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More "Harbinger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to ascend these heights. They are mournful, cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire and wish for had to them been denied. If, indeed, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... more essential than the mosquito net under which I slept every night for nearly four months. Insects are the bane of Africa. The mosquito carries malaria, and the tsetse fly is the harbinger of that most terrible of diseases, sleeping sickness. Judging from personal experience nearly every conceivable kind of biting bug infests the Congo. One of the most tenacious and troublesome of the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... thy knees, The giant of his locks was shorn. And Dagon, being now at ease, Cried like the harbinger of morn, To see ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... once the friendliness of his Church towards true science, and her right to determine what true science is. Let us dwell for a moment on the proofs of her scientific competence. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456 it was regarded as the harbinger of God's vengeance, the dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, and by order of the Pope the church bells of Europe were rung to scare the monster away. An additional daily prayer was added to the supplications of the faithful. The comet in due time disappeared, and the faithful were ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure took Than Dis,[41] on heaps of gold fixing his look. By this, Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard, But he the bright Day-bearing car[42] prepar'd, 330 And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night, Till she, o'ercome with anguish, shame, and rage, Dang'd[43] down to hell her ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... government subjecting its inhabitants to institutions abhorrent to their souls and fatal to their prosperity, forced upon them at the point of the bowie-knife and the muzzle of the revolver by hordes of sordid barbarians from a hostile soil, their natural and necessary enemies. And the sweet harbinger of this blessed peace, the halcyon which broods over the stormy waves and tells of the calm at hand, is a bribe so cunningly devised that its contrivers firmly believe it will buy up the souls of these much-injured men, and reconcile them to the shame and infamy of trading away their lights and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... livid lips; Leda, swanlike beside her swan lover; Chimaera, in whom many natures mingled and made one; the conflict of a dragon and a lion; S. John conceived not as a prophet but as a vine-crowned Faun, the harbinger of joy:—over pictorial motives of this kind, attractive by reason of their complexity or mystery, he loved to brood; and to this fascination of a sphinx-like charm we owe some of his most exquisite drawings. Lionardo more than any other artist who has ever lived (except ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the bright morning-star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... and then, at once, was torn between a desire to stay and hear more and an urge to hurry forth and spread the unbelievable tidings. After the briefest of struggles the latter inclination won; this news was too marvelously good to keep; surely a harbinger and a herald were ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... midst of a well-nurtured animalism. The Herod of a ruling selfishness seeks to obliterate the loftier ideal. But while he summons all his strength to prevent the embodiment of the new thought, there are other faculties that perceive the star of promise and follow it as a harbinger of truth. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... their education to fit them for the service of the Altar; and a fair encouragement for worthy men to come into the Church. However, it may be some comfort for persons of that holy function, that their Divine Founder as well as His harbinger, met with the like reception. "John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he hath a devil; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, behold a glutton ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... our situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sail. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. It was the ninth day we had been upon the raft; the torments of hunger consumed our entrails; and the soldiers and sailors already devoured with haggard eyes this wretched prey, and seemed ready ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... our camp and set the tents up, down poured the furious harbinger of the Masika season in torrents sufficient to damp the ardor and newborn love for East Africa I had lately manifested. However, despite rain, we worked on until our camp was finished and the property was safely stored from weather and thieves, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... The middle-sized gulls, with a black spot at the end of the wings, attend you a little way into the Bay of Biscay. When it blows a hard gale of wind the stormy petrel makes its appearance. While the sea runs mountains high, and every wave threatens destruction to the labouring vessel, this little harbinger of storms is seen enjoying itself, on rapid pinion, up and down the roaring billows. When the storm is over it appears no more. It is known to every English sailor by the name of Mother Carey's chicken. It must have been hatched in Aeolus's cave, amongst a clutch of squalls and tempests, for ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Bingen and Stuttgart. The artists and the magistracy vied with each other in preparing happy days for the visitors—an emulation which was crowned with the most delightful results. The artists' festival, however, was but the harbinger to the the city of the great seventh centennial birthday festival of the Bavarian capital, which had been so long in preparation, and was waited for with such impatience. Concerts and theatres opened the festal series. Services in all the churches ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the next lesson a soul is capable of learning?' he would say. 'The Spirit of God is the teacher. My part is to tell the good news. Let that work as it ought, as it can, as it will.' He knew that pain is with some the only harbinger that can prepare the way for the entrance of kindness: it is not understood till then. In the lulls of her pain he told her about the man Christ Jesus—what he did for the poor creatures who came to him—how kindly he spoke to them—how ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... half-past nine he retired to his bedroom. Lady Burton then repeated "the night prayers to him," and while she was speaking "a dog," to use her own words, "began that dreadful howl which the superstitious regard as the harbinger of death." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... he could exclaim, "Where I see anything at variance with the doctrines of Christ, I will not obey, though the stakes were staring me in the face." That was his maxim all through life; and in such an age such heroism in such a cause was the harbinger ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... embarked on the trackless wave, no longer my delight; and as the shore receded, I watched the humble edifice which I had raised over the remains of my Rosina: it appeared to me as if a star had settled over the spot, and I hailed it as an harbinger of grace. When I landed, I repaired to the convent to which I now belong; and, taking the vows of abstinence and mortification, have passed the remainder of my days in masses for the soul of my Rosina, and prayers ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... printer, however, could not read French,[29] and there is sufficient evidence to show that he was independent of any influences save those which he took from real life. None the less, of course, Marivaux, who has a name for affectation which his writings scarcely deserve, has an interest for us as a harbinger of the modern novel. Pamela was published in two volumes in 1740. The author was sufficiently ill-advised to add two more in 1741. In this latter instalment Mrs. B. was represented as a dignified ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Carey's chicken' hovered round the wreck while we were on board, and followed us to the 'Sunbeam;' and although a flat calm and a heavy swell prevailed at the time, we all looked upon our visitor as the harbinger of a breeze. In this instance, at least, the well-known sailor's superstition was justified; for, before the evening, the wind sprang up, and 'fires out and sails up' was the order of the day. We were soon bowling merrily along at the rate of seven knots an hour, while a clear starlight ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... abandoned road the auto trucks crept and crawled, and the shed and the houses that had been prepared by Blount now gave shelter to his hated successor. Only one man was absent and he sat on the hill-top, looking down like a lonely coyote. It was Stiff Neck George, that specter at the feast, the harbinger of evil to come; but as Wiley ordered the empty trucks to back up against the dump he glanced ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... again. Then answer thus the shadowy form return'd. Take courage; suffer not excessive dread 1000 To overwhelm thee, such a guide he hath And guardian, one whom many wish their friend, And ever at their side, knowing her pow'r, Minerva; she compassionates thy griefs, And I am here her harbinger, who speak As thou hast heard by her own kind command. Then thus Penelope the wise replied. Oh! if thou art a goddess, and hast heard A Goddess' voice, rehearse to me the lot Of that unhappy one, if yet he live 1010 Spectator of the cheerful beams of day, Or if, already ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... Delightful harbinger of joys to come, Of summer's verdure and a fruitful year, Who bids thee o'er our northern snow-fields roam, And make all gladness in thy bright career? Lo from the Indian Isle thou dost appear, And dost a thousand ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... The first pale star! braving the rear of Day! And all heaven waiting till the sun has drawn His long train after him! then half creation Will follow its queen-leader from the depths. O harbinger of hope! O star of love! Thou hast gone down in me, gone down for ever; And left my soul in such a starless night, It has not love enough to weep thy loss. O fool! to know thee once, and, after years, To take a gleaming marsh-light for ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Yaspard to encounter That fierce harbinger of gloom— Fain to dare the spells of magic, Fain to foil the wrath of doom. Hark! the solitary raven Croaks a note of death and pain, And a human call defiant Answers ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... to it as the harbinger of fortune. Has a cat insight into the future? Can it presage wealth or death? I am inclined to believe that certain cats can at all events foresee the advent of the latter; and that they do this in the same manner as the shark, crow, owl, jackal, hyena, etc., viz. by their abnormally ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... of Gregory VI was the harbinger of an epoch of moral renaissance. The wise Pontiff, whose glory it had been to free the Church from a disgraceful yoke, proved himself worthy of the sovereign power, as much by the zeal with which he wielded as by the noble disinterestedness with which he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... of present power, Preserving, recreating, day by day. Better confess how little we can know, Better with feet unshod and humble awe Approach this living Power to ask for aid." And as he spoke the devas filled the air, Unseen, unheard of men, and sweetly sung: "Hail, prince of peace! hail, harbinger of day! The darkness vanishes, the light appears." But Mara heard, and silent slunk away, The o'erwrought prince fell prostrate on the ground And lay entranced, while devas hovered near, Watching each ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the the thick forest, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him safely; for he is entirely attached to my interests: but now good night; for there is every appearance of snow coming on: it has been threatening for the last twenty-four hours: cold so severe as this is always the harbinger of snow: and, from the appearance of the sky at this moment, I doubt there will be a heavy fall before ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... the sunlight. Snowy bits of cloud raced across the sky, like sails against the blue of the ocean. November leaves, lying thick upon the grass, stirred into life, and for an hour imagined the fickle wind to be a harbinger of spring. Children, with laughter that knew no other cause than the exhilaration of the morning, played and romped, weaving dreams into their lives and their lives into dreams. Invalids in chairs leaned back upon their pillows and smiled. Something ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... very generally known, for it is most tempting to the eye by its delicate fringe-like bunches of white flowers. Even the touch of this shrub is poisonous, and produces violent swelling. The arbor judae is abundant in every wood, and its bright and delicate pink is the earliest harbinger of the American spring. Azalias, white, yellow, and pink; kalmias of every variety, the too sweet magnolia, and the stately rhododendron, all grow in wild abundance there. The plant known in England as the Virginian ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... pay the price of the preservation, as she has paid the price of the purchase of our liberties. It is inattention and inconsideration, protracted till the crisis is past, and the things which belong to our peace are hid from our eyes. And blessed be God, that the tokens of a national waking up, the harbinger of God's mercy, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... were still running high and breaking in fiery sparkles. The silver sharks unwearyingly kept their silent vigil about the rocking buoy. Up the eastern horizon was stealing a faint pallor, harbinger ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... day I had the happiness of dedicating our Synagogue at Ramsgate, and the day of my wedding, the proudest day of my life. I trust the honour conferred by our most gracious Queen on myself and my dear Judith may prove the harbinger of future good to the Jews generally, and though I am sensible of my unworthiness, yet I pray the Almighty to lead and guide me in the proper path, that I may observe ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... found a first market in the East Indies, no doubt could be improved as the planters learned the art of its cultivation and the adventurers found for them a better weed. No doubt, too, this success with tobacco, whatever the imperfections of the current product, could be viewed as a harbinger of other successful attempts to produce commodities the Spaniard had for so long and so profitably grown in ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... rang out boldly, as the joyous harbinger of the time to come, of a new life open to all in the future;—far or near? They felt that it depended upon them whether they advanced towards liberty or themselves deferred ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... representations of the benign monster on garments, banners and metal tablets.[161] "The ancient texts ... are short, but sufficient to give us the main conceptions of Old China with regard to the dragon. In those early days [just as at present] he was the god of water, thunder, clouds, and rain, the harbinger of blessings, and the symbol of holy men. As the emperors are the holy beings on earth, the idea of the dragon being the symbol of Imperial power is based upon this ancient ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Hill—Unwin, 1897). Only a few of them met with favour; and one of them, "The Germ," going to the vote along with "The Seed" and "The Scroll," was approved by a vote of six to four. The next best were, I think, "The Harbinger," "First Thoughts," "The Sower," "The Truth-Seeker," and "The Acorn." Appended to the new title we retained, as a sub-title, something of what had been previously proposed; and the serial appeared ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to be intelligible again. When the 'heart is oppressed with unutterable anguish, condemned to conceal that passion which is at once the torment and delight of life'—when 'his lip, the ruby harbinger of joy, lies pale and cold, the miserable appendage of a mang—' that is, Miss Monson, I mean to say, when all our faculties are engrossed by one dear object we are often incoherent and mysterious, as a matter ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... so sweet, so tranquil, so unwonted, have been the harbinger of good? Alas, no good came of it! I Presently the rude Real burst coarsely in—all evil grovelling and repellent as ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... colors almost touching the water—the captain, who was absent from his ship, found his flag upon his return. A harbinger as it proved of the issue that was ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... William had written to his mother that he would be home on a stated day, and not even for the delight of meeting the mistress of his heart, the period of whose return was now uncertain, would he disappoint her. William was engaged in packing his trunk, when Dr. Keene, again the harbinger of good tidings, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... in the flashes of his guns, and the blaze of his camp-fires, those wintry days and nights in front of Donelson. From that hour until the closing triumph at Appomattox he was the leader whose name was the harbinger of victory. From the final sheath of his sword until the tragedy on Mount McGregor he was the chief citizen of the republic and the great central figure of the world. [Applause.] The story of his life savors more of romance than reality. It is more like a fabled ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... what he says?" she cried. "Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheer up! 'Tis a harbinger of spring, and flowers, and warmer weather. Who knows but that he brings good luck to ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... not—through the night That long has reigned with tyrant sway, E'en now I see the opening light, The harbinger of coming day; To Heaven I now direct my prayer— O God of love, forsake me not! Grant that my waywardness may ne'er ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... to lead the child's mind through a long sequence of thought from the lower to the higher life, the amphibian affords an easy step in this ascending scale. And among amphibians that familiar and picturesque harbinger of spring, the frog, and his cousin the friendly toad, are the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... thousand horrid prodigies foretold it: A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking states. When publick villany, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard? When some neglected fabrick nods beneath The weight of years, and totters to the tempest, Must ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... there are a number of pieces of egg-shell lying in a line, as at k, this is an evil prognostic, the line of shell fragments indicating the road to the funeral pyre. Such a line of shell fragments is called ki'leng rah thang. This sign is a harbinger of death. ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... in his hand, hobbled from the cook-tent toward them; like a sinister harbinger of evil he advanced, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... still meditating, in the dark, in the wretched little bed of his cell, on the salutary and evident effects of the divine grace which he had sought in the sacraments. He meditated also on the action of the Moro, on the ray of light that had shone into that dark conscience, harbinger, if nothing less, of better and lasting light. And in his mystic imagination he saw the design of Providence which recompensed him for a sacrifice which he had suffered for duty's sake. It was a blessing to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in the face ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... looked for. The voyage is spoken of as long, and amid its discomforts the drooping spirits of the soldiery were signally cheered by a meteor of special brilliance which one night darted westwards as their harbinger. Moreover we find that when the Romans did land, their first success was a defeat of the Dobuni, subject allies of the House of Cymbeline, who, as we gather from Ptolemy, dwelt in what is now Southern Gloucestershire.[129] ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... part of King Island had been found by the skipper of a sealing brig, named Reid, in 1799, but the name it bears was given to it by John Black, commander of the brig Harbinger, who discovered the northern part in January, 1801. Flinders was occupied for three days at King Island. On the 24th, the wind having moderated, he made for Cape Otway. But it was still considered imprudent to follow the shore too closely against ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... greening on alders in one swampy place and willows just blushing into life along the banks of a little creek. A few yards aside from the path he found, under a patch of snow and dead leaves, the pink-and-white blossoms and the waxy green leaves of the trailing arbutus, that fragrant harbinger of the old Mother's awakening, and June breathed in from it the very breath of spring. Near by were turkey peas, which she had hunted and eaten ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... intelligence the mother's fortitude gave way. Tribulation and anguish had indeed set in upon them like a flood. The ring, so unaccountably brought back by the Red Woman, was beyond doubt the cause of all their misfortunes—its reappearance, as she anticipated, being the harbinger of misery. What should be the next arrow from her quiver she trembled to forebode. But in the midst of this fever of doubt and apprehension one hope sustained her, and that was the result of her husband's mission to Dr Dee, who would doubtless ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... given by that clock some time before the premonitory hiss. Between this harbinger of coming events, and the joyful sound which was felt to be "an age," Ned was wont to wipe his pen and arrange his papers. When the hiss began, he invariably closed his warehouse book and laid it in the desk, and had the desk locked before the first stroke of the hour. While the "minute-gun ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman born. His birth to our just fear gave no small cause; But his growth now to youth's full flower, displaying All virtue, grace and wisdom to achieve Things highest, greatest, multiplies my fear. Before him a great Prophet, to proclaim 70 His coming, is sent harbinger, who all Invites, and in the consecrated stream Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them so Purified to receive him pure, or rather To do him honour as their King. All come, And he himself among them ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... amalgamation of parties against domestic faction, which gave vigour to the arm of power, and enabled the nation to check foreign interference abroad, while it annihilated anarchy at home. By that means the Protector himself laid the first stone of the Restoration. The division of a nation is the surest harbinger of success to its invaders, the death-blow to its Sovereign's authority, and the total destruction of that innate energy by which alone a country can obtain the dignity ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... plant. And when college and university days are over, where does the young professional man turn his eyes? To the West. Westward, with the sun, he travels; its fiery course is an invitation to and a harbinger ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... miscarry and another be, In its stead and place, engendered anew, 'Tis hard to show by reason, or by words To prove absurd—since, lo, so many things Can be create with fixed successions: Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus' boy, The winged harbinger, steps on before, And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora, Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all With colours and with odours excellent; Whereafter follows arid Heat, and he Companioned is by Ceres, dusty one, And by the Etesian Breezes of the north; Then cometh Autumn on, and ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Count Remon, Lord of Savoy, with the power of the King of France, gathered together twenty thousand knights and came beyond Tolosa, to hold the road against King Don Ferrando. And he met with his harbinger the Cid, who went before him to prepare lodgings, and they had a hard battle; and the men of the Count were discomfited, and he himself made prisoner and many with him, and many were slain. And the Count besought the Cid of his mercy to set him free, saying that he would give him a daughter ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... Are pass'd with the swift one's lurid stride, And the huge rock glares on the glaring tide, With mightier march and fiercer power It gain'd Arachne's neighbouring tower— Thence on our Argive roof its rest it won, Of Ida's fire the long-descended son Bright harbinger of glory and of joy! So first and last with equal honour crown'd, In solemn feasts the race-torch circles round. And these my heralds! this my SIGN OF PEACE! Lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of Greece, Stalk, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as Vishnu's form, with circling cranes To trumpet him, instead of bugle strains, And garmented in lightning's silken robe. Approaches now the harbinger of rains. 3 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... only real harbinger of revival which I have been able to detect anywhere on the religious horizon. It may be the cloud the size of a man's hand for which a few saints here and there have been looking. It can result in a resurrection of life for many souls and a recapture of that radiant wonder which should ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... attract general interest. This unhappy result deeply affected the health of the poet, whose constitution had already been much shattered by repeated attacks of illness. He was seized with a complaint which proved the harbinger of pulmonary consumption. He died at Mount Pleasant on the 1st September ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... reverse. It was the harbinger of keen apprehension; for not only had it interrupted our search, but should the heavy rain continue only for a few hours, we might be able neither to find or further to follow the trail. It ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... romance. And yet it was among these "distant dreams of dreams" that my ears became first awake to the nearer sounds of some vague social disturbance of which Ruskin's gospel of Labor, as I heard it at Oxford without any clear comprehension of it, had been a harbinger. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... cards now with the least discretion, she might have been allowed to remain in Belgrade in peace. But Natalie seems fated to have been the harbinger of storm. For a time, it is true, she was content to lie perdue, entertaining her friends at her house in Prince Michael Street, driving through the streets of her capital behind her pair of white ponies, or walking with her pet goat for companion, greeted everywhere with ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... and, in the name of good neighbourship, and with an appeal to her generosity, beg some small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me." Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant's door, and said: "Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion of it." The ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the cock proclaims the rising day, And milkmaids sing around sweet curds and whey, Till grey-eyed twilight, harbinger of night, Pursues o'er silver mountains sinking light, I can unwearied from my casements view The Plaid, with something still about it new. How are we pleased when, with a handsome air, We see Hepburna walk with easy care! One arm half circles round her slender waist, The other like ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Among the sons and grandsons of Ndengei were Roko Mbati-ndua, the one-toothed lord; a fiend with a huge tooth projecting from his lower jaw and curving over the top of his head. He had bat's wings armed with claws and was usually regarded as a harbinger of pestilence. The mechanic's god was eight-handed, gluttony had eighty stomachs, wisdom possessed eight eyes. Other gods were the adulterer, the abductor of women of rank and beauty, the rioter, the brain-eater, the killer of men, the slaughter ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... HARBINGER, MOUNTAINS.—A remarkable group of moderate height, mostly extending from the N.W. towards Aristarchus. They include a large incomplete walled-plain about 30 miles in diameter, defined on the W. by a lofty border, forming part of a ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... French landed, they were informed that, two days previous, the village of the Colapissas had been attacked by a party of two hundred Chickasaws, headed by two Englishmen. These were the first tidings which the French had of their old rivals, and which proved to be the harbinger of the incessant struggle which was to continue for more than a century between the two races, and to terminate by the permanent occupation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... filled with rejoicing to-day at having caught a single salmon, which was considered as the harbinger of vast quantities in four or five days. In order to hasten their arrival the Indians, according to custom, dressed the fish and cut it into small pieces, one of which was given to each child in the village. In the good humor excited by this occurrence they ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... Exhibition. Thirty-six years of peace, marked by an enormous development of manufacturing industry, by the introduction of railroads, and by the victory of the principle of Free Trade, had culminated in a spectacle so impressive and so novel that to many it seemed the emblem and harbinger of a new epoch in the history of mankind, in which war should cease, and the rivalry of nations should at length find its true scope in the advancement of the arts of peace. The apostles of Free Trade had idealised the cause for ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... dream is fled. Proud harbinger of day, Who scar'dst the vision with thy clarion shrill, Fell chanticleer! who oft hast reft away My fancied good, and brought substantial ill! O to thy cursed scream, discordant still, Let Harmony aye shut her gentle ear: Thy boastful mirth let jealous rivals spill, Insult thy crest, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... on: when, like many of his respectable brethren, he hailed it at first as the harbinger of national reformation and prosperity. But he had soon reason to find that he had been deceived. However, in the fervour of the moment, and upon the suppression of the monastic and other public libraries, he received a very wide ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... dance, the banquet, and those visits that won the momentary gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be the harbinger of a change. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... as I suppose, he has come or is at hand of whom it is written, Want shall go before his face.[104] If I mistake not, Antichrist is he whom famine and sterility of all good both precedes and accompanies. Whether therefore it is the herald of one now present or the harbinger of one who shall come immediately, the want is evident. I speak not of the crowd, I speak not of the vile multitude of the children of this world:[105] I would have you lift up your eyes upon the very pillars[106] of the Church. Whom can you show me, even of ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... arrived within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves, floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in the spring should denote that the strife and war between these two elements was at an end. He is the peace-harbinger; in him the celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences of the spring on one hand, and the retreating footsteps of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the senate, a new balance of power had been created in the State. The Republic, according to the reflection of a later writer, had been given two heads,[642] and this new Janus, more ominous than the old, was believed to be the harbinger of deadly conflict between the rival powers. In moments of calm Gracchus may have believed that his reforms were but a renewed illustration of that genius for compromise out of which the Roman constitution had grown, and that he had but created new and necessary defences against a recently developed ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... sickness and death, longed for these lovely flowers. The time of the Mayflower's blossoming has long been past, but in fancy our thoughts go back to that early spring when the first bluebird winged his way to Burial Hill, calling up memories of the English robin, which this harbinger of spring resembles. It was the Pilgrims who called him ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... her fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace; She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere, His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace through ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... at Amoy in 1847 the total church membership was three. By 1850 it had grown to five. By the end of 1851 the seed had brought forth nearly fourfold. There were nineteen converts. This was the harbinger of brighter days. Even during the troublous times of 1853 signs of awakening appeared. In the midst of war and rumors of war the native brethren had proposed to enter the "regions beyond" Chiangchiu and Chinchew. The faithful preaching of Doty and Talmage in the chapels and on the ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... from being carried to Paris, I know nobody that would do more to promote peace, or that will bear the want of it, with a better grace than myself. If I don't send you an actual declaration of war in this letter, at least you perceive I am the harbinger of it. An account arrived yesterday morning that Boscawen had missed the French fleet, who are got into Cape Breton; but two of his captains(582) attacked three of their squadron and have taken two, with scarce any ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... fire, in full career, Rush'd on the ponderous cuirassier, The lancer couch'd his ruthless spear, And hurrying as to havoc near, The cohorts' eagles flew. In one dark torrent, broad and strong, The advancing onset roll'd along, Forth harbinger'd by fierce acclaim That, from the shroud of smoke and flame, Peal'd ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... think at last that it must be near dawn, and turned our eyes eastward, in the expectation of seeing the pale red and yellow streaks which usher in the rich glow, the harbinger of the rising sun. That was my idea, not friend Obed's. He remarked, "Daylight will soon be on, I guess, and it is time we were back at camp to get some breakfast, before we begin our trudge over the mountains, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... I should prefer your staying. Nike will prefer it, too. In the old days she always liked you to be her harbinger. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of Nature at that witching hour fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will* from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fire-flies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... more than to know all the combinations of chemistry. A little wonder is worth tons of knowledge. But to Walter the new day did not come as a call to new life in the world of will and action, but only as the harbinger of a bliss borne hitherward on the wind of the world. Was he not going forth as a Titanic child to become a great man among great men! Who would be strong among the weak! who would be great among the small! He did not suspect ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... of the heavy taxes they had not been able to raise. The whole caravan thought of the same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing: it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter Canaan. Thou must sell thyself, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... lower sky was spread with those colours which Titian stole from the joyous horizon that filled his eyes. There was in that evening light, somehow, just a touch of pensiveness— the triste delicacy of heliotrope, harbinger of the Indian summer soon to come, when the air would make all sensitive souls turn to the past and forget that to-morrow was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the temple of Jupiter, with full effect given to the majesty of his bearing, is Garibaldi. Moved by the strikingly contrasting associations of the time and the place, we turn to General J—n, saying, "Behold around us the symbols of the death of Italy, and there the harbinger of its resurrection." Our companion, fired with a like enthusiasm, immediately advances to the base of the temple, and, removing his hat, repeats the words in the presence of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... of the morning, was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in a flame-colored car, drawn by two or four horses, expanding with her rosy fingers the ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... with exhaustion in hastening her ruin. The plague had broken out in the very year of the last expedition against Hadrach (765), perhaps under the walls of that city. An eclipse of the sun occurred in 763, in the month of Sivan, and this harbinger of woe was the signal for an outbreak of revolt ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... handsomer than my new head-dress. I was delighted, and was still more gratified when, after a fortnight had elapsed, I found that M. de Malipiero did not broach the subject of my returning to my godfather's church. My grandmother alone constantly urged me to return. But this calm was the harbinger of a storm. When my mind was thoroughly at rest on that subject, M. de Malipiero threw me into the greatest astonishment by suddenly telling me that an excellent opportunity offered itself for me to reappear in the church ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Napoleon to make a second attempt to invade France. He did it in a rash way almost certain to end in failure. Followed by about fifty men, and bringing with him a tame eagle, which was expected to perch upon his banner as the harbinger of victory, he sailed from England in August, 1840, and landed at Boulogne. This desperate and foolish enterprise proved a complete failure. The soldiers whom the would-be sovereign expected to join ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... thy spirit's friend and love, Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify; Though pale she lay when in the winter grove Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her And the red wings of frost-fire rent ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... a huge, fat, religious gentleman ... big enough to be a pope. His gills are as rosy as a turkey-cock's. His big belly walks in state before him, like a harbinger; and his gouty legs come limping after it. Never was such a tun of devotion seen.—Dryden, The Spanish ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... first work, pub. in 1789, was a little vol. containing 14 sonnets, which was received with extraordinary favour, not only by the general public, but by such men as Coleridge and Wordsworth. It may be regarded as the harbinger of the reaction against the school of Pope, in which these poets were soon to bear so great a part. B. pub. several other poems of much greater length, of which the best are The Spirit of Discovery (1805), ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonus, harbinger of light alike to mortals and immortals, Jove sent fierce Discord with the ensign of war in her hands to the ships of the Achaeans. She took her stand by the huge black hull of Ulysses' ship which ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... sacred poets first shall hear the sound, And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are cover'd with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shalt go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show, The way which thou so well hast ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of suspicion against the use of animal food that it so obviously inclines us to corpulency. Corpulency itself is a species of disease, and a still surer harbinger of other diseases. It is so even in animals. When a sheep has become fat, the butcher knows it must be killed or it will rot and decline. It is rare indeed for the corpulent to be long-lived. They are at the same time sleepy, lethargic, and short-breathed. Even Hippocrates says, 'Those who ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... from his yellow teeth in that smile which Emerson had come to recognize as a harbinger of the violent acts that ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... began to fill with company; and one that was acting as Groom of the Chambers, and marshalling the guests to their places, I heard whisper to the Harbinger, who first called out the names at the Stair-head, that Clarencieux king-at-arms (who was then wont to attend the funerals of the Quality, and to be gratified with heavy fees for his office; although in our days 'tis only public noblemen, generals, ambassadors, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a lantern silently to light my steps along the narrow, springy plank of our primitive gangway. "And so we are going off," he would murmur directly my foot touched the deck. I was the harbinger of sudden departures, but there was nothing in the world sudden enough to take Dominic unawares. His thick black moustaches, curled every morning with hot tongs by the barber at the corner of the quay, seemed to hide a perpetual smile. But nobody, I believe, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... day of which this, merry morn was the harbinger, the arrivals of guests at the castle had been numerous and important. First came the brother of the duchess, with his countess, and their fair daughter the Lady Katherine, whose fate, unconsciously to herself, had already been sealed by her noble relatives. She was ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... woodland, to the farm-house where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,—the moan of the whippoorwill from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fire-flies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... sky this little harbinger of spring appears, as we see him and his mate househunting in early March. Oftentimes he makes his appearance as early as the middle of February, when his attractive note is heard long before he himself is seen. He is one of the last to leave us, and although ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... subject is commended to your consideration. It is an obvious duty to provide the means of postal communication which our commerce requires, and with prudent forecast of results the wise extension of it may lead to stimulating intercourse and become the harbinger of a profitable traffic which will open new avenues for the disposition of the products of our industry. The circumstances of the countries at the far south of our continent are such as to invite our enterprise and afford the promise of sufficient ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is easily recognized; and, besides, I was following you. At Sevres your postilion told mine that he had brought you here. Will you permit me to act as your harbinger? I will write as soon as ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... met, it is evident that a remarkable effect was produced on John. There was something in the face of Jesus that almost overpowered the fearless preacher of the desert. John had been waiting and watching for the Coming One, whose herald and harbinger he was. One day he came and asked to be baptized. John had never before hesitated to administer the rite to any one who stood before him; for in every one he saw a sinner needing repentance and remission of sins. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... themselves with tricolor. Nay motherly Paris has sent her Avengers sufficient 'cartloads of loaves;' which are shouted over, which are gratefully consumed. The Avengers, in return, are searching for grain-stores; loading them in fifty waggons; that so a National King, probable harbinger of all blessings, may be the evident ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... laughed, they speculated on politics, though it was well known that in a few minutes yonder door was to open, and that on its threshold the jailer would appear, list in hand; that from this list he would call out with his loud, croaking voice, as Death's harbinger, the names of those whose death-warrants had been yesterday signed by Robespierre, and who would have immediately to leave the hall, to mount the wagons which were already waiting at the prison's gate to drive ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... night passes to one tipping and swinging along in a slowly moving stage! But the harbinger of the day came at last. When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burst out of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus was strong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distant more than an eighth of the heavenly circle. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the feast of realization transported her to the realm of air castles. The arrival of the Italian family which had come from Florence to settle in New York, bearing letters of introduction to Tom from his mother, just in time to fit into his plans to make her a painter of children, seemed a harbinger of good fortune. The father had been most enthusiastic when Tom mentioned the "rising young artist" to him, and was anxious that the sittings should commence immediately, before her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... songs above, The day of Love—sweet universal Love. Thou art its priest, O son of Zebedee, And we are waiting—waiting still for thee. Why tarry yet thy footsteps from afar Thou gentler John the Baptist? May thy star The herald of The Christ uprising shine, The harbinger of ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... with fire. The natives, notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always rare, and quickly disposed of. While the ancients considered the opal a harbinger of good fortune to the possessor, it has been deemed in our day to be exactly the reverse; and many lovers of the gem have denied themselves the pleasure of wearing it from a secret superstition as to its unlucky attributes. This fancy ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... dogs and foxes great with young, And wolves from far Lanuvian hill, Give clamorous tongue: Across the roadway dart the snake, Frightening, like arrow loosed from string, The horses. I, for friendship's sake, Watching each wing, Ere to his haunt, the stagnant marsh, The harbinger of tempest flies, Will call the raven, croaking harsh, From eastern skies. Farewell!—and wheresoe'er you go, My Galatea, think of me: Let lefthand pie and roving crow Still leave you free. But mark with what a front of fear Orion lowers. Ah! ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... cuckoo is evidently much more of a spring bird than ours is, much more a harbinger of the early season. He comes in April, while ours seldom appears till late in May, and hardly then appears. He is printed, as they say, but not published. Only the alert ones know he is here. This old English ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... morning. If the bodies wash ashore, the good woman of the Humane Society will come down from the town, and see them decently buried. Stores has several times spoken of this good woman; were she a ministering angel he could not speak of her name with more reverence. For years, he tells us, has she been a harbinger of good, ever relieving the sick and needy, cheering the downcast, protecting the unfortunate. Her name has become a symbol of compassion; she mingles with the richest and the poorest, and none know ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... cannot think, as thy bright dyes appear To my enraptured gaze, that thou wert born Of Evening's exhalations: more sublime, Light-giver! is thy birth-place, than of earth. Wert thou not formed to herald in the day, And clothe a world in thy unborrowed light? Or art thou but a harbinger of rains To budding May?—or in thy subtle screen Nursest the lightnings that affright the world? Or wert thou born of th' thin aerial mist That shades the sea, or shrouds the mountain's brow? Whate'er thou art, I gaze on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... "there cannot be a greater comfort under the sun, than sound and invigorating sleep to the weary, nor in our opinion, a greater grievance than the loss of it; because wakefulness at those hours, which nature has destined for repose, is, in nine cases out of ten, sure to be the harbinger of peevishness, discontent, and ill humour, and not unfrequently induces languor, lassitude, and disease. No two individuals in the world have greater reason to complain of disturbed slumbers or nightly watching, than ourselves. Heretofore, this has been occasioned chiefly ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... now a robin sing, I wonder if his English mate May not be hopping near your gate, A harbinger, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... replied, "the cessation of your pains is a sure harbinger of death. Already has mortification set in, and the best surgeon in the world ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... dawn one morning, the cook aroused the camp with the report that the herd was missing. The beeves had been bedded within two hundred yards of the wagon, and the last watch usually hailed the rekindling of the cook's fire as the first harbinger of day. But on this occasion the absence of the usual salutations from the bed-ground aroused Parent's suspicion. He rushed into camp, and laboring under the impression that the cattle had stampeded, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... thy venturous flight High o'er the moon's pale, ice-reflected light; High o'er the pearly star, whose beamy horn Hangs in the east, gay harbinger of morn; Leave the red eye of Mars on rapid wing, Jove's silver guards, and Saturn's dusky ring; Leave the fair beams, which issuing from afar Play with new lustres round the Georgian star; Shun with strong oars the sun's attractive throne, The burning ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... The great harbinger of the new era was Galileo. There had been prophets before him, and after him came a greater one—Newton. They did nothing of note in electricity and magnetism, but they were filled with the true spirit of science, they introduced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... early snow having fallen, and remained with frequent additions, a long and rigorous winter reigned in absolute sway. But now, on the last of February, the sun wheeled high on his circuits; thaws and rains ensued, and the first robin on the leafless maple sang, sweet harbinger of spring. Winter recalled his tyrant ministers, or restrained them in their wrath; and milder days and warmer skies appeared in pleasant alternation, with many still of ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... which we had sustained—necessarily, from chagrin, heightening the effect of the picture by exaggeration. The solicitor-general, Wedderburne, endeavoured to reconcile the house to this loss, by appealing to British magnanimity under distress, which, he conceived, was the harbinger of victory. During the war of the succession, he said, General Stanhope was compelled to surrender himself, and his whole army, prisoners of war in Spain; but the disgrace only served to call forth an ardour which soon effaced the stigma, and achieved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the deserted garden where pearl-tinted spikes of iris perfumed the air and great masses of peonies nodded along borders banked deep under the long wall. A few butterflies still flitted in the golden radiance, but already that solemn harbinger of sunset, the garden toad, had emerged from leafy obscurity into the gravel path, and hopped heavily ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... race might have been raised to the solitary spire that sprang up in the midst of them, the bearer of present consolation, the harbinger of future equality; but Holy Church at Marney had forgotten her sacred mission. We have introduced the reader to the vicar, an orderly man who deemed he did his duty if he preached each week two sermons, and enforced humility on his congregation and gratitude for the blessings ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... are haunted, as it seems to me, with an unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge, they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, who have read a little poetry and a little ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Americanism does not go. At that point, we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland. We are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black to-morrow which is yet destined to soften the whiteness of the Teutonic to-day. We are that people whose subtle sense of song has given America its only American music, its only American fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid its mad money-getting plutocracy. ...
— The Conservation of Races • W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
... thy lamp, the flaming sun Thy harbinger; take thou my soul, Now bounding forth thy race to run, To thy ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... health, his mind had suffered a severe shock which was not equally obvious. Fancies, each gloomier than the preceding, took, henceforth, more and more possession of his imagination. He seemed the harbinger of misfortune to all connected with him. Frequently rose up the image of his dead brother, mingling with his dreams and obtruding itself even into his waking thoughts, at one time dripping with water as when taken from the pond—ghastly pale—livid—with ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... everything that had caught the rain was soon drying in the warm sun, which was now smiling serenely upon them. The mock suns, or "sun dogs," as they were commonly called, all disappeared with the storm of which they seemed to have been the harbinger. Beautiful as had been their appearance, the boys all agreed that if their coming was to be so speedily followed by such a storm they would gladly dispense with them in the future; nor did they see them again ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... that the thought that Rome was doomed (as seemed not impossible in 1857) so affected my Mother that it 'irradiated' her dying hours with an assurance that was like 'the light of the Morning Star, the harbinger of the rising sun'. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... know the history of your country; we know the history of your great men, from Washington to Roosevelt. You are truly and sincerely welcome amongst us, because you are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future, bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid the cannon's roar, or the din of popular acclamations, the echo in its grand ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... accipitres the most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of whose paternity he was doubtful, and on her return placed before her a curry ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... trestles were cleared and the three were left alone in the hall, Chandos broke his message to the lady. "King Edward hath ever borne in mind that noble knight your son Sir Eustace," said he. "He will journey to Southampton next week, and I am his harbinger. He bade me say, noble and honored lady, that he would come from Guildford in any easy stage so that he might spend one night under ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have lulled themselves, and the chill of October rains have left the earth, and the sun gives a genial, luxurious warmth, with no power to scorch, with strength only to comfort. But here, as elsewhere, this luxury is laden with melancholy, because it tells us of decay, and is the harbinger of death. This was such a day, and Mary Bonner, as she hurried into a shrubbery walk, where she could wander unseen, felt both the sadness and the softness of the season. There was a path which ran from the front gate of the villa grounds through shrubs and tall evergreens ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced; he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the East. It is the Heb. "Shaked" and the fruit is the "Loz" (Arab. Lauz)Amygdalus communis, which the Jews looked upon as the harbinger of spring and which, at certain feasts, they still carry to the synagogue, as representing the palm ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... fair settlement of this most dangerous question. We all recall how our hopes revived, and how gladly we hailed the introduction of the bill recommended by a joint committee of conference of the Senate and House of Representatives. It was welcomed as the harbinger of peace by the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... proved a pleasant surprise in this respect—he had, doubtless, by no means incorrect views regarding Riel's powers of pursuit and revenge. That the two rebels should have come back, and that a bear—a sure harbinger of spring—should have made itself so intrusive were contingencies the party could hardly have foreseen. As it was, Dorothy, save for the fright, was little the worse for the rough handling she had received, so they resolved to proceed on ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards. Midsummer Night's Dream, iii, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... be perceived that Alford Graham was peculiarly open on this deceitful May evening, which promised peace and security, to the impending stroke of fate. Its harbinger first appeared in the form of a white Spitz dog, barking vivaciously under the apple-tree, where a path from a neighboring residence intersected the walk leading from Mrs. Mayburn's cottage to the street. Evidently some one was playing with the little creature, and was pretending to ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... essayed to speak, But words responded tremulous and weak, And mustering his dissipated strength, A sitting posture he assumed at length,— "Whate'er thou art, thou harbinger of gloom, Thou fiend or ghoul, fresh from the new made tomb, Thou vampire, diabolical and fell, Thou stygian shade or denizen of hell, I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess Why thou hast thus disturbed ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... phoebe-bird of the season alighted in a tree overhanging the torrent, and in her plaintive notes seemed to say, as interpreted by John Burroughs, "If you please, spring has come." They gave the brown little harbinger such an enthusiastic welcome that she speedily took ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... occupied by the groom and his wife; and to bring them into the house as soon as it was manifest that there was no danger from infection. But all this was to be matter for deliberation. Fanny wanted her to send over a note, in reply to Lady Lufton's, as harbinger of her coming; but Lucy marched off, hardly answering ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... recreating, day by day. Better confess how little we can know, Better with feet unshod and humble awe Approach this living Power to ask for aid." And as he spoke the devas filled the air, Unseen, unheard of men, and sweetly sung: "Hail, prince of peace! hail, harbinger of day! The darkness vanishes, the light appears." But Mara heard, and silent slunk away, The o'erwrought prince fell prostrate on the ground And lay entranced, while devas hovered near, Watching each heart-throb, breathing that sweet calm Its guardian angel ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... undoubtedly seen. One of a still more insolent nature was prepared and even sent to Lord Stormont here, and a refusal and even delay of compliance with the requisitions therein made, was to have been the harbinger of war, and the immediate destruction of the French commerce and Islands. Happily for our enemies, the news of our success at ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... deserted garden where pearl-tinted spikes of iris perfumed the air and great masses of peonies nodded along borders banked deep under the long wall. A few butterflies still flitted in the golden radiance, but already that solemn harbinger of sunset, the garden toad, had emerged from leafy obscurity into the gravel path, and hopped heavily forward as ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... this territory, there was organized a "Conference of the Lutheran pastors of the Metropolitan District for the discussion of all questions of doctrine and practice to the end of effecting unity." This, too, is a harbinger of an approaching era of reconstruction ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... life faith and trust in the Divine Father and his plans for the good future of the human race; after years of thought and years of life, I give to Mr. Ripley—the leader, the daring man, the brave Christian heart, the torch bearer, himself the harbinger of the bright future of social justice—the first place, the highest seat, the noblest position among ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... might otherwise multiply too fast. On a spring or summer evening you may hear its plaintive hoot among the apple-blossoms of an orchard, or the sheaves of a cornfield. Curiously enough, this simple sound earned the little bird the name of being the harbinger of death, and peasants believed that whenever its cry was heard where sickness was in the family, the patient ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... thy face is spotted, so Thou art not worthy of thy Philips love? Thy face to me was but a Mar[e]s[c]hall To lodge thy sacred person in my mind, Which long agoe is surely chambred there. And now what needs an outward Harbinger? I doe affect, not superficially: My love extendeth further than the skin. The inward Bellamira tis I seeke, And unto ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... is one of the epochs of Hythe, a sure harbinger of the approaching season. In July "The Families" begin to come down, and the same people come every year, for visitors to Hythe share in the privilege of the inhabitants, inasmuch as they never—or hardly ever—die. Of late years, since the indefatigable Town Clerk has succeeded in waking ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... saw the lady who was to be his wife in the hunting-field. She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and an heiress. She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare development:—a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that presages summer, but does not make it—and as such much in the mouths of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature. This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees of priests, will never save mankind. ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the black plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. The pious closed their accounts with the world; their only remaining desire was for a participation in the consolations of religion. Repentance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... willows just blushing into life along the banks of a little creek. A few yards aside from the path he found, under a patch of snow and dead leaves, the pink-and-white blossoms and the waxy green leaves of the trailing arbutus, that fragrant harbinger of the old Mother's awakening, and June breathed in from it the very breath of spring. Near by were turkey peas, which she had hunted and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... just as the sky began to turn a deep red in the east, and the "chuck me" chameleon, the harbinger of the early dawn, began his morning challenge. Our progress was very cautiously made through the cane-fields, banana groves, and bamboo jungles, halting and investigating the slightest noise, the rustling of a leaf or the breaking of a twig not escaping our ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... edge of a snow bank are seen rising the fragrant, pearly-white or rose-colored flowers of this earliest harbinger of spring. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... encounter That fierce harbinger of gloom— Fain to dare the spells of magic, Fain to foil the wrath of doom. Hark! the solitary raven Croaks a note of death and pain, And a human call defiant Answers ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... obloquy. A fair return for the time and money spent in their education to fit them for the service of the Altar; and a fair encouragement for worthy men to come into the Church. However, it may be some comfort for persons of that holy function, that their Divine Founder as well as His harbinger, met with the like reception. "John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he hath a devil; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, behold a glutton and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... the names of a few of the principal stars and constellations. The nature of the stars, moon, sun, eclipses, and kindred phenomena are all explained in mythological tales, from a belief in which no amount of reasoning can move them. The old story that the comet is the harbinger or bearer of disease is ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... loss and disgrace which we had sustained—necessarily, from chagrin, heightening the effect of the picture by exaggeration. The solicitor-general, Wedderburne, endeavoured to reconcile the house to this loss, by appealing to British magnanimity under distress, which, he conceived, was the harbinger of victory. During the war of the succession, he said, General Stanhope was compelled to surrender himself, and his whole army, prisoners of war in Spain; but the disgrace only served to call forth an ardour which soon effaced the stigma, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... glad bright spirits, guardians of the mind, Were with them; as the demon-powers unbind And lash their furies on the conscious breast Of earth's fell tyrants who ne'er dream of rest. Theirs, too, joy's harbinger, the thoughts aye fed With brighter objects than of earth, that shed A light within their narrow home, and gave A triumph's lustre to the yawning grave. And in that hour when the proud heart's o'erthrown, And self all-powerless, self is truly known; When pride ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... never expect to be intelligible again. When the 'heart is oppressed with unutterable anguish, condemned to conceal that passion which is at once the torment and delight of life'—when 'his lip, the ruby harbinger of joy, lies pale and cold, the miserable appendage of a mang—' that is, Miss Monson, I mean to say, when all our faculties are engrossed by one dear object we are often incoherent and mysterious, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... Timberlake phrases the cry, sounded from the summit of the mound, would occasion the assembling of all the community in the rotunda to hear the details from the lips of the chief. How much more the: "death hollow," harbinger of woe! ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Morning reddens in the east, ... another Day is born,—a day in which to win God's grace and pardon,—another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake! Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,—this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!— open your ears ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... granivorous, grandiloquent, gravamen, gratuitous, gregarious, habitue, hallucination, harbinger, hardihood, heckle, hectic, hedonist, hegemony, heinous, herbivorous, heretic, hermaphrodite, heterodox, heterogeneous, hibernate. histrionic, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... proclaims the rising day, And milkmaids sing around sweet curds and whey, Till grey-eyed twilight, harbinger of night, Pursues o'er silver mountains sinking light, I can unwearied from my casements view The Plaid, with something still about it new. How are we pleased when, with a handsome air, We see Hepburna walk with easy care! One arm half circles round her slender ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... character; while other writers, who have attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and token of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... pilgrim from the shrine Of Poesy's fair temple, brings a wreath Which fame and gratitude alike entwine, Around a name that charms the monster Death, And bids him pause!—Amidst despairing life BIRKBECK's the harbinger of hope and health; When sordid affluence was with man at strife, He boldly stripp'd the veil, and show'd the wealth To aged ignorance, and ardent youth, Of cultured minds—the freedom of the soul! The sun of science, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... morning in August he awoke with a splitting headache, the harbinger of an attack of fever, and was obliged to inform the head clerk, by means of a note, of his inability to attend office. An answer was brought by Gyanendra to the effect that three days' leave of ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... negotiation as to the exchequer was still pending, Scott was visited, for the first time since his childish years, with a painful illness, which proved the harbinger of a series of attacks, all nearly of the same kind, continued at short intervals during more than two years. Various letters, already introduced, have indicated how widely his habits of life when in Edinburgh differed from those of Abbotsford. They at all ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of Ver; Merry springtime's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds on ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... heavens adorned with its purple hues and its sparkling sapphires. Aurora, fair harbinger of the day, graciously dispenses smiles; and brightness of the roses which wreath her forehead dissipates the ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... did this harbinger of evil news resume the situation. Caligula was in his palace, surrounded by the slaves of his household and guarded by a few soldiers against a raging mob—an hundred thousand or more strong—who had formed a ring around ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... respect to it as the harbinger of fortune. Has a cat insight into the future? Can it presage wealth or death? I am inclined to believe that certain cats can at all events foresee the advent of the latter; and that they do this in the same manner as the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... forgotten by me; it is a proud one: with the exception of the day I had the happiness of dedicating our Synagogue at Ramsgate, and the day of my wedding, the proudest day of my life. I trust the honour conferred by our most gracious Queen on myself and my dear Judith may prove the harbinger of future good to the Jews generally, and though I am sensible of my unworthiness, yet I pray the Almighty to lead and guide me in the proper path, that I may observe and keep His ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... of King Island had been found by the skipper of a sealing brig, named Reid, in 1799, but the name it bears was given to it by John Black, commander of the brig Harbinger, who discovered the northern part in January, 1801. Flinders was occupied for three days at King Island. On the 24th, the wind having moderated, he made for Cape Otway. But it was still considered ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... suspect sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... looking on. Fate prevented the nation from enjoying so much happiness as it would have done had he followed her advice. Whenever she lost a child, she beheld a bright flame shining before her, and would immediately cry out, "God save my children!" well knowing it was the harbinger of the death of some one of them, which melancholy news was sure to be confirmed very shortly after. During her very dangerous illness at Metz, where she caught a pestilential fever, either from the coal fires, or by visiting some of the nunneries which had been ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... next day, and perched upon the mast, as if to tell that we had yet a friend! Welcome harbinger of good! you bring us thoughts ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... are the days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blossoms, the hamlets grow fair, Broad meadows are beautiful, earth again bursts into life, And all stir the heart of the wanderer eager to journey, So he meditates going afar on the pathway of tides. The cuckoo, moreover, gives warning with sorrowful note, Summer's harbinger sings, and forebodes to the heart bitter sorrow. Now my spirit uneasily turns in the heart's narrow chamber, Now wanders forth over the tide, o'er the home of the whale, To the ends of the earth—and comes back to me. Eager and greedy, The lone wanderer screams, and resistlessly ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... to have loosed its stern hold upon the frozen earth, and the songs of countless birds welcome the bright sunlight, the harbinger ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... enwrapped in feather, Harbinger of pleasant weather, Sing softly unto me. Your tuneful notes at morn and even Are antepasts of joys in heaven That ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... morning, and harbinger of the rising sun: whom poets and artists represent as drawn by white horses in a rose-colored chariot, unfolding with her rosy fingers the portals of the East, pouring reviving dew upon the earth, and ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... cold is a better word. The wind brought with it a suggestion of the pine-clad wastes of the northwestern wilderness whence it came, and that sure harbinger of autumn, the blue haze, settled around the hills, and benumbed the rays of the sun lingering over the crests. Farrar and I, as navigators, were glad to get into our overcoats, while the others assembled in the little cabin and lighted the gasoline stove which stood in the corner. Outside ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... postrado, -a prostrate, kneeling. postrero, -a last. precipitado, -a precipitate, headlong, rash, abrupt. precipitar(se) precipitate, hasten, rush headlong, hurry. precursor, -a m. f. precursor, herald, harbinger. preguntar ask, inquire, question. premtica f. pragmatic (a law). prender catch, take, bind, fasten; —— fuego set fire. presa f. capture, prize. prsago, -a presaging, ominous. prsago m. presage, omen. presentar present, offer, show. presente adj. present. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... transition from a state of hopeless despair to that of comparative safety, is ever attended with a misgiving of its reality. Her deliverance from the power of the Moors appeared almost certain; the name of Aguilar was the harbinger of victory; yet the anticipation of her rescue caused so powerful a revulsion of feeling, that Theodora nearly sunk under its pressure. When she had a little recovered, she perceived, however, more clearly, that her destiny ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... and continued on his way, whistling as he went. There was about him no suggestion of a harbinger of bad tidings; the sun shone from a cloudless sky, and awoke sparkling reflections in the water; the scene was one of unbroken peace and happiness, and yet, and yet,—some shadow seemed to have fallen on Margot's soul, so ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... words, to get rid of an escort that was an expensive nuisance. At the next village we were confronted by what appeared to be a shouting, gesticulating maniac. On dismounting, we learned that a harbinger had been sent by the khan, the evening before, to have a guard ready to join us as we passed through. In fact, two armed ferashes were galloping toward us, armed, as we afterward learned, with American rifles, and the usual kamma, or huge dagger, swinging from a belt of cartridges. These ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... dread 1000 To overwhelm thee, such a guide he hath And guardian, one whom many wish their friend, And ever at their side, knowing her pow'r, Minerva; she compassionates thy griefs, And I am here her harbinger, who speak As thou hast heard by her own kind command. Then thus Penelope the wise replied. Oh! if thou art a goddess, and hast heard A Goddess' voice, rehearse to me the lot Of that unhappy one, if yet he live 1010 Spectator of the cheerful ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... The Harbinger Mountains.—A remarkable group, north-west of Aristarchus, including some peaks as high as 7000 feet, and other details noticed in ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... of good neighbourship, and with an appeal to her generosity, beg some small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me." Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant's door, and said: "Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion of it." ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... have public knowledge and public opinion working with it. Well, it is God's cause, and I commit it altogether to him. I am, however, sadly disappointed, but how weak and short- sighted is man! This temporary failure may be the harbinger of success. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Seed, Destined to this, is late of woman born. His birth to our just fear gave no small cause; But his growth now to youth's full flower, displaying All virtue, grace and wisdom to achieve Things highest, greatest, multiplies my fear. Before him a great Prophet, to proclaim 70 His coming, is sent harbinger, who all Invites, and in the consecrated stream Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them so Purified to receive him pure, or rather To do him honour as their King. All come, And he himself among them was baptized— Not thence to be more pure, but to receive The testimony of Heaven, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... precursor, antecedent, precedent, predecessor; forerunner, vancourier[obs3], avant-coureur[Fr], pioneer, prodrome|, prodromos[obs3], prodromus[obs3], outrider; leader, bellwether; herald, harbinger; foreboding; dawn; avant-courier, avant-garde, bellmare[obs3], forelooper[obs3], foreloper[obs3], stalking-horse, voorlooper[Afrikaans], voortrekker[Afrikaans]. prelude, preamble, preface, prologue, foreword, avant-propos[Fr], protasis[obs3], proemium[obs3], prolusion[obs3], proem, prolepsis[Gram], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... history; we know the history of your country; we know the history of your great men, from Washington to Roosevelt. You are truly and sincerely welcome amongst us, because you are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future, bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid the cannon's roar, or the din of popular acclamations, the echo in its grand unanimity that these ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... lonely castle. It was his habit at odd intervals to foray down the village streets with one grievance or another rankling in his bosom, seeking some unlucky one upon whose head to wreak his resentment. We had come to recognise the heavy, slow tapping of his thick cane as a harbinger of trouble, even as you might prognosticate a thunderstorm from the rumbling beneath ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... which he sees such a card, he thinks of me; and not only does he think of me but he sends me his thoughts." Or was she mistaken. Ella was diffident; surely this could not be misconstrued. The Christmas card—was it not a harbinger? The two young couples on it and the words—surely he meant something by that. His enraptured eyes again rose before her; they seemed not only to envelop her, but to caress her. She thought neither of past nor future; she lived only in the present. She lay wide awake that night looking at ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... permission, I will notice. Some men, of whom I wish to speak with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge, they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, who have read a little poetry and a little history, is dangerous to the commonwealth. Such half-knowledge is ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... emblem —born in the field of battle, its lullaby the cannon's thunder, its cradle the hearts of the brave, its nurse necessity, its baptismal rite a rain of blood and tears. May it forever be another beacon of Bethlehem to guide us on to a grander future—a harbinger of hope and happiness, an emblem of love and liberty, and in its deathless splendor ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... At last the hollowness of his pretensions was detected, and there was no mincing of epithets for the man who had befooled and destroyed a great party. The Dukes left him to himself, and, according to our present informant, their flight was the harbinger of reviving fortunes. The heart of provincial conservatism warmed to its deserted chief. The patriotic sentiments of the people began to stir. Constitutional associations sprang up in the large towns. The reaction grew apace when the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... between eleven and twelve, and I am always up before seven. I was always instructed by my father to consider indolence as one of the greatest faults; it was, in fact, a sin of the first magnitude in his vocabulary.—Indolence, he always said was the harbinger of every vice, of every evil. And the Songs of Solomon and his Proverbs were on every occasion ready to support his opinion. He would say to the sluggard, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise." He would forgive many a fault in a servant, but at habitual ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the French landed, they were informed that, two days previous, the village of the Colapissas had been attacked by a party of two hundred Chickasaws, headed by two Englishmen. These were the first tidings which the French had of their old rivals, and which proved to be the harbinger of the incessant struggle which was to continue for more than a century between the two races, and to terminate by the permanent occupation of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... subdue her grief. There she learns to look her sorrow in the face; there she becomes familiar with its features; there she communes with it, as with a celestial messenger; till at length she can almost welcome its presence, and hail it as the harbinger of ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... about the floor. The local conditions were unsettled at this time. The garrison at Surigao had been attacked by the so-called ladrones. Night messages were flying to and fro. Padre Jose's summons seemed a harbinger of trouble. But, in spite of the fact that Padre Pedro had been sick for several days, he obeyed the command of his superior like any soldier, and at midnight saddled the ponies, tucked a revolver under his gown, and started at a gallop down ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Woodsmen as they both were, they knew well enough the Indian tradition that the bee is the harbinger of the coming of the white man. When he comes, the plow soon follows, and weeds grow where lately have been the flowers of the forest ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... have intended to publish the twenty-first chapter later as a second volume. At half-past nine he retired to his bedroom. Lady Burton then repeated "the night prayers to him," and while she was speaking "a dog," to use her own words, "began that dreadful howl which the superstitious regard as the harbinger of death." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... latter considered as art is wholly inferior. Now we know enough about the soul of the Australian native, thanks largely to the penetrating interpretations of Sir Baldwin Spencer, to greet and honour in him the potential lord of the universe, the harbinger of the scientific control of nature. It is more than half the battle to have willed the victory; and the picture-charm as a piece of moral apparatus is therefore worthy of our deepest respect. The ...
— Progress and History • Various
... is not safe to date the French Reformation before the influence of Luther was felt, it is possible to see an indigenous reform that naturally prepared the way for it. Its harbinger was Lefevre d'Etaples. This "little Luther" wished to purify the church, to set aside the "good works" thereof in favor of faith, and to make the Bible known to the people. He began to translate it in 1521, publishing the Gospels in June 1523 and the Epistles and Acts and Apocalypse in October and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... newly married to the beautiful, but one-eyed daughter of a rich Portuguese, who had migrated from Damascus to Gaza. Opulent and zealous, he devoted himself henceforth to preaching the Messiah, living and dying his apostle and prophet—no other in short than the Elijah who was to be the Messiah's harbinger. Nor did he fail to work miracles in proof of his mission. Merely on reading a man's name, he would recount his life, defaults and sins, and impose just correction and penance. Evil-doers shunned his eye. More readily than on Sabbatai men believed on him, inasmuch as he claimed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of this long journey, there happened two or three passages, which were sufficiently remarkable. A domestic servant to the ambassador, who rode before as harbinger, to take up lodgings for the train, a violent and brutal man, being reprehended by his lord for having been negligent in his duty, fell into a horrible fit of passion, as soon as he was out of Mascaregnas his presence. Xavier heard him, but took ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... are two sorts of superstition, each of which is the very antithesis of the other. The victim of one believes all kinds of absurdities blindfold, oblivious of evidence or causality. The upsetting of a salt-cellar or the fall of a mirror is to him a harbinger of disaster, entirely irrespective of any possible connection between the cause and the effect. A bit of stalk floating on his tea presages an unlooked-for visitor, and the guttering of a candle is a sign of impending death. ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... a school-room seat becomes vacant in the early teens. If, instead of the harsh measures so often used, the boy could know he had not only the loving sympathy but also the pride of his parents in this harbinger of approaching manhood; if, in place of force, he were given choice, after all the considerations had been carefully weighed; if he could feel the confidence of father and mother that he would do the manly thing because he is almost a man, he would rarely fail to meet the issue, for "at no ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... in a Hansom cab to that hotel near Fleet Street where his young wife was pining in her second-floor sitting-room, like a wild woodland bird behind the bars of a cage. The young man thought the little fellow might be a harbinger of peace—nor was he mistaken, for Ida melted at sight of him, and seemed quite happy when they three sat down to a dainty little luncheon, she waiting upon and petting her young brother all ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... myrrh, Frankincense for harbinger, Myrrh to make His sepulchre. Roses white and roses red, Thorns arrayed for His dear Head. Hail! hail! Wise Men ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... wishes, allowed me a passage to their country. Once more I embarked on the trackless wave, no longer my delight; and as the shore receded, I watched the humble edifice which I had raised over the remains of my Rosina: it appeared to me as if a star had settled over the spot, and I hailed it as an harbinger of grace. When I landed, I repaired to the convent to which I now belong; and, taking the vows of abstinence and mortification, have passed the remainder of my days in masses for the soul of my Rosina, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... sings this gent, as he goes skatin' stiff-laig about in a ring like I relates, arms bent, an' back arched; "let all the sons of men b'ar witness; an' speshully let a cowerin' varmint, named Sam Enright, size me up an' shudder! I'm the maker of deserts an' the wall-eyed harbinger of desolation! I'm kin to rattlesnakes on my mother's side; I'm king of all the eagles an' full brother to the b'ars! I'm the bloo-eyed lynx of Whiskey Crossin', an' I weighs four thousand pounds! I'm ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... commended to your consideration. It is an obvious duty to provide the means of postal communication which our commerce requires, and with prudent forecast of results the wise extension of it may lead to stimulating intercourse and become the harbinger of a profitable traffic which will open new avenues for the disposition of the products of our industry. The circumstances of the countries at the far south of our continent are such as to invite our enterprise and afford the promise of sufficient advantages to justify an unusual effort to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of Hawthornden, a Scotchman, born in 1585, may almost be looked upon as the harbinger of a fresh outburst of word-music. No doubt all the great poets have now and then broken forth in lyrical jubilation. Ponderous Ben Jonson himself, when he takes to song, will sing in the joy of the very sound; but great men have always so much graver work to do, that they ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Hark! how the noise increases! through the gloom 115 Of the still evening—harbinger of death, Rings the tocsin! the dreadful generale ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... peep, That none neglected may its faith impugn. Before I die thy humid pinions sweep Above me once, but O to stain forbear The heart which still immaculate I keep! But thou com'st not, and now, with rosy hair From Ganges hastening, to all things again Their native hue restores Day's harbinger. Perhaps thou'st come, and ah, my cruel pain And wakeful thoughts thee ingress have denied Into my eyes, or hurl'd thee out amain. Since, blundering archer, thou dost shoot aside, Or snapp'st thy every dart my breast upon, To me thy wand be never more applied! Away, away! ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... at once the friendliness of his Church towards true science, and her right to determine what true science is. Let us dwell for a moment on the proofs of her scientific competence. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456 it was regarded as the harbinger of God's vengeance, the dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, and by order of the Pope the church bells of Europe were rung to scare the monster away. An additional daily prayer was added to the supplications of the faithful. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Pickett's command were killed, wounded, or captured. Every brigade commander and every field officer except one fell. Lee and Longstreet had seen from the edge of the woods, with great exultation, the blue flag of Virginia waving over the crest occupied by the Union troops. It seemed the harbinger of great success to Lee. He thought the Union army was conquered at last. The long struggle was over, and peace would soon come, accompanied by the acknowledgment of the independence of the Southern Confederacy. It was but a passing dream; the ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... forming the groundwork of one of the ballads which I have made the harbinger of doom to the house of Rookwood, is ascribed, by popular superstition, to a family resident in Sussex; upon whose estate the fatal tree—a gigantic lime, with mighty arms and huge girth of trunk, as described in the song—is still carefully preserved. Cuckfield Place, to which ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire and wish for had to them been denied. If, indeed, the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... flowers. The time of the Mayflower's blossoming has long been past, but in fancy our thoughts go back to that early spring when the first bluebird winged his way to Burial Hill, calling up memories of the English robin, which this harbinger of spring resembles. It was the Pilgrims who called ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... who can bear a weight of such magnitude, and can succeed a king so great. Fame, the harbinger of truth, destines the illustrious Numa for the sovereign power. He does not deem it sufficient to be acquainted with the ceremonials of the Sabine nation; in his expansive mind he conceives greater views, and inquires into the nature of things. 'Twas love of this pursuit, his country ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... and all aglow with fire. The natives, notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always rare, and quickly disposed of. While the ancients considered the opal a harbinger of good fortune to the possessor, it has been deemed in our day to be exactly the reverse; and many lovers of the gem have denied themselves the pleasure of wearing it from a secret superstition as to its unlucky attributes. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... long, too, the scourges of disease and civil strife combined with exhaustion in hastening her ruin. The plague had broken out in the very year of the last expedition against Hadrach (765), perhaps under the walls of that city. An eclipse of the sun occurred in 763, in the month of Sivan, and this harbinger of woe was the signal for an outbreak of revolt in the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... fell on troublous times. The Reformation—that harbinger of good not unmixed with evil—closed the book of the monastery. It is strange and sad that ecclesiastical changes should partake so largely in the destruction of buildings and the spoliation of belongings. Never yet did ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Birkbeck Hill—Unwin, 1897). Only a few of them met with favour; and one of them, "The Germ," going to the vote along with "The Seed" and "The Scroll," was approved by a vote of six to four. The next best were, I think, "The Harbinger," "First Thoughts," "The Sower," "The Truth-Seeker," and "The Acorn." Appended to the new title we retained, as a sub-title, something of what had been previously proposed; and the serial appeared as "The Germ. Thoughts towards ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... have a large practice; it was all very well for Aunt Madge to be sententious, and say that one swallow does not make a spring; but already the second harbinger of good luck had ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the east came a keen, cold breeze, the harbinger of sunrise; the gray gloaming began by degrees to pierce and part the tops of the tall trees, which, in the darkness, had seemed a compact black roof. The crowing of cocks rang out from the court-yard of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... universal Love. Thou art its priest, O son of Zebedee, And we are waiting—waiting still for thee. Why tarry yet thy footsteps from afar Thou gentler John the Baptist? May thy star The herald of The Christ uprising shine, The harbinger of love—of Love Divine. ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... comfort under the sun, than sound and invigorating sleep to the weary, nor in our opinion, a greater grievance than the loss of it; because wakefulness at those hours, which nature has destined for repose, is, in nine cases out of ten, sure to be the harbinger of peevishness, discontent, and ill humour, and not unfrequently induces languor, lassitude, and disease. No two individuals in the world have greater reason to complain of disturbed slumbers or nightly watching, than ourselves. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... prefer your staying. Nike will prefer it, too. In the old days she always liked you to be her harbinger. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... thrown into water, in extending its influence in proportion to its circumference. As philanthropists in many different countries are labouring simultaneously to promote this great end, we are justified in considering the present age as the harbinger of a better; and we may rejoice in the anticipation. The progressive improvement of the human family is a delightful subject for meditation, giving us, perhaps, a prelibation of the joys of futurity, and animating us to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... seek who may the mighty load Sustain; who may succeed so great a king. Fame, harbinger of truth, the realm decreed To noble Numa. Not content to know The laws and customs of the Sabine race, His mind capacious grasp'd a larger field. He sought for nature's laws. Fir'd by this wish, His country left, he journey'd to the town Of him, who erst was ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... well to call attention to the fact that the Father of modern Socialism, in "The Civil War in France," page 78, claims that "the workingmen's Paris, with its Commune, will forever be celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society." The Commune, then, whose anniversary is celebrated on the 18th of March, every year, by the Socialists all over the world, has been, and still is considered the precursor of their contemplated state. The ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... harbinger of evil news resume the situation. Caligula was in his palace, surrounded by the slaves of his household and guarded by a few soldiers against a raging mob—an hundred thousand or more strong—who had formed a ring around the Palatine, and was clamouring for the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and praise! for the Night is past and sweet Morning reddens in the east, ... another Day is born,—a day in which to win God's grace and pardon,—another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake! Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,—this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!— open your ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a silence rich with meaning. The stream, the whispering boughs, the rising breeze in the tree-tops joined in the soft chorus of their nuptial-song. The night fell, shrouded in mystery. Behind them over their shoulders a new moon rose, a harbinger of good fortune, but they did not turn to look at it. It could not foretell them a fortune that was already theirs. Its light flowed through the shadows, paling the silhouette of the leaves against the afterglow, bathing them both in liquid silver. He told her many of the things that ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... meet, he first saw the lady who was to be his wife in the hunting-field. She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and an heiress. She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare development:—a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that presages summer, but does not make it—and as such much in the mouths ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... banquet, and those visits that won the momentary gratification of flattery and admiration were sighed for. So irksome was the monotony and so uncongenial the role forced upon them by disguise, they hailed with joy the least circumstance that might be the harbinger of a change. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Lord will come, and not be slow; His footsteps cannot err; Before him righteousness shall go, His royal harbinger. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... of the Italian family which had come from Florence to settle in New York, bearing letters of introduction to Tom from his mother, just in time to fit into his plans to make her a painter of children, seemed a harbinger of good fortune. The father had been most enthusiastic when Tom mentioned the "rising young artist" to him, and was anxious that the sittings should commence immediately, before her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... me, not in vain My prison gates are opened. This small grace Is harbinger of greater happiness. No! I mistake not; 'tis the active hand Of love to which I owe this kind indulgence. I recognize in this the mighty arm Of Leicester. They will by degrees expand My prison; will accustom me, through small, To greater liberty, until at last I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... country once densely populated, now desolate and still. The Bakota tribes, "the colour of coffee and milk," were friendly, and "great numbers came from all the surrounding villages and expressed great joy at the appearance of a white man and harbinger of peace." They brought in large supplies of food, and expressed great delight when Livingstone doctored their children, who were suffering from whooping-cough. As they neared the coast, they became aware of hostile forces. This was explained when they were met by a Portuguese ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... confess how little we can know, Better with feet unshod and humble awe Approach this living Power to ask for aid." And as he spoke the devas filled the air, Unseen, unheard of men, and sweetly sung: "Hail, prince of peace! hail, harbinger of day! The darkness vanishes, the light appears." But Mara heard, and silent slunk away, The o'erwrought prince fell prostrate on the ground And lay entranced, while devas hovered near, Watching each heart-throb, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in the spring should denote that the strife and war between these two elements was at an end. He is the peace-harbinger; in him the celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences of the spring on one hand, and the retreating footsteps of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... evidently much more of a spring bird than ours is, much more a harbinger of the early season. He comes in April, while ours seldom appears till late in May, and hardly then appears. He is printed, as they say, but not published. Only the alert ones know he is here. This old English rhyme on the cuckoo does not ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... them yesterday in the garden, advancing along one of the retired walks. The sun was shining with delicious warmth, making great masses of bright verdure, and deep blue shade. The cuckoo, that "harbinger of spring," was faintly heard from a distance; the thrush piped from the hawthorn; and the yellow butterflies sported, and toyed, and coquetted in ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... appearance, with a cold, from the accident. But although this seemed the only effect produced upon his bodily health, his mind had suffered a severe shock which was not equally obvious. Fancies, each gloomier than the preceding, took, henceforth, more and more possession of his imagination. He seemed the harbinger of misfortune to all connected with him. Frequently rose up the image of his dead brother, mingling with his dreams and obtruding itself even into his waking thoughts, at one time dripping with water as when taken from the pond—ghastly pale—livid—with ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... freely from one German state to another without the payment of duties at each boundary line. This yielded some of the advantages of a political union. This economic union, of which Prussia was the head, and from which Austria was excluded, was a harbinger of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... they joked, they laughed, they speculated on politics, though it was well known that in a few minutes yonder door was to open, and that on its threshold the jailer would appear, list in hand; that from this list he would call out with his loud, croaking voice, as Death's harbinger, the names of those whose death-warrants had been yesterday signed by Robespierre, and who would have immediately to leave the hall, to mount the wagons which were already waiting at the prison's gate to drive them ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... in the ground: in the cheer of the work hardships were forgotten, and we paused now and again to laugh at some sally of Terence McCann's or odd word of Swein Poulsson's. As the day wore on to afternoon a blue haze—harbinger of autumn—settled over fort and forest. Bees hummed in the air as they searched hither and thither amongst the flowers, or shot straight as a bullet for a distant hive. But presently a rifle cracked, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... every mile of the journey is interesting and full of novelty. We left the blazing camp fire at a little this side of the Wolf's Cove. The stars were shining brightly in the heavens. Even the morning star, now so brilliant, had not as the harbinger of the great sun ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... grey-green branches were studded with wens each armed with a keen prickle, long and tough. It offered the hospitality of its shade to man, but little else, save flowers to gladden his eyes, though it stood as a perpetual calendar, or rather floral harbinger, of some of the most excellent things in life. At a certain season its big, trilobed, hollow-stalked leaves changed from bright green to pale yellow and lingeringly fell, and often before the last disappeared, flower-buds registered ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... abilities and services, which were eminent and various, secured Napoleon's advancement at every step of his rapid career from obscurity to the imperial throne; and that the loss of her influence and counsels was the necessary harbinger ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... surface of this cloud begins to put on the appearance of cumulus, the whole, at the same time, rising from the ground like a magnificent curtain. As the cloud ascends, it is broken up and evaporates or passes off with the morning breeze. The stratus has long been regarded as the harbinger of fine weather; and, indeed, there are few days in the year more serene than those whose morning breaks out ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... Mormon defenders of their faith so largely depend,—as for explanations of modern revelations, miracles, and signs,—was preached to so extreme a point by Ohio Disciples that Alexander Campbell had to combat them in his Millennial Harbinger. An outcome of this literal interpretation was a belief in a speedy millennium, another fundamental belief of the early Mormon church. "The hope of the millennial glory," says Hayden, "was based on many passages of the Holy Scriptures.... Millennial ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... glorious are the days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the the thick ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of whose paternity he was doubtful, and on her return placed before ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... aglow with fire. The natives, notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always rare, and quickly disposed of. While the ancients considered the opal a harbinger of good fortune to the possessor, it has been deemed in our day to be exactly the reverse; and many lovers of the gem have denied themselves the pleasure of wearing it from a secret superstition as to its unlucky attributes. This fancy has ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... horizon to the zenith, with a tail millions of miles in length. This, however, did not take place until near the time of Hawthorne's departure from Florence. In his case it proved sorrowfully enough a harbinger of calamity. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Parisian sportsman felt his heart pit-a-pat and jump like a girl's in love; and without stopping any longer to admire the marvels of Nature, he turned hastily back to his uncle's abode, in search of a gun, with which to annihilate the luckless harbinger of spring. He soon found one, ready loaded, in the hall; and, with his heart full of hope and his legs full of precaution, he glided mysteriously from one tree to another, endeavouring, by all possible means, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... been here yesterday. Robert Watson called. He wanted to congratulate us on the relations we have for so long maintained. We have never spoken of it, but you must have known the risk of coming here. He has seen it, says he has watched you closely, and you are an exception to all known law, or the harbinger of a ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... ingenuous truth. Oh, that's his antipode, of courteous race, The man of bows and ever-smiling face. Why Nature made him, or for what design'd, Never he knew, nor ever sought to find, 'Till cunning came, blest harbinger of ease! And kindly whisper'd, 'thou wert born to please.' Rous'd by the news, behold him now expand, Like beaten gold, and glitter o'er the land. Well stored with nods and sly approving winks, Now first with ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... Now a rush, And now a roar, and now a fainter fall, And still remoter, and yet finding still, For the white anguish of their boiling whirl, No resting-place. Over my head appear'd, Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen, Sole harbinger of hope, a patch of sky, Of deep, clear, solemn sky, shrining a star Magnificent; that, with a holy light, Glowing and glittering, shone into the heart As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood, Drinking the beauty of that gem serene, How long I wist not; but, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... pleasure took Than Dis, on heaps of gold fixing his look. By this, Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard, But he the bright Day-bearing car prepar'd, And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night Till she, o'ercome with anguish, shame, and rage, Dang'd down ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... prostrated ourselves, find the same regard for self pervades the rest, and that there is no voluntary attendance—then the sight of the expiring wretch, in his last effort, turning his head over the side of his hammock, and throwing off the dreadful black vomit, harbinger of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... first diplomatic triumph, that at Leoben. He it was, too, who had brought the first offers of an armistice after Austerlitz. These recollections touched the superstitious chords in the great Corsican's being; for in times of stress the strongest nature harks back to early instincts. This harbinger of good fortune the Emperor now summoned and talked long and earnestly with him.[380] First, he complimented him on his efforts of the previous day to turn the French left at Doelitz; next, he offered to free him on parole in order to return to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... went an inspiration lifting its votaries to a self-reliance founded on God, a harbinger of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... bronze was the harbinger of better days to the various tribes of Europe. Without metals it is doubtful if man would ever have been able to raise himself from barbarism. His advance in civilization has been in direct proportion ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... the persevering and independent course of Miss Blackwell, who recently attended a series of medical lectures in Geneva, and has now gone to Europe to graduate as a physician, we see a harbinger of the day when woman shall stand forth "redeemed and disenthralled," and perform those important duties which are so truly within ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... poor creature. He never made such attempts. 'How can I tell the next lesson a soul is capable of learning?' he would say. 'The Spirit of God is the teacher. My part is to tell the good news. Let that work as it ought, as it can, as it will.' He knew that pain is with some the only harbinger that can prepare the way for the entrance of kindness: it is not understood till then. In the lulls of her pain he told her about the man Christ Jesus—what he did for the poor creatures who came to him—how kindly he spoke to them—how he cured ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... may be perceived that Alford Graham was peculiarly open on this deceitful May evening, which promised peace and security, to the impending stroke of fate. Its harbinger first appeared in the form of a white Spitz dog, barking vivaciously under the apple-tree, where a path from a neighboring residence intersected the walk leading from Mrs. Mayburn's cottage to the street. Evidently some one ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... morning, was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in a flame-colored car, drawn ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... sorrow in the face; there she becomes familiar with its features; there she communes with it, as with a celestial messenger; till at length she can almost welcome its presence, and hail it as the harbinger of a brighter world. ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... otherwise. Such was the state of affairs in Ireland when the French revolution took place. This event was looked upon by the mass of the Irish with strong sensations of joy. Ever disposed to revolt, they looked upon it as the harbinger of their own liberty. Meetings were held to celebrate its anniversary in different places, and also for the discussion of politics. The chief topics at these meetings were parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, in favour of which strong resolutions were entered into with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in God.... And the sweet Christian symbolism invited him with its most enticing images: the Shades of Paradise; the Fountain of Living Water; the Repose in the Lord God; the green Branch of the Dove, harbinger of peace.... But the passions still resisted. "To-morrow! Wait a little yet! Shall we be no more with you, for ever? Non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum?..." What a dismal sound in these syllables, and how ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love, Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify; Though pale she lay when in the winter grove Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her And the red wings of frost-fire ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... more kindness: Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth; Muffle your false love with some show of blindness: Let not my sister read it in your eye; Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; 10 Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? 15 What simple thief brags of his own attaint? 'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed, And let her read it in thy looks at board: Shame ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves, floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... trifle altered. The Latin of your present doctors may be better than that of your old comedy; their wisdom and the variety of their resources are the same. They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... woodland to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of Nature at that witching hour fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will* from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fire-flies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Carolina. When the French landed, they were informed that, two days previous, the village of the Colapissas had been attacked by a party of two hundred Chickasaws, headed by two Englishmen. These were the first tidings which the French had of their old rivals, and which proved to be the harbinger of the incessant struggle which was to continue for more than a century between the two races, and to terminate by the permanent occupation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the hamlets grow fair, Broad meadows are beautiful, earth again bursts into life, And all stir the heart of the wanderer eager to journey, So he meditates going afar on the pathway of tides. The cuckoo, moreover, gives warning with sorrowful note, Summer's harbinger sings, and forebodes to the heart bitter sorrow. Now my spirit uneasily turns in the heart's narrow chamber, Now wanders forth over the tide, o'er the home of the whale, To the ends of the earth—and comes back to me. Eager and greedy, The ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... huge, fat, religious gentleman coming up, sir. He says he's but a friar, but he's big enough to be a pope; his gills are as rosy as a turkey cock's; his great belly walks in state before him, like an harbinger; and his gouty legs come limping after it: Never was such ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... all, except the lark, was mute, Oh, beauty-breathing Bute On thee entranced I gazed; each moment brought A new creation to the eye of thought: The orient clouds all Iris' hues assumed, From the pale lily to the rose that bloom'd, And hung above the pathway of the sun, As if to harbinger his course begun; When, lo! his disk burst forth—his beams of gold Seem'd earth as with a garment to enfold, And from his piercing eye the loose mists flew, And heaven with arch of deep autumnal blue Glow'd overhead; while ocean, like a lake, Seeming delight to take In its own ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the two oars. The chest, being securely lashed, still remained. The mate quickly opened it, and took out the tools likely to prove most useful, with an ample supply of nails. Scarcely had they been transferred to the boat, when Alice, who had been the harbinger of good tidings, exclaimed, "See! see that large fish!" Walter seized one of the harpoons, and handed it to the mate, The fish was swimming round close to the raft; the harpoon flew from the grasp of the mate, and he calling to Tidy ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... ravine or rift On winding far to where in wooden cell The old man prayed, while o'er him rushed the cloud Storm-borne from crag to crag. Serener breeze, With alternation soft in Nature's course, Following ere long, great Easter's harbinger, Thus spake he: 'I must keep the Feast at home; My children there expect me.' Parting thence, He left his brothers three to consummate His work begun, Celin, and Cynabil, And Chad, at Lichfield Bishop ere he died. Thus Lastingham ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sail. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. It was the ninth day we had been upon the raft; the torments of hunger consumed our entrails; and the soldiers and sailors already devoured with ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale! [1] Say that we come, and come by this day's light; Fly upon swiftest wing round field and height, [2] But chiefly let one Cottage hear the tale; There let a mystery of joy prevail, 5 The kitten frolic, like a gamesome sprite, [3] And Rover whine, as at a second sight Of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... men met, it is evident that a remarkable effect was produced on John. There was something in the face of Jesus that almost overpowered the fearless preacher of the desert. John had been waiting and watching for the Coming One, whose herald and harbinger he was. One day he came and asked to be baptized. John had never before hesitated to administer the rite to any one who stood before him; for in every one he saw a sinner needing repentance and remission of sins. But he who now stood before him waiting to be baptized bore ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace; She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere, His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... us because we know your history; we know the history of your country; we know the history of your great men, from Washington to Roosevelt. You are truly and sincerely welcome amongst us, because you are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future, bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... unlooked-for intelligence the mother's fortitude gave way. Tribulation and anguish had indeed set in upon them like a flood. The ring, so unaccountably brought back by the Red Woman, was beyond doubt the cause of all their misfortunes—its reappearance, as she anticipated, being the harbinger of misery. What should be the next arrow from her quiver she trembled to forebode. But in the midst of this fever of doubt and apprehension one hope sustained her, and that was the result of her husband's mission to Dr Dee, who would doubtless find out the nature of the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... sight they caught of him was in the flashes of his guns, and the blaze of his camp-fires, those wintry days and nights in front of Donelson. From that hour until the closing triumph at Appomattox he was the leader whose name was the harbinger of victory. From the final sheath of his sword until the tragedy on Mount McGregor he was the chief citizen of the republic and the great central figure of the world. [Applause.] The story of his life savors more of romance ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Mary Ewold was in the presence of the wonder of daybreak on the desert without watching for the harbinger of gold in the V of the pass, with its revelation of a dome of blue where unfathomable space had been. For the first time daybreak interested her only in broadening and defining her vision ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... are regaining their lost ground; broods of young blue-coats are again seen drifting from stake to stake or from mullen-stalk to mullen-stalk about the fields in summer, and our April air will doubtless again be warmed and thrilled by this lovely harbinger of spring. — JOHN BURROUGHS, August ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... intended brusqueness before the graceful salutation of the poorest peon. Hat in hand, and with courteous or devout wish for your welfare on his lips, the poor Mexican seems almost a reproach to the harbinger of an outside world which seemingly grows more hard and commercial as time ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... seemingly innocent changes in the relations of the mercantile order to the senate, a new balance of power had been created in the State. The Republic, according to the reflection of a later writer, had been given two heads,[642] and this new Janus, more ominous than the old, was believed to be the harbinger of deadly conflict between the rival powers. In moments of calm Gracchus may have believed that his reforms were but a renewed illustration of that genius for compromise out of which the Roman constitution had ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... belief operated in Pagan Italy. The same omen announced to Lord Lindsay's Arab attendants in the desert the approach of some disaster, which partially happened in the morning. And a Highlander of the 42d Regiment, in his printed memoirs, notices the same harbinger of evil as having crossed his own path on a day of personal ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... an aged man, to the purveyor of the convent, "hast thou ever seen such monsters before? My soul! but this will glad the hearts of the whole convent, and make many poor folk happy, an it be but the harbinger of a return ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... pretty cautiously past what memory, that great dealer in hyperbole, had hitherto generally contrived to picture as a huge lake—now, to my astonishment, dwindled into a duck-pond—but not without danger from its slippery margin. It still reposed under the shadow of the old cherry-tree, once the harbinger of delight, as the returning season gave intimation of another bountiful supply of fruit. Its gnarled stump, now stunted and decaying, had scarcely one token of life upon its scattered branches. Following a narrow walk, nearly obliterated, I entered a paved court. The first tramp ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that of love. She was beautiful—fascinating—accomplished—amiable—and I loved her. It was not long before I was satisfied. I had kindled a reciprocal passion in her breast. The mute eloquence of her look and manner was only the harbinger of that same thrilling eloquence, which fell from her tongue when I won the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... chapter later as a second volume. At half-past nine he retired to his bedroom. Lady Burton then repeated "the night prayers to him," and while she was speaking "a dog," to use her own words, "began that dreadful howl which the superstitious regard as the harbinger of death." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... words it rang out boldly, as the joyous harbinger of the time to come, of a new life open to all in the future;—far or near? They felt that it depended upon them whether they advanced towards liberty or themselves deferred ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... to think at last that it must be near dawn, and turned our eyes eastward, in the expectation of seeing the pale red and yellow streaks which usher in the rich glow, the harbinger of the rising sun. That was my idea, not friend Obed's. He remarked, "Daylight will soon be on, I guess, and it is time we were back at camp to get some breakfast, before we begin our trudge over the mountains, for I'm mighty hungry, I calkilate; ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... thought of the same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing; it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter Canaan. Thou must sell thyself, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 'tis excellent; for in this kind the hand, you know, is harbinger to the tongue, and provides the words a lodging in the ears of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... plains her lucid waters mine; 45 Sees at his feet the forky lightnings glow, And hears innocuous thunders roar below. ——Rife, great MONGOLFIER! urge thy venturous flight High o'er the Moon's pale ice-reflected light; High o'er the pearly Star, whose beamy horn. 50 Hangs in the east, gay harbinger of morn; Leave the red eye of Mars on rapid wing; Jove's silver guards, and Saturn's dusky ring; Leave the fair beams, which, issuing from afar; Play with new lustres round the Georgian star; 55 Shun with strong oars the Sun's attractive ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... you forgot, my jocund Boy! DAVUS, [12] the harbinger of childish joy; For ever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet, with a breast of such materials made, Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; 270 Candid and liberal, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... horrid prodigies foretold it: A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking states. When public villany, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard? ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... commun in the East. It is the Heb. "Shaked" and the fruit is the "Loz" (Arab. Lauz)Amygdalus communis, which the Jews looked upon as the harbinger of spring and which, at certain feasts, they still carry to the synagogue, as representing the palm branches ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... pretensions was detected, and there was no mincing of epithets for the man who had befooled and destroyed a great party. The Dukes left him to himself, and, according to our present informant, their flight was the harbinger of reviving fortunes. The heart of provincial conservatism warmed to its deserted chief. The patriotic sentiments of the people began to stir. Constitutional associations sprang up in the large ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... gave lustre; nay, I doubt whether pity and love are so near a-kin as poets feign, for I have seldom seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love, or the harbinger of lust. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... blithe laugh and tossed another peeling to the yellow rooster, who had dropped the role of harbinger of evil and was posing as a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... home, had enjoyed their property in security and repose. The assertors of these positions well know that the lot of thousands who remained at home was far more terrible, that the most cruel imprisonment was only a harbinger of a cruel and ignominious death, and that in this mother country of freedom there were no less than three hundred thousand at one time in prison. I go no further. I instance only these representations of the party, as staring ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Bear, called in Greek [Greek: arktos] or [Greek: helike], has her Warden behind her. Near him is the Virgin, on whose right shoulder rests a very bright star which we call Harbinger of the Vintage, and the Greeks [Greek: protrygetes]. But Spica in that constellation is brighter. Opposite there is another star, coloured, between the knees of the Bear Warden, dedicated there under the name ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... bodies wash ashore, the good woman of the Humane Society will come down from the town, and see them decently buried. Stores has several times spoken of this good woman; were she a ministering angel he could not speak of her name with more reverence. For years, he tells us, has she been a harbinger of good, ever relieving the sick and needy, cheering the downcast, protecting the unfortunate. Her name has become a symbol of compassion; she mingles with the richest and the poorest, and none know her but to love and esteem her. "And she, too, is an ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... frequent visits, and break in upon my precious hours with their impertinent intrusions." He replied, "To such of them as are poor lend money, and from such as are rich ask some in loan; and neither of them will trouble you again." Let a beggar be the harbinger of an army of Islam, or the orthodox, and the infidel will fly his importunity as far as ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... read The omen falsely; rather is your joy The thrilling harbinger of general dawn. Did you not tell me scarce a month agone, When I chanced in on you at feast and prayer, The holy time's bright legend? of the queen, Strong, beautiful, resolute, who denied her ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... be the friend of men, and keep near their dwellings. I shall ever be happy and contented; and although I could not gratify your wishes as a warrior, it will be my daily aim to make you amends for it as a harbinger of peace and joy. I will cheer you by my songs, and strive to inspire in others the joy and lightsomeness of heart I feel in my present state. This will be some compensation to you for the loss of glory you expected. I am now free from the cares and ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... powerful monarchs, who reign over the Grecian youth, phlattothrattophlattothrat, are sending the Sphinx, that terrible harbinger of death, phlattothrattophlattothrat. With his avenging arm bearing a spear, phlattothrattophlattothrat, the impetuous bird delivers those who lean to the side of Ajax, phlattothrattophlattothrat, to the dogs who roam ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Wade—man of misery—who could find no peace on earth—whose presence unknit the tranquil lives of people and poisoned their blood and marked them for doom! Wherever he wandered there followed the curse! Always this had been so. He was the harbinger of catastrophe. He who preached wisdom and claimed to be taught by the flowers, who loved life and hated injustice, who mingled with his kind, ever searching for that one who needed him, he must become the woe and the bane and curse of those he would only serve! Insupportable and pitiful fate! The ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... Joel admirably illustrates the intimate connection which subsisted for the prophetic mind between the sorrows and disasters of the present and the coming day of Jehovah: the one is the immediate harbinger of the other. In an unusually devastating plague of locusts, which, like an army of the Lord,[1] has stripped the land bare and brought misery alike upon city and country, man and beast—"for the beasts of the field look up sighing unto Thee," ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... now came on: when, like many of his respectable brethren, he hailed it at first as the harbinger of national reformation and prosperity. But he had soon reason to find that he had been deceived. However, in the fervour of the moment, and upon the suppression of the monastic and other public libraries, he received a very wide and unqualified ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... everywhere is becoming converted to its use. Adopt it, oh, you women, with clean hands and a pure heart! Verify the best word written by the apostle; "In Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but a new creature," the harbinger of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... with Bethlehem songs above, The day of Love—sweet universal Love. Thou art its priest, O son of Zebedee, And we are waiting—waiting still for thee. Why tarry yet thy footsteps from afar Thou gentler John the Baptist? May thy star The herald of The Christ uprising shine, The harbinger of love—of Love Divine. ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... relates, arms bent, an' back arched; "let all the sons of men b'ar witness; an' speshully let a cowerin' varmint, named Sam Enright, size me up an' shudder! I'm the maker of deserts an' the wall-eyed harbinger of desolation! I'm kin to rattlesnakes on my mother's side; I'm king of all the eagles an' full brother to the b'ars! I'm the bloo-eyed lynx of Whiskey Crossin', an' I weighs four thousand pounds! I'm a he- steamboat; I've ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... he awoke with a splitting headache, the harbinger of an attack of fever, and was obliged to inform the head clerk, by means of a note, of his inability to attend office. An answer was brought by Gyanendra to the effect that three days' leave of absence was granted, but that his work must be carried on by some other clerk. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... morning-star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who, from her green lap, throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. 1169 MILTON: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... literary eminence, was published in May 1839, but failed to attract general interest. This unhappy result deeply affected the health of the poet, whose constitution had already been much shattered by repeated attacks of illness. He was seized with a complaint which proved the harbinger of pulmonary consumption. He died at Mount Pleasant on the 1st September 1839, in his ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my room. I want to show you a present I got to-night." Then silence. Wesley had no watch. The rebels had relieved him of that at Bull Run. But it must be quite midnight. He opened one of the windows softly. Oh, the glory of the night, harbinger of his high emprise, his deathless glory! The wondrous, wondrous stillness of the scene—and to think that over yonder, in the dark depths of the forest, fifty, perhaps a hundred, men were waiting for him—for him? Yes, the mighty arms of the Union were about him; the trump ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... a mood, so sweet, so tranquil, so unwonted, have been the harbinger of good? Alas, no good came of it! I Presently the rude Real burst coarsely in—all evil grovelling and repellent as she too ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... sweet creature he loved better than his own life. Suddenly she drew her arm out of his, and with an exclamation of delight, sprang to a little bank by the road-side, where she had spied a tiny violet, peeping out from amid the dead leaves that had lain there all the winter through—the first harbinger of spring, smiling up at her a friendly greeting, despite the wintry cold of February. She knelt down and gently cleared away the dry leaves and grass about it, carefully broke the frail little stem, and returned to de Sigognac's side with her treasure—more ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... instrument, take it altogether! But what, thinkest thou, are the arms to this matrimonial harbinger?—Why, in the first place, two crossed swords; to show that marriage is a state of offence as well as defence; three lions; to denote that those who enter into the state ought to have a triple proportion of courage. And [couldst thou have imagined that these priestly fellows, in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... our lakes. At this hour, the rushing noise of the advancing wave startles the wild beast in his lair among the prairies of the West. Soon it shall be seen climbing the Rocky Mountains, and, as it dashes over their cliffs, shall be hailed by the dwellers on the Pacific, as the harbinger of the coming blessings of safety, liberty, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... wide prairie save the yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered. Here, the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there, by a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and mauve—the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lips, with smiles apart, Bespoke the gladness of his heart. And in his arms he took the boy The harbinger of future joy; Delighted that indulgent Heaven To his fond hopes this pledge had given, It seemed as if, to bless his reign, Irij had ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced:[306] he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger[307] of a greater friend. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were looking at the evidences of the violent breaking up of winter, the first phoebe-bird of the season alighted in a tree overhanging the torrent, and in her plaintive notes seemed to say, as interpreted by John Burroughs, "If you please, spring has come." They gave the brown little harbinger such an enthusiastic welcome that she speedily took ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... on the surface of the earth instead of those cellars in which they resided when we passed them. there was great joy with the natives last night in consequence of the arrival of the salmon; one of those fish was caught; this was the harbinger of good news to them. they informed us that these fish would arrive in great quantities in the course of about 5 days. this fish was dressed and being divided into small peices was given to each child in the village. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... us, and taking me aside, informed me that, as he had foreboded, sleep had been the harbinger of death, and that Don Diego was no more. I broke the news as gently as I could to Isora: but her grief was far more violent than I could have anticipated; and nothing seemed to cut her so deeply to the heart as the thought that his ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... praying herself now, and Morris' broad chest heaved as he glanced at her kneeling figure, and then at the death-like face upon the pillow, with the pinched look about the nose and lips, which to his practiced eye was a harbinger of death. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... young and gladsome god of day, His fiery steeds had yoked to flaming car (By which, my Gill, you may surmise The sun was just about to rise) And that be-feathered, crook-billed harbinger, The rosy-wattled herald of the dawn, Red comb aflaunt, bold-eyed and spurred for strife, Brave Chanticleer, his strident summons raised (By which fine phrase I'd have you know, The cock had just begun to crow) And gentle Zephyr, child of Boreas, Stole soft the hush of dewy leaves, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... send a proper man. A chinaman was at length discovered, who, after having been invested with the customary official hat and the long official coat, was persuaded to advance towards the bridge bearing our message and piteously waving a white flag to show that he likewise was a harbinger of peace. The man progressed but slowly towards the Imperial bridge, and twice he gave unmistakable signs of wishing to bolt; but urged on by cries and a frantic waving, he at last reached the parapet on which leaned our ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... abortive negotiation as to the exchequer was still pending, Scott was visited, for the first time since his childish years, with a painful illness, which proved the harbinger of a series of attacks, all nearly of the same kind, continued at short intervals during more than two years. Various letters, already introduced, have indicated how widely his habits of life when ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me." Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant's door, and said: "Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... a heavy cannonade were the feature of Tuesday. This led us to infer that the much-vaunted "siege train" (which was the talk of the city) had begun its work of devastation. The inspiration of itself would not have been the harbinger of consolation—we were long listening to sound and fury, meaning nothing—but we were quick to associate it with the unfurling of the Flag, to put the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the night That long has reigned with tyrant sway, E'en now I see the opening light, The harbinger of coming day; To Heaven I now direct my prayer— O God of love, forsake me not! Grant that my waywardness may ne'er Quench ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... qualities are very generally known, for it is most tempting to the eye by its delicate fringe-like bunches of white flowers. Even the touch of this shrub is poisonous, and produces violent swelling. The arbor judae is abundant in every wood, and its bright and delicate pink is the earliest harbinger of the American spring. Azalias, white, yellow, and pink; kalmias of every variety, the too sweet magnolia, and the stately rhododendron, all grow in wild abundance there. The plant known in England as the Virginian creeper, is often seen climbing ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... I am the Harbinger of Peace By special request. Imperial Germany, Sated with victory and a shortage of boiled potatoes, Implores me to save the Entente Powers from utter annihilation, And the prayer is echoed By Sir EDGAR SPEYER and the other neutrals. So my keys tap out the glad message Of friendship ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... expected to be welcomed by Aminta, and she was very timid on finding herself alone with the earl. He, however, treated her as the harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep her appointment unless an accident delayed. He had forgotten her name, but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed, and he was interested, not quite independently of the sentiment of her being there ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by her praise, to remove the chagrin which her ingenuous countenance (ever the faithful harbinger of her thoughts) betrayed so plainly—"I assure you, my dear," said she, "that for some time you performed very prettily; didn't ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... suffer not excessive dread 1000 To overwhelm thee, such a guide he hath And guardian, one whom many wish their friend, And ever at their side, knowing her pow'r, Minerva; she compassionates thy griefs, And I am here her harbinger, who speak As thou hast heard by her own kind command. Then thus Penelope the wise replied. Oh! if thou art a goddess, and hast heard A Goddess' voice, rehearse to me the lot Of that unhappy one, if yet he live 1010 Spectator of the cheerful beams of day, Or if, already dead, he dwell below. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... to his mother that he would be home on a stated day, and not even for the delight of meeting the mistress of his heart, the period of whose return was now uncertain, would he disappoint her. William was engaged in packing his trunk, when Dr. Keene, again the harbinger of good tidings, entered ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius—another and a brighter star of that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... so uniformly wonderful that they cease to inspire any interest whatever. Tristan's rose-bush twined itself around the pillars, the pillars are lacking now, and the clusters of flowers trail on the ground. Tristan was a harbinger of Musset; Guinevere gives us ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... person, he could scarce look off him, and said he was worthy of such parents, gave him a crown of gold, the spirit of divination, and in conclusion made him a demigod. O vis superba formae, a goddess beauty is, whom the very gods adore, nam pulchros dii amant; she is Amoris domina, love's harbinger, love's loadstone, a witch, a charm, &c. Beauty is a dower of itself, a sufficient patrimony, an ample commendation, an accurate epistle, as [4829]Lucian, [4830]Apuleius, Tiraquellus, and some others conclude. Imperio ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Reigns the mistress of the scene, Chasing gloom, and courting glee, With the merry tambourine; Many a form of fairy birth, Many a Hebe, yet unwon, Wirt, a gem of purest worth, Lively, laughing Pleasanton; Vails and Tayloe will be there, Gay Monroe so debonair, Hellen, pleasure's harbinger, Ramsay, Cottringers and Kerr; Belles and matrons, maids and madams, All are gone ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... intervals to foray down the village streets with one grievance or another rankling in his bosom, seeking some unlucky one upon whose head to wreak his resentment. We had come to recognise the heavy, slow tapping of his thick cane as a harbinger of trouble, even as you might prognosticate a thunderstorm from the ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... snowshoes. Nothing can check his curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me shyly with their blandishments—tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are—are you a harbinger?" ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Gregory VI was the harbinger of an epoch of moral renaissance. The wise Pontiff, whose glory it had been to free the Church from a disgraceful yoke, proved himself worthy of the sovereign power, as much by the zeal with which he wielded as by the noble disinterestedness with which he resigned it. He found the temporal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... distinctive mission in the world was to serve as a harbinger for his race! A star of the first magnitude, he rose in the night of American slavery, attracted the admiring gaze of the civilized world, and so thrilled the hearts of men that they broke the chains of all his kind in the hope of further enriching the firmament of lofty human endeavor with ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a Huss, a Calvin, or a Luther. Yet when the mass joined ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... kept his arms to himself. He did not suspect sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... asunder, and the captain in such a state of intense suffering, that we were in great apprehension for his life. Horrible days, and yet more horrible nights! But they were succeeded by fine weather, and at length we had the consolation of seeing the moon, smiling placidly down upon us, like a harbinger of peace. On the evening of the twenty-sixth the full moon rose with a troubled countenance, her disk obscured by angry clouds. She shook them off, but still looked turbid and superb. A gloomy cloud, black as night, still stretched over her like a pall, thickly veiling, yet not ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... its lullaby the cannon's thunder, its cradle the hearts of the brave, its nurse necessity, its baptismal rite a rain of blood and tears. May it forever be another beacon of Bethlehem to guide us on to a grander future—a harbinger of hope and happiness, an emblem of love and liberty, and in its deathless ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... bind our realm in brotherhood, Firm laws and equal rights, Let each uphold the Empire's good In freedom that unites; And make that speech whose thunders roll Down the broad stream of time The harbinger from pole to pole Of love ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... your tongue thy own shame's orator, Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty, Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger. —Comedy ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... seemed about to part with its starry train. I witnessed this gorgeous spectacle, and was awe-struck. The air seemed filled with bright, descending messengers from the sky. It was about daybreak when I saw this sublime scene. I was not without the suggestion, at the moment, that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of Man; and, in my then state of mind, I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and deliverer. I had read, that the "stars shall fall from heaven"; and they were now falling. I was suffering much in my mind. It ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... For the late government, whether under the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The King's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard Commonwealth which had insulted them with its name' (Hallam: Const. Hist. ch. x ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... head, my head! Stand further of, good nightcrow: if thou comst As a presaging harbinger of death, Howlt in thy direfulst and most horrid notes, And ['t] will be wellcome as choyse musick to me And Ile adore thee fort, with teares of ioy Make thy ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... of man and beast, have never dared to ascend these heights. They are mournful, cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire and wish for had to them ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... supernatural, avoided the danger-line between the ideal and the absurd. Poe was the truer worshipper of the Beautiful; his love for it was a consecrating passion, and herein he parts company with his illustrator. Poet or artist, Death at last transfigures all: within the shadow of his sable harbinger, Vedder's symbolic crayon aptly sets them face to face, but enfolds them with the mantle of immortal wisdom and power. An American woman has wrought the image of a star-eyed Genius with the final torch, the exquisite semblance ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... dreams of dreams" that my ears became first awake to the nearer sounds of some vague social disturbance of which Ruskin's gospel of Labor, as I heard it at Oxford without any clear comprehension of it, had been a harbinger. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... as they both were, they knew well enough the Indian tradition that the bee is the harbinger of the coming of the white man. When he comes, the plow soon follows, and weeds grow where lately have been the flowers of the forest or ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... business, and in the clothing and cigar trades. For sheer arbitrary coerciveness, nothing in the armory of the union is so effective as the boycott. A flourishing business finds its trade gone overnight. Leading customers withdraw their patronage at the union's threat. The alert picket is the harbinger of ruin, and the union black list is as fraught with threat ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... dear pride, Their joy, in England; this, too, at a time In which worst losses easily might wean The best of names, when patriotic love 305 Did of itself in modesty give way, Like the Precursor when the Deity Is come Whose harbinger he was; a time In which apostasy from ancient faith Seemed but conversion to a higher creed; 310 Withal a season dangerous and wild, A time when sage Experience would have snatched Flowers out of any hedge-row to compose A chaplet in contempt of his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... cease, Sent down the meek-ey'd Peace; She, crowned with olives green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And, waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace through ...
— Christmas Sunshine • Various
... heaven. We have become so familiar with the Lark and the Nightingale, by the perusal of the romance of rural life, that "neither breath of Morn, when she ascends" without the charm of this her earliest harbinger, "nor silent Night" without her "solemn bird," seems holy, as when we contemplate them in the works of pastoral song. Poetry has hallowed to our minds the pleasing objects of the Old World; those of the New have to be cherished in song yet many more years, before they will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... happy days, I and my mother, together. Then—the joy of hope fulfilled being sometimes a swifter harbinger to another world than the heaviest load of sorrow—she passed, without pain or sickness, smiling, in her sleep; she passed—leaving ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... "carminger" the cobbler means harbinger, an officer; who preceded the monarch during progresses, to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... to speak, But words responded tremulous and weak, And mustering his dissipated strength, A sitting posture he assumed at length,— "Whate'er thou art, thou harbinger of gloom, Thou fiend or ghoul, fresh from the new made tomb, Thou vampire, diabolical and fell, Thou stygian shade or denizen of hell, I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess Why thou hast thus disturbed my sore distress. Why ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... met with elsewhere in nature, but which no artifice could lend, served to remove my last frail doubt which had survived the evidence of the violet eyes. I had been deceived by no strange resemblance; this was indeed the woman who had been the harbinger of Professor Deeping's death. In three strides I was beside her again. Curious glances were set upon me, and I saw a servant evidently contemplating approach; but I ignored all save my own ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... independent of any influences save those which he took from real life. None the less, of course, Marivaux, who has a name for affectation which his writings scarcely deserve, has an interest for us as a harbinger of the modern novel. Pamela was published in two volumes in 1740. The author was sufficiently ill-advised to add two more in 1741. In this latter instalment Mrs. B. was represented as a dignified matron, stately ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... thought that death did seem to her Of long-lost joy the harbinger— Like an old household servant, come To take the willing scholar home; The school-house, it was very dear, But then the holidays were near; And why should she be lingering here? Softly the servant bore the child Who at her parting turned and smiled, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... one most in studying these proceedings is the curious folly of the whole affair! Why was a harbinger of peace sent if only to be immediately recalled? Why were the hopes of the Roman Catholics, of the whole country in fact, raised to the highest pitch of expectation, if only that they might be dashed to the ground? Pitt no ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... timely, bringing you into contact with the great and the good—giving you an opportunity of laying before them facts relative to the condition of the Indians, which eventuated in so much good. We do indeed rejoice in the formation of the 'Algic Society,' which is, I trust, the harbinger of great and extensive blessings to this ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... O charnel gulf I 2 Of death on death, not to be done away, Why harrowest thou my soul? Ill boding harbinger of woe, what word Have thy lips uttered? Oh, thou hast killed me again, Before undone! What say'st? What were thy tidings? Woe is me! Saidst thou a slaughtered queen in yonder hall Lay in her blood, crowning the pile ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... remained with frequent additions, a long and rigorous winter reigned in absolute sway. But now, on the last of February, the sun wheeled high on his circuits; thaws and rains ensued, and the first robin on the leafless maple sang, sweet harbinger of spring. Winter recalled his tyrant ministers, or restrained them in their wrath; and milder days and warmer skies appeared in pleasant alternation, with many still ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... May we began our journey down the Rhine. My fears had no place in Max's heart, and his self-confidence was to me a harbinger of good fortune. A man may do anything that he knows he can do; failure never disappoints him ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... great movement Spenser was the harbinger and announcing sign. But he was only the harbinger. What he did was to reveal to English ears as it never had been revealed before, at least, since the days of Chaucer, the sweet music, the refined grace, the inexhaustible versatility of the English tongue. But his own ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... ground of suspicion against the use of animal food that it so obviously inclines us to corpulency. Corpulency itself is a species of disease, and a still surer harbinger of other diseases. It is so even in animals. When a sheep has become fat, the butcher knows it must be killed or it will rot and decline. It is rare indeed for the corpulent to be long-lived. They are at the same time sleepy, lethargic, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... from the shrine Of Poesy's fair temple, brings a wreath Which fame and gratitude alike entwine, Around a name that charms the monster Death, And bids him pause!—Amidst despairing life BIRKBECK's the harbinger of hope and health; When sordid affluence was with man at strife, He boldly stripp'd the veil, and show'd the wealth To aged ignorance, and ardent youth, Of cultured minds—the freedom of the soul! The sun of science, and the light of truth, The bliss ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Ottawas was the moon in which the forest trees put forth their earliest buds, and the blooming takes place of the little blue flower, which our forest maidens love to twine with their hair, and our forest boys to gather as the harbinger of returning warmth, and joy, and gladness. She came not at first to the village of the Ottawas in the perfect shape of a human being. It was many years before that, one morning, as the head warrior of the nation went out, as was his wont, to look abroad ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of duty, be the doing of good to one another. Think you, sir, that the universal exercise of this right would promote the fulfilment of the "new commandment that ye love one another?" Think you, it would be the harbinger of millenial peace and blessedness? Or, think you not, rather, that it would fully and frightfully realize the prophet's declaration: "They all lie in wait for blood: they hunt every man his neighbor ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... yet it was among these "distant dreams of dreams" that my ears became first awake to the nearer sounds of some vague social disturbance of which Ruskin's gospel of Labor, as I heard it at Oxford without any clear comprehension of it, had been a harbinger. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, fairly blazing in ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... starlight, with an old musket slung at her back, which Adone had taught her to use, and her small, bronzed feet leaping over the ground like a young goat's, was a figure which soon became familiar and welcome to the people. She seemed to them like a harbinger of hope; she had few words, but those words reverberated with courage and energy; she moved the supine, she braced the timid; she brought the wavering firmness and the nervous strength; she said what ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... apprehension. But they traveled comfortably and reached home in the evening where welcome waited. But an alarming chill overtook the mother before she had retired that night, and the doctor was hastily summoned. The chill was a harbinger of serious illness, and the cheerful house became shrouded in dread of coming sorrow. Winifred devoted herself eagerly to her mother, but professional skill was needed also. The telephone rang frequent calls from the office during the anxious days to inquire for the ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... Lord of Savoy, with the power of the King of France, gathered together twenty thousand knights and came beyond Tolosa, to hold the road against King Don Ferrando. And he met with his harbinger the Cid, who went before him to prepare lodgings, and they had a hard battle; and the men of the Count were discomfited, and he himself made prisoner and many with him, and many were slain. And the Count besought the Cid of his mercy to set him free, saying that he would ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... sunshine were gladdening the hearts of the settlers. Patches of green freshened the slopes of the hills; the lilac bushes showed tiny leaves, and the maple-buds were bursting. Yesterday a blue-bird—surest harbinger of spring—had alighted on the fence-post and had sung his plaintive song. A few more days and the blossoms were out mingling their pink and white with the green; the red-bud, the hawthorne, and the dog-wood were in ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and carried the boy off instanter in a Hansom cab to that hotel near Fleet Street where his young wife was pining in her second-floor sitting-room, like a wild woodland bird behind the bars of a cage. The young man thought the little fellow might be a harbinger of peace—nor was he mistaken, for Ida melted at sight of him, and seemed quite happy when they three sat down to a dainty little luncheon, she waiting upon and petting her young brother all ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... however, that the art of the latter considered as art is wholly inferior. Now we know enough about the soul of the Australian native, thanks largely to the penetrating interpretations of Sir Baldwin Spencer, to greet and honour in him the potential lord of the universe, the harbinger of the scientific control of nature. It is more than half the battle to have willed the victory; and the picture-charm as a piece of moral apparatus is therefore worthy of our deepest respect. The chariot of progress, of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the happiness of dedicating our Synagogue at Ramsgate, and the day of my wedding, the proudest day of my life. I trust the honour conferred by our most gracious Queen on myself and my dear Judith may prove the harbinger of future good to the Jews generally, and though I am sensible of my unworthiness, yet I pray the Almighty to lead and guide me in the proper path, that I may observe and keep His ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... of the morning, and harbinger of the rising sun: whom poets and artists represent as drawn by white horses in a rose-colored chariot, unfolding with her rosy fingers the portals of the East, pouring reviving dew upon the earth, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... millimetre). And in a perfect darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however, that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger—whose name will be familiar to the scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute—was quite unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even with ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... that we were in great apprehension for his life. Horrible days, and yet more horrible nights! But they were succeeded by fine weather, and at length we had the consolation of seeing the moon, smiling placidly down upon us, like a harbinger of peace. On the evening of the twenty-sixth the full moon rose with a troubled countenance, her disk obscured by angry clouds. She shook them off, but still looked turbid and superb. A gloomy cloud, black as night, still stretched over her like a pall, thickly veiling, yet not entirely ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... every succeeding night. On the 5th I had a visit from the father of the little boy who was living with me, to demand his son; he had come down the river post haste for that purpose, as soon as he saw the comet, which he assured me was the harbinger of all kinds of calamities, and more especially to the white people. It was to overthrow Adelaide, destroy all Europeans and their houses, and then taking a course up the Murray, and past the Rufus, do irreparable damage to whatever or whoever came in its way. It was sent, he said, by the northern ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... out by Indiana as the harbinger of a rising hurricane; and now a swift spark of light like a falling star glanced on the water, as if there to quench its fiery light. Again the Indian girl raised her dark hand and pointed to the rolling storm-clouds, to the crested, waters and the moving pine ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of whose paternity he was doubtful, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... South Channel. Examine Western Port. Adventure with a Snake. Black Swans. Cape Patterson. Deep Soundings. Revisit King and Hunter Islands. Fire. Circular Head. Gales of Wind. Reid's Rocks. Sea Elephant Rock. Wild Dogs. Navarin and Harbinger Reefs. Arrive at Port Phillip. Sail for Sydney. Pigeon ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... "the cessation of your pains is a sure harbinger of death. Already has mortification set in, and the best surgeon in ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... while other writers, who have attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... from Paris with the important and gratifying information that treaties of alliance and commerce had been concluded between France and the United States. This intelligence diffused a lively joy throughout America and was received by the people as the harbinger of their independence. The alliance had been long expected, and the delays thrown in the way of its accomplishment had excited many uneasy apprehensions. But these were now dissipated, and, to the fond imaginations of the people, all the prospects of the United States appeared gilded ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... would be home on a stated day, and not even for the delight of meeting the mistress of his heart, the period of whose return was now uncertain, would he disappoint her. William was engaged in packing his trunk, when Dr. Keene, again the harbinger of good tidings, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... available within the Washo territory during the spring, summer, and fall it seems highly unlikely that the failure of one species of plant created a serious problem. This, of course, was not true of the pine nut. A failure of the pine-nut crop was a harbinger of a starvation winter. The gathering of pine nuts, in contrast to the gathering of other plants, was the subject of a great deal of ritual and, in some degree, of ceremonialism uncommon to most Washo gathering activities. This will be ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... monarchs, who reign over the Grecian youth, phlattothrattophlattothrat, are sending the Sphinx, that terrible harbinger of death, phlattothrattophlattothrat. With his avenging arm bearing a spear, phlattothrattophlattothrat, the impetuous bird delivers those who lean to the side of Ajax, phlattothrattophlattothrat, to the dogs who roam in ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... will come, and not be slow; His footsteps cannot err; Before him righteousness shall go, His royal harbinger. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... others below have the floors of their summer dwellings on the surface of the earth instead of those cellars in which they resided when we passed them. there was great joy with the natives last night in consequence of the arrival of the salmon; one of those fish was caught; this was the harbinger of good news to them. they informed us that these fish would arrive in great quantities in the course of about 5 days. this fish was dressed and being divided into small peices was given to each child in the village. this custom is founded in a supersticious ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Chasing gloom, and courting glee, With the merry tambourine; Many a form of fairy birth, Many a Hebe, yet unwon, Wirt, a gem of purest worth, Lively, laughing Pleasanton; Vails and Tayloe will be there, Gay Monroe so debonair, Hellen, pleasure's harbinger, Ramsay, Cottringers and Kerr; Belles and matrons, maids and madams, All are gone to ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... whose distinctive mission in the world was to serve as a harbinger for his race! A star of the first magnitude, he rose in the night of American slavery, attracted the admiring gaze of the civilized world, and so thrilled the hearts of men that they broke the chains of all his kind in the hope of further enriching the firmament of lofty human endeavor with stars ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... and her Harbinger, Near to her moves the winged Zephyrus, For whom maternal FLORA strews the way With Flowers of every ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... which might otherwise multiply too fast. On a spring or summer evening you may hear its plaintive hoot among the apple-blossoms of an orchard, or the sheaves of a cornfield. Curiously enough, this simple sound earned the little bird the name of being the harbinger of death, and peasants believed that whenever its cry was heard where sickness was in the family, the ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... to the exchequer was still pending, Scott was visited, for the first time since his childish years, with a painful illness, which proved the harbinger of a series of attacks, all nearly of the same kind, continued at short intervals during more than two years. Various letters, already introduced, have indicated how widely his habits of life when in Edinburgh differed from those of Abbotsford. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... 'Neva' went ashore on the Harbinger reef, on May 13th unshipped her rudder and parted into four pieces. Only nine men and thirteen women reached the island; they were nearly naked and had nothing to eat, and they wandered along the beach during the night, searching amongst the wreckage. At last they found a puncheon of rum, upended ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... myself, seeing these preparations (and not, perhaps, displeased at the idea that some of the best people in the neighbourhood were coming to see me). 'Hark, theres the first bell ringing! 'said Ponto, moving away; and, in fact, a clamorous harbinger of victuals began clanging from the stable turret, and announced the agreeable fact that dinner would appear in half-an-hour. 'If the dinner is as grand as the dinner-bell,' thought I, 'faith, I'm in good quarters!' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... handle of the Dipper; after which it grew apace until it extended nearly from the horizon to the zenith, with a tail millions of miles in length. This, however, did not take place until near the time of Hawthorne's departure from Florence. In his case it proved sorrowfully enough a harbinger of calamity. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... recognized; and, besides, I was following you. At Sevres your postilion told mine that he had brought you here. Will you permit me to act as your harbinger? I will write as soon as ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... never dared to ascend these heights. They are mournful, cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire and wish for had to them been denied. If, indeed, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... money at command: we live frugally, and realize the blessings of health, comfort, and contentment. Our only disquietude is on your account, Alonzo. Your affair with Melissa, I suppose, is not so favourable as you could wish. But despair not, my son; hope is the harbinger of fairer prospects: rely on Providence, which never deserts those who submissively bow to the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... sat in the carriage on our way to R—sitten, well wrapped up in good fur coats, driving through a thick snowstorm, the first harbinger of the coming winter. On the journey the old gentleman told me many remarkable stories about the Freiherr Roderick, who had established the estate-tail and appointed him (V——), in spite of his youth, to be his ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... upon his bodily health, his mind had suffered a severe shock which was not equally obvious. Fancies, each gloomier than the preceding, took, henceforth, more and more possession of his imagination. He seemed the harbinger of misfortune to all connected with him. Frequently rose up the image of his dead brother, mingling with his dreams and obtruding itself even into his waking thoughts, at one time dripping with water as when taken from the pond—ghastly pale—livid—with scarcely distinguishable ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... amazement to find that it was a plaster cast of that little statuette of the Dying Hercules which had won for him the Adelphi Gold Medal so many years before in London. There was the token of his first artistic success appearing to him out of the gloom as the harbinger of another success which he hoped would also soon emerge from ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... she said. "Oh, Lance, how I dread the sight of those yellow envelopes; they always fill me with horror; they always seem to be the harbinger of bad news." ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... consideration. It is an obvious duty to provide the means of postal communication which our commerce requires, and with prudent forecast of results the wise extension of it may lead to stimulating intercourse and become the harbinger of a profitable traffic which will open new avenues for the disposition of the products of our industry. The circumstances of the countries at the far south of our continent are such as to invite our enterprise and afford the promise of sufficient advantages ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sustained—necessarily, from chagrin, heightening the effect of the picture by exaggeration. The solicitor-general, Wedderburne, endeavoured to reconcile the house to this loss, by appealing to British magnanimity under distress, which, he conceived, was the harbinger of victory. During the war of the succession, he said, General Stanhope was compelled to surrender himself, and his whole army, prisoners of war in Spain; but the disgrace only served to call forth an ardour which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... overthrowing the government of the Bourbons, and this without chilling the attachment of the military, who despised these coadjutors, both as theorists and as civilians, and had welcomed Napoleon only as the certain harbinger of war, revenge, and plunder. How little his soldiery were disposed to consider him as owing anything to a civil revolution, appeared almost from the commencement of his march from Cannes. It was observed that these haughty bands moved on in contemptuous silence whenever the populace cheered ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... nature that crime, disease, and unhappiness step in." "The abolition of marriage in the form now practiced," wrote Godwin more than a century ago (Political Justice, second edition, 1796, vol. i, p. 248), "will be attended with no evils. We are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity. But it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them." And Professor Lester Ward, in insisting on ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... more pleasure took Than Dis, on heaps of gold fixing his look. By this, Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard, But he the bright Day-bearing car prepar'd, And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night Till she, o'ercome with anguish, shame, and rage, Dang'd down to hell her ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... yon vile flatterer of the clouds, 290 The smoky harbinger of thy dull prayers— Thine altar, with its blood of lambs and kids, Which fed on milk, to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Harbinger and Jocelyn and several others of the League leaders came in one at a time, and the plan of campaign was developed in detail. But the force they chiefly relied upon was the influence of their twelve hundred men, their four or five thousand women and young men and girls, talking ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... hard at work, ploughing here and mowing there, and in another place putting seed in the ground: in the cheer of the work hardships were forgotten, and we paused now and again to laugh at some sally of Terence McCann's or odd word of Swein Poulsson's. As the day wore on to afternoon a blue haze—harbinger of autumn—settled over fort and forest. Bees hummed in the air as they searched hither and thither amongst the flowers, or shot straight as a bullet for a distant hive. But presently a rifle cracked, and we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... relations we have for so long maintained. We have never spoken of it, but you must have known the risk of coming here. He has seen it, says he has watched you closely, and you are an exception to all known law, or the harbinger of a new era ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... middle-sized gulls, with a black spot at the end of the wings, attend you a little way into the Bay of Biscay. When it blows a hard gale of wind the stormy petrel makes its appearance. While the sea runs mountains high, and every wave threatens destruction to the labouring vessel, this little harbinger of storms is seen enjoying itself, on rapid pinion, up and down the roaring billows. When the storm is over it appears no more. It is known to every English sailor by the name of Mother Carey's chicken. It must have been ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger." Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors and colors—a theory which might never have been dreamed of in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... mast, yard, and sail into the boat, with the two oars. The chest, being securely lashed, still remained. The mate quickly opened it, and took out the tools likely to prove most useful, with an ample supply of nails. Scarcely had they been transferred to the boat, when Alice, who had been the harbinger of good tidings, exclaimed, "See! see that large fish!" Walter seized one of the harpoons, and handed it to the mate, The fish was swimming round close to the raft; the harpoon flew from the grasp of the mate, and he calling to Tidy to help him, they together in another minute brought ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... between the ideal and the absurd. Poe was the truer worshipper of the Beautiful; his love for it was a consecrating passion, and herein he parts company with his illustrator. Poet or artist, Death at last transfigures all: within the shadow of his sable harbinger, Vedder's symbolic crayon aptly sets them face to face, but enfolds them with the mantle of immortal wisdom and power. An American woman has wrought the image of a star-eyed Genius with the final torch, the exquisite semblance ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... it; A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking States. When publick villainy, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard? When some neglected fabrick nods beneath The weight of years, and totters to the tempest, Must heaven despatch the messengers of light, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... pastors, members of nearly all of the synods represented on this territory, there was organized a "Conference of the Lutheran pastors of the Metropolitan District for the discussion of all questions of doctrine and practice to the end of effecting unity." This, too, is a harbinger of an approaching era ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... after. positivamente adv. positively, certainly. postrado, -a prostrate, kneeling. postrero, -a last. precipitado, -a precipitate, headlong, rash, abrupt. precipitar(se) precipitate, hasten, rush headlong, hurry. precursor, -a m. f. precursor, herald, harbinger. preguntar ask, inquire, question. premtica f. pragmatic (a law). prender catch, take, bind, fasten; —— fuego set fire. presa f. capture, prize. prsago, -a presaging, ominous. prsago m. presage, omen. presentar present, offer, show. presente adj. present. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... deer slung over their horses. The skin of the first that is shot is presented to a priest, who flings it back to the slayer to be retained by him as a trophy, and at the same time asks from the Great Spirit that this may prove only the harbinger of deer in abundance whenever wanted. There was some slight dancing that evening in the sacred square, but not of significance enough to make it an object with me to remain for it, and as so many were reserving themselves for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the star of the valiant Prince of Wales had not been quenched in the sickness which was the harbinger of death; and his younger brother, John of Gaunt, though already known for his bravery in the field (he commanded the reinforcements sent to Spain in 1367), had scarcely begun to play the prominent part in politics which he was afterwards to fill. But his day was at hand, and the anti-clerical ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the sky began to turn a deep red in the east, and the "chuck me" chameleon, the harbinger of the early dawn, began his morning challenge. Our progress was very cautiously made through the cane-fields, banana groves, and bamboo jungles, halting and investigating the slightest noise, the rustling of a leaf or ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... rain was soon drying in the warm sun, which was now smiling serenely upon them. The mock suns, or "sun dogs," as they were commonly called, all disappeared with the storm of which they seemed to have been the harbinger. Beautiful as had been their appearance, the boys all agreed that if their coming was to be so speedily followed by such a storm they would gladly dispense with them in the future; nor did they see them again until when, in the depth of winter, they showed up in their weird ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... might wound his feelings, for he is an exquisitely sensitive creature. As you have ingeniously discovered, he is a social reformer. At present he is only known to the public as the editor of the 'Humanitarian Harbinger;' but his select circle of friends are well aware that he is devoting his ripened genius to the production of a work called the 'Progressional Principia,' which will be in four volumes, and exhaust the whole subject of social science. This immense undertaking ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... or of a camp (an honourable place); also, a blacksmith; also, a farrier, horse-leech, or horse-smith; also, a harbinger," ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... unseen world; at such times one feels that the profoundest answer which science can give to our questionings is but a superficial answer after all. At these moments, when the world seems fullest of beauty, one feels most strongly that it is but the harbinger of something else,—that the ceaseless play of phenomena is no mere sport of Titans, but an orderly scene, with ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... seated before the fire with Desgenais. The window was open; it was one of the early days in March, a harbinger of spring. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... created moon Might not miscarry and another be, In its stead and place, engendered anew, 'Tis hard to show by reason, or by words To prove absurd—since, lo, so many things Can be create with fixed successions: Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus' boy, The winged harbinger, steps on before, And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora, Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all With colours and with odours excellent; Whereafter follows arid Heat, and he Companioned is by Ceres, dusty one, And by the Etesian Breezes of the north; Then cometh Autumn ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... of a heavy cannonade were the feature of Tuesday. This led us to infer that the much-vaunted "siege train" (which was the talk of the city) had begun its work of devastation. The inspiration of itself would not have been the harbinger of consolation—we were long listening to sound and fury, meaning nothing—but we were quick to associate it with the unfurling of the Flag, to put the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... and on that account she had bought this one, never questioning that fashion is recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as beheld. On the contrary, these staring women obviously failed to realize that what they were being shown was not an eccentric outburst, but the bright harbinger of an illustrious mode. Alice had applied a bit of artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks before she set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a ready colour of her own, which now ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... he was too wise to attribute the movement to surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... and still without inhabitants![33] As I stood," continues the explorer, warming with the thoughts of his discovery, "the first European intruder on the sublime solitude of these verdant plains, as yet untouched by flocks or herds, I felt conscious of being the harbinger of mighty changes; and that our steps would soon be followed by the men and animals for which it seemed to have been prepared." Twelve days afterwards, the whole of which had been spent in traversing ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... before him, he says that Comte du Perron, with whom you are a favorite, will take that care. You see, by this one instance, and in the course of your life you will see by a million of instances, of what use a good reputation is, and how swift and advantageous a harbinger it is, wherever one goes. Upon this point, too, Mr. Harte does you justice, and tells me that you are desirous of praise from the praiseworthy. This is a right and generous ambition; and without which, I fear, few ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... directed to more liberal and manly studies. In the resurrection of science, Italy was the first that cast away her shroud; and the eloquent Petrarch, by his lessons and his example, may justly be applauded as the first harbinger of day. A purer style of composition, a more generous and rational strain of sentiment, flowed from the study and imitation of the writers of ancient Rome; and the disciples of Cicero and Virgil approached, with reverence and love, the sanctuary ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... welcomed by Aminta, and she was very timid on finding herself alone with the earl. He, however, treated her as the harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep her appointment unless an accident delayed. He had forgotten her name, but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed, and he was interested, not quite independently of the sentiment of her being ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... morning star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and loads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail beauteous May that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and groves arc of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. ...
— Two Festivals • Eliza Lee Follen
... to Paris, I know nobody that would do more to promote peace, or that will bear the want of it, with a better grace than myself. If I don't send you an actual declaration of war in this letter, at least you perceive I am the harbinger of it. An account arrived yesterday morning that Boscawen had missed the French fleet, who are got into Cape Breton; but two of his captains(582) attacked three of their squadron and have taken two, with scarce any loss. This is the third time one of the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 17th April, some of them climbing over the icebergs to the shore found much open sea. They also saw a small bird diving in the water, and looked upon it as a halcyon and harbinger of better fortunes. The open weather continuing, they began to hanker for the fatherland. So they brought the matter, "not mutinously but modestly and reasonably, before William Barendz; that he might suggest it to Heemskerk, for they were all willing to submit to his better judgment." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing; it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter Canaan. Thou must sell thyself, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... tree (for these meadows are dotted with timber like a park), began to echo my lovely little girl, 'cuckoo! cuckoo!' I have a prejudice very unpastoral and unpoetical (but I cannot help it, I have many such) against this 'harbinger of spring.' His note is so monotonous, so melancholy; and then the boys mimic him; one hears 'cuckoo! cuckoo!' in dirty streets, amongst smoky houses, and the bird is hated for faults not his own. But prejudices of taste, likings and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... knew, a forest seer, A minstrel of the natural year, Foreteller of the vernal ides, Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, A lover true, who knew by heart Each joy the mountain dales impart; It seemed that Nature could not raise A plant in any secret place, In quaking bog, on snowy hill, Beneath the grass that shades the rill, Under the snow, between the rocks, In damp fields known ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... first commissioners to Europe—Messrs. Yancey, Rost and Mann—sailed from New Orleans, on March 31, '61, their mission was hailed as harbinger to speedy fruition of these delusive thoughts, to which the wish alone was father. Then—though very gradually—began belief that they had reckoned too fast; and doubt began to chill glowing hopes of immediate recognition ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... attitude towards love and in their general literary treatment of the theme. Of course, poets describing the spring will always speak of the birds; Greek and Hebrew loved flowers, Jew and Egyptian heard the turtle-dove as a harbinger of nature's rebirth; sun and moon are everywhere types of warm and tender feelings; love is the converter of a winter of discontent into a glorious summer. In all love poems the wooer would fain embrace the wooed. And if she prove ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... must begin with a great prayer revival. It is in the closet, with the door shut, that the sound of abundance of rain will be first heard. An increase of secret prayer with ministers and members, will be the sure harbinger of blessing. ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... gold, the spirit of divination, and in conclusion made him a demigod. O vis superba formae, a goddess beauty is, whom the very gods adore, nam pulchros dii amant; she is Amoris domina, love's harbinger, love's loadstone, a witch, a charm, &c. Beauty is a dower of itself, a sufficient patrimony, an ample commendation, an accurate epistle, as [4829]Lucian, [4830]Apuleius, Tiraquellus, and some others conclude. Imperio digna forma, beauty deserves a kingdom, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... now resumed its sway, though mingled with doubt and fear, for the sudden transition from a state of hopeless despair to that of comparative safety, is ever attended with a misgiving of its reality. Her deliverance from the power of the Moors appeared almost certain; the name of Aguilar was the harbinger of victory; yet the anticipation of her rescue caused so powerful a revulsion of feeling, that Theodora nearly sunk under its pressure. When she had a little recovered, she perceived, however, more clearly, that her destiny was still involved in ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... morning of her nuptials, on a day so bright and cloudless, that Inez hailed it as a harbinger of future happiness. Father Ignatius performed the offices of the church, in a little chapel attached to the estate of Don Augustin; and long ere the sun had begun to fall, Middleton pressed the blushing and timid young Creole ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in the ditches by the roadside, the early morning air bit sharp and chilly, having a touch of frost in it—the harbinger of colder weather to come—but still retaining a dampness ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... imagine an excuse for the marshal's inflexibility. He was quite ill, too, and what with fever and agitation, his brain was in a whirl. He leaned against the chair, faint and dispirited. The painful cough, the harbinger of that fatal malady which had already brought a sister to an early grave, oppressed him, and the hectic glowed upon his pale cheeks. The marshal approached him, and laid his hand ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
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