"Proserpine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... companionship with us may be understood; then the water-lily and the heath, both four foils, are to be studied in their solitudes (I shall throw all that are not four foils out of the Ericaceae); then finally there are to be seven orders of the dark proserpine, headed by the draconids (snapdragons), and including the anemones, ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... secular ode, Lucina is used as one of the names of Diana, and the beauty of Diana is extolled by all the most orthodox doctors of the ancient mythology, from Homer in his Odyssey, to Claudian in his Rape of Proserpine. In another ode, Horace describes Diana as the goddess who assists the "laborantes utero puellas." But we are ashamed to detain our readers ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... said poor Ralph. "I've done trying. I can't move further. I can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I don't want to die on the Sicilian plains—to be snatched away, like Proserpine in the same locality, to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... furiously angry, and small wonder. Those had been choice bulbs, some of which he had presented me from his own cherished store—freesias, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and the starred narcissus, "such as Proserpine let ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... plays, it is nothing less than "very heaven" to find and feel ourselves again in the midmost Paradise, the central Eden, of Shakespeare's divine discovery—of his last sweet living invention. Here again is air as pure blowing over fields as fragrant as where Dante saw Matilda or Milton saw Proserpine gathering each as deathless flowers. We still have here to disentwine or disentangle his own from the weeds of glorious and of other than glorious feature with which Fletcher has thought fit to interweave them; even in the close of the last scene of all we can ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the most striking objects in the first casino was a group by Bernini,—Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great ability. There are some works in literature that bear an analogy to his works in sculpture, when great ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over the earth is the portion of a God, to whom we, as well as the Greeks, have given a name that denotes riches (in Latin, Dis; in Greek, [Greek: Plouton]), because all things arise from the earth and return to it. He forced away Proserpine (in Greek called [Greek: Persephone]), by which the poets mean the "seed of corn," from whence comes their fiction of Ceres, the mother of Proserpine, seeking for her daughter, who was hidden from her. She is called Ceres, which is the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... say, never morn broke clear as those On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea, The deep groves and white temples and wet caves: And nothing ever will surprise me now— Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair." ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... inaccessible rocks; but this was procured for her by an eagle; and lastly, Venus, declaring that her own beauty had been impaired by attendance on her injured son, commanded Psyche to visit the Infernal Regions and obtain from Proserpine a closed box of cosmetic which was on no account to be opened. Psyche thought death alone could bring her to these realms, and was about to throw herself from a tower, when a voice instructed her how to enter a cavern, and propitiate Cerberus ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the youngest of three brothers succeeds after the others have failed, is one of the most familiar in folk- tales amusingly parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i. 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its brilliant literary relationships. There can be little doubt that Edgar, in his mad scene in King Lear, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... primitive peoples. Their parentage also is variously given, though they are usually mentioned as daughters of the river god, Achelous. They are generally represented as maidens, with a more or less extensive equipment of wings and other plumage. These wings were obtained at their request when Proserpine was carried off, that they might be better able to hunt for her. But another account says that they refused their sympathy to Ceres, and were given their feathery coating by her in punishment. Some writers say it was ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... the sun or summer, and the consequent desolation of Frigga, the earth, is merely a different version of the myths of Proserpine and Adonis. When Proserpine and Adonis have gone, the earth (Ceres or Venus) bitterly mourns their absence, and refuses all consolation. It is only when they return from their exile that she casts off her mourning ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... high Olympus Came the mother Ceres down, Seeking in those savage regions Her lost daughter Proserpine. But the Goddess found no refuge, Found no kindly welcome there, And no temple bearing witness To the worship of ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... half-mile, no farther. As I went on, the misty horizon receded. The valley was larger than I had imagined. It was like Elysium, where the shades of dead men stroll in the Garden of Proserpine. Streamlets ran through the blue moss at intervals, chill as death from the snowy plains hidden in the fog. ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... anxious joy, When I behold her struggling in my arms, With glowing beauty, and disorder'd charms, While fear and anger, with alternate grace, Pant in her breast, and vary in her face! So Pluto seized off Proserpine, convey'd To hell's tremendous gloom th' affrighted maid; There grimly smiled, pleased with the beauteous prize, Nor envied Jove his ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she herself lost the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... member of the Labiatae, is a very hardy perennial, native to Mediterranean countries. Its generic name is derived from the mythological origin ascribed to it. Poets declared that Proserpine became jealous of Cocytus's daughter, Minthe, whom she transformed into the plant. The specific name means green, hence the common name, green mint, often applied to it. The old Jewish law did not require that tithes of "mint, anise and cumin" should be paid in to the treasury, ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... It was noon and he was eating his dinner. It might just as well have been midnight, so dense was the darkness. We seemed to have been an uncomputable time in the depths, yet, glancing at the bunch of wild flowers in my belt, I saw that they were only beginning to wilt. Did poor Proserpine have the same feeling when she was ravished from the sunshine and the green and flowery earth and carried into the dark underground kingdom of Pluto? Remembering her fate, I whispered to my companion, "We will not eat anything while here—no, not so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... I was thoroughly convinced of my existence; when I looked through the blinds of the carriage, and saw nothing but barren plains and mournful willows, banks clad with rushes, and heifers so black and dismal that Proserpine herself would have given them up to Hecate. I was near believing myself in the neighbourhood of a certain evil place, where I should be punished for all my croakings. We travelled at this rate, I dare say, fifteen miles, without seeing a single ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... warring Polypheme to roar, And scream thyself as none e'er scream'd before! To aid our cause, if Heav'n thou canst not bend, Hell thou shalt move; for Faustus is our friend; Pluto with Cato, thou for this shalt join, And link the Mourning Bride to Proserpine. Grub Street! thy fall should men and gods conspire, Thy stage shall stand, insure it but from fire. Another AEschylus appears! prepare For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair! In flames like Semele's, be brought to bed, While op'ning hell ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... things happen to be so, they harness a parcel of them together and breed them up to draw fish-carts. I yesterday met a man driving four-in-hand; in turning a corner and meeting three of these open-mouthed Mastiffs panting and pulling, you might almost fancy it was Cerberus drawing the Chariot of Proserpine—but I am wandering from the Diligence, which deserves some description. It resembled a little Theatre more than a coach, with front boxes, pit, &c., lined with common velvet. We had a curious collection of passengers. Opposite to me sat a prize thoroughbred Dutch woman ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... indigenous now only on the verdureless banks of the Styx. When Proserpine, who was gathering flowers, was carried away to the dark Avernus, all the other blossoms which she had woven in her garland withered and died, but the Poppy; and that the goddess planted in the land of darkness and gloom, and called it the flower of Death. She flourishes ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... sexual intercourse. It is engendered by a pre-existing spirit through the agency of a medicine man. The North Queenslanders have a similar belief. They believe a child to be sent in answer to the husband's prayer as a punishment to his wife when he is vexed with her. On the Proserpine River the Blacks believe that a child is the gift of a supernatural being called Kunya. In South Queensland the Euahlayi believe that spirits congregate at certain spots and pounce on passing women, and so are born. On the Slave Coast ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... way was Friedrich snatched by Morgante into Fairyland, carried by Diana to the top of Pindus (or even by Proserpine to Tartarus, through a bad sixteen hours), till the Battle whirlwind subsided. Friendly imaginative spirits would, in the antique time, have so construed it: but these moderns were malicious-valetish, not friendly; and wrapped the matter in mere stupid ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and hath left thee more Than thy full meed of heaven: be what thou wilt- For neither Tartarus hopes to call thee king, Nor may so dire a lust of sovereignty E'er light upon thee, howso Greece admire Elysium's fields, and Proserpine not heed Her mother's voice entreating to return- Vouchsafe a prosperous voyage, and smile on this My bold endeavour, and pitying, even as I, These poor way-wildered swains, at once begin, Grow timely used ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... 135), another of Aphrodite's creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also known as "the maiden". By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek [Greek: porphyra]; and [Greek: porphyromata] was the term applied to the flesh of swine that had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.). In fact, the purple-shell was "the maiden" and also "the sow": in other words it was Aphrodite. The use of the term "maiden" for the Pterocera suggests a similar identification. To complete ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Swinburne, the greatest master of double and treble rhymes that we have ever had, rarely succeeds in giving even the former with a full spondaic effect of vowel such as is easy in Provencal. In "The Garden of Proserpine" itself, as in the double rhymes, where they occur, of "The Triumph of Time" (the greatest thing ever written in the Provencal manner, and greater than anything in Provencal), the second vowels of the rhymes are never full. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... a servant-maid of Metanira, wife of Celeus, king of Eleusis, who tried to exhilarate Ceres when she travelled over Attica in quest of her daughter Proserpine. From the jokes and stories which she made use of, free and satirical verses have been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... good cheer and good company, and "Horace and Anacreon in vain would have him stay." But the gentleman from Arkansas demonstrated that they were all surpassed at Johnny Coyle's. The recital of the genial qualities of various gentlemen named enlisted Proserpine, who urged Pluto to let him go, that he might return, bringing his ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... accounts that are given both in ancient and modern times of the immolation of dogs, and of their being used for food. They were sacrificed at certain periods by the Greeks and Romans to almost all their deities, and particularly to Mars, Pluto, and Pan, to Minerva, Proserpine, and Lucina, and also to the moon, because the dog by his barking disturbed all charms and spells, and frightened away all spectres and apparitions. The Greeks immolated many dogs in honour of Hecate, because by their ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the wife of Zeus, became the mother of Persephone (Proserpine), to whom she was so tenderly attached that her whole life was bound up in her, and she knew no happiness except in her society. One day, however, whilst Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow, attended ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... destined to further trials. But leaving me, before you pursue your journey home, you must visit the house of Ades, or Death, to consult the shade of Tiresias the Theban prophet; to whom alone, of all the dead, Proserpine, queen of hell, has committed the secret of future events: it is he that must inform you whether you shall ever see again your wife and country." "O Circe," he cried, "that is impossible: who shall steer my course to Pluto's kingdom? Never ship had strength to make that voyage." "Seek no guide," ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... the artist she is a model. These gentlemen by much contemplation of her charms wax critical. The days when they had hearts being gone, they are haply divided between the blonde and the brunette; the aquiline nose and the Proserpine; this shaped eye and that. But go about among simple unprofessional fellows, boors, dunderheads, and here and there you shall find some barbarous intelligence which has had just strength enough to conceive, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Avernus, whose waters we find both limpid and clear; but are instructed that two months later will change them to a dark-red colour, and that the neighbourhood will then become very malarious and unsafe. A piece of semicircular wall on one side of the lake, indicates the whereabouts of a temple of Proserpine, or Apollo, or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel, accompanied by two torch-bearers, and two other dirty wretches, who often carry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Its general direction was nearly north and south, and it declined downwards, as if seeking the interior of the earth. In fact, it looked not unlike those imaginative pictures of the road to the infernal regions described by the ancient poets. One could picture Pluto in his chariot, with Proserpine beside him, thundering downwards behind his black horses, on the way to those sombre and magnificent regions which are hollowed out beneath the ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... mist, a will-o'-the-wisp, a vulture descending from the Himalayas, the ice-floes on the North-East passage, the sea-beast leviathan, Xerxes' Hellespontic bridge, the gryphon pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides in Oeta, the rape of Proserpine, and a hundred more reminiscences of ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... the sobbing cry of his despair! I could not rest, Nor live with patient mind, Though knowing what is fated must be best; But surely thou art more than mortal kind, And thou canst feel my woe, All-pitying, all-observant, all-divine; He is so little, mother Proserpine, He needs me, let ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... of the frogs and mice; and Aristophanes gave the frogs a most important chorus in one of his comedies; moreover, calling the whole comedy "The Frogs," although he had his choice of title-names among many very notable characters—AEschylus, Euripides, Bacchus, Pluto, Proserpine, and other leaders of society. Still, in every way the frog and the toad are underesteemed—as though such a thing as a worthy family frog or an honourable toad of business were in Nature impossible. It is not as though they were useless. The frog's hind legs ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... on’ (to quote the words of one of his letters) ‘like a house on fire. This is the only kind of picture one ought to do—just copying the materials, and no more: all others are too much trouble.’ It is not difficult to understand that the painter of a ‘Proserpine’ and a ‘Ghirlandata’ would occasionally feel the luxury of a mood intellectually lazy, and would be minded to give voice to it—as in this instance—in terms wilfully extreme; keeping his mental eye none the less steadily directed to a ‘Roman Widow’ or a ‘Blessed ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Urrisbeg Mountain under whose shadow I heard Ottilia's name, Mackay, the learned author of the "Flora Patlandica," discovered the Mediterranean heath,—such a flower as I have often plucked on the sides of Vesuvius, and as Proserpine, no doubt, amused herself in gathering as she strayed in the fields of Enna. Here it is—the self-same flower, peering out at the Atlantic from Roundstone Bay; here, too, in this wild lonely place, nestles the ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the Titans (the bones of the "giants on the earth" before the Deluge, gave rise to the stories of the Titans found in caves), and their scions and coadjutors Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Bacchus, Minerva, or Pallas, Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto, and Neptune furnish by far the greatest part of the Mythology of Greece. Tradition says that they left Phoenicia about the time of Moses to settle in Crete, and from thence they made their way into Greece, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... two goddesses,"—a woman's oath, which recurs constantly in this play; the two goddesses are always Demeter and Proserpine. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sung, and hell{11} consented To hear the poet's prayer; Stern Proserpine relented, And gave him back the fair. Thus song could prevail O'er death and o'er hell, A conquest how hard and how glorious! Though fate had fast bound her With Styx nine times round her, Yet music and ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... seie, "Awey, thou blake ymage, Which of thi derke cloudy face Makst al the worldes lyht deface, And causest unto slep a weie, Be which I mot nou gon aweie Out of mi ladi compaignie. O slepi nyht, I thee defie, And wolde that thou leye in presse With Proserpine the goddesse 2850 And with Pluto the helle king: For til I se the daies spring, I sette slep noght at a risshe." And with that word I sike and wisshe, And seie, "Ha, whi ne were it day? For yit mi ladi thanne I may Beholde, thogh I do nomore." And efte I thenke forthermore, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... your canvas white Unfurl'd, sit thou; the breathing North shall waft Thy vessel on. But when ye shall have cross'd The broad expanse of Ocean, and shall reach The oozy shore, where grow the poplar groves And fruitless willows wan of Proserpine, Push thither through the gulphy Deep thy bark, 620 And, landing, haste to Pluto's murky abode. There, into Acheron runs not alone Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud, From Styx derived; there ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Dionysius Periegetes; indeed the three accounts seem all referrible to one source. But not so Strabo. That writer, or rather his authority Artemidorus, finds his parallel in Ceres. "Artemidorus states, with regard to Ceres and Proserpine, what is more worthy of credit. For he says, that there is an island near Britain wherein are celebrated sacred rites, similar to such as are celebrated in ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... flying song flies after, O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet, Some dim derision of mysterious laughter From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veiled head, Some little sound of unregarded tears Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes, And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs— These only, these the hearkening spirit hears, Sees only ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears, and the restless shades that came and went in the darkness, like dead autumn leaves driven by a winter gale, stood still to gaze and listen. Before the throne where Pluto and his queen Proserpine were seated, sable-clad and stern, the relentless Fates at their feet, Orpheus still played on. And to Proserpine then came the living remembrance of all the joys of her girlhood by the blue AEgean Sea in the fair island of Sicily. Again ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... are going to have a feast at Tempe I have sent my favourite Cerberus to pick up the crumbs as he gets but poor living in the shades here at Tartarus. Proserpine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... such times Proserpine comes back, as she may have cast wistful glances towards the vanishing home of her childhood, when the rude hands of the ravishers were bearing her away from the spot where she was gathering flowers in the vale of Enna; and we think of Orpheus taking that fatal, wistful last look back at ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... don't mean I must believe all this man says, because the decurions have put him here?" cried Arnobius. "Here is this Polemo saying that Proteus is matter, and that minerals and vegetables are his flock; that Proserpine is the vital influence, and Ceres the efficacy of the heavenly bodies; that there are mundane spirits, and supramundane; and then his doctrine about triads, monads, and progressions of the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Sallust, is one and a half miles in circuit, and contains valuable monuments of art, particularly the Aurora of Guercino, an ancient group of the senator Papirius and his mother (or rather of Phaedra and Hippolytus), another of Arria and Paetus, and Bernini's rape of Proserpine. The Villa Borghese, near Rome, has a fine but an unhealthy situation. The greatest part of the city, and the environs as far as Frascati and Tivoli, are visible from it. It has a garden, with a park three miles in circuit. This palace was ornamented in its interior, and furnished ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... be briefly expressed as "a toast with a Savory to follow." For "The Visitors," Lord Justice BOWEN, catching sight of the President's classical picture (No. 232), made a happy hit about the delights of a honeymoon in the Infernal Regions, ending in the return of Proserpine to her mother Ceres by order of the Court above. Finally, the President, in summing up the losses to Art during the past year, paid a graceful tribute to the memory of CHARLES KEENE, who, but a short while ago, was our fellow-worker on the staff of Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... chaste Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel, The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... est couronnee de planetes comme d'un brillant diademe. (Voyez les tableaux d'Albert Duerer.) Ainsi reparait, comme dans l'ancien culte, cette grande divinite, appelee tour-a-tour Maia, Bhawani, Isis, Ceres, Proserpine, Persephone. Reine du ciel, elle est la nuit d'ou sort la vie, et ou toute vie se replonge; mysterieuse reunion de la vie et de la mort. Elle s'appelle aussi la rosee, et dans les mythes allemands, la rosee est consideree comme le principe ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... must once be travelled. The Furies give up some to the sport of horrible Mars: the greedy ocean is destructive to sailors: the mingled funerals of young and old are crowded together: not a single person does the cruel Proserpine pass by. The south wind, the tempestuous attendant on the setting Orion, has sunk me also in the Illyrian waves. But do not thou, O sailor, malignantly grudge to give a portion of loose sand to my bones ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... surpassed by the royal galleries of Munich, Vienna, Madrid, and Paris. The ladies alone would repel one by their gaunt ugliness, their flesh being apparently composed of the article on which the pictures are painted, leather. The only picture not by "Titian" in this room is a Rubens, - "the Rape of Proserpine" - to see which is well worth the half-crown charged for the sight of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... was won in the composition of operas, for which the poet Quinault wrote the words, and he is justly considered to be the founder of French opera. Among Lulli's operas are "Armide," "Isis," "Atys," "Alceste," "Psyche," "Proserpine," and "Bellerophon." The composer did not reach old age, but died in 1687, about fifty-four years old, wealthy and honoured, and a great favourite of Louis XIV., who had made him "Superintendent of the King's Music," and treated him with much ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... was made the chief tree in the groves of Proserpine. And Homer, in describing the Cyclops' country, speaks of it as a land of soft marshy meadows, good rich crumbling plow land, and beautiful clear springs, with aspens all around them. How much that sounds like ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... rais'd by Fate— Looks big, and scorns his neighbour's low estate; His leafy arms into a green cloud twist, And on each branch doth sit a lazy mist, A fatal tree, and luckless to the gods, Where for disdain in life—Love's worst of odds— The queen of shades, fair Proserpine, did rack The sad Adonis: hither now they pack This little god, where, first disarm'd, they bind His skittish wings, then both his hands behind His back they tie, and thus secur'd at last, The ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... of Orpheus, her husband, to hell for her recovery, with which Virgil closes the fourth Georgic, is among the most exquisite passages in all Latin poetry. Pope made it the subject of his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; but if Pluto and Proserpine really relented at the doggerel that the English poet puts into the mouth of the half-divine minstrel, they cannot deserve the title of illacrymabiles which Horace gives them. Some of the pedantic scientists (to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... astonishment expressed upon every face. Madame was walking in the gallery with Chateauthiers—her favourite, and worthy of being so. She took long strides, her handkerchief in her hand, weeping without constraint, speaking pretty loudly, gesticulating; and looking like Ceres after the rape of her daughter Proserpine, seeking her in fury, and demanding her back from Jupiter. Every one respectfully made way to let her pass. Monsieur, who had returned to 'lansquenet', seemed overwhelmed with shame, and his son appeared in despair; and the bride-elect was marvellously embarrassed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to applaud us! Eh, but you are young, very young. I should not wonder to hear you were born after I left the stage. And you are pretty, but not old enough to be Orfeo yet. I must wait—I must wait, though I wait till I doubt if I am not changed to Proserpine with her cracked voice. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Shelley, but of his wife. A comparison of that fragment and the dramas here published seems to me to suggest the same conclusion, though in both cases Mary Shelley must have been helped by her husband.] Again, it may well be more than a coincidence, that the Proserpine motive occurs in that passage from Dante's Purgatorio, canto 28, on 'Matilda gathering flowers', which Shelley is known to have translated shortly before Medwin's visit in the late autumn ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... for prices very far in excess of their intrinsic value, the total sum realized being over three thousand pounds. But during the sale of the books, on that fine July afternoon, in the dingy study hung round with the lovely but melancholy faces of Proserpine and Pandora, despite the noise of the throng and the witticisms of the auctioneer, a sad feeling of desecration must have crept over many of those who were present at the dispersion of the household goods and gods of that man who so hated the vulgar crowd. Gazing through ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... praising his patrons Stilicho (On the Consulate of Stilicho) and Honorius (on the Consulate of Honorius), and inveighing against Rufinus and Eutropius, the rivals of Stilicho. Of poems on other subjects, 'his three books of the unfinished Rape of Proserpine are among the finest examples of the purely ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... picture is The 'Carrying off of Proserpine.' 'Pluto in his car is driven by fiery brown steeds, and is bearing away the goddess, resisting and struggling. The picture absolutely glows with genial fire. The forms in it are more slender than is general with Rubens. Among ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... into the inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and, gilding them all with celestial gathering, never stops on their spots or their bodily shape; while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy streak of jet in the very flower that without this bit ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... guide, whom I had agreed with, rode up to the door of the hotel, leading another small, sturdy, mountain horse, and accompanied by the inseparable companion of his wanderings, a bull-dog named Pluto, which, had sex been considered, should have been called Proserpine, though not ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... To wound her heart whose eyes have wounded me And suffered her to glory in my wrack, Thus to my aid I lastly conjure thee! By hellish Styx, by which the Thund'rer swears, By thy fair mother's unavoided power, By Hecate's names, by Proserpine's sad tears, When she was wrapt to the infernal bower! By thine own loved Psyche, by the fires Spent on thine altars flaming up to heaven, By all true lovers' sighs, vows, and desires, By all the wounds that ever thou hast given; I conjure thee by all that I have named, To make ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... our trust), with love's own beam Dost warm thee," thus to her my speech I fram'd: "Ah! please thee hither towards the streamlet bend Thy steps so near, that I may list thy song. Beholding thee and this fair place, methinks, I call to mind where wander'd and how look'd Proserpine, in that season, when her child The mother lost, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Piazza Navona. In the court of the Palazzo Bernini is one of the most interesting of his works—a colossal figure, allegorical in significance, illustrating "Truth Brought to Light by Time." One of the most important works of Bernini—now placed in the Museo Nazionale—is the group of "Pluto and Proserpine." ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... answered, 'Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, you shall none of you stay here any longer if you do not want to, but there is another journey which you have got to take before you can sail homewards. You must go to the house of Hades and of dread Proserpine to consult the ghost of the blind Theban prophet Teiresias, whose reason is still unshaken. To him alone has Proserpine left his understanding even in death, but the other ghosts ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned dagger! this empress of pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakespeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Juno commanding aspects! this Terpsichore of the curtains and scenes! this Proserpine of fire and excitement! this Katterfelto of wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief and soared above all the natural powers of description! She was nature itself! She was the most exquisite work of art! She was the very daisy, primrose, tuberose, sweet brier, furze blossom, gilliflower, ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... Poor things! I do remember me, How I did seek Proserpine. We must not leave her thus forlorn: Auroral grace in her is born, And, rarer else, the finest sense Of feeling and intelligence. Mortals of such ethereal grain Are quickened both for joy and pain; Theirs is the affluence of joy, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the Fields, but in the Company of a Parent, a Guardian, or some other sober discreet Person. I have before shewn how apt they are to trip in a flowry Meadow, and shall further observe to them, that Proserpine was out a Maying, when she met with that fatal Adventure to which Milton alludes when ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Moresin of Aberdeen, a writer of the sixteenth century, says that on St. Peter's Day, which is the twenty-ninth of June, the Scotch ran about at night with lighted torches on mountains and high grounds, "as Ceres did when she roamed the whole earth in search of Proserpine";[531] and towards the end of the eighteenth century the parish minister of Loudoun, a district of Ayrshire whose "bonny woods and braes" have been sung by Burns, wrote that "the custom still remains amongst the herds and young people to kindle fires in the high grounds ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... freshness, raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden expresses it, "through the spectacles of books;" and, on most occasions, calls learning to his assistance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned Charybdis on the "larboard." The mythological allusions have been justly censured, as not being always ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... crest she wore a wannish fire Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar: Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet! She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete: 60 And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair? As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air. Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love's sake, And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay, Like a stoop'd falcon ere ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... fatigue which I have undergone, added to the necessity of my writing several letters upon my arrival here, makes it impossible for me to say more to you than that I am alive and well, after a miraculous escape from the 'Proserpine,' which ran ashore off Searhorn, and a second danger, scarcely less, yesterday morning, in a long walk to gain this place, during which we were overtaken by the tide and forced to wade for an hour, in the hardest frost I ever felt, against a strong current of tide, which ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... pass'd the gulf of silent death, And now I land on the Elysian shore!— Behold the goddess of those happy plains, Fair Proserpine—let me adore thy ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... ("Placebo" seems to have been a current term to express the character or the ways of "the too deferential man." "Flatterers be the Devil's chaplains, that sing aye Placebo."—"Parson's Tale."), or with the fantastic machinery in which Pluto and Proserpine anticipate the part played by Oberon and Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On the other hand, Chaucer is capable of using goods manifestly borrowed or stolen for a purpose never intended in their ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... how art thou chang'd in death's black shade! Had Proserpine no pity on thy youth, But suffer'd thy fair crimson-colour'd spring With withered winter to be blasted thus? Horatio, thou ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... The typist, Miss Proserpine Garnett, is a brisk little woman of about 30, of the lower middle class, neatly but cheaply dressed in a black merino skirt and a blouse, rather pert and quick of speech, and not very civil in her manner, but sensitive and affectionate. ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... the threshold of Proserpine." 38 Orpheus, to whom the introduction of the Mysteries into Greece from the East was ascribed, wrote a poem, now lost, called the "Descent into Hades." Such a descent was attributed to Hercules, Theseus, Rhampsinitus, and many others.39 It is painted ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... viii, 2, 3, 6, ed. Frazer. Cp. also the animal names applied to priests and priestesses, e.g. the King-bees of Ephesus; the Bee-priestesses of Demeter, of Delphi, of Proserpine, and of the Great Mother; the Doves of Dodona; the Bears in the sacred dance of Artemis; the Bulls at the feast of Poseidon at Ephesus; the Wolves at the ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... candles burning in honour of Februa; and the Greeks at this same period held their feast of lights in honour of Ceres. Pope Innocent explains the origin of this feast of Candlemass. He states that "The heathens dedicated this month to the infernal gods. At its beginning Pluto stole away Proserpine, and her mother Ceres sought for her in the night with lighted torches. In the beginning of this month the idolaters walked about the city with lighted candles, and as some of the holy fathers could not extirpate such a custom, they ordained that ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... elaborate" are "of inward less exact." A Boston critic denominates Powers "a sublime mechanic," as if there were only physical imitation in his busts, and no expression in his figures. The insinuation is unjust. By exquisite finish and patient labor he makes of such subjects as the Fisher-boy, the Proserpine, and Il Penseroso charming creations,—in attitude and feature true to the moment and the mood delineated, and not less true in each detail; their popularity is justified by scientific and tasteful canons; and his portrait busts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... years hence fly And leave no sound: nor piety, Or prayers, or vow Can keep the wrinkle from the brow; But we must on, As fate does lead or draw us; none, None, Posthumus, could e'er decline The doom of cruel Proserpine. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... were hung with Mortlake tapestries, representing in four great panels the story of Perseus and Andromeda, and the Rape of Proserpine. To her who knew not the old Greek fables those figures looked strangely diabolical. Naked maiden and fiery dragon, flying horse and Greek hero, Demeter and Persephone, hell-god and chariot, seemed alike demonaic and unholy, seen ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... by the wild boar in the woods was shorn. 40 Law-giving Minos did such years desire, And wished the goddess long might feel love's fire. Ceres, what sports[418] to thee so grievous were, As in thy sacrifice we them forbear? Why am I sad, when Proserpine is found, And Juno-like with Dis reigns under ground? Festival days ask Venus, songs, and wine, These gifts are meet to please ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... P. Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more masters than the one we've got! We don't the least care for you; pray ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... distinct souvenir of Parnassus, but there is no modern equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the "Romantiques." The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of Mdlle. de Maupin. In form the Leper is old English, the colouring is Baudelaire, but the rude industry of the dustmen and the comestible glories of the market-place shall be mine. A bas "Les ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of course recognize that this is the story of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Apuleius, and translated with such felicity by Pater in his Marius, Pt. i., ch. 5. Though the names of the gods and goddesses—Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Juno, Proserpine, etc.—are scattered through the tale, it is now acknowledged on all hands that it has nothing to do with mythology but is a fairy tale pure and simple, as indeed is acknowledged by Apuleius who calls it a "fabella anilis." From this ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... East record In sacred symbol, or unletter'd word; Emblem of Life, to change eternal doom'd, The beauteous form of fair ADONIS bloom'd.— On Syrian hills the graceful Hunter slain Dyed with his gushing blood the shuddering plain; 50 And, slow-descending to the Elysian shade, A while with PROSERPINE reluctant stray'd; Soon from the yawning grave the bursting clay Restor'd the Beauty to delighted day; Array'd in youth's resuscitated charms, And young DIONE woo'd him to her arms.— Pleased for a while the assurgent youth above Relights the golden lamp of life and love; Ah, soon again to leave ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... and round off, as it were, some great period of my studies." Of his object he says: "God has instilled into me, at all events, a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so much labour is Ceres said to have sought Proserpine as I am wont day and night to seek for the idea of the beautiful through all the forms and faces of things, and to follow it leading me on as with certain assured traces." We may be sure that he read the classics of all the languages which he understood. His ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... reached the height of this objectionable manner in his representation of the Rape of Proserpine, which is in the Villa Ludovisi. The Pluto is a rough, repulsive man, with whom no association of a god can be made, and the Proserpine is made a soulless, sensual figure, so far from attractive in a pure sense ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... the proof, against him in particular, end even there; he further shows that his attention must have been especially drawn to this garden scene by his assertion that Pluto and Proserpine were the prototypes of Oberon and Titania; and yet he failed to notice a circumstance that would have added some degree of plausibility to the comparison, namely, that Chaucer's, as well as Shakspeare's, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... Then later came crimson campion and eyebright, dog roses and honeysuckles, columbine and centaury, grasses of all kinds, and harebell, and a multitude impossible to name; though the very naming is pleasant. Eleanor lived very much out of doors, and was likened by her aunt to a rural Flora or Proserpine that summer; though when in the house she was just the most sonsy, sensible, companionable little earthly maiden that could be fancied. Eleanor was not under size indeed; but so much like her own wild flowers in pure simpleness and sweet natural good qualities that Mrs. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of miscellaneous adventure. The jealousy of Juno is naturally the mainspring of the action and the motive which affords some show of connection or coherence to the three remaining acts of "The Silver Age": the rape of Proserpine, the mourning and wandering and wrath of Ceres, are treated with so sweet and beautiful a simplicity of touch that Milton may not impossibly have embalmed and transfigured some reminiscence of these scenes in a passage of such heavenly beauty as custom ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Claudian (365-404 A.D.), in whom the graceful imagination of classical antiquity seems to have revived. He enjoyed the patronage of Stilicho, the guardian and minister of Honorius, and in the praise and honor of him and of his pupil, he wrote "The Rape of Proserpine," the "War of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... that Orpheus sang. Even Proserpine, the spouse of Pluto, confesses to her lord that she feels the new stirrings of sympathy. She desires to hear more of this wondrous song. Now Orpheus sings in octave stanzas. The last stanza of his song is thus translated ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... 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. I felt the vapours of forgetfulness Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake, And, stooping over me, for Henna's sake Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back Breathless, with leaping heart along the track. After me roared and clattered angry hosts ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... Memoirs—in three volumes, but those have stopped. There was plenty to say, but after certain experiences which came to me here— singular enough experiences—nothing in it seemed worth while. Now I call it Despoina, after the principal character. Despoina, or the Lore of Proserpine." ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Pale Proserpine came groping round, Her pupils dreadfully dilated With too much living underground,— A ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ever at quadrille? (The ladies there must needs be rooks, For cards, we know, are Pluto's books.) If Florimel had found her love, For whom she hang'd herself above? How oft a-week was kept a ball By Proserpine at Pluto's hall? She fancied those Elysian shades The sweetest place for masquerades; How pleasant on the banks of Styx, To troll it in a coach and six! What pride a female heart inflames? How endless ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Peter must hang upon the cross in the Pincian gardens, as a real Laureolus upon the stage. A Christian boy must be the Icarus, and a Christian man the Scaevola or the Hercules or the Orpheus of the amphitheatre; and Christian women, modest maidens, holy matrons, must be the Danaids or the Proserpine or worse, and play their parts as priestesses of Saturn and Ceres, and in blood-stained dramas of the dead. No wonder that Nero became to Christian imagination the very incarnation of evil; the antichrist; the Wild Beast from the abyss; the delegate of the great red Dragon, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... came beneath the walls of Carthage to implore the protection of Ceres and Proserpine, for in Byrsa there was a temple with priests consecrated to these goddesses in expiation of the horrors formerly committed at the siege of Syracuse. The Syssitia, alleging their right to waifs and strays, claimed the youngest in order to sell them; and some fair Lacedaemonian women ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... PANELS. Designed by Rev. Selwyn Image. Representing Venus and Proserpine. To be worked in outline on linen, as No. 1, or in coloured silks on a groundwork of ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... about for a time, tumbles into a ditch. Pigwiggen, seconded by Tomalin, encounters Oberon, seconded by Tom Thum, and the fight is "both fast and furious." Queen Mab, in alarm, craves the interference of Proserpine, who first envelopes the combatants in a thick smoke, which compels them to desist, and then gives them a draught "to assuage their thirst." The draught was from the river Leth[^e]; and immediately the combatants had tasted it, they forgot not only the cause ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... simplicity reminds one of that passage where Proserpine, when carried off by Pluto, regrets the loss of the flowers ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... this moon of blank verse! this queen and princess of tears! this Donellan of the poisoned bowl! this empress of the pistol and dagger! this chaos of Shakspeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Terpsichore of the curtains and scenes! this Proserpine of fire and earthquake! this Katterfelto of wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! she was nature itself! she was the most exquisite ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... pain, Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife Of lab'ring nature, and dissolve her life. For since she died, not doom'd by Heav'n's decree, Or her own crime, but human casualty, And rage of love, that plung'd her in despair, The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair, Which Proserpine and they can only know; Nor made her sacred to the shades below. Downward the various goddess took her flight, And drew a thousand colors from the light; Then stood above the dying lover's head, And said: "I thus devote thee to the dead. This off'ring to th' infernal ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... here described is characteristic; it is the type familiar to all in "Pandora," "Proserpine," "La Ghirlandata," "The Day Dream," "Our Lady of Pity," and the other life-size, half-length figure paintings in oil which were the masterpieces of his maturer style. The languid pose, the tragic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... his orders in stentorian roars; the anchor was hove up, catted and fished; one sail went up after another, the Proserpine's head came round, and away she bore for England with a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... beauty of her youthful face Made it the Harem of each maiden grace; And such perfection blended with her air, She seemed some stately Goddess moving there: Beholding her, you thought she might have been The long-lost, flower-loving Proserpine: ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... lovers about to part, the despondency of a man bent on suicide, the devotion of the nun, or the rapt adoration of worship. A different text and a slight change in time effect the marvel, and hardly a composer has disdained to borrow from one work to enrich another. His only opera composed in Paris, "Proserpine," was ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Proserpine was gathering narcissus or asphodel when Pluto ran away with her," declared Mr. Stacey, offering Lilias a bouquet which a Greek nymph might have been pleased to accept. "I incline to asphodel myself, because of its immortal significance. It gives an added ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... in for the BENJAMIN'S mess of obloquy, having represented Pluto, the god of wealth, in the act of carrying off a female Proserpine, but the figures so Lilliputian, and in such a disproportionate expansion of confused sceneries, that the elopement produced but a very paltry impression. The slipshod carelessness of this painter may be realised from the fact that in ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... on his knees a copy of the gospels." (See Murray's {408} Handbook to Belgium.) The throne in which the body was seated, the sarcophagus (of Parian marble, the work of Roman or Greek artists, ornamented with a fine bas-relief of the Rape of Proserpine) in which the feet of the dead king were placed, are still preserved in the cathedral, where I saw them last year, together with some portions of the robes, and some curious ancient embroidery: these last are not usually exhibited ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... all things back at last into silence —"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And, therefore, as the most tender image of this appearing and fading life, in the birth and fall of flowers, her daughter Proserpine plays in the fields of Sicily, and thence is torn away into darkness, and becomes the Queen of Fate—not merely of death, but of the gloom which closes over and ends, not beauty only, but sin, and chiefly of sins the sin against the life she gave; so that ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... divine wisdom never yet surpassed. In Egypt, too, the Sphynx, walking the earth with lion tread, looked out upon its marvels in the calm, inscrutable beauty of a virgin's face, and the Greek could only add wings to the great emblem. In Greece, Ceres and Proserpine, significantly termed "the great goddesses," were seen seated side by side. They needed not to rise for any worshipper or any change; they were prepared for all things, as those initiated to their mysteries knew. More obvious is the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... bystander to be a witness to his bad treatment. The woman says, 'If, by Proserpine, instead of all this 'testifying' (comp. Cuddie and his mother in 'Old Mortality!') you would buy yourself a rivet, it would show more sense in you!' The Scholiast explains echinus as ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... Near the Tapis Vert, in the midst of a dense grove, is a magnificent rotunda composed of 32 marble columns, united by arches and supporting a number of marble vases. Under the arcades, are a circular range of fountains, "and in the middle is a fine group of the Rape of Proserpine." ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... Chesterton family had been quite without the strange Protestant prejudice that in the minds of many Englishmen sets the Mother of God against God the Son. Our lady was respected though of course not invoked. In a boyhood poem Gilbert took the blasphemous lines of Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine" and wrote a kind of parody in reverse turning the poem into a hymn to Mary. He would, too, recite Swinburne's own lines "deliberately directing them away from Swinburne's intention and supposing them addressed to the new Christian Queen of life, rather than to the fallen Pagan ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... mischievous fun of shocking your audience. However, "The Leper" and his company are chiefly boyish, in the least favourable sense of the word. They do not destroy the imperishable merit of the "Hymn to Proserpine" and the "Garden of Proserpine" and the "Triumph of Time" ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... three long centuries throughout the world a dreary green monotony of spring all over France, Provence, Italy, Spain, Germany, England; spring, spring, nothing but spring even in the mysterious countries governed by the Grail King, by the Fairy Morgana, by Queen Proserpine, by Prester John; nay, in the new Jerusalem, in the kingdom of Heaven itself, nothing but spring; till one longs for a bare twig, for a yellow leaf, for a frozen gutter, as for a draught of water in the desert. The green fields and meadows enamelled with painted flowers, how one ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Claudian on the Rape of Proserpine, the longest extant work connected with the story of Demeter, yet itself unfinished, closes the world of classical poetry. Writing in the fourth century of the Christian era, Claudian has his subject before him in the whole extent of its various development, and also profits by those ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... for her future. Once his wife, he would move heaven and earth for her love. She should be kept in luxury, surrounded by everything that could rouse tenderness and delight; she should be the star of his life, and he would be her very slave. There were instances of Proserpine loving her dark-browed Pluto, and sharing his world. Wilmarth had brooded over this until it seemed more ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... for initiation, and received the title of Initiates. These were the matters contained in the articles of information, which Thessalus, the son of Cimon, exhibited against Alcibiades, for his impious mockery of the goddesses, Ceres and Proserpine. The people were highly exasperated and incensed against Alcibiades upon this accusation, which, being aggravated by Androcles, the most malicious of all his enemies, at first disturbed his friends exceedingly. But when they perceived that all the sea-men designed for Sicily were for him, and the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Masons for the introduction of the symbol of Hiram Abif. The idea of the symbol, although modified by the Jewish Masons, is not Jewish in its inception. It was evidently borrowed from the pagan mysteries, where Bacchus, Adonis, Proserpine, and a host of other apotheosized beings play the same role that Hiram does in ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... heart as Folk-lore, fills moonlit dells with dancing fairies, sets out a meal for the Brownie, hears the tinkle of airy bridle-bells as Tamlane rides away with the Queen of Dreams, changes Pluto and Proserpine into Oberon and Titania, and makes friends with unseen powers as Good Folk; the other is a bird of night, whose shadow sends a chill among the roots of the hair: it sucks with the vampire, gorges with the ghoule, is choked by the night-hag, pines away under the witch's charm, and commits uncleanness ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... one could likewise see, Phoebus Apollo, Vulcan, Lady Venus, Pluto and Proserpine and Mercury, God ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... prisoner in England, came to visit his old friends again, crossing the seas; but the truth is, his coming was to see the Countess of Salisbury, the nonpareil of those times, and his dear mistress. That infernal God Pluto came from hell itself, to steal Proserpine; Achilles left all his friends for Polixena's sake, his enemy's daughter; and all the [4867]Graecian gods forsook their heavenly mansions for that fair lady, Philo Dioneus daughter's sake, the paragon of Greece in those days; ea enim venustate fuit, ut eam ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dead and sister to the dust; When no more avidly I drink the wine Of human love; when the pale Proserpine Has covered me with poppies, and cold rust Has cut my lyre-strings, and the sun has thrust Me underground to nourish the world-vine, — Men shall discover these old songs of mine, And say: This woman lived — as ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... reach true Being, "to the uniform and simple energy of the period of sameness, instead of the abundantly wandering motion of the period which is characterised by difference." This is the life sought by those initiated by Orpheus into the Mysteries of Bacchus and Proserpine, and this is the result of the practice of the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant |
