"Tantalus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Not only had the troops to display active but passive heroism. Though the longing for water exceeded the craving for food and repose, the unfortunate fellows were very near the verge of famine. Their position at times must have savoured of the tortures of Tantalus, for many of the men were groping after the enemy in a doubled-up fashion and under a shower of lead, along farms and gardens, while hens clacked, pigs grunted, goats offered milk, and potatoes and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... advantage of the lesser heat of the earlier hours, but his way led him through loose sand, down into cuts and gorges, up their steep sides, across fields of loose stones, which, shifting underfoot, made his striving for haste a pure work of Tantalus. At the end of the first hour the heat was already intense; at the end of the second he felt that his skin was as dry as the desert sands and that the moisture of his body was being sucked out of it by the thirsty air and that at every stride the day grew ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... hast thou spoken. Him nam'st thou ancestor whom all the world Knows as a sometime favorite of the gods? Is it that Tantalus, whom Jove himself Drew to his council and his social board? On whose experienc'd words, with wisdom fraught, As on the language of an oracle, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... among her other accomplishments, my aunt is a very fair accountant. She has found out that the girl cannot eat figs and candies in a year to the amount of sixty thousand florins, so she is not over-willing to part with her at all. But I am not going to play the Tantalus for years, and run the risk of having the girl snatched from me by some jackanapes ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... is that it was for passionate admirers the torment of Tantalus to see Chopin going about a whole evening in a salon and not to hear him. The mistress of the house took pity on us; she was indiscreet, and Chopin played, sang his most delicious songs; we set to these joyous or sad ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... said, "they've decided on some exquisite method of punishing me. Something like the punishment they gave Tantalus when he—" ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hues and outlines of the pageant; the real knowledge, the recreative power induced by familiar love, the assimilation of its soul and substance,—all the true value of such a revelation,—is wanting; and he remains a poor Tantalus, hungrier than before he had tasted this ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Don Gregorio and Lantanas have been enduring agony great as ever tortured Tantalus. It has made fearful inroad on their strength—on their frames. Both are reduced almost to skeletons; cheekbones protruding, eyes sunken in their sockets. Were the cords that confine them suddenly taken off, they would sink helpless ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... gave her a European mansion. Later, as his sons and daughters grew able to advise, he built a bungalow, a spacious, rambling affair, as unpretentious as it was magnificent. Also, as time went by, there arose a mountain house on Tantalus, to which the family could flee when the "sick wind" blew from the south. And at Waikiki he built a beach residence on an extensive site so well chosen that later on, when the United States government condemned it for fortification purposes, an immense ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... he asked, looking at her with the wistful eyes of Tantalus gazing at the luscious fruits which the wrathful winds wafted ever from his ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... you care? She is nothing to you. Ah! I begin to see," he continued thoughtfully; "you would not regret had he a taste of the Tantalus punishment." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... but those of paternity; she died young. Her libertine husband, fettered at the beginning of his commercial career by the necessity for working, and held in thrall by want of money, had led the life of Tantalus. Thrown in—as he phrased it—with the most elegant women in Paris, he let them out of the shop with servile homage, while admiring their grace, their way of wearing the fashions, and all the nameless charms of what is called breeding. To rise to the level of one of these fairies of the drawing-room ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... fetters of a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been fastened on his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: "I shall lose all my energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I shall see ever before me—ah! tortures of Tantalus!—the vision of a new love, fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before my sight, which lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is not ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... an impatient patient, lingring vnder the rough hands of a cruell phisitian: his creditor hauing cast his water knowes his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him. He is like Tantalus, who hath freedome running by his doore, yet cannot enioy the least benefit thereof. His greatest griefe is that his credit was so good and now no better. His land is drawne within the compasse of a sheepe's skin, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... it shall not be serv'd like Tantalus any more: he was doom'd to behold; and, beholding, to wish and languish for the tempting draught, in vain: but a better doom awaits the happy Harriet;—what she desires is not thus interdicted, but ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... each individual his own peculiar adventures. Vossius refers the adventure of Niobe, the daughter of Phoroneus, to Jupiter Apis, the king of Argos, who reigned about B.C. 1770; and that of Danae to Jupiter Proetus, who lived about 1350 years before the Christian era. It was Jupiter Tantalus, according to him, that carried off Ganymede; and it was Jupiter, the father of Hercules, that deceived Leda. He says that the subject of the present Fable was Jupiter Asterius, who reigned about B.C. 1400. Diodorus Siculus tells us that he was the son ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the men, sometimes rowing themselves to give a good example; and after eating to recruit their strength, they fell to their work again, seeing nothing all around but the sky and the sea. Though this was enough to distress them sufficiently, yet they were besides in the predicament of Tantalus, who had water within a span of his mouth yet could not quench his thirst; such was their distress, for, through the improvidence of the Indians and the prodigious heat of the preceding day and night, all their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... man that coffers-up his gold Is plagued with cramps and gouts and painful fits; And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold, But like still-pining Tantalus he sits, And useless barns the harvest of his wits; Having no other pleasure of his gain But torment that ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... calculation; foresight &c. 510. contemplation, prospection[obs3], lookout; prospect, perspective, horizon, vista; destiny &c. 152. suspense, waiting, abeyance; curiosity &c. 455; anxious expectation, ardent expectation, eager expectation, breathless expectation, sanguine expectation; torment of Tantalus. hope &c. 858; trust &c. (belief) 484; auspices &c. (prediction) 511; assurance, confidence, presumption, reliance. V. expect; look for, look out for, look forward to; hope for; anticipate; have in prospect, have in contemplation; keep in view; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... nude would have perceived her outlines only through a surrounding glory. She would have shown herself without hesitation to a satyr or a eunuch. She had the self-possession of a goddess. To have made her nudity a torment, ever eluding a pursuing Tantalus, would have been ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Tantalus never longed for water more than we did. Those who have been so beset can alone tell of the watchfulness and headaching for water. Now to the mast-head with straining eyes,—then arguing and inferring, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... place where we're standin' now wuz once a volcano and belched forth flames, and that also," sez I, pintin' to Tantalus that riz up two thousand feet. "And," sez I, "they say that the ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Hades the sounds sped on their way, and the hands of Time stood still. From his bitter task of trying to quaff the stream that ever receded from the parched and burning lips, Tantalus ceased for a moment. The ceaseless course of Ixion's wheel was stayed, the vulture's relentless beak no longer tore at the Titan's liver; Sisyphus gave up his weary task of rolling the stone and sat on the rock to listen, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... taken not to confound Attalus with Tantalus,—a blunder which, as Villani observes, [Footnote: Cron. Lib. I. c. vii.] is often committed by ignorant chroniclers. But Tantalus, as we all very well know, was the son of Jupiter, and grandson of Saturn. Now we are quite sure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a situation somewhat similar to that of Tantalus. Water I saw not, but I heard it. The hoarse rushing of the waves as they tore along the sides of the ship was plainly audible. I knew it was the water of the sea—salt, and of no service to me, even could I have reached it— but still it was the sound of water playing continually ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of the Tantalus cup of bliss I could read in these traces of love stricken by the thunderbolt remorse—in this visible presentment of a life of luxury, extravagance, and riot. There were faint red marks on her young face, signs of the fineness of the skin; but her features ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... in "Metamorphosis", vi. 404, relates how Tantalus at a feast to the gods offered them the shoulder of his own son. It is not certain, however, that Chretien is referring here to this ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... shelter. One of their number whose name will not appear in history, published a book, entitled "True Civilization an Immediate Necessity." Surely enough true civilization is and always has been an immediate necessity: a necessity like the feast of Tantalus: but how is it to be realized? The purest saints and noblest statesmen have struggled and died in despair in the attempt to elevate humanity a single inch above the condition ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... away by the god of hell, and Orpheus, her lover, went in quest of her. He took with him his lyre, and played such exquisite music that all hell was amazed. Ixion forgot his labors at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus ceased from their hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, even Pluto smiled, and, for the first time in the history of hell, the eyes of the Furies were wet with tears. As it was with the lyre of Orpheus, so it is to-day with the great harmonies of Science, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... tantalus and found a syphon in the corner cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... halt in a current as strong as this? No, Dick; you must taste a little of the torture of Tantalus just now. You shall make ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... with a blotter, a rack for telegram forms and stationery, and a wastepaper basket, standing out in the hall near the sideboard, and a lady's worktable, with two chairs at it, towards the other side of the lounge. The writing table has also two chairs at it. On the sideboard there is a tantalus, liqueur bottles, a syphon, a glass jug of lemonade, tumblers, and every convenience for casual drinking. Also a plate of sponge cakes, and a highly ornate punchbowl in the same style as the keramic display in the pavilion. Wicker chairs ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... belongs to that heroic house whose tragic history was among the most terrible and the most familiar to a Greek audience. Tantalus, the founder of the family, for some offence against the gods, was suffering in Hades the punishment which is christened by his name. His son Pelops was stained with the blood of Myrtilus. Of the two sons of the next generation, Thyestes seduced the wife of his brother ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Tantalus lay far out on a spiral arm, well away from the main stream of traffic that flowed through the galaxy. It was a fair planet boasting an equable climate, at least in the tropic zone. But as yet the population ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... of wretched men, each an epistolary Tantalus, who, with eyes fixed on the wooden grating, implore the clerk for a post-marked deception. 'Tis a sad spectacle, and I am sure that there is a post-office in purgatory, where tortured souls go to inquire if their deliverance ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... dreadful to relate, nor suffering, nor heaven-inflicted calamity, the burden of which human nature may not be compelled to bear. For Tantalus, the blest, (and I am not reproaching his fortune, when I say this,) the son of Jupiter, as they report, trembling at the rock which impends over his head, hangs in the air, and suffers this punishment, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... from this moment, by a wave of unimaginable agony that he could not suppose anyone ever had suffered as he did. And he suddenly thought of the puerility of poets who have invented the useless labor of Sisyphus, the material thirst of Tantalus, the devoured heart of Prometheus! Oh, if they had foreseen, if they had experienced the mad love of an elderly man for a young girl, how would they had expressed the painful and secret effort of a being who can no longer inspire love, the tortures of ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... show your own eloquence; pass over these things as slightly as you can, and rather aim at being useful and intelligible. Observe how the great and sublime Homer acts on these occasions! as great a poet as he is, he says nothing about Tantalus, Ixion, Tityus, and the rest of them. But if Parthenius, Euphorion, or Callimachus, had treated this subject, what a number of verses they would have spent in rolling Ixion's wheel, and bringing the water up to the very lips of Tantalus! Mark, also, how quickly Thucydides, who is ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... leave them. He had lived long enough to know that an interest by a woman in a man—especially a man beyond the beaten track of her observation—did not necessarily mean that she might marry him if he asked her. And yet—oh, Tantalus! here she was beside him, for one afternoon again his very own, their two souls ringing with the harmony of whirling worlds in sunlit space. He sought refuge in thin thought; he strove, in oblivion, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were sons of Atreus, and were descended from Tantalus, once a favourite of the gods, who used to come down and feast with him, until once he took his son Pelops and dressed him for their meal. Jupiter found it out, collected the limbs, and restored the boy to life; but Ceres had been so distracted with grief about her daughter, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that, surrounded by people who were eating, suffocated by the fragrant odor of the viands, the Count and Countess de Breville and Monsieur and Madame Carre-Lamadon suffered the agonies of that torture which has ever been associated with the name of Tantalus. Suddenly the young wife of the cotton manufacturer gave a deep sigh. Every head turned towards her; she was as white as the snow outside, her eyes closed, her head fell forward—she had fainted. Her husband, distraught with fear, implored ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... definite. And if you keep this in mind, you will find every name and legend of the oldest history become full of meaning to you. All the mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the legends of the family of Tantalus. The main one is the making of the ivory shoulder of Pelops after Demeter has eaten the shoulder of flesh. With that you have Broteas, the brother of Pelops, carving the first statue of the mother of the ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... murmured the young man sadly, and his thoughts reminded him of the renowned son of Jupiter dying of thirst with the tempting element raised to his chin, but could not partake of a single drop. "Ah! there's many a modern Tantalus," said Phillip ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... in a hall-room on Third Avenue. He invited me up there one night. He had a little book on the washstand that he read instead of shopping in the saloons after hours. 'I'm on to that,' says I, 'from reading about it in novels. All the heroes on the bum carry the little book. It's either Tantalus or Liver or Horace, and its printed in Latin, and you're a college man. And I wouldn't be surprised,' says I, 'if you wasn't educated, too.' But it was only the batting averages of the League for the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... relieved of it; and with the lake glistening before their eyes under the clear sunlight, and the current gently gliding through the straits underneath, they could realise, in something more than fancy, what must have been the terrible sufferings of poor Tantalus. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... situation of the vulgar, and would have regarded all these disquisitions with indolence and indifference. At present they seem to be in a very lamentable condition, and such as the poets have given us but a faint notion of in their descriptions of the punishment of Sisyphus and Tantalus. For what can be imagined more tormenting, than to seek with eagerness, what for ever flies us; and seek for it in a place, where it is impossible it ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of the rock, the Tantalus of the fable, man, plunged in this world of woe with his lips thirsty for happiness, stretches out his hand to pluck the bitter Dead-Sea fruits of this earth. With his profound instincts of the Infinite, his craving for the Absolute, he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... were, at least, occasional hours when you could trifle too, but now you are always carrying on your everlasting book-keeping, and, by Tantalus, all ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... drop to lose In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, All in one moment, and so near the brink; But Fate withstands, and, to oppose th' attempt, Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards The ford, and of itself the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, th' adventurous bands, With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast, Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... that a God who has created all things, every object the most desirable to the nourishment and health of man, should nevertheless forbid him their use? The Christian religion appears to doom its votaries to the punishment of Tantalus. The most part of the superstitions in the world have made of God a capricious and jealous sovereign, who amuses himself by tempting the passions and exciting the desires of his slaves, without permitting them the gratification of the one or the enjoyment ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Sharon with a new intent, Making no laws, but keen to circumvent The laws of Nature (since he can't repeal) That break his failing body on the wheel. As Tantalus again and yet again The elusive wave endeavors to restrain To slake his awful thirst, so Sharon tries To purchase happiness that age denies; Obtains the shadow, but the substance goes, And hugs the thorn, but cannot keep the rose; For Dead Sea fruits bids prodigally, eats, And then, with tardy ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... themselves in its pellucid wave; some making the valley vocal with their melodious warblings, and others filling it with harsh, stridulous cries. Burning with thirst, and faint from fatigue, he will fix his gaze on the glistening water, to be tortured as Tantalus, and descry the cool shade, without being able to rest his ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... without another word. Like Tantalus, the tempting fruit had been within reach, and his evil destiny had come in to dash it from his lips. Was it wonderful if he felt disposed to give it up and in sheer desperation go back ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... rolled cigarettes one after another with amazing dexterity and smoked them with half a dozen Titanic breaths. His was a single-track mind. He loved the girl, and he bore the sign of his love on his face. He wanted her desperately; it was a hunger like that of Tantalus, too keen to be ever satisfied. Yet, still more than he looked at the girl, he, also, stared into the distance. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... about anything which is unconnected with some present or future pain of body. Nor is there any fool who does not suffer under some one of these diseases. Therefore there is no fool who is not miserable. Besides these things there is death, which is always hanging over us as his rock is over Tantalus; and superstition, a feeling which prevents any one who is imbued with it from ever enjoying tranquillity. Besides, such men as they do not recollect their past good fortune, do not enjoy what is present, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... 125-132.) The Christian orator faintly mutters some exhortations to modesty and forgiveness; but he is well satisfied, that the real sufferings of Julian will far exceed the fabulous torments of Ixion or Tantalus.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... his own Dogs; may bee meant, That when a man casteth his eyes on the vain and soone fading beauty of the world, consenting thereto in his minde, hee seemeth to bee turned into a brute beast, and so to be slain by the inordinate desire of his owne affects. By Tantalus that stands in the midst of the floud Eridan, having before him a tree laden with pleasant apples, he being neverthelesse always thirsty and hungry, betokeneth the insatiable desires of covetous persons. The fables of Atreus, Thiestes, Tereus and Progne signifieth ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... assure you, Mlle. Juliette, that from that time onwards I have to endure the qualms of the damned, for the heir to Great Britain's throne always contrives to be thirsty when I am satiated, which is Tantalus' torture magnified a thousandfold, or to be satiated when my parched palate most requires solace; in either case I am a most ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Athenians landed, and instantly advanced with all their forces and took Thyrea. The town they burnt, pillaging what was in it; the Aeginetans who were not slain in action they took with them to Athens, with Tantalus, son of Patrocles, their Lacedaemonian commander, who had been wounded and taken prisoner. They also took with them a few men from Cythera whom they thought it safest to remove. These the Athenians determined to lodge in the islands: the rest of the Cytherians were ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... impluvium? that thy soul was torn by a perpetual struggle? Didst thou not tell me that even by pouring wine before the threshold, and calling on the name of some Grecian deity, thou didst fear thou wert incurring penalties worse than those of Tantalus, an eternity of tortures more terrible than those of the Tartarian fields? Didst thou not tell me this? I wondered, I could not comprehend; nor, by Hercules! can I now: but I was thy son, and my sole task was to compassionate ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... you make to such as these? Why, let them hug their misery if they please, Like the Athenian miser, who was wont To meet men's curses with a hero's front: "Folks hiss me," said he, "but myself I clap When I tell o'er my treasures on my lap." So Tantalus catches at the waves that fly His thirsty palate—Laughing, are you? why? Change but the name, of you the tale is told: You sleep, mouth open, on your hoarded gold; Gold that you treat as sacred, dare not use, In fact, that charms ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the story of the juniper tree reminds us of the Tantalus story and the meal of Thyestes. Demeter (or Thetes) ate a shoulder of the dismembered Pelops, who was set before the gods by his father Tantalus, and the shoulder, after he was brought to life again, was replaced by an ivory one. In a story ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... face? He that hath robbed me of my peace, my energy, the whole love of my life? Could I call the fabled Hydra, I would have him live and perish, survive and die, until the sun itself would grow dim with age. I would make him have the thirst of a Tantalus, and roll the wheel of an Ixion, until the stars of heaven should quit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... converted. But what a pity! A "converted clergyman" would have been a glorious catch, worth five thousand pounds at St. James's Hall. And fancy bagging a duke! It was enough to make Mr. Nix's mouth water. He must have felt some of the agony of Tantalus. He was up to the neck, so to speak, in lords and parsons, and could not grasp one. Dissenting ministers and their wives did not show up. Naturally. They would not go to such a naughty place—except in a mission van. Mr. Nix has a ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... a whisky decanter, taken from the tantalus-stand on the sideboard, and one glass. That, by the by," I added, "looked as though only one ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... to interfere with the plan of action decided on by Hilda and Philip; no misadventure came to mock them, dashing the Tantalus cup of joy to earth before their eyes. On the contrary, within forty-eight hours of the conversation recorded in the last chapter, they were as completely and irrevocably man and wife, as a special licence and the curate of a city church, assisted by the clerk and ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... But the "toll-gate question" remained for several years to perplex statesmen and cause long debates, while Congress made appropriations directly for the repair of the Cumberland Road. Monroe had made public improvements the fruit of Tantalus to the hungry people by suggesting in his veto message that he would have no objection to such enterprises being undertaken by the National Government provided an amendment were added to the Constitution permitting ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... he said, the classic name of Ariadne suggesting the idea that the pseudonym of Tantalus might well be applied ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... locked up spirit tantalus and cigar-box with his wonted deliberation; and on reaching the drawing-room found her absorbed in contemplation of Dick's portrait, hands clasped behind her, the unbroken lines of her grey-green dress lending height and dignity ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Like Jason, when he sought the fleece of gold, Or change from man to beast three years entire, As King Nebuchadnezzar did of old; Or else have times as shameful and as bad As Trojan folk for ravished Helen had; Or gulfed with Proserpine and Tantalus Let hell's deep fen devour him dolorous, With worse to bear than Job's worst sufferance, Bound in his prison-maze with Daedalus, Who could wish evil to the ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... one thousand and twenty-five years. [180] He must by this account have been born about one hundred years after our Saviour. He professed to have visited the infernal regions, and there to have seen Tantalus seated on a throne of gold. He is also said by some to be the same person, whose life has been written by Philostratus under the name of Apollonius of Tyana. [181] He wrote a book on the philosopher's ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... shadows whereof are in the Poets, in the description of torments and pains, next unto the crime of rebellion, which was the giants offence, doth detest the crime of futility, as in Sisyphus and Tantalus. But this was meant of particulars. Nevertheless, even unto the general rules and discourses of policy and government, [it extends; for even here] there is due a reverent handling.' And after ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... insubstantial world of shades. Sappho still sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of Alcaeus sounds its chords only to songs of earthly hardships by land and sea, Prometheus and Tantalus find no surcease from the pangs of torture, Sisyphus ever rolls the returning stone, and the Danaids fill ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... regarded rather as the reflection of human passions than as moral retributions by the gods. Thus, Tan'talus, placed up to his chin in water, which ever flowed away from his lips, was tormented with unquenchable thirst, while the fruits hanging around him constantly eluded his grasp. The story of Tantalus is well told ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... turned on a wheele,[*] For daring tempt the Queene of heaven to sin; And Sisyphus an huge round stone did reele Against an hill, ne might from labour lin; 310 There thirsty Tantalus hong by the chin; And Tityus fed a vulture on his maw; Typhoeus joynts were stretched on a gin, Theseus condemnd to endlesse slouth by law, And fifty sisters water in leake vessels ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Phryne or Lais, Gnathaenium, 'kindling her lamp at evening time,' on the look-out for lovers and inviting them, is often passed by; 'yet, if some sudden whiff arise' of mighty love and desire, it makes this very delight seem equal to the fabled wealth of Tantalus and his domains. So feeble and cloying is the venereal indulgence, if Love inspires it not. And you will see this more plainly still from the following consideration. Many have allowed others to share in their venereal enjoyments, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... strains to show The Phrygian queen, all beautiful in woe. 'Twas where Maeonia spreads her wide domain Niobe dwelt, and held her potent reign: See in her hand the regal sceptre shine, The wealthy heir of Tantalus divine, He most distinguish'd by Dodonean Jove, To approach the tables of the gods above: Her grandsire Atlas, who with mighty pains Th' ethereal axis on his neck sustains: Her other grandsire on the throne on high Rolls the loud-pealing thunder thro' the sky. Her spouse, Amphion, who ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... TANTALUS, king of Phrygia, was the son of Jupiter and Plota. Whether it was for this cause, the violation of hospitality, or for his pride, his boasting, his want of secrecy, his insatiable covetousness, his imparting nectar and ambrosia to mortals, or for all of them together, since he has been accused ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... mind of to-day trust would be easier were it not for the terror lest God's plans involve us in fearful things from which we shrink. We have heard so much of the trials He sends; of the gifts of Tantalus He keeps forever in our sight but just beyond our reach; of the blessings He actually bestows upon us only to snatch them away when we have come to love them most—we have heard so much of this that ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... beheld Tantalus (Od.);' for Prodicus the Cean was at Athens: he had been lodged in a room which, in the days of Hipponicus, was a storehouse; but, as the house was full, Callias had cleared this out and made the room into a guest-chamber. Now Prodicus was still in ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... out of the question; and both pieces are crowded with a multitude of secondary persons, such as are never to be found in a Greek tragedy. In Cataline, the prologue is spoken by the spirit of Sylla, and it bears a good deal of resemblance to that of Tantalus, in the Atreus and Thyestes of Seneca; to the end of each act an instructive moralizing chorus is appended, without being duly introduced or connected with the whole. This is the extent of the resemblance to the ancients; in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... given christian measure to his customers, was now a thriving man. When they again inspected the larder, they saw the same spirit, but woefully reduced in size, and in vain attempting to reach at the full plates and bottles, which stood around him; starving, in short, like Tantalus, in the midst of plenty. Honest Heywood sums up the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... to his mind. Taxes were infinitesimal. There were no elections, assemblies, or the like. A single magistrate, or Syndic, decided all disputes and made the few regulations and enforced them. There were no land speculators, no dry-mouthed sons of the commercial Tantalus, athirst for profits. Boone used to say that his first years in Missouri were the happiest of his life, with the exception of his first ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... i., Myers's translation: "To me it is impossible to call one of the blessed gods a cannibal.... Meet it is for a man that concerning the gods he speak honourably, for the reproach is less. Of thee, son of Tantalus, I will speak contrariwise to them who have gone before me." In avoiding the story of the cannibal god, however, Pindar tells a tale even more offensive to ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... honorable death. This is the twentieth year of sodden waiting. Fighting by land and sea and soldier's work, As hot as heart could wish,—boy generals,— Wars on all hands, in Holland, France, and Spain, With military honors falling thick;— And I, a Tantalus set in a lake of thirst, Up to my neck in battles all about, Without the ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... very pale and anxious faces (I really must except my own, for my face never looked anxious till I thought of marrying, or pale till I took to scribbling), the possessors of which were experiencing a little the torment of Tantalus. The palisades, those graves of sand, turned into a rich compost by the ever-recurring burial, were directly under the windows, and the land-breeze came over them, chill and dank, in palpable currents, through the jalousies, into the heated room; and, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... box to the negro, only there is no hope at the bottom. The wretchedness of his fate is not a little increased by being a constant witness of the unbounded freedom enjoyed by others: the slave's labor must necessarily be like the labor of Sisiphus; and here the torments of Tantalus are added. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... for I have many prologues to which he cannot possibly fit his catchword: "Pelops, the son of Tantalus, having started for Pisa ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Tank. I suppose his real name is Thaddeus, or Tantalus, or something like it; I never knew, and I never liked him well enough to ask. Tank was a black-eyed little runt whom none of the boys liked, a grasping cuss, younger than Jim, and as selfish as ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... chinked, and showing through the crevices what scanty store there was of corn and pumpkins. A black-and-white work-ox, that had evidently no deficiency of ribs, stood outside of the fence and gazed, a forlorn Tantalus, at these unattainable dainties; now and then a muttered low escaped his lips. Nobody noticed him or sympathized with him, except perhaps the little girl, who had come out in her sun-bonnet to help her brother bring in the fuel. He gruffly accepted ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... amid a thousand wants, Pale Dropsy rears his bloated form, and pants; "Quench me, ye cool pellucid rills!" he cries, Wets his parch'd tongue, and rolls his hollow eyes. So bends tormented TANTALUS to drink, 420 While from his lips the refluent waters shrink; Again the rising stream his bosom laves, And Thirst consumes him 'mid circumfluent waves. —Divine HYGEIA, from the bending sky Descending, listens to his piercing cry; 425 ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... comes to the rich and the poor alike, and comes once for all; but remember, Acheron could not be bribed by gold to ferry the crafty Prometheus back to the sunlit world. Tantalus, too, great as he was above all mortals, went down to the kingdom of the dead, never to return. Remember, too, that, although death is inexorable, yet he is just; for he brings retribution to the rich for ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... people who were eating, and well-nigh suffocated by the odor of food, the Comte and Comtesse de Breville and Monsieur and Madame Carre-Lamadon endured that hateful form of torture which has perpetuated the name of Tantalus. All at once the manufacturer's young wife heaved a sigh which made every one turn and look at her; she was white as the snow without; her eyes closed, her head fell forward; she had fainted. Her husband, beside himself, implored the help of his neighbors. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... my bride! The hopeless heights of hope were scaled The summit won, I paused and sigh'd, As if success itself had fail'd. It seem'd as if my lips approach'd To touch at Tantalus' reward, And rashly on Eden life encroach'd, Half-blinded by the flaming sword. The whole world's wealthiest and its best, So fiercely sought, appear'd when found, Poor in its need to be possess'd, Poor from ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... those tortures said to be In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed With baseless terror, as the fables tell, Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air: But, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods Urges mortality, and each one fears Such fall of fortune as may chance to him. Nor eat the vultures ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... "had also three heads," according to the calculation of Alfred, whose mythology is not very safe. Charon welcomes the harper, "because he was desirous of the unaccustomed sound"; all sufferings cease at the melody of the harp; the wheel of Ixion ceases to turn; the hunger of Tantalus is appeased; the vulture ceases to torment King Tityus; and the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... lyre he played. Tantalus—who, for his crimes, had been condemned to stand up to his neck in water and yet never be able to assuage his thirst—Tantalus heard, and for a while did not strive to put his lips toward the water that ever flowed away from him; Sisyphus—who had been condemned to roll up a hill a stone that ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain! Immersed in the fountain, Tantalus tastes not The water that wastes not! Through ages increasing The pangs that afflict him, With motion unceasing The wheel of Ixion Shall torture ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... horrid harmony with the clashings of their chains; the Furies, lashing the guilty with their snakes; the awful abyss where Hydra howls with its hundred heads, greedy to devour; Tityus, prostrate, and his entrails fed upon by the cruel vulture: Sisyphus, ever rolling his rock; Ixion on his wheel; Tantalus tortured by eternal thirst and hunger, in the midst of water and with declicious fruits touching his head; the daughters of Danaus at their eternal, fruitless task; beasts biting and venomous reptiles stinging; and devouring flame eternally consuming bodies ever ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... provinces invariably fell was his enemy, and that truce or treaty with him did not avail to loosen the compression steadily growing around his capital. Over and over, daytime and night, the unhappy Emperor pondered the story of the daughter of Tantalus; and often, starting from dreams in which the Ottoman power was a serpent slowly crawling to its victim, he would cry in real agony—"O Constantinople—Niobe! Who can save thee but God? And if He will not—alas, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the passage of Pindar's first ode, which gives us the key to the right interpretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. You remember that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (Sec. 151), that the mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the legends of the family of Tantalus; and especially in the most grotesque legend of them all, the inlaying of the ivory shoulder of Pelops. At that story Pindar pauses,—not, indeed, without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... man is he who with his golden lyre Hath moved the gates that never move, While the dead folk repeat his dirge of love? The rolling stone no more doth tire Swart Sisyphus on yonder hill; And Tantalus with water slakes his fire; The groans of mangled Tityos are still; Ixion's wheel forgets to fly; The Danaids their urns can fill: I hear no more the tortured spirits cry; But all find rest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... done woman. "Where is my shawl? I feel as if I should die if I don't get there," for the hour was late, and the time for closing the registry lists was near at hand. To have lost this opportunity would have placed her in the position of a second Tantalus, the cup withdrawn just as it touched her lips. But she was in time, and the important act of registering accomplished, she had but to possess her soul in patience until the following Tuesday. Who shall say how long the two intervening days were to her; but Tuesday ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... horrible death by thirst once more—encounters with rattlesnakes—the discovery in a great open plain of the cause of a distant roaring sound like water, just at a time when it was once more wanted most. And there it was where they could look down, Tantalus-like, from the brink of a vast crack in the level plain and see a vast river foaming along half-a-mile below them, never ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw in the glorious garden of Alcinoues "pears and pomegranates, and apple-trees bearing beautiful fruit" ([Greek: kahi maeleai aglaokarpoi]). And according to Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the wind ever blowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and described the apple-tree as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... another's monument. Once, I remember, a Western capitalist was persuaded to make a great gift to McGraw. He made it with conditions, and for a while our hopes blazed high and with exceeding fury. The collegiate Gothic quadrangles were within our reach, as near to us as the grapes to Tantalus. A half-million dollars was promised us if we raised a like sum within a year. Doctor Todd tried to effect a compromise by accepting two hundred thousand dollars outright, but the philanthropist did not believe in making beggars of institutions by surfeiting ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... TANTALUS. A proud king, who suffered in Hades the agonies of hunger and thirst, with food and drink always in sight, but ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... Tantalus And Sisyphus were kings long time ago, But now they lie in the Lake Dolorous, The hills of hell are noisy with their woe; Ay, swift the tides of Empire ebb and flow, And that is quickly lost was hardly won, As Ilios herself o'erwell ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... sofa is in front of fireplace R. At the back of the stage a curtain is drawn across the window. Doors L. and R. Table R. with writing materials. Table C. with syphons, glasses, and Tantalus frame. Table L. with cigar and ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... stupefied at this new way of managing matters; they had never known anything like it before. It was no new thing to Claudius, yet he thought it unfair. There was a long discussion as to the punishment he ought to endure. Some said that Sisyphus had done his job of porterage long enough; Tantalus would be dying of thirst, if he were not relieved; the drag must be put at last on wretched Ixion's wheel. But it was determined not to let off any of the old stagers, lest Claudius should dare to hope for any such ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... regretfully. The floating timbers became well-nigh intolerable; he kept asking himself if he could swim to land, but, knowing his weakness from long fasting, he curbed his impatience. His eyes grew tired with staring at the longed-for spot; he suffered the torments of Tantalus, and finally could endure them no longer. So making his clothes into a bundle, he tied them around his neck ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... things have troubled my brain this many a day, and just now, when I was laying hold on the invention of them, your sudden call made them, like Tantalus's apples, fly from ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... such as tying two Chinamen's tails together, the effect of the relation of which is melancholy in the extreme, but there is no approach to fun in the whole penny library. And yet it attracts, it is calculated, four millions of readers—a fact which makes my mouth water like that of Tantalus. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... oath of uncompromising enmity with fearful perseverance. Petitions, expostulations, prayers, threats, had been all in vain to procure one smile, one word, one glance of compliance or forgiveness. And the fate of Dr. Grimshaw, with his unwon bride, was like that of Tantalus. And now the inconceivable tortures of jealousy were about to be added to his other torments, for this man now sitting by his side, and basking in the sunshine of her smiles, was the all-praised Adonis who had won her maiden admiration ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... such a way as to present the full face to the beholder (Fig. 43). But we shall better understand our subject if I recount as concisely as possible the story of Niobe, which, as you know, is a Grecian myth. Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus, and was born on Mount Sipylus. When a child Niobe played with Lato, or Latona, who afterward married the great god Jupiter, or Zeus. Niobe became the wife of Amphion, and had a very happy life; she was the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, and all this prosperity made her forget that she ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... with double force, and the valley had become intolerable during the day, the perpendicular rocks sending back the heat till the fort felt like an oven, and the poor fellows lying wounded under the doctor's care suffered terribly, panting in the great heat as they did, feeling the pangs of Tantalus, for there, always glittering before their eyes in the pure air, were the mountain-peaks draped in fold upon fold of the purest ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... sunshine, brooding. He was not in a happy frame of mind. Many things lay heavy upon his soul; but among these things there was not one named remorse. To have brought about all these failures this thought irked him most. Here was a crown almost within reach of his greedy fingers, the water to Tantalus. To have underestimated this yellow haired young woman, he who knew women so well—there lay the bitter sting. He had been too impetuous; he should have waited till all her fears had been allayed. That spawn of Siva, the military, was insolent again, and rupees to cross ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... on Pindar, Nem. x. 114: (ll. 1-6) 'Straightway Lynceus, trusting in his swift feet, made for Taygetus. He climbed its highest peak and looked throughout the whole isle of Pelops, son of Tantalus; and soon the glorious hero with his dread eyes saw horse-taming Castor and athlete Polydeuces both hidden within ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Bishop, observation has taught me all the shades and delicate gradations of that difference. We women no more mistake the latter for the former, than the gods who declined to turn cannibal when they went to dine with Tantalus, and were offered a fricassee of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... bread and a can of water. He strapped one prisoner up in the pillory for twenty-four hours, and directed him to be fed in it. This prisoner had a short neck, and the cruel collar would not let him eat, so that the tortures of Tantalus were added to crucifixion. The earnest beast put a child of eleven years old into a strait-waistcoat for three days, then kept him three days on bread and water, and robbed him of his bed and his gas for fourteen days. We none of us know the meaning ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Scandwell. Her town-house, a few miles away in Honolulu, on Nuuanu Drive between the first and second "showers," was a palace. Hosts of guests had known the comfort and joy of her mountain house on Tantalus, and of her volcano house, her mauka house, and her makai house on the big island of Hawaii. Yet this Waikiki house stressed no less than the rest in beauty, in dignity, and in expensiveness of upkeep. Two Japanese yard-boys were trimming hibiscus, a third was engaged expertly with the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... in their detachment reports. These reports reveal not only men of ability and insight, but throw light on the kind of people these Police in the north had to guide. Sergeant Frank Thorne, for instance, was in charge at a place called Tantalus. The man who gave that name to the elusive mining prospects of the region had a sense of humour and the fitness of things. Thorne says, "Hundreds of people landed at Tantalus en route to the new White Horse diggings. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... myself to those of more recent introduction endeavour to enumerate as many as I can remember of the words which have by this method been introduced into our language. To begin with mythical antiquity—the Chimaera has given us 'chimerical', Hermes 'hermetic', Tantalus 'to tantalize', Hercules 'herculean', Proteus 'protean', Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic', and Daedalus 'dedal', if this word may on Spenser's and Shelley's authority be allowed. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied that famous 'gordian' knot which ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... to October, instead of having, as you will most probably in the mountain, just one day's sport in the whole of your month's holiday. Deluded friend, who suffered in Scotland last year a month of Tantalus his torments, furnished by art and nature with rods, flies, whisky, scenery, keepers, salmon innumerable, and all that man can want, except water to fish in; and who returned, having hooked accidentally by the tail one salmon—which ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... appetite. This made me feel hurt at my chum's indifference to my sufferings, envying the while every morsel he swallowed, and wondering when my suspense would cease; and, although I had not then heard of the tortures of the classic Tantalus, my feelings must have much resembled those of that mythical ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sheep, although your keeper pineth, Yet like to Tantalus doth see his food. Skip you and leap, no bright Apollo shineth, Whilst I bewail my sorrows in yon wood, Where woeful Philomela doth record, And sings with notes of sad and dire lament The tragedy wrought by her sisters' lord; ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... waste it away; so that there are two groups of Sirens, one noble and saving, as the other is fatal. But there are no animating or saving Harpies; their nature is always vexing and full of weariness, and thus they are curiously connected with the whole group of legends about Tantalus. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... I am unmarried," said the Colonel; "that my sword is my whole fortune; and that such a challenge is setting Tantalus down to a ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... well have believed on any other evidence that the classical people had a gloomy Calvinism of their own time. True, as early as Homer, we hear of the shadowy existence of the souls, and of the torments endured by the notably wicked; by impious ghosts, or tyrannical, like Sisyphus and Tantalus. But when we read the opening books of the "Republic," we find the educated friends of Socrates treating these terrors as old-wives' fables. They have heard, they say, that such notions circulate among the people, but they seem never for a moment to have themselves ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... threats of ostracism. For her, the immemorial methods of the Inside; forbidden by Sir Lakshman, but secretly applied, when flagrant obstinacy demanded drastic measures. So neither Dyan nor his grandfather had suspected that Aruna, for days together, had suffered the torment of Tantalus—food set before her so mercilessly peppered that a morsel would raise blisters on her lips and tongue; water steeped in salt; the touch of the 'fire-stick' applied where her skin was tenderest; not to mention the more subtle torment of jibes and threats ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Which taught him all that elder lovers know. And now the same gan so to scorch and glow As in plain terms (yet cunningly) he craved it. Love always makes those eloquent that have it. She, with a kind of granting, put him by it And ever, as he thought himself most nigh it, Like to the tree of Tantalus, she fled And, seeming lavish, saved her maidenhead. Ne'er king more sought to keep his diadem, Than Hero this inestimable gem. Above our life we love a steadfast friend, Yet when a token of great worth we send, We often kiss it, often look thereon, ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... beasts, to lead a dance, Constrained the hilly trees to follow him, Thou couldst not move the judge of Erebus, Nor move compassion in grim Pluto's heart; For fatal Mors expecteth all the world, And every man must tread the way of death. Brave Tantalus, the valiant Pelops' sire, Guest to the gods, suffered untimely death, And old Tithonus, husband to the morn, And eke grim Minos, whom just Jupiter Deigned to admit unto his sacrifice. The thundering trumpets of blood-thirsty Mars, The fearful rage of fell Tisiphone, The boistrous ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... laurel wreath on the brow of a genius she hitches a plough to his shoulders and holds a Tantalus cup ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... a drop-kicker!" exploded the dazed Butch, who could not have been more astounded had Theophilus announced that the sunny youth possessed powers of black magic. "Theophilus Opperdyke, Tantalus himself was never so tantalized as I have been of late. Tell me the whole story, old man—hurry. Spill ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... I know her as a mystery; as Tantalus thirsting for the fruit which hangs ever beyond the reach, I know her; as a woman who is not what she seems, always masked, with or without the cambric. Know her?" with ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the desolate, The widow and the orphan in their woe, Drown'd 'neath the clink of gold wrung from their need, Like moisture from the crushing of the grape. Oh! for the fruitless cry of misery, The Tantalus of stern reality, That feebly perisheth in Famine's grasp, Whilst plenty moulders for the lust of pride, And adds its rottenness to the hot-bed Of wantonness and subtle infamy. And yet the worker wears as fair a port As he ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... tease: "Tantalus," according to the poets, an ancient king of Phrygia, who was made to stand up to the chin in water with fruit hanging over his head, but from whom both receded ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... it shall not be serv'd like Tantalus any more: he was doom'd to behold; and, beholding, to wish and languish for the tempting draught, in vain: but a better doom awaits the happy Harriet;—what she desires is not thus interdicted, but will soon be ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... capabilities of the country on the eastern flank of the Mountains of the Moon, and along the western shores of the N'yanza, are so notoriously great that it is worthy of serious attention. My reluctance to return may be easier imagined than described. I felt as much tantalised as the unhappy Tantalus must have been when unsuccessful in his bobbings for cherries in the cherry-orchard, and as much grieved as any mother would be at losing her first-born, and resolved and planned forthwith to do everything that lay in my power to visit the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Tantalus, as the old Greek fable tells us, was King of Lydia. Being invited by Jupiter to his table, he heard secrets which he afterwards divulged. To divulge a secret is to make it vulgar, or common, by ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various |
