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Proserpine

noun
1.
Goddess of the underworld; counterpart of Greek Persephone.  Synonym: Proserpina.






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"Proserpine" Quotes from Famous Books



... life,—the dust from whence we were taken; secondly, as the receiver of 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 ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... 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 called iambics.—Apollod, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various

... gallants among the ghosts? If Chloe were a sharper still As great as 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 are ambition's aims: Cease, haughty nymph; the ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... 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 due to Aphrodite, who was angered at their ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... is a much prettier story, with something of the same meaning, about Ceres (Demeter), the grave, motherly goddess of corn and all the fruits of the earth. She had one fair daughter, named Proserpine (Persephone), who was playing with her companions near Mount Etna, gathering flowers in the meadows, when grim old Pluto pounced upon her and carried her off into his underground world to be his bride. Poor Ceres did not know what had become of her darling, and wandered ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... been celebrated in song by him, but that he should pay the debt when he came to her. Shortly after this he died. There was, however, a relation of his, a woman then far advanced in years, who had practised the singing of most of his hymns. To her Pindar appeared in a dream and sang the hymn to Proserpine, which she wrote down from ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley

... opens, and Proserpine rises out of it, sitting on a chariot drawn by black horses, and having at her ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... and trod on 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 in ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... verses in our minds, while wandering down the grassy aisles, beside the waters of the solitary place, we seem to meet that lady singing as she went, and plucking flower by flower, 'like Proserpine when Ceres lost a daughter, and she lost her spring.' There, too, the vision of the griffin and the car, of singing maidens, and of Beatrice descending to the sound of Benedictus and of falling flowers, her flaming robe and mantle ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... scandal, even now. I don't see the fun of several of the pieces, except the 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 ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... sweet service and 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

... in English; even now it will be observed that Mr 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. And there too, as I think invariably in English, the poet shows his feeling ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... 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 ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... four marble columns. We went then to a palace—I am sure I forget the name of it—where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one you remember. I remember, however, an interesting picture by Guido, of the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proserpine casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of Enna. There was an exquisitely executed piece of Correggio, about four saints, one of whom seemed to have a pet dragon in a leash. I was told that it was ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... scattered for luck on the fields with the seed-corn. A myth explained that a flock of pigs were swallowed by Earth when Persephone was ravished by Hades to the lower world, of which matter the Hymn says nothing. "In short, the pigs were Proserpine." {64b} The eating of pigs at the Thesmophoria was "a partaking of the body of the God," though the partakers, one thinks, must have been totally unconscious of the circumstance. We must presume that (if this theory be correct) a very considerable time was ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... beautiful woman, daughter of Cabarus the Spanish merchant,—has softened the red bristly countenance; pleading for herself and friends; and prevailing. The keys of Tartarus, or any kind of power, are something to a woman; gloomy Pluto himself is not insensible to love. Like a new Proserpine, she, by this red gloomy Dis, is gathered; and, they say, softens ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... had resolved to mark down no more griefs and groans, but I must needs briefly state that I am nailed to my chair like the unhappy Theseus. The rheumatism, exasperated by my sortie of yesterday, has seized on my only serviceable knee—and I am, by Proserpine, motionless as an anvil. Leeches and embrocations are all I have for it. Diable! there was a twinge. The Russells and Fergusons here; but I was fairly driven off the pit after dinner, and compelled to retreat to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... Oberon appears first in English literature in Lord Berners' translation of Huon of Bordeaux (c. 1534), and afterwards in Spenser[27] and in Robert Greene's play James IV, which was acted in 1589.[28] But the king of the fairies in Chaucer[29] is Pluto, and the queen Proserpine. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... demon's self. Upon her 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

... 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 say to a line, to a letter, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... reserved in the north for the birch, and the people of Andalusia believe that the poplar is the most ancient of trees. (See de Gubernatis, Za Mythologie des plantes, Paris, Reinwald, 1882, p. 285.) In classical superstition the black poplar was consecrated to the goddess Proserpine, and the white poplar to Hercules. "The White Poplar was also dedicated to Time, because its leaves were constantly in motion, and, being dark on one side and light on the other, they were emblematic of night and day.... ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... 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

... Roxy told me yesterday that she was positive Billie and Mr. Howard would come down for a while in July or August." Kit heaved a sigh of contentment, as she rose from the ground. "I see that my wilderness is going to blossom like the rose, Proserpine Hancock. Now, if you'll kindly tell me where all these tent dwellers of mine are going to get fresh water from when the brooks dry up, I'll be glad. They can't all trot way up to the house ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... neighbourhood give you its good word. Should one of your co-heirs be old, and vexed With an inveterate cough, approach him next: A house or lands he'd purchase that belong To your estate: they're his for an old song. But Proserpine commands me; I must fly; Her will is law; ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... Anna, marriage in a year; for Masetto and Zerlina, a wedding instanter; for Elvira, a nunnery), and platitudinously to moralize that, the perfidious wretch having been carried to the realm of Pluto and Proserpine, naught remained to do save to sing the old song, "Thus do the wicked find their end, dying as they ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Who calls Amyntas? beauteous Proserpine? 'Tis shee.—Fair Empresse of th' Elysian shades, Ceres bright daughter intercede for mee, To thy incensed mother: prithee bid her Leave talking riddles, wilt thou?... Queene of darknesse, Thou supreme Lady of eternall night, Grant ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... is there! Marcia's my own! How will my bosom swell with 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 sunshine ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... refuted Mr. Croker's criticisms by an appeal to Horace. In the 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Pluto ravishes Proserpine, and Thais will follow my fierce-looking friend whithersoever he will ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... goes 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 of paper staining would have been the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various

... Medusean ringlets, but just enough to "whip the offending Adam out of thee"—shall courteously dismiss thee at the right hand gate—the O.P. side of Hades—that conducts to masques, and merry-makings, in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... this, threw the water on the ground. 'I will be avenged,' said she. 'Go down to the bottomless pit and ask Proserpine to give you the Essence of Long Life for me; I am always afraid of falling ill and dying. When you have done this you will be free. But mind you do not upset any; neither may you drink ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac

... children, stay. 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, And pain that sorely doth ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... trouble of surprise, took the chair to which he pointed. But he himself did not sit down. In the middle of the room stood a great bronze candelabrum, many-branched for the suspension of lamps, at its base three figures, Pluto, Neptune, and Proserpine. It was the only work of any value which the villa now contained, and Marcian associated it with the memories of his earliest years. As a little child he had often gazed at those three faces, awed by their ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... 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 Samothrace ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... conducts and orders the changes of the seasons, but in Greece we find gods whom man can accompany in the tragedy of their fall and the triumph of their rise. We shall see afterwards that the rustic worships of Demeter and Proserpine were brought forward at a critical period in Greek religion, to supply an element which was much required in it. These worships, similar, as Mr. Frazer suggests,[1] to those still kept up by our own peasantry, were ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... 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 her love, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... bridal chamber! Oh deep-delved And strongly-guarded mansion! I descend To meet in your dread chambers all my kindred, Who in dark multitudes have crowded down Where Proserpine received the dead. But I, The last—and oh how few more miserable!— Go down, or ere my sands ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the poisoned bowl! this empress of the pistol and dagger! this child of Shakspeare! this world of weeping clouds! this Juno of commanding aspects! 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 work of art! She ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... board, Your mast erected, and 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 also stands a rock, At whose broad base the roaring rivers meet. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... 2840 With al the will of mi corage, And 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, To som man hou the ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... early varieties (La Reine, Pink Beauty, President Lincoln, Proserpine, Queen of the Netherlands and Rose Luisante), or late varieties (La Merveille, La Reve, Moonlight, The Fawn) and Mertensiav Virginica can be ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 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 this web of proof it may be noted ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... and pitied her, and sent down Iris, her messenger, that she might loose the soul that struggled to be free. For, seeing that she died not by nature, nor yet by the hand of man, but before her time and of her own madness, Queen Proserpine had not shred the ringlet from her head which she shreds from them that die. Wherefore Iris, flying down with dewy wings from heaven, with a thousand colors about her from the light of the sun, stood about her head and said, "I give thee to death, even as I am bidden, and loose ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... the important operations of Nature were shadowed or allegorized in the heathen mythology, as the first Cupid springing from the Egg of Night, the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, the Rape of Proserpine, the Congress of Jupiter and Juno, Death and Resuscitation of Adonis, &c. many of which are ingeniously explained in the works of Bacon, Vol. V. p. 47. 4th Edit. London, 1778. The Egyptians were possessed ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... up by the lugs and throw him overboard to the bottom of the sea? Hear, sailor; ho, honest fellow. Thus, thus, my friend, hold fast above. In truth, here is a sad lightning and thundering; I think that all the devils are got loose; it is holiday with them; or else Madame Proserpine is in child's labour: all the devils dance ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Cupid's 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

... its kerosene torch and its drum, smelling and sounding rather of Juhannam? Surely, from the Table of Bohemia to the Stump in Tammany Land, is a far cry. But believe us, O Khalid, you will wish you were again in the gardens of Proserpine, when the silence and darkness extinguish the torch and the drum and the echoes of the shouting crowds. The headaches are certain to follow this inebriation. You did not believe Shakib; you would not be admonished; you would ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... valley closed in by 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, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flower! how she did shine. Her beauty all displaying! In truth this modern Proserpine Might set the angels maying, As, like a fairy mid the flowers, She flew to this, now that; And some she braided in her hair— Some ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... sisters, For whom my heart with rapture blisters; Who swim in HELICON uncertain Whether a petticoat or shirt on, From vulgar ken their charms do cover, From every eye but Muses' lover; In name of every ugly GOD; Whose beauty scarce outshines a toad; In name of PROSERPINE and PLUTO, Who board in hell's sublimest grotto; In name of CERBERUS and FURIES, Those damned aristocrats and tories; In presence of two witnesses, Who are as homely as you please, Who are in truth, I'd not belie 'em, Ten times as ugly, faith, as I am; But being, as most people ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... 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

... that we are indebted to the Tyrian 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

... PLUTOES GRIESLY DAME, Proserpine, the avenger of men, and inflicter of curses on the dead. She is identified with Shakespeare's Hecate, the goddess of sorcery, and with Milton's Cotytto, goddess of lust. To this latter sin the knight ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... 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 worlds of cobweb, which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... cap, and holding the sceptre called a gom, which represents the Egyptian Bacchus, Osiris Ounophris; and a painted wooden figure, kneeling, and supporting a building and a basket, representing the Egyptian Proserpine, Nepththys, mistress of the palace. The second and third divisions contain some remarkable figures, including bronze groups of Osiris-ioh, or the moon, with the lunar disk; a walking figure of Anubis, with a jackal's ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... sun, full and rank, and a tall dull red flower, Eupatorium purpureum, or trumpet-weed, formed the rear rank of the fluvial array. The bright blue flowers of the soap-wort gentian were sprinkled here and there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers which Proserpine had dropped, and still farther in the fields or higher on the bank were seen the purple Gerardia, the Virginian rhexia, and drooping neottia or ladies'-tresses; while from the more distant waysides which we occasionally passed, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... 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 ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... in a railroad, and the human voice is distressing to me amid the whirl and the whistling, and the wild panting of the loosened megatheria who drag us. And then those terrible grottos—it is quite a descent of Proserpine; so I have ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... morning of the 24th of July he still kept making wonderful plans for the future. He had the room in which he spent his last hours crowded with flowers, and as he felt his powers failing him he recited Swinburne's beautiful poem, 'The Garden of Proserpine': ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... 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

... (Ovid, Amores, iii. 13), of which, however, we do not know the history. Falerii was one of those cities, like Praeneste, where Etruscan, Greek, and Latin influences met. The "Orci nuptiae" on which Frazer lays stress was simply the Greek marriage of Pluto and Proserpine: "Orci coniux Proserpina," Aug. C.D. vii. 23 and 28, Agahd, p. 152. Wissowa shows this conclusively, R.K. p. 246. Orcus was Graecised as Plutus, but ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... invention, upon a simple allegory, could a poem have been composed of about fifty thousand verses, relating with such force and power the events, and giving details with such exactness? On a theme purely allegorical there may easily be composed a short mythical poem, as for example a poem on Proserpine or Psyche: but never an epic so full of traditions and historical memories, so intimately connected with the life of the people, as the Ramayan.(1183) Excessive readiness to find allegory whenever some traces of symbolism occur, where the myth partly veils ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... one whom the gods have 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 ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... to the Underworld. A ghostly ferryman rowed her over the River of Death, and took one of her copper coins. Then a monstrous dog with three heads sprang out, but Psyche fed him with one of her honey-cakes, and entered the hall of Proserpine, the queen of the dead. Proserpine filled the casket, and by means of the last honey-cake and the last copper coin, Psyche returned to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... it is now said that if properly tilled it would produce more grain than any country of its size in the world. Its beauty and fertility were often celebrated by ancient bards, who described the sacred flocks and herds of Apollo on its delightful slopes. The plain of Enna, where Proserpine and her nymphs gathered flowers, was famous for delicious honey; and according to an ancient writer, hounds lost their scent when hunting, in consequence of the odoriferous flowers which perfumed the air; and this may be no fable; for in Spring, as I myself have seen, the flowers are ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... 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 ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... 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 used with ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... them never to venture abroad in 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... 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 baying the phantoms of the lower world were disturbed. A great number of dogs ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... according as it chances to be the daughter of fancy or terror. The one lies warm about the 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

... mythological chronicle 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 ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wail'd the sweet Philomel; The tears of Ceres swell'd in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... I 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." ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... of womanly beauty 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 eyes with their mystic, brooding intensity ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... 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 ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... indeed, and nothing is to be seen now but sun-flowers and African marygolds around us; one bough besides, on every tree we pass—one bough at least is tinged with the golden hue; and if it does put one in mind of that presented to Proserpine, we may add the original line too, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... would marry the stern and gloomy god, he seized Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, while she was gathering flowers, and opened the earth and carried ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... 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

... Atlantides, lived here. Finally, it has been asserted in our own time that there was an immense opening at the poles, from which came the Northern Lights, and through which one could reach the inside of the earth; since in the hollow sphere two planets, Pluto and Proserpine, were said to move, and the air was luminous in consequence of the strong pressure ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... 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

... before 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 shed: at last, one or two miserable cottages ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... certain grandeur which fills his work with a powerful breath. In the Occidental Empire tottering more and more in the perpetual menace of the Barbarians now pressing in hordes at the Empire's yielding gates, he revives antiquity, sings of the abduction of Proserpine, lays on his vibrant colors and passes with all his torches alight, into the obscurity that was then engulfing ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... Muses! this moon of blank 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 ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous

... 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

... 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, which was supposed at that time to be ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... (the north-wind) had maliciously miscarried the discus, is a circumstance we hardly need to remind us that we have here, of course, only one of many transparent, unmistakable, parables or symbols of the great solar change, so sudden in the south, like the story of Proserpine, Adonis, and the like. But here, more completely perhaps than in any other of those stories, the primary elemental sense had obscured itself behind its really tragic analogue in human life, behind the figure of the dying youth. We ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... placed them, with my white hands, in a corner of my robe, and then, sitting down and choosing flower after flower, I wove therefrom a fair garland, and adorned my head with it. And, being so adorned, I arose, and, like unto Proserpine at what time Pluto ravished her from her mother, I went along singing in this new springtime. Then, being perchance weary, I laid me down in a spot where the verdure was deepest and softest. But, just as the tender foot of Eurydice was pierced by the concealed viper, ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio

... boy, and the King himself splitting his gloves 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. Boy, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... 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 ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... the first time, the 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 ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... 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 ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... have a bird's eye view of Pittsburg, and he assured me that it was quite worth while. We started off in the buggy with two fresh horses, and a few minutes later I had the wildest dream. It seemed to me that he was Pluto, the god of the infernal regions, and I was Proserpine. We were travelling through our empire at a quick trot, drawn by our winged horses. All round us we could see fire and flames. The blood-red sky was blurred with long black trails that looked like widows' veils. The ground was covered ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... violets in the air,—and a gardener, cutting sheafs of narcissi from the edges of the velvety green banks which rolled away in smooth undulations upward from the terrace to the wider extent of the palace pleasaunce beyond, scattered such perfume with his snipping shears as might have lured another Proserpine from Hell. Cluster after cluster of white blooms, carefully selected for the adornment of the Royal apartments, he laid beside him on the grass, not presuming to look in the direction where that other Workman in the ways of life sat silent ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... worthy of 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 she the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... Greece pigs were offered to Demeter, the corn-goddess, for the protection of the crops, and there is good reason to suppose that the conceptions of Demeter herself and the lovely Proserpine grew out of the worship of the pig, and that both goddesses were in the beginning merely the deified pig. The highly instructive passage in which Sir J. G. Frazer advances this theory is reproduced almost in full [7]: "Passing next to the corn-goddess Demeter, and remembering that in European ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... load of materials (and it was said this always happened), she was torn in pieces and her limbs carried round the temple.[944] Dionysius Periegetes says the women were crowned with ivy, and celebrated their mysteries by night in honour of Earth and Proserpine with great clamour.[945] Pliny also makes a reference to British rites in which nude women and girls took part, their bodies ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... (pertica and perca); two 'races' (raes and the French race); two 'rocks,' two 'rooks,' two 'sprays,' two 'saws,' two 'strains,' two 'trunks,' two 'burrows,' two 'helms,' two 'quarries'; three 'moles,' three 'rapes' (as the 'rape' of Proserpine, the 'rape' of Bramber, 'rape'-seed); four 'ports,' three 'vans,' three 'smacks.' Other homonyms in the language are the following: 'ash,' 'barb,' 'bark,' 'barnacle,' 'bat,' 'beam,' 'beetle,' 'bill,' 'bottle,' 'bound,' 'breeze,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... 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 unto the voice of prayer. In early spring-tide, when ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... just three years to-day since Domitilla's death. She was stoned at the bottom of the Wood of Proserpine. I gathered her bones, which shone like glow-worms in the grass. The ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... to hell: tell Pluto, prince of devils, That great Alcides wants a kitchen wench To turn his spit. Command him from myself To send up Proserpine; she'll ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... the Sibyl who guards the sacred wood of Avernus, and I discerned the fair Proserpine's beautiful golden twig amongst the tufted boughs of the tree to which ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... 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 sends her love ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... 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)

... he said, "and I will charm you. Moon of Tanis! Lamp of Proserpine! Essence of all the Heavens! do you not see I love you?—I, Iddilcar, priest of Melkarth. Behold, my robe is dark. It mourns—not for the fool who died, but because you have not loved me. Love, and it will gleam again in violet, and all the bracelets ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... with a garland by one of the most respectable matrons of the town or city. The Egyptian Osiris, and the female pudenda, or symbol of the passive principle of generation were, in like manner, carried in procession to the temple of Libera or Proserpine. ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... Helicon, to see the fountain of Hippocrene. The Muses tell her the story of Pyreneus and the Pierides, who were transformed into magpies after they had repeated various songs on the subjects of the transformation of the Deities into various forms of animals; the rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the change of Cyane into a fountain, of a boy into a lizard, of Ascalaphus into an owl, of the Sirens into birds in part, of Arethusa into a spring, of Lyncus into a lynx, and of the invention of agriculture ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... 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 ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... 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, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... have been numerous. Among these are "The Fisher Boy," of which three duplicates in marble have been made; "Il Penseroso;" "Proserpine," a bust; "California;" "America," modeled for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, England; "Washington" and "Calhoun," portrait statues, the former for the State of Louisiana, and the latter for the State of South Carolina; and "Benjamin Franklin" and "Thomas ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... kissing, some pissing; some reeling, some stealing) urged my curiosity to enquire for what it was possible those noble sports might be ordained, and was soon satisfied it was the Anniversary Feast of their Great Lady Proserpine's birth-day. But these things that I took to be diverting, so elevated the spleen of my Puritan companion, that he began loudly to exclaim against those prophane exercises: he said, they were impure, and lifted up the mind to lewdness; that those that followed ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... 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 ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... whether that particular preposterous couplet about lilies and roses redounds to the credit of the Swinburnian style, but whether it would be possible in any other style than the Swinburnian to have written the Hymn to Proserpine. In the same way, the essential issue about Browning as an artist is not whether he, in common with Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, and Swinburne, sometimes wrote bad poetry, but whether in any other style except Browning's you could have achieved the precise artistic effect which is ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... earthquake, and scattered through a world of baser matter. The soul of the reader now faints with excess of beauty, now shudders at the terrible and the revolting. the young poet's muse at times goes like Proserpine to gather flowers, but straightway is seized by the lord of the infernal regions, and disappears in flame and darkness. The entire volume is a poetical Archipelago—isles of loveliness sprinkling a ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... as it brought in irresistibly the related topics of poetry, genius, and taste. Neptune was Circumstance; Pluto, the Abyss, the Undeveloped; Pan, the glow and sportiveness and music of Nature; Ceres, the productive power of Nature; Proserpine, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... Posthumus! our 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

... 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 and statues ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... [thrice-crowned queen of night] Alluding to the triple character of Proserpine, Cynthia, and Diana, given by some mythologists to the same Goddess, and comprised ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... 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

... 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 Argonauts sung to by Sirens, Of Andromache, Helen of Troy, Of Proserpine, Iphigenia, And the Fates ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 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, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... should have thought to hear her gentle name? Walking on that very 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 fragrant memory ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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

... been so slack 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 ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... was their goddess of heaven. The story of Adonis is well known:—how, being slain by a wild boar in the Libanus, his mistress sought him in vain, with loud lamentations, throughout the earth, and following him to the infernal regions, prevailed on Proserpine by her tears and prayers to allow him to spend one half the year on earth, to which he returned in youth perpetually renewed. Thus was shadowed out the annual course of the sun in the zodiac, and especially his return to ascendancy at the summer ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... subject on which more mistakes have been made than on that of the Goddess Isis, both by ancients and moderns. He calls attention to the inconsistency of calling her the moon when in many countries the moon is masculine. He is quite positive that if Isis is the moon, Ceres, Proserpine, Venus, and all the other female gods were the same, which in view of the facts everywhere at hand cannot be true. It is true, however, that "the planet called the moon was dedicated to her in judicial astrology, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... have 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 ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... 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, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... 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 original employment. Puck himself must have guided the audacious hand which could turn over ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... the theory of an English captain, who likened the earth to a vast hollow sphere, in the interior of which the air became luminous because of the vast pressure that weighed upon it; while two stars, Pluto and Proserpine, rolled within upon the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... 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: ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil



Words linked to "Proserpine" :   Roman deity



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