"Asphodel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lolled, immortal Bottom, propped on a bed of asphodel and moly that seemed to curd the moonshine; and at his side, Titania slim and scarlet, and shimmering like a bride-cake. The sky was dark above the tapering trees, but here in the secret woods ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... darkness; so Mithrobarzanes led the way, and I followed holding on to him, until we reached a great meadow of asphodel, where the shades of the dead, with their thin voices, came flitting round us. Working gradually on, we reached the court of Minos; he was sitting on a high throne, with the Poenae, Avengers, and Erinyes standing at the sides. From another direction ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whisper'd—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O rest ye, brother mariners, we will ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Had lost his way between the piney sides Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came, Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower, And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, Violet, amaracus, and asphodel, 95 Lotos and lilies: and a wind arose, And overhead the wandering ivy and vine, This way and that, in many a wild festoon Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs With bunch and berry and flower ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... who singly seek the immortal way. So guided and inspired, it cannot but be a charming path; for those who perpetually walk therein come to look as though they were entranced with the perfume that floats from fields of asphodel. Characters so developed are beautiful exceedingly, and seem of a far higher strain than those who most generously and effectively labor for the amelioration and moral advancement of the race. They, more than any others who have riches there, illumine the grand, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... them lazy lumps o' gods wot kips on asphodel Swigs nectar that's a flavour of Oolong; I only wish them sons o' guns a-grillin' down in 'ell Could 'ave their daily ration of Suchong. Hurrah! I'm off to battle, which is 'ell and 'eaven too; And if I don't ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the veil is rent. Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent, Her form is given to pardoned sight, And lets our mortal eyes receive The sovereign loveliness of celestial white; Adored by them who solitarily pace, In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve, The paths among the meadow asphodel, Remembering. Never there her face Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell Around such whiteness the enamoured air Of noon that clothes her, never there. Daughter of light, the joyful light, She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, Sweet in her disregard of aid Divine to conquer or persuade. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exhaled the Asphodel, And some whose Smoke gave forth a roseate Smell, And some poor Weeds that told you at a Whiff How they were made to Give Away, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... Feteyry, lies about one hour and a half south of Aweyt. After travelling three hours we came in sight of the Orontes, and then began to descend. The mountain on this side is rather steep, and its side is overgrown with herbs which afford an excellent pasturage. The plant asphodel (Siris [Arabic]) is very common; the inhabitants of Syria, by pulverising its dried roots, and mixing the powder with water, make a good glue, which is superior to that made with flour, as it is not attacked by worms. In the summer the inhabitants of the valley pasture their cattle in these ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... fortunes and beloved relatives left behind, and eagerly questioning each newly arriving soul for tidings from above. When the soul of Achilles is told of the glorious deeds of Neoptolemus, "he goes away taking mighty steps through the meadow of asphodel in joyfulness, because he had heard that his son was very illustrious."2 Sophocles makes the dying Antigone say, "Departing, I strongly cherish the hope that I shall be fondly welcomed by my father, and by my mother, and by my brother."3 It is important to notice that, according ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of gold and silver plate that once belonged to John Company, Bahadur, and that now repose on the groaning board of the Great Ornamental, amid a glory of Himalayan flowers, or blossoms from Eden's fields of asphodel, be reflected upon the eye's retina without producing positive thrills and vibrations of joy (that cannot be measured in terms of ohm or farad) shooting up and down the spinal cord and into the most hidden seats of pleasure! I certainly can never see the luxurious ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... which it were gross to call food: dainty mysteries of coolness and sudden flavors; a fish salad in which the essences of sea and land are blended in cold, celestial harmony; innermost kernels of the lamb of the salted meadows where must grow the Asphodel on which it fed, in amorous union with what men call a sauce, but really oil and cream and herbs stirred by a god in a dream; peaches in purple ichor chastely clad in snow, melting on the palate as the voice of the divine ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... this about, reverend sir?' asked Philammon of Peter the Reader, who made his appearance at that moment in the quadrangle, walking with great strides, like the soul of Agamemnon across the meads of Asphodel, and apparently beside himself ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Asphodel scents did Gilgal's breezes bring— Through nuptial shadows, questionless, full fast The angels sped, for momently there passed A something blue which seemed ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... now urged to revisit. In fancy she saw it again to-day, the tideless sea of deepest sapphire blue, the little wavelets breaking on a yellow beach, the white triangular sails, the woods full of asphodel and great purple and white lilies, the atmosphere steeped in warmth and light and perfume, the glare of white houses in the sun, the red and yellow blinds, the pots of green and orange and crimson clay, with oleanders abloom, the wonderful ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the brown bosom of the waste into one wide sea of crimson; the air is charged with its honied odour. The dry, elastic turf glows, not only with its flowers, but with those of the wild thyme, the clear blue milkwort, the yellow asphodel, and that curious plant the sundew, with its drops of inexhaustible liquor sparkling in the fiercest sun like diamonds. There wave the cotton-rush, the tall fox-glove, and the taller golden mullein. There creep the various species of heath-berries, cranberries, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... might be at rest in some field Elysian, If this be asphodel set in the herbage fair, I know not how I should wonder, so sweet the vision, So clear and silent the water, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... A wood of asphodel below Uprose as still and sweet as death, And gliding shapes moved to and fro,— I watched them with ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... thought, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, "It is four to one she'll none of me." Nay, the odds were probably even longer. Ah, CECILIA, if these lines meet thine eyes, thou wilt know that one heart still is true. In another life, less begirt by material difficulties, we may meet amongst the asphodel, where there is no opportunity for the display of mere mechanical accomplishments. Till then, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... on the ground, declared that he gave the needful orders and tried vainly to enforce them; Cheatham, in command of his leading corps, that he did not. Doubtless the dispute is still being carried on between these chieftains from their beds of asphodel and moly in Elysium. So much is certain: Stanley drove away Forrest and successfully held the junction of the roads against Cleburne's division, the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... ASPHODEL.—The 29th of April, 1870, was a Friday. When a man says he is "very much in love" with the girl to whom he is speaking, he means her to give him some encouragement to say more, and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... the rock floor of the grave; and out of doors her eyes filled and her lips laughed when she wandered through the leafy land and found the warbler's nest hung upon the reeds, or the first branching asphodel in flower. She could not have told why these made her happy, why she could watch for half a day untired the little wren building where the gladwyn blossomed on the water's edge. It was only human life that hurt her, embittered her, and filled ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... not read the law of Epimenides's frugality in Hesiod's writings, who prescribes him and others this spare diet; for he was the person that gratified Epimenides with the seeds of this nutriment, when he directed him to inquire how great benefit a man might receive by mallows and asphodel (Hesiod, "Works and Days," 41.) Do you believe, said Periander, that Hesiod meant this literally; or rather that, being himself a great admirer of parsimony, he hereby intended to exhort men to use mean ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... science can be useful,) and find, under the head of Anthericum, the Savoy Lily indeed, but only the {8} following general information:—"809. Anthericum. A name applied by the Greeks to the stem of the asphodel, and not misapplied to this set of plants, which in some sort resemble the asphodel. Plants with fleshy leaves, and spikes of bright yellow flowers, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... overlook a foreground of dappled light and shadow; then come two stationary columns built, it seems, of solid gold, where the sunbeams strike along their russet surface. Between them lies the landscape, a medley first of brakefern and asphodel and feathering acanthus and blue spikes; while beyond and above is a glimpse of mountains, purple almost to indigo with cloud shadows, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... way, and there were none to see that meeting. Unless, perhaps, the gods looked down from high Olympus—the poor immortals—and turned away, disconsolate, to the cheerless fields of asphodel. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... path that led not only through space but through time, for it ran nimbly in and out among the seasons. It travelled under the rosy eaves of a forest of blossoming almond up to a steep as haggard with weather as a Scotch moor, and dipped again to hedges of aloes and cactus and asphodel. At one moment a spindrift of orange blossom blew about him; at another he had watched the peasants in their brown capes stripping their dark green orange-groves and piling the golden globes into the panniers of donkeys which were gay with magenta ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... interspersed with scattered thickets, but with few signs of cultivation. On approaching the mountains there were indications giving promise of sport in patches of soil grubbed up by the wild hogs in search for the root of the Asphodel, which they greedily devour. This handsome plant springs from a bunch of long fibrous bulbs, something like the Dahlia, throwing up straight stems two or three feet high, with numerous angular filiformed leaves and yellow flowers.[51] It grows freely ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... carried her off to become his wife, and his touch turned the white flowers to a golden yellow. Some remained in her tresses till she reached the meadows of Acheron, and falling off there grew into the asphodel, with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... bloom, blowing in the merry wind," "His words flowed abundantly like a sudden shower on an aftermath in May," "When your eyes beam upon me, it seems to me I drink a draught of perfumed wine," "My sister is burned like a branch of the date tree," "You are like the asphodel, and the tanned hand of Summer dares not caress your white brow," "Slender as a dragon-fly," are comparisons taken at random. Of Mireio the poet says, "The merry sun hath hatched her out," "Her glance is like dew, her rounded bosom is a ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer |
