Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Adonis   Listen
noun
Adonis  n.  
1.
(Gr. Myth.) A youth beloved by Venus for his beauty. He was killed in the chase by a wild boar.
2.
A preeminently beautiful young man; a dandy.
3.
(Bot.) A genus of plants of the family Ranunculaceae, containing the pheasant's eye (Adonis autumnalis); named from Adonis, whose blood was fabled to have stained the flower.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Adonis" Quotes from Famous Books



... "King Charles, 1648" (sic). See An Account of what appeared on Opening the Coffin of King Charles the First, by Sir H. Halford, Bart., 1813, pp. 6, 7. Cornelia Knight, in her Autobiography (1861, i. 227), notes that the frolic prince, the "Adonis of fifty," who was in a good humour, and "had given to Princess Charlotte the centre sapphire of Charles's crown," acted "the manner of decapitation on my shoulders." He had "forgotten" Cromwell, who, as Lord Auchinleck reminded Dr. Johnson, had "gart kings ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... with that savage gleam of his eyes; "but those are not women, and the people who made them have left as the tales of Endymion, Adonis, Anchises: a ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... he, in o'er-assumption, o'er-repletion he, Sedately saunter every dainty couch along, A bright Adonis, as the snowy dove serene? Can you look on, look idly, filthy Romulus? Look idly, gamester, epicure, a ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... dunny from the Mogul. The same. Christ receiving the Sick. Pensyl. hospital. * Leonidas exiling Cleombrotus and family. The two Marys at the Sepulchre. Alexander and his Physician. Cesar reading the Life of Alexander. Death of Adonis. Continence of Scipio. * Savage Warrior taking leave of his family. Venus and Cupid. Alfred dividing his loaf with the Beggar. Helen presented to Paris. Cupid stung by a bee. Simeon and the Child. * William Penn treating with the Savages. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... the rail, and at first Vizard was rather talkative, making his comments on the players; but the ladies were taciturn, and brought him to a stand. "Ah," thought he, "nothing interests them now; Adonis is not here." So he retired ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... out of Uenus the Goddes foot. The Goddes Uenus, as foolishe Poetes dooe feigne, beyng the aucthour of Loue: loued Ado- nis the soonne of Cynara kyng of Cypres. But Mars called the God of battaile, loued Uenus, beyng nothyng loued of Uenus: but Mars loued Uenus as feruently, as Uenus lo- ued Adonis. Mars beyng a God, loued Uenus a goddes, but Uenus onely was inflamed with the loue of Adonis, a mor- tall man. Their loue was feruent, and exremely set on fire in bothe, but their kinde and nature were contrary, wherev- pon Mars beyng in gelousie, ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde

... how little would there have been, certainly not more than a few pages, remaining for your "People"! What fine things would have perished, what flowery, I had almost said Floralian, expressions! What would have become of your "gardens of Alcinous and Adonis," of your little story about "Hortensius"; what of the "sycamore," what of "Pyramus and Thisbe," what of the "Mulberry tree"? [All these are phrases in Milton's book, introduced whenever he refers circumstantially to the naughty particulars of the scandals against Morus, whether in Geneva ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... confusment, l'hiver, quand le soir tombe, Que jadis, animal ou plante, j'ai souffert, Lorsque Adonis saignant dormait ple en sa tombe; Et mon coeur ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... I describe in detail the charms of this Army Adonis. Far be it that I should disobey so august a command, being, as I am, the prime minister in this her principality of Domestic Felicity. Her brother has never ceased to be among the first in her dear regard. He possessed the merriest black eyes: his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... state that Dolf's treachery met with its proper reward. Clorinda succeeded in saving her money, and she married the parson, leaving Dolf to his shame and remorse. Victoria gave him the cold shoulder, and made herself so intimate with a new male Adonis, who came to the house as domestic, that Dolf's days were full of misery and his nights made restless ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... Cadenette, puffing out the dog's ears of his client—"there's aristocratic hair for you, soft and fine as silk, and takes the tongs so well one would think you wore a wig. See, Monsieur le Baron, you wanted to be as handsome as Adonis! Ah! if Venus had seen you, it's not of Adonis that ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... still filled with merriment over it. How was it, the critics of the years since have asked—how was it that this untutored little savage from leafy Warwickshire, with no training and little education, came into London with "Venus and Adonis" in manuscript in his pocket? It is quite evident that the critic fraternity have no Sherlock Holmes in their midst. It would not take much of an eye, a true detective's eye, to see the milk in that cocoanut, for it is but ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... form of this conception is seen in such myths as the change of Philemon into the oak, and of Baucis into the linden; of Myrrha into the myrtle; of Melos into the apple tree; of Attis into the pine; of Adonis into the rose tree; and in the springing of the vine and grape from the blood of the Titans, the violet from the blood of Attis, and the hyacinth from ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Indian and Greek poetry, of Adonis and the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of Nature's sympathy ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... of the hillside here and ran down in a little laughing brook through lawns full of tiny pink and white daisies, and broad fields of tangled weeds and flowers, red anemones, blue iris, purple mallows, scarlet adonis, with here and there a strip of cultivated ground shimmering with silky leeks or dotted with young cucumbers. There was a broken aqueduct cut in the rock at the side of the valley, and the brook slipped ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... the Mediterranean and neighboring world had been the scene of a vast number of pagan creeds and rituals. There were Temples without end dedicated to gods like Apollo or Dionysus among the Greeks, Hercules among the Romans, Mithra among the Persians, Adonis and Attis in Syria and Phrygia, Osiris and Isis and Horus in Egypt, Baal and Astarte among the Babylonians and Carthaginians, and so forth. Societies, large or small, united believers and the devout in the service or ceremonials connected with their respective deities, and in the creeds ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... inspect a collection, not numerous, but perhaps the most select of any in London, and which has certainly been formed at the greatest expense in proportion to its numbers. Among its principal ornaments are four of the finest landscapes by Claude; the Venus and Adonis, and the Ganymede, by Titian, from the Colonna palace at Rome; a very fine landscape by Poussin, and other works by Velasquez, Rubens, Murillo, and Vandyck: to all which is added the invaluable series ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... Vulcan; by which it is meant to infer that wisdom is the result of this ethereal fluid. Thus, following the same fictions, the sun, that beneficent star which has such a marked influence over the earth, became an Osiris, a Belus, a Mithras, an Adonis, an Apollo. Nature, rendered sorrowful by his periodical absence, was an Isis, an Astarte, a Venus, a Cybele. Astarte had a magnificent temple at Hieropolis served by three hundred priests, who were always employed in offering sacrifices. The priests of Cybele, called Corybantes, also ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... turned Cook and Traiteur.—Traces of Phenician Superstitions in Sarde Usages.—The Rites of Adonis.—Passing through the Fire to ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... fish called by lian the Adonis, or Darling of the Sea; so called, because it is a loving and innocent fish, a fish that hurts nothing that hath life, and is at peace with all the numerous inhabitants of that vast watery element; and truly, I think most Anglers are so disposed to ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... to describe him. To Byron he became "the fourth of the fools and oppressors called George." Moore immortalized his "nothingness" as a "sick epicure's dream, incoherent and gross." Leigh Hunt went to prison for calling him a "fat Adonis of fifty." Landor, in an epigram on himself and his royal namesakes as bitter as four biting lines could be, could find nothing more bitter than to record his descent from earth, and thankfulness to Heaven that with him the Georges had come to an end. Thackeray abandoned in despair the task ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... they are grown very simple. We English are living upon their old gods and goddesses; I roll about in a chariot decorated with cupids, and look like the grandfather of Adonis. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... before, especially as the festival goes by the lunar month and its date varies in different years by more than a fortnight. The name signifies the tenth day, and prior to the festival a fast of nine days is observed, when the pots of wheat corresponding to the gardens of Adonis are sown and quickly sprout up. This is an imitation of the sowing and growth of the real crop and is meant to ensure its success. During these nine days it is said that the goddess Devi was engaged in mortal combat with the buffalo demon Mahisasur or Bhainsasur, and on the tenth day ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... religion. They held a heifer, or cow, in high veneration, agreeably with the [154]customs of Egypt. Their chief Deity was the Sun, whom they worshipped together with the Baalim, under the titles Ourchol, Adonis, Thamuz. It was a custom among the Grecians, at the celebration of their religious festivals, to crown the whole with hymns of praise, and the most joyful exclamations. But the Egyptians were of a gloomy turn of mind, which infected the whole of their worship. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... for that perfected flower to be gathered to immortality. A lovely immortel. But an obstruction to other, purple and carmine blossoms which were in bud on the stem. A lovely edelweiss—but time it was gathered into eternity. Black-purple and red anemones were due, real Adonis blood, and strange individual orchids, spotted and fantastic. Time for Miss Frost to die. She, Alvina, who loved her as no one else would ever love her, with that love which goes to the core of the universe, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... all, that name engraved as a talisman!... The mysterious Adonis who loved her and suffered for her sake!... All that story seems very unlikely; and I wonder whether, Lupin though you be, you did not just drop upon a pretty love-story, absolutely genuine and ... ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... in a minute came up to each other, the colored man not giving way in the least, but bumping, hat, goatee, cane, cigar, and all, against our Philadelphian, who, with the greatest coolness and presence of mind, doubled up his fist and giving the colored Adonis two blows with it, (precisely on the middle brass stud which confined his frilled shirt-bosom,) laid him full length upon ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... reports—but we have not been able to discover Menage's own account of the larceny. The anecdotist is not so truthful that cardinals need flush a deeper scarlet, like the roses in Bion's "Lament for Adonis," on account of a scandal resting on the authority of Menage. Among Royal persons, Catherine de Medici, according to Brantome, was a biblioklept. "The Marshal Strozzi had a very fine library, and after his death the Queen-Mother seized it, promising some day to pay the value to his son, who ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... and the pines, and brought with it the sounds of a lonely and mysterious night, that hard by them in the starry darkness the divine Huntress was abroad, and about the base of AEtna she and her forest maids drove the chase with horn and hound. In the cities ladies sang the psalm of Adonis brought back from 'the stream eternal of Acheron.' Under the mystic moon love-lorn damsels did their magic rites, and knit up spells of power to bring home the men they loved. Among the vines and under the grey olives songs were singing of Daphnis all day ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... his bullet head sunk between his mighty shoulders, marks of great personal beauty. His wicked, bloodshot eyes and broad nose, his ample mouth and great fighting fangs only enhanced the claim of this Adonis of the forest upon the affections ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... pursued La Fosse, who dealt much in mythology and classic lore—"it will need an Adonis in beauty, a Mars in valour, an Apollo in song, and a very Eros in love to accomplish it. And I fear me," he hiccoughed, "that it will go unaccomplished, since the one man in all France on whom we have based our hopes has failed. Gentlemen, to your feet! I give you the ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... of poor Jane, it never entered his head to fancy himself in love with her. Therefore, when she threw herself into his arms, he hugged her in a very sincere and brotherly way, but kissed her with a pair of cast lips of Adonis. Of course he would never forget her. Jane went to bed and sobbed her heart out. Paul slept but little. The breaking up of the home meant the end of many precious and gentle things, and without them he knew that his life would be the poorer. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... agree with me that it would be rather foolish of her, and very disappointing and disillusioning later on for her to marry the kind of a man she thinks she wants to marry. She has a notion that the man she marries must be a cross between Adonis, and—and Diamond Dick! She wants a man who carries six-shooters in all his pockets, and who fears neither God, man, nor ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... story of Lot and his daughters, for instance, will at once occur to the reader, and upon this Mr. Fenton has some observations, to which I may refer the student who wishes to pursue this curious subject further,[75] while Mr. Frazer, in his recent study of Adonis, has discussed the practice with his usual extent of knowledge.[76] Again, it should be remembered that in our own chronicle histories Vortigern is said to have married his own daughter, though the legend and the supposed consequences of the marriage have ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... caused so many flutterings among the female hands that it seriously interfered with production. Rosie's real cause for turning Frank down was that she was after Good Lookin'. Good Lookin' would not have been so good lookin' out along the avenue, but in the setting of our third floor he was an Adonis. Rosie worked a power press. I would miss the clank of her machine. There she would be up in the corner of the floor where Good Lookin' worked. Good Lookin' would go for a drink. Rosie would get thirsty that identical moment. They would carry on an animated conversation, ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... world, I myself am, I trust, often amiable—always in some respects exemplary. In my castle, I am always all that I ought to be—all that I wish to be. I am as stately as Juno, as beautiful as Adonis, as elegant as Chesterfield, as edifying as Mrs. Chapone, as eloquent as Burke, as noble as Miss Nightingale, as perennial as the Countess of Desmond, and as robust as Dr. Windship. I also understand everything ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Thais she spoke, and of the schooling of Sappho, and of the secrets of Rhodope, and of the mourning for Adonis: and the refrain of all her talking was not changed. "For we have but a little while to live, and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure. As thus and thus," ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... and rivers of Asia Minor the local gods and goddesses had departed; even their devotees began to doubt whether they had ever been there. If still the Syrian damsels lamented, in their amorous ditties, the fate of Adonis, it was only as a recollection, not as a reality. Again and again had Persia changed her national faith. For the revelation of Zoroaster she had substituted Dualism; then under new political influences she ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... mute with astonishment, as well at the tiny smallness of the fairy, as at his truly classical beauty. The little creature was, in his way, a perfect Adonis. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... Severn, I remember, was present on the occasion, by the circumstance of our exchanging looks upon Keats's reading to us portions of his new work that had pleased himself. One of these, I think, was the "Hymn to Pan"; and another, I am sure, was the "Bower of Adonis," because his own expression of face will never pass from me (if I were a Reynolds or a Gainsborough, I could now stamp it forever) as he read the description of the latter, with the descent and ascent of the ear of Venus. The "Hymn to Pan" ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... a consort's crown, was the wife of the Czar Alexander I; and he himself was married to the Princess Theresa of Saxe-Hildburghausen, a lady described as "plain, but exemplary." Still, so far as personal appearance goes, Ludwig himself was no Adonis. Nestitz, indeed, has pictured him as "having a toothless jaw and an expressionless countenance." But his consort did her duty; and, at approved intervals, presented him with a quiverful of four sons and three daughters. Of his sons, one of them, Otto, was, as a lad of sixteen, selected ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... quiet assurance with which he went about ordinary affairs. He was never in difficulties, never at a loss; the Bush was his living-room, bedroom, and larder. He had already shown himself independent of what the stores could provide when a meal was wanted. Mike might have been a pink Adonis in another climate and under other conditions; his gray eyes and fair moustache were in almost ludicrous contrast with his tanned hide—he appeared ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... enraptured in obeying?—the hero who would wrestle with her, overcome and hold her bound? Siegfried could not be dreamed in him, or a Siegfried's baby son-in-arms. She caught a glorious image of the woman rejecting him and his rival, and it informed her that she, dissatisfied with an Adonis, and more than a match for a famous conqueror, was a woman of decisive and independent, perhaps unexampled, force of character. Her idea of a spiritual superiority that could soar over those two men, the bad and the good—the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... its subject, a beautiful boy of that name, who, having gone to fetch water for the reapers, was, while drawing it, borne down by the nymphs of the stream. Such were the cries for the youth Hylas, swallowed up by the waters of a fountain, and the lament for Adonis, whose untimely death was ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... to say that, though it opens with a genuine and quite horrible thrill, the "explanation" is obscure and tame. Far more successful, to my mind, is "The Vision," a delicate little idyll of a Midland schoolmarm, to whom is shown the death of Adonis and the lamenting of his goddess-lover. The writing of this touches real beauty (the high-fantastic, instead of the merely high-falutin', which in such connection would have been so fatally easy). To sum up, though one ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... the mouth of the one in question was filled with snags that projected in every direction; his chin was excessively retreating, and, to add to it all, his countenance was daubed with different colored paint, in such fantastic streakings that an Adonis himself would have appeared hideous. Such was the jailer of Fred, who heard him addressed once or twice by a name which sounded to him as if ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... that my lover is a very pretty youth of about fifteen, who reciprocates my passion with boyish ardor. You will acknowledge that to a woman of my age, such an amour must be delicious and unique. For a few days past I have not seen the youthful Adonis, who, by the bye, bears the very romantic name of Clinton Romaine. I first met him under very unusual and ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... with me both of you," she said, and they were soon in the female department. Up came keeperesses directly, smirking and curtseying to her, and pretending not to look at Adonis. "Which of you nurses tanked Mrs. Dale?" said ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... moment gazing at that marvel of art, which seemed the work of some supernatural brush. The picture represented Adonis stretched out on a lion's skin. The lamp, in an alabaster vase, hanging in the centre of the boudoir, cast upon the canvas a soft light which enabled us to grasp all the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac

... called "Le Gue des Aulnes," except to go shooting in the forest; for he was a great sportsman and cared for little else. He was of gigantic stature—six foot six or seven, and looked taller still, as he had a very small head and high shoulders. He was not an Adonis, and could only see out of one eye—the other (the left one, fortunately) was fixed as if it were made of glass—perhaps it was—and this gave him a stern and rather forbidding expression ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... a rather unusual and learned sort of house painter," reflected the stalwart Adonis. "Is ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... O Zeus! in the Gasteres. Wild birds were they, strong of talon, clanging of wing, and clamorous of gullet. Wild birds, O Zeus! wild birds; now cropping the tender grass by the river of Adonis, and breaking the nascent reed at the root, and depasturing the sweet nymphaea; now again picking up serpents and other creeping things on each hand of old Aegyptos, whose head ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... dear to the heart of Venus. There her temples were kept with honor, and there, some say, she watched with the Loves and Graces over the long enchanted sleep of Adonis. This youth, a hunter whom she had dearly loved, had died of a wound from the tusk of a wild boar; but the bitter grief of Venus had won over even the powers of Hades. For six months of every year, Adonis had to live as a Shade in the world of the ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... formed by similar combinations; the most frequent is the quatrain couplet, called, from Shakespeare's poem, the Venus and Adonis stanza, ababcc^{5} (compare the end of the English sonnet and the ottava rima).[55] Familiar examples are Wordsworth's To a Skylark ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... Man as yet felt himself only as a part of nature, and aspired to no more than a life in harmony with her laws. The worship of fertility and the endless renewal of life was the object of the orgiastic cults of Adonis and Astarte in the East, and Dionysus and Aphrodite in Greece; unbridled licentiousness and blind gratification of the senses ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... and flageolets, fine oil paintings, morocco bound volumes, Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases, extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax, alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, inlaid toilet-cases, ivory-handled hair-brushes and mother-of-pearl combs, and a hundred other luxurious appendages scattered ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... occurs very often in composition, as in Ad-Or, Ad-On; from whence was formed Adorus, Adon, and Adonis. It is sometimes found compounded with itself; and was thus made use of for a supreme title, with which both Deities and kings were honoured. We read of Hadad, king of [86]Edom: and there was another of the same name at Damascus, whose son and successor was styled [87]Benhadad. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... their friends and the naval authorities. The first step was to find the vessel upon which they had left Brazil. This was a work of time; so that it was many years after the disappearance of the officers when the brig was found lying at a London dock. She was the brig "Adonis," and the master proved to be the same who had commanded her when the two officers had taken passage. He readily recalled the circumstance, but claimed that the two passengers had left him in mid-ocean to go aboard an American man-of-war; and in proof of this he brought out the log-book, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... the wool, implanted by nature, inherent, in the grain. affective [obs3][med. and general]. Adv. in one's heart &c. n.; at heart; heart and soul &c. 821. Phr. "affection is a coal that must be cool'd else suffer'd it will set the heart on fire" [Venus and Adonis]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... collecting objects for his Glyptothek at Munich, and he frequently consulted Thorwaldsen in these matters; his advice was of value, and he more than once saved Louis from imposition by dealers. Louis gave the sculptor the order for the fine Adonis, now in the Glyptothek; it was modelled in 1808, but was not completed until 1832; this splendid work was executed entirely by Thorwaldsen's own hands. In 1808 he also received the order for four bas-reliefs to be used in the restoration of the Palace ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... heard Mary say,"[211] is a fine song; but, for consistency's sake, alter the name "Adonis." Were there ever such banns published, as a purpose of marriage between Adonis and Mary! I agree with you that my song, "There's nought but care on every hand," is much superior to "Poortith cauld." The original song, "The mill, mill, O!"[212] though excellent, is, on account ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... in Florence, the greater part and the best of which were in the house of the Medici. He made a number of drawings of certain little panels in half-relief that were under the loggia in the garden, on the side towards S. Lorenzo, in one of which is Adonis with a very beautiful dog, and in another two nude figures, one seated, with a dog at its feet, and the other standing with the legs crossed, leaning on a staff. Both these panels are marvellous; and there are likewise two others of the same size, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... Another mythical king of Cyprus. Hesychius calls him a son of Apollo, and Ovid makes him the father of Adonis. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... very often sick of seeing them. Here is something fresh,—and not only unlike, but so much more lovely. I quite acknowledge that I may be jealous, but no one can say that I am spiteful. I wish that some republican Adonis or Apollo would crop up,—so that we might have our turn. But I don't think the republican gentlemen are equal to the republican ladies. Do you, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... fishes in his pages than any now swimming in our streams, and some sleep of his on the banks of the Merrimack by moonlight that Egypt never rivalled; a morning of which Memnon might have envied the music, and a greyhound that was meant for Adonis; some frogs, too, better than any of Aristophanes. Perhaps we have had no eyes like his since Pliny's time. His senses seem double, giving him access to secrets not easily read by other men: his sagacity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... say that crews of bachelors are seldom out of place in the drawing-room of a young and pretty woman. She looked past her husband to where in fancy she beheld the aisle of a church and the young Adonis, who had been his best man, with eyes full of reverence and awe ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of the dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon the ART of the poem; and this perhaps, is what at first sight will strike the student most. He chose as a foundation for his work those laments of Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which are the most pathetic products of Greek idyllic poetry; and the transmutation of their material into the substance of highly spiritualized modern thought, reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. It is a metamorphosis whereby the art of excellent ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... them frequently reveals itself. Only a few months before the appearance of Mrs. Blaize in 'The Bee' for October 27, 1759, he had written in the 'Critical Review', vii. 263, when noticing Langhorne's 'Death of Adonis', as follows:—'It is not thus that many of our moderns have composed what they call elegies; they seem scarcely to have known its real character. If an hero or a poet happens to die with us, the whole ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... did rede a portion of his "Venus and Adonis," to their prodigious admiration, whereas I, being sleepy and fatigued withal, did deme it but paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain zeal that presently I was like to choke once ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... stage Jew of Marlowe and the rest out of the gutter, and gave the world in "The Merchant of Venice" a figure that commands keen interest not untouched with sympathy. "King John," bearing date 1594, is another piece of inimitable adaptation. By this time the "Venus and Adonis" had been published with a dedication to the third Earl of Southampton, and the poet followed it a year later with "The Rape of Lucrece," dedicated ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... Venus seems to have represented the beauty of organic Nature rising from the sea, and afterwards became simply an emblem of ideal beauty; while the figure of Adonis was probably designed to represent the more abstracted idea of life or animation. Some of these hieroglyphic designs seem to evince the profound investigations in science of the Egyptian philosophers, and ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... young Adonis sitting by her, Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him; She told the youngling how god Mars did try her, And as he fell to her, so fell she to him. "Even thus," quoth she, "the wanton god embraced me!" And then she clasped Adonis in her arms; ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... and pure, the melancholy ashen seas slowly, slowly turning to chill ethereal meads of violets, the violet more slowly yet giving place to Adonis gardens of rose and daffodil. The forests stood dew-drenched and shadowy, solemn enough, deep and tangled woodlands that they were, under the mysterious light, in the realm of the hour whose finger is at ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... delight, and a great deal of capering and dancing about on the sand, some strips of a gaudy handkerchief conveyed to them by a lad decorated with streamers of pandanus leaf at the elbows and wrists—evidently the Adonis of the party. Some of the men had formerly been off to the ship, and one or two carried axes of the usual form, but headed with pieces of our iron hoop, neatly ground to a fine edge. A few coconuts were given us for a knife or two, and we saw their mode of climbing ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... with Rollins had roused the memories of years long gone by,—of days when he, too, was young and full of hope and faith, ay, full of love,—all lavished on one fair girl who knew it well, but gently, almost entreatingly, repelled him. Her heart was wrapped up in another, the Adonis of his day in the gay old seaboard garrison. She was a soldier's child, barrack-born, simply taught, knowing little of the vice and temptations, the follies and the frauds, of the whirling life of civilization. A good and gentle mother had reared ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... thunderbolts, though trained to handle fire, was smitten by a shaft more potent than he himself had ever wrought. Nay I, though I be his mother, have not been able to fend off his arrows: Witness the tears I have shed for the death of Adonis! But why weary myself and thee with the utterance of so many words? There is no deity in heaven who has passed unscathed from his assaults; except, perhaps, Diana only, who may have escaped him by fleeing to the woods; though some there be who tell that she did not flee, ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio

... and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a transfigured Adonis backed against a pink sunset."—[North ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... that he should have held a sixteenth of the whole property. Without the generous patronage of such patrons as the Earl of Southampton or Lord Brooke, how could the young actor have thriven? He was only twenty-six, and may have written "Venus and Adonis" or "Lucrece;" yet the first of these poems was not published till 1593. He may already, it is true, have adapted one or two tolerably successful historical plays, and, as Mr. Collier thinks, might have written The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... admitted; "but what of that? Ere this have I been wild with love for a herdsman on Phrygian hills. Aye, Adonis have I kissed in the oakwood, and bewailed his loss. And did not Selene descend to woo the neatherd Endymion? Wherefore, then, should I scorn thee? and what are the differences and degrees of mortals to such as I! Be bold; distrust your merits no longer, since I, who amongst the goddesses obtained ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... Trinkle, "that no young man disappears who isn't a physical Adonis, do you? No thin-shanked, stoop-shouldered, scant-haired highbrow has yet vanished. You notice that, don't you, Sayre? Open your mouth and speak! Say anything! Say pip! if you ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... gallery at Padua have been acclaimed by Signor Venturi as the master's own,[72] and with that view I am entirely agreed. The stories represented are not easily determinable (as is so often the case with Giorgione), but probably refer to the legends of Adonis.[73] The splendour of colour, the lurid light, the richness of effect, are in the highest degree impressive. What artist but Giorgione would have so revelled in the glories of the evening sunset, the orange horizon, the distant blue hills? The same gallery affords several ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot

... creature, Astraea's daughter, How shall I honour thee for this success? Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens That one day bloom'd and fruitful were the next. France, triumph in thy glorious prophetess! Recover'd is the town of Orleans. More blessed hap ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... The Greeks named the place Byblos, the birthplace of Philo. The coins of Byblos have a representation of the Temple of Astarte. All along the coast we find remains of the worship of Baal Kronos and Baaltis, of Osiris and Isis, and it is probable that the worship of Adonis and Jupiter-Ammon led Benjamin to associate therewith the Ammonites. The reference to the children of Ammon is based on a misunderstanding, arising perhaps ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... craving for a love she knew she could never win. She would have gladly been his servant on the mere chance and hope that possibly in some moment of abandonment he might have yielded to the importunity of her tenderness; Adonis himself in all the freshness of his youth never exercised a more potent spell upon enamoured Venus than this plain, big bearded man over the lonely, untutored Californian girl with the large loveliness of a goddess and the soul of a little child. What was the singular fascination which like ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853: yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must have been, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... injured. He gradually sunk; and Wood says that he became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, 'went in ragged clothes, and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places.' Alas for the Adonis of sixteen, the beloved of Lucasta, and the envied of all! Some have doubted these stories about his extreme poverty; and one of his biographers asserts, that his daughter and sole heir (but who, pray, was his wife and her ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... giants, as ye are! the strength of brass in your toughened sinews; but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet odors from his curly locks, shall come, and with his lily fingers pat your brawny shoulders, and bet his sesterces upon your blood! Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he tasted meat; but tomorrow he shall break his fast upon your ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... dead, is dead forever, Is dead forever and the loves lament. Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover, Seeing him again, having lived, dead again, Lends her great skyey grief now to be blent With ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa

... Black Adonis, A Garston Bigamy, The Her Husband's Friend His Foster Sister His Private Character In Stella's Shadow Love at Seventy Love Gone Astray Moulding a Maiden Naked Truth, The New Sensation, A Original Sinner, An Out of Wedlock ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... to remain and hear the reply. The next speaker was a contrast to their hero, and a titter went round among Dolly's friends in the Gallery. He was a type of the preaching Member. No doubt a very worthy soul, but hardly an Adonis to look at, nor a Cicero to listen to. Still he is sincere, and with his own class effective; and sincerity, after all, is the most valuable, and I may add the most rare, quality in the composition of an ordinary ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... Esthonian legend, a prince, by eating pork, acquires the faculty of understanding the language of birds. All this opens up a very suggestive field of inquiry. Thus, Plutarch says that the reason why the Jews would not eat swine's flesh was because Adonis was slain by a boar, and Bacchus and Adonis, he says, were the same divinities. Now, if we turn to Herodotus, we find that wonderful narrator saying: 'The only deities to whom the Egyptians offer swine are Bacchus and Luna; to these they sacrifice swine ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... before this Adonis was quite satisfied with himself. He re-touched the paint on his shoulders several times, and modified the glare of that on his wide-mouthed, high-cheek-boned visage before he could tear himself away; but at last he did so, and, throwing a large piece of scarlet cloth over his shoulders, he thrust ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... adventures, into Egypt. Another tradition asserts, however, that Osiris never found his way back to his country: he was buried at Byblos, this tradition maintained, and it was in his honour that the festivals attributed by the vulgar to the young Adonis were really celebrated. A marvellous fact seemed to support this view. Every year a head of papyrus, thrown into the sea at some unknown point of the Delta, was carried for six days along the Syrian coast, buffeted by wind and waves, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... cannot pretend to judge; but it strikes me that the men about my own age who affect to be fast are a more languid race than the men from ten to twenty years older, whom they regard as slow. The habit of dram-drinking in the morning is a very new idea, an idea greatly in fashion at the moment. Adonis calls for a "pick-me-up" before he has strength enough to answer a billet-doux from Venus. Adonis has not the strength to get nobly drunk, but his delicate constitution requires stimulants, and he ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... thinks it one of Shakespeare's first attempts at dramatic composition; but first attempts must reflect the mental condition of the author at the time they were made; and we know the mental condition of Shakespeare in his early manhood by his poem of "Venus and Adonis," which he expressly styles "the first heir of his invention." Now leaving out of view the fact that "Titus Andronicus" stamps the impression, not of youthful, but of matured depravity of taste, its execrable enormities of feeling and incident could not have proceeded from the sweet and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... Adonis AEsculapius Agoult, Comte d' Agoult, Marie Sophie, Comtesse d' Amati, family of violin-makers Anfossi, Pasquale Anhalt-Koethen, Prince of Anne, Queen Aphrodite Apollo Arco, Count Arion Arne, Dr. Thomas Arnim, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... wanting, it was something to have the manners. They at least were to the imagination a memory and a prophecy. They recalled the idyllic age when fine manners expressed fine feelings, and they foretold the return of Astraa to her ancient haunts. Here is young Adonis dreaming of a four-in-hand and a yacht, like any other gentleman. Let us hope that he knows the test of a gentleman not to be the ownership of blood-horses and a unique drag, but perfect courtesy founded upon fine human feeling—that ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... him and his horrid daughter Bellona. His star was "the red planet Mars;" but Venus had the beautiful clear one, which, according as it is seen either at sunrise or sunset, is called the morning or evening star. Venus also loved a beautiful young earthly youth, called Adonis, who died of a thrust from a wild boar's tusk, while his blood stained crimson the pretty flower, pheasant's eye, which is still called Adonis. Venus was so wretched that she persuaded Jupiter to decree that Adonis should come back and live for one-half of the year, but he was to go down to ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of Theocritus was echoed by his younger contemporaries, Bion and Moschus.[6] The former is best known through the oriental passion of his 'Woe, woe for Adonis,' probably written to be sung at the annual festival of Syrian origin commemorated by Theocritus in his fifteenth idyl.[7] The most important extant work of Moschus is the 'Lament for Bion,' characterized by a certain delicate ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... fear lest another should approach the object of his love, and occupy a place in the heart which he had not even demanded as his own. He was positively in a hurry. What if some undergraduate should get an introduction to Eva—some gay and handsome Adonis—and should suddenly carry ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... and Eudora wept, he added: "Do not mourn because I am soon to depart. Why would ye detain my soul in this world? Its best pleasures are like the shallow gardens of Adonis, fresh and fair in the ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... doesn't need it, and as for me, nothing could make me a modern Adonis. Seriously, though, a man couldn't get in there, I suppose. At least that is one of the many things I want you to find out. Under the circumstances, you are the only person in whom I have confidence enough to believe that she can get at ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... be, was wide, and their rewards often solid. Contemporary writers also complain that, however brutal and ugly they were, there were always women ready to adore them and to consider them as beautiful as Adonis. At Pompeii a scribbling calls one of them "the sigh of the girls." Nevertheless no Roman with much self-respect, unless forced by a malignant emperor, would bear the stigma of having appeared as a gladiator, any more than in modern times one would choose to be known as a professional ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... countries, absorbed my whole being. My dreams were haunted for a time by the burnt-up mountain-chain of Galaad and the peak of Safed, where the Messiah was to appear, by Carmel and its beds of anemone sown by God, by the Gulf of Aphaca whence issues the river Adonis. Strangely enough, it was at Athens, in 1865, that I first felt a strong backward impulse, the effect being that of a fresh and bracing ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... his article and was watching them through the window, the tall handsome youth, his head bared with the glint of the sun on his short cropped gold curls making one think of a young prince, yet a prince bound under a spell and frozen in a block of ice. He was handsome as Adonis, every feature perfect, and striking in its manly beauty, yet there was nothing feminine about him. The minister was conscious of all this as he watched—this boy whom he had seen grow up, and this girl of his heart. A great still question came into the father's ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... go on the stage, dear Dairy. I know now its decietfullness and visisitudes. My heart has bled until it can bleed no more, as a result of a theatricle Adonis. I am ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... had seen their best days, and a wide-awake hat,—such was the elegant and excessively fashionable attire of Dick, the old black fiddler, who, when dressed in these rags, believed himself as handsome as Adonis. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... 'litanies and lurries,' and clash the rattles, which commemorate their rage against the traitor Judas. So far have we already passed away from the Greek feeling of Mentone. As I listened to the hideous din, I could not but remember the Theocritean burial of Adonis. Two funeral beds prepared: two feasts recurring in the springtime of the year. What a difference beneath this superficial similarity—[Greek: kalos nekus oia katheudon]—attritus aegra macie. But the fast of Good Friday is followed by the festival of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... were true in their psychology when they pictured the distress of mortal men beloved of goddesses: Tithonus and Aurora, Venus and Adonis, Diana and Endymion. How could aught but tragedy result from such loves as these? How could a mortal have dared to lift his eyes to such a height unbidden? The gulf between Miss Wycliffe, beautiful, rich, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Abronia umbellata. Adonis aestivalis; autumnale. Argemone grandiflora. Calendulas. Callirrhoe. Carduus benedictus. Centaurea Cyanus. Centauridium. Centranthus macro- Cerinthe retorta. {siphon. Cheiranthus Cheiri. Chrysanthemums. Convolvulus minor; tricolor. Dianthus ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... luck at the Salon des Etrangers, at length contrived to lose his last shilling at rouge et noir. When he had lost everything he possessed in the world, he got up and exclaimed, in an excited manner, "If I had Canova's Venus and Adonis from Alton Towers, my uncle's country seat, it should be placed on the rouge, for black has ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... nearly always chosen from the fables of the gods, and they are in illustration of the poets, Homer and the rest. To suit that soft, luxurious life which people led in Pompeii, the themes are commonly amorous, and sometimes not too chaste; there is much of Bacchus and Ariadne, much of Venus and Adonis, and Diana bathes a good deal with her nymphs,—not to mention frequent representations of the toilet of that beautiful monster which the lascivious art of the time loved to depict. One of the most ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... Adonis, Venus is related to have thrown herself on a bed of lettuces to assuage her grief. "In lactuca occultatum a Venere Adonin—cecinit Callimachus—quod allegorice interpretatus Athenoeus illuc referendum putat quod in venerem hebetiores ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... We were sitting in the Gardens of Adonis once occupied in part by the golden house of Nero, here where St. Sebastian was bound to a tree and pierced with arrows. What material symbols for our thoughts! Ruins of walls, columns and capitols lay about us; and on the air was borne the music of bells ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... the faint pink that surely the lips of divinity had scarcely brushed to the smiling scarlet that suggested Aphrodite's mouth, from the imperial purple of a Caesar's pomp to the crimson so deep that it was almost black, black as the congealed blood on the torn thigh of Adonis. Here, when the stars eluded or deceived him, King Louis would come, creeping down the winding stairs of his tower, with the names of saints upon his thin lips, to breathe the sunlit or moonlit fragrance of his roses, to seek a little rest for his ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... sitting by her, Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him; She told the youngling how god Mars did try her, And as he fell to her, so fell she to him. "Even thus," quoth she, "the wanton god embraced me!" And then she clasped Adonis in her arms; "Even thus," quoth she, "the warlike god unlaced me!" As if the boy should use like loving charms. But he, a wayward boy, refused the offer, And ran away the beauteous queen neglecting Showing both folly to abuse her proffer, And all his sex of cowardice detecting. O that I ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... the valet of Olympus, sir," he replied, gracefully flicking a speck of dust from the calf of his leg, the contour of which was beautiful to look upon, clad in superbly fitting silken tights. "Adonis, at your service. What can ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... wrapt in delicious repose, Most harmoniously playing a tune with his nose, In a dream there appeared the adorable Venus, Who said, "To be sure there's no likeness between us; Yet to show a celestial to kindness so prone is, Your looks shall soon rival the handsome Adonis." Liston woke in a fright, and cried, "Heaven preserve me! If my face you improve, zounds! madam, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... epigram of Diodorus was inspired only by a myth,—for the "son of Kinyras" was no other than Adonis,—whereas the verses of Okura express for us the yearning of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... out of the very thigh of Jupiter? Did not Roquetaillade come out at his mother's heel, and Crocmoush from the slipper of his nurse? Was not Minerva born of the brain, even through the ear of Jove? Adonis, of the bark of a myrrh tree; and Castor and Pollux of the doupe of that egg which was laid and hatched by Leda? But you would wonder more, and with far greater amazement, if I should now present you with that chapter of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... upon the young man riding townward on a wiry buckskin that had just topped the rise which commanded the valley below. The rider presented a striking enough appearance to take and hold the roving eye of any young woman in search of romance. He was a slender, lithe young Adonis of medium height. His hair and eyebrows left one doubtful whether to pronounce them black or brown, but the eyes called for an immediate verdict of Irish blue. Every inch of him spoke of competency—promised mastership of any ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... "I should not be surprised if the girl were taken at disadvantage by his abrupt visit, and that the venerable Adonis saw something to justify his jealousy. A husband has no right to surprise his wife. Le Prun," he continued carelessly aloud, "I wonder why Nature, who has been so bounteous to the sex, has not furnished husbands, like certain snakes, with rattles to their ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... water being the shallowest. The vegetation is the same; there is a little cultivation, but nothing to indicate any descent. The amount of population is not great; and the hills to the west are covered with snow. The chief vegetation is Santonica. In cornfields Fumariaceae, Adonis, Cruciferae, Pulmonaria, Arenaria, Hordei sp., Tulipa lutea, and Hyacinthus? ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... the Anemone as given by Bion was that it sprung from the tears of Venus, while the Rose sprung from Adonis' blood— ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... Shakespeare pronounced "Venus and Adonis" "the first heir of his invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. They have to make him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... suffered. The immediate cause of the putting away of this ring was said to be the renowned Clinton Howe, who was on the Harvard football eleven, and who visited Mr. George Hanbury that Easter. Fortunate indeed the tailor who was called upon to practise his art on an Adonis like Mr. Howe, and it was remarked that he scarcely left Honora's side at the garden party and dance which Mrs. Dwyer gave in honour of the returning heroes, on the Monday ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Invincible, At whom as enemy barbarian standards shake, But the Divine Community with gifts adore you, And with this in especial from the wife of Zephyr: She to the Dutch Apelles did perpetual spring Ordain, and meadows living by the painter's hand. Alcinous' charm is annual, and Adonis' gardens, Nor do the Pharian roses bloom long in that air; Antique Pomona of Semiramis has boasted, And yet deep winter climbs the summit of her roof. How shall your honors fail? The garlands that you wear Beseem Imperial triumph, which time ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole

... she should sit, for men to gaze upon. The outside of her garments were of lawn, The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn; 10 Her wide sleeves green, and border'd with a grove, Where Venus in her naked glory strove To please the careless and disdainful eyes Of proud Adonis, that before her lies; Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain, Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain. Upon her head she ware[3] a myrtle wreath, From whence her veil reach'd to the ground beneath: Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves, Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives: ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... music in the streets, and after a time a well-to-do citizen who noticed him took him into his house and entrusted him with the task of teaching music to his sons and of playing him to sleep in the evening. Franz spent his leisure hours in composing an opera called 'The Death of Adonis,' into which he poured all the music of his soul, all his love, his sorrow, and his infinite desire. He lived for this only, and during all the hours he spent when he was not working at his opera he was like a man in a dream, unconscious of ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... comfort to think what a Methuselah he must be; and yet, if he will excuse the personality, he looked as rosy and smooth-faced as when he used to stand me outside his door with my coat-sleeves turned inside out. It was a way he had. Well, the presence of that particular master made me feel an Adonis forthwith. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... dearly love good-nature; and as you have found me out to be a comical fellow, so I have no skill in physiognomy, if you are not one of the best-natured gentlemen in the universe." Jones now walked downstairs neatly drest, and perhaps the fair Adonis was not a lovelier figure; and yet he had no charms for my landlady; for as that good woman did not resemble Venus at all in her person, so neither did she in her taste. Happy had it been for Nanny the chambermaid, if ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... Adonis.—This poem was published in 1593 with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton, then a youth. In the dedication Shakespeare speaks of the poem as "the first heire of my invention," from which some conclude that it was the first poem ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... Adonis Flos.—Showy crimson summer flowers, requiring only the simplest treatment of hardy annuals. Sow in March or April in the open border. Height, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... cipher, and a decimal cipher at that. If some men were not all pocket they would never be Johns, for no Jill would be so demented as to "come tumbling after" them. I have seen a pocket marry off a hump-back, a twisted foot and sixty winters' fall of snow upon the head, while a pocketless Adonis sighed in vain for Beauty's glance. A full pocket balances an empty skull as a good heart cannot; a ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... Orpheus. Ganymede. Hyacinth changed to a flower. The Amanthians to oxen. The Propaetides to flints. Pygmalion's statue to a woman. Myrrha's incestuous love, and transformation to a tree. Venus' love for Adonis. Story of Atalanta and Hippomenes. Adonis changed to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... on the perfection of Ganymede, as deeply enamored on his perfection as Montanus inveigled with hers; for her eye made survey of his excellent feature, which she found so rare, that she thought the ghost of Adonis had been leaped from Elysium in the shape of a swain. When she blushed at her own folly to look so long on a stranger, she mildly ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... him with cowardice, merely because he happened to have an effeminate voice. Whenever Cher'ea came to demand the watch-word from the emperor, according to custom, he always gave him either Venus, Adonis, or some such, implying softness ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... neighbor of mine found one of your northern boatmen dying in his boat. He rowed all the way from Philadelphia on a bet, and if he had reached New Orleans would have won his five thousand dollars, but he died when only ninety-five miles from the city, and was buried by Adonis ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... universal improvement of mankind," but Popanilla publishes for the benefit of the people of England, whom he represents as living in a too artificial state. He tells his story as the native of an Indian isle, whose men combine "the vivacity of a faun with the strength of a Hercules, and the beauty of an Adonis," and whose women "magically sprung from the brilliant foam of that ocean, which is gradually subsiding before them." This favoured spot he calls the Isle of Fantaisie, about the shores of which appears a remarkable fish, or rather a ship, to the no small terror of the islanders. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various

... revolution from Christian image-worship—Christianity, in a natural succession, and by fortuitous circumstances, took possession of the executive, and placed on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor in lieu of a pagan. Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis, Venus and the deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other saints (or gods) of the Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well. He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the "Songe de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron caused him to lay it aside. It is a dull piece. Four fairies, Palatiane, Hortesie, Apellanire, and Calliopee, make long speeches about their specialty in Art, as seen at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... imagine how far she carries this. She has in her room a few pictures and engravings, and what do you imagine they are? An Adonis, a Cephalus, a Paris, an Apollo? Not a bit of it! Fine portraits of Saturn, of King Priam, of old Nestor, and of good father ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere

... the darkness, ivories brown with age, worn brocades with gold threads gleaming in them, and tapestries with strange and pallid figures of dead gods, were all half revealed and half obscured in the twilight. As he moved through them, a figure which looked almost as pale as the Adonis of the tapestry and was erect and motionless like the statue of the wounded Love, came before his sight out of the darkness. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... Adonis; unique. Edinburgh, by John Writtoun, and are to bee sold in his shop, a little beneath the Salt Trone, 1627 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... said the man. I replied that he did seem to be a good-looking animal; but, said I, "he does not quite come up to the description of a horse I have read." "Whose hos was it?" said he. I replied it was the horse of Adonis. He said he didn't know him; but, he added, "there is so many hosses stolen, that the descriptions are stuck up now pretty common." To put him at his ease (for he seemed to think I suspected him of having stolen the horse), I told him the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... went, like the steed of Adonis, as if she told the steps. Presently the quaint gables and jumbled roofs of St. Launce's were spread beneath her, and going down the hill she entered the courtyard of the Falcon. Mrs. Buckle, the landlady, came to the door to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... conception of a Trinity, the miraculous birth and murder of a Deity, had found a place in earlier religions has frequently been used as an argument to show that the story of Christ was merely a new version of various ancient legends, those of Attis, Adonis, or of Osiris, and that consequently the Christian religion is founded on a myth. The answer to this is that the existence of Christ on earth is an historic fact which no serious authority has ever denied. The attempts of such ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... we have introduced was named Redmond. The reader has already penetrated his character. In person he was quite good-looking, though not the Adonis he deemed himself. He had fallen deeply in love with the "acres of charms" possessed by a certain Miss Clinton, and was making rapid inroad upon her heart—at least he thought so—when a young man well known ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... Charles (the dear familiar name I must take the liberty henceforward to distinguish my Adonis by), with a smile full of meaning, took me gently by the hand, and said: "Come, my dear, I will show you a room that commands a fine prospect over some gardens"; and without waiting for an answer, in which he relieved me extremely, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... about her and Alick Craven. For he discussed her and her change of fortune without embarrassment or any arriere pensee, and he, too, spoke of the visit to Rose Tree Gardens. Evidently all the Coombe set was full of this mysterious visit, paid to an Adonis whom nobody knew, in the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... is a clever embroidery of the world-old tale of Ariadne and Theseus, the figure of the gentle Ariadne being happily contrasted with that of the fiery and passionate Phaedra, who succeeds her sister in the affections of the fickle Theseus. The death of Phaedra, who is crushed by a statue of Adonis which she had insulted, is followed by a curious and striking scene in Hades, whither Ariadne descends in order to bring her sister back to the world of life. The opera, according to tradition, ends with the flight of Theseus and Phaedra, while ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... old fop, vain to excess, but good-natured withal, and quite the slave of the fair sex, were they but young and fair. At the age of 70, his lordship fancied himself an Adonis, notwithstanding his qualms and his rheumatism. He required a great deal of "brushing, oiling, screwing, and winding up before he appeared in public," but when fully made up, was game for the part of "lover, rake, or fine gentleman." Lord Ogleby made his bow to Fanny Sterling, and promised ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... Biter Ladies last Stake Jane Grey Oroonoko Non Juror Tender Husb. Timon What d'ye call it Gamester Cruel Gift Double Gallant Caesar Borgia Apparition Xerxes Sophonisba Woman's Wit Rival Fools Venus and Adonis Island ...
— The Annual Catalogue (1737) - Or, A New and Compleat List of All The New Books, New - Editions of Books, Pamphlets, &c. • J. Worrall

... viridiflora, abutilons, acacia, rose, acalypha, acer, species, Achillea Ptarmica, achyranthes, aconites, actinidia, adiantums, adlumia, Adonis vernalis, aesculus species, African lily, agapanthus, agave, Agrostemma Coronaria, Agrostis nebulosa, ailanthus, shoots of, Ajuga reptans, akebia, alder, alliums, almond, alpine plants, alternanthera, Althaea frutex, Althaea rosea, Alyssum saxatile, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... makes any one shot-proof against thee, Cupid. I pray thee, light honey-bee, remember thou art not now in Adonis' garden, but in Cynthia's presence, where thorns lie in garrison about the roses. Soft, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... accident, but it must be admitted it was De Guiche's own fault. How could he possibly have gone to hunt such an animal merely armed with pistols; he must have forgotten the fable of Adonis?" ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... with Charlie? I thought he was the prince of cavaliers. Annabel says he dances 'like an angel,' and I know a dozen mothers couldn't keep him at home of an evening. Have you had a tiff with Adonis and so fall back on poor me?" asked Mac, coming last to the person of whom he thought first but did not mention, feeling shy about alluding to a subject ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... of Belphoebe; the story of Florimel and the Witch's son; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of Cupid; and Colin Clout's vision, in the last book. But some people will say that all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, Iceland, and the British Isles and Ireland. The Sargon myth, for instance, resembles closely the myth of Scyld (Sceaf), the patriarch, in the Beowulf epic, and both appear to be variations of the Tammuz-Adonis story. Tammuz also resembles in one of his phases the Celtic hero Diarmid, who was slain by the "green boar" of the Earth Mother, as was Adonis by the boar form of Ares, the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... penetrated as it is with a sense of beauty, as lively and transparent as that of a Greek? There is even a sort of preparation for the romantic temper within the limits of the Greek ideal itself, which Winckelmann failed to see. For Greek religion has not merely its mournful mysteries of Adonis, of Hyacinthus, of Demeter, but it is conscious also of the fall of earlier divine dynasties. Hyperion gives way to Apollo, Oceanus to Poseidon. Around the feet of that tranquil Olympian family still crowd the weary shadows of ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... and looked at Raffles with his prominent frozen eyes. The contrast was as striking as it could have been eighteen years before, when Rigg was a most unengaging kickable boy, and Raffles was the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-rooms and back-parlors. But the advantage now was on the side of Rigg, and auditors of this conversation might probably have expected that Raffles would retire with the air of a defeated dog. Not at all. He made a grimace which was habitual with him ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... not understand, and perhaps you are wise. Why do you stare at that pavement? There's a story written on it. The old goddess of my people, Aphrodite, loved a certain Adonis—so runs the fable—but he loved not her, and thought only of his sports. Look, she woos him there, and he rejects her, and in her ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... bean-stalk, son. Let's take a look at you. Well, say—" Mr. Brotherton stopped and backed up and paused for dramatic effect. Then he exploded: "Say, boy, if I had you in an olive wood frame, I could get $2.75 or $3.00 for you as Narcissus or a boy Adonis! You ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White



Words linked to "Adonis" :   crowfoot family, demigod, genus Adonis, pheasant's-eye, Adonis annua, man, daemon, buttercup family, adult male, Greek mythology, magnoliid dicot genus, family Ranunculaceae, Ranunculaceae



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com