed in never letting their fire go out, another crash came at the door, followed by the war-whoop of a scalp-hunter. "I seem to recognise that noise," he thought, "but I can't possibly open the door in ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... personal, Rena's new vestal instinct took alarm, and she began to apprehend his character more clearly. She had long ago learned that his pretensions to wealth were a sham. He was nominal owner of a large plantation, it is true; but the land was worn out, and mortgaged to the limit of its security ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Fohn did not materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared, became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in the full ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Michael gleam upon the wind? Where did Mozart hear the awful cries of the risen dead come to judgment? What voice was in the fountain of Vaucluse? Under what nodding oxlip did Shakespeare find Titania asleep? When did the Mother of Love come down, chaster in her unclothed loveliness than vestal in her veil, and with such vision of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... youth will permit us to look a little deeper into its heart, we will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written there. Age does us only indirect justice,—by the value it gives to memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein it learned and felt and suffered;—so the circles, which are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... people. Henry Ward Beecher has said: "Every mother is a priestess ordained by God Himself," and Professor Mason enlarges the same thought: "Scarcely has the infant mind begun to think, ere this perpetual priestess lights the fires of reverence and keeps them ever burning, like a faithful vestal" (112. 12). ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to her, that she had devoted herself to one who must ever be to her as a being of air. No word of sympathy would ever whisper felicity to her heart; no-the flame that was within her (which she found would be immortal as the vestal fires which resemble its purity) must burn there unknown; ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... gay with the bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, all ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... our guiltless ore Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore; Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine Deserve more honour than a flaming mine? These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be, Than a few embers, for a deity. Had he our pits, the Persian would admire No sun, but warm 's devotion at ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... his descendants after him, reigned over the town for many years. At length Numitor and Amulius, two brothers, quarrelled about the kingdom. Amulius seized the crown by force, cast out Numitor, and made his daughter, Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin. The Vestal Virgins, the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, were sworn to celibacy. But Rhea Silvia broke her vow, and gave birth, by the god Mars, to the twins, Romulus and Remus. For this offence she was ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... till his work stood perfected, A woman beautiful with youth and grace, But like a Vestal singled from her sex To show the beauty of pure innocence. Her form was such as rapt Endymion Saw on the heights of Latmos when he slept And dreamed Heaven down to him. A glorious shape That to the brightness of ethereal ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... to her which made it necessary that he should assert mere sportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her—something in her quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupied with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It had been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short; fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an inscription ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... and she looked on the paper, and said, "It is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... the vestal virgins turn down their thumbs, that's another matter. They're ladies ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... blackness. But moonlight shrouds the Coliseum in mystery. It opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, upon which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and tragic colors. Shadowy forms of emperor and lictor and vestal virgin and gladiator and martyr come out of the darkness, and pass before us in long and silent procession. The breezes which blow through the broken arches are changed into voices, and recall the shouts and cries of a vast audience. By day, the Coliseum ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... horizon new flushed in the first Uncertain ray of Altruism, thou seem'st More ghost than human. Yet thou lovest, loving ghost, And thy fierce parent flame thyself snuffed out Scarce later than the dark'ning of the fire Thou gav'st to be eternal vestal of Thine Antony's spirit. Thou didst love and die Of love; let, therefore, no light tongue, brazen In censure, say that nothing in thy life Became thee like the leaving it. The cloth From which humanity ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... where Pleasure's streamlet glides Fann'd by soft winds to curl in mimic tides; Where Mirth and Peace beguile the blameless Day; And where Friendship's fixt star beams a mellow'd Ray; 50 Where Love a crown of thornless Roses wears; Where soften'd Sorrow smiles within her tears; And Memory, with a Vestal's meek employ, Unceasing feeds the lambent flame of Joy! No more thy Sky Larks less'ning from my sight 55 Shall thrill th' attund Heartstring with delight; No more shall deck thy pensive Pleasures sweet With wreaths of sober hue my evening ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... among which she was crouching. Had she indeed any life in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once she must have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the charm of simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal. ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... 748 or 750 B. C.— cooperated with the endless other Pagan superstitions in anchoring the whole Pantheon to the Capitol and Mount Palatine. So long as Rome had a worldly hope surviving, it was impossible for her to forget the Vestal Virgins, the College of Augurs, or the indispensable office and the indefeasible privileges of the Pontifex Maximus, which (though Cardinal Baronius, in his great work, for many years sought to fight off the evidences for that fact, yet afterwards partially he confessed his error) actually ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... under the old civilizations. In Rome she had not only secured remarkable personal and property rights,[178] but she officiated as priestess in the most holy offices of religion. Not only as Vestal Virgin did she guard the Sacred Fire, upon whose preservation the welfare of Rome was held to depend, but at the end of every consular period women officiated in private worship and sacrifice to the Bono Dea, with mystic ceremonies which no man's ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Henry IV., who loved his jests whether at his own expense or that of friend or foe, was wont to observe that there were three things which nobody would ever believe, and which yet were very true; that Queen Elizabeth deserved her title of the, throned vestal, that he was himself a good Catholic, and that Cardinal Albert was a good general. It is probable that the assertions were all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... now? I think a whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... magnify The night of ages,—now when the pale ray Of starlight penetrates the studious gloom, And, at my window seated, while mankind Are lock'd in sleep, I feel the freshening breeze Of stillness blow, while, in her saddest stole, Thought, like a wakeful vestal at her shrine, Assumes ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... by the Romans to their household deities, individually and unitedly, in honour of whom a fire, in charge of the vestal virgins, was ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
