"Aslant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... familiar, watches his approach, Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend;— To wear out time in numbering to and fro The studs that thick emboss his iron door, Then downward and then upward, then aslant And then alternate, with a sickly hope By dint of change to give his tasteless task Some relish, till the sum, exactly found In all directions, he begins again:— Oh comfortless existence! hemmed around With woes, which who that ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... with scarlet ribbons; when, hardly torn loose by all his art from the cruel rock, his oars lost, rowing feebly with a single tier, Sergestus brought in his ship jeered at and unhonoured. Even as often a serpent caught on a highway, if a brazen wheel hath gone aslant over him or a wayfarer left him half dead and mangled with the blow of a heavy stone, wreathes himself slowly in vain effort to escape, in part undaunted, his eyes ablaze and his hissing throat lifted high; in part the disabling wound keeps him coiling in knots and twisting back on his ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... curb a crowd had collected. A traffic officer was talking to the driver of an automobile. As Sweeney Orcutt strolled toward the doorway, Overland Red, clean-shaven, clothed in new corduroys and high lace boots, and a sombrero aslant on his stiff red hair, dove into the saloon and called ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging, whack by ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... It's hot amost as Summer-time; yet what a blessed breeze Is a-whiffing round the corners, and a-whoostling through the trees! And the sunlight on the roof-slates, all aslant to the blue sky, Seems to twinkle like the larfter in a pooty gurl's blue eye, When you swing in the dance, and she feels you've got 'er step: And the trees—ah! bless their branches!—through the winter weeks they've slep', ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... its streamers there, And furled its sails to fill and flaunt Along fresh firmaments of air When ancient morn renewed his chant,— She sighed in thinking on the plant Drooping so languidly aslant; Fancied some fierce noon's forest-haunt Where wild red things loll forth and pant, Their golden antlers wave, and still Sigh for a shower that shall distil The largess gracious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Would she not, could she not, she nought replied, But spurred aslant the ready Rabicane, And, signing to Rogero, rode as wide As she could wend from that embattled train; Then to a sheltered valley turned aside, Wherein embosomed was a little plain. In the mid lawn a wood of cypress ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... died away In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard In this low dell, bow'd not the delicate grass. But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze: The light has left the summit of the hill, Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful, Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell, Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot! On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill, Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me, I find myself upon the brow, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... makes my eyes ache to look aslant over the sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so conveniently; and I must not have the window-shutters ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... looking steadily at father, as he steered us aslant the tide so as not to check the way of the boat, while making straight for the pontoon across the stream, which was now running out, like a regular good ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon. All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Eustacia most of all. The grass under their feet became trodden away, and the hard beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant towards the moonlight, shone like a polished table. The air became quite still, the flag above the waggon which held the musicians clung to the pole, and the players appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the circular mouths of the trombone, ophicleide, and ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... book, for you always contrive to draw the lines aslant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... small low room, belonging to the old part of the house—dark with the sombre covers of the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery this morning as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun fell aslant on the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room enticing. In the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... grass, finches rise and fly to the hedge; from the hedge again others fly out, and, descending into the grass, are concealed as in a forest. A thrush travelling along the hedgerow just outside goes by the gateway within a yard. Bees come upon the light wind, gliding with it, but with their bodies aslant across the line of current. Butterflies flutter over the mowing grass, hardly clearing the bennets. Many-coloured insects creep up the sorrel stems and take wing from ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... long time ago, Prince Cuglas,[4] master of the hounds to the high King of Erin, set out from Tara to the chase. As he was leaving the palace the light mists were drifting away from the hill-tops, and the rays of the morning sun were falling aslant on the grinan or sunny bower of the Princess Ailinn. Glancing towards it the prince doffed his plumed and jeweled hunting-cap, and the princess answered his salute by a wave of her little hand, that was as white as a wild rose in the hedges in June, and leaning ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... gazing round with a feeling of awe, tempered with a calm delight, felt that now she was happy, and at rest. She took a Bible from the shelf, and read; then, laying it down, thought of the summer days and the bright springtime that would come—of the rays of sun that would fall in aslant, upon the sleeping forms—of the leaves that would flutter at the window, and play in glistening shadows on the pavement—of the songs of birds, and growth of buds and blossoms out of doors—of the sweet air, that would steal in, and gently wave the tattered banners overhead. What if the spot ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly he crossed to his hall, took down ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... and dignified as ever, and was with his own hands holding Frou-Frou by both reins, standing straight in front of her. Frou-Frou was still trembling as though in a fever. Her eye, full of fire, glanced sideways at Vronsky. Vronsky slipped his finger under the saddle-girth. The mare glanced aslant at him, drew up her lip, and twitched her ear. The Englishman puckered up his lips, intending to indicate a smile that anyone ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... preparing to cross the road. One was from Walworth; the other from Putney. Both wore black stockings, but Mrs. Thomas was coiled in furs. The comparison was much in Lady Rocksbier's favour. Moll had more humour, but was violent; stupid too. Hilda Thomas was mealy-mouthed, all her silver frames aslant; egg-cups in the drawing-room; and the windows shrouded. Lady Rocksbier, whatever the deficiencies of her profile, had been a great rider to hounds. She used her knife with authority, tore her chicken bones, asking Jacob's ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... door, opened it, and stood studying the gale that beat upon his cottage-front, straight from the Manacle Reef. The rain drove past him into the kitchen, aslant like threads of gold silk in the shine of the wreckwood fire. Meanwhile by the same firelight I examined the relics on my knee. The metal of each was tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old cavalry trumpet, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... may be illustrated by a book set aslant on a shelf. The dip is the acute angle made with the shelf by the side of the book, while the strike is represented by a line running along the book's upper edge. If the dip is north or south, the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... across them there floated the song of a sparrow; For a sprig of green caraway carries me there, To the old village church and the old village choir, When clear of the floor my feet slowly swung, And timed the sweet praise of the songs as they sung, Till the glory aslant of the afternoon sun Seemed the rafters of gold ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... on the platform; something had delayed her, and he could see the road winding under trees, and presently he saw her white summer dress and her parasol aslant. There was no prettier, no more agreeable woman than Ellen in Ireland, and he thought it a great pity to have to worry her and himself with explanations about politics and about religion. To know how to sacrifice the moment is ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... forgot the bitter humiliations, the mental and physical torments, the deprivations and dangers of the past three years; forgot those harrowing months in the harbor of Nagasaki when the Russian bear had caged his tail in the presence of eyes aslant; his dismay at Kamchatka when he had been forced to send home another to vindicate his failure, and to remain in the Tsar's incontiguous and barbarous northeastern possessions as representative of his Imperial Majesty, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless, Thy port assured in a happier land than mine. But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine, As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding, From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line In the offing scatterest foam, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... houses is now in the shade,—they looking towards, I should say, the southwest. Later in the day, they are wholly covered with sunshine, and continue so through the afternoon; and at evening the sunshine slowly withdraws upward, gleams aslant upon the windows, perches on the chimneys, and so disappears. The upper part of the spire and the weathercock of the Park Street Church appear over one of the houses, looking as if it were close behind. It shows the wind to be cast now. At one of the windows of the third story sits a woman ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wiped away, and with full permission to love and to be loved forever. And as she sang, the Doctor looked upward, and marvelled at the light in her eyes and the rich bloom on her cheek,—for where she stood, a sunbeam, streaming aslant through the dusty panes of the window, touched her head with a kind of glory,—and the thought he then received outbreathed itself in the yet more fervent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... almost unendurable. We were fording a river in bright starlight; the carriage bumped across the stones, water washed and slopped over the carriage floor. To right and left, Prussian lancers were riding, and I saw the water boiling under their horses and their long lances aslant the stars. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... head of a crowd of half-naked fellows, the brewer Santerre, arrayed in the fantastic costume of a robber of the Abruzzo Mountains, with a dagger and pistol in his girdle, dashed into the room, his broad-brimmed hat, with three red plumes, aslant upon his brown hair, that streamed down on both sides of his savage countenance, like the mane ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... imagination. Like all men, he was only truly firm under serious circumstances, when he wished to show energy in fulfilling a duty. Thus Lord Byron allowed his pen to jest, to mark the follies of men: sometimes attacking them boldly in front, sometimes aiming light arrows aslant, ridiculing, chastising, as humor or fancy prompted; and he gave himself the same liberty of language in private conversation, according to the character of those with whom he conversed. On all these occasions his genius undoubtedly gave itself up to versatility. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... steps, their fetters ringing in harmony with the music, the enslaved and toiling masses coming in response to command to build the monument for their masters. It is impossible to describe the exquisite beauty of the slow movement of those dark figures aslant the broad flight of steps; individual expressions were of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre. Some groups carried hammer and anvil, and others staggered ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... was in complete darkness, save where a ray from a gas-lamp at the mouth of the court came aslant through the window, when citizen Le Roux re-entered, closed the window, lighted two of the sconces, and drew forth from a drawer in the table implements of writing, which he placed thereon noiselessly, as if he feared to disturb M. Lebeau, whose head, buried in ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... while in the corner a kneeling shape rummaged a pouch by candle-light. As I climbed out, the rectangle of entry afforded me a revelation of our legs. Flat on the ground, vertically in the air, or aslant; spread about, doubled up, or mixed together; blocking the fairway and cursed by passers-by, they present a collection of many colors and many shapes—gaiters, leggings black or yellow, long or short, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... open air, and among his fellow-beings. Still he felt the pleasure of being warmed through by this natural heat, and, though blinking a little from its superfluity, could not but confess an enjoyment and cheerfulness in this flood of morning light that came aslant the hill-side. While he thus stood, he felt a friendly hand laid upon his shoulder, and, looking up, there was the minister of the village, the old friend of Septimius, to whose advice and aid it was owing that Septimius had followed his instincts ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... swallowed up at once in the broken ice. He could perceive, from the increasing commotion of the ice around her, that her hitherto level and unbroken support was growing every moment more insecure and uncertain. And as it rose and fell, or was pitched forward and thrown up aslant, in the changing volume, he could plainly hear her piteous shrieks, and see her flying from side to side of the plunging body, to avoid being hurled into the frightful chasms which were continually ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... phantom citadels Miraculous, a moment seen, then gone. Among the mountains I am ill at ease, Missing the stretched horizon's level line And the illimitable restless blue. The crag-torn sky is not the sky I love, But one unbroken sapphire spanning all; And nobler than the branches of a pine Aslant upon a precipice's edge Are the strained spars of some great battle-ship Plowing across the sunset. No bird's lilt So takes me as the whistling of the gale Among the shrouds. My cradle-song was this, Strange inarticulate sorrows of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a rose-tree (Gloire de Dijon), flanked by a Yucca in bloom, the bed underneath consisting of deep blue lobelia, is a touching little memorial to a favourite canary. This consists of a narrow little board, made like a head-stone, and set aslant, on which is painted in ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... to do some doughty deed, Stooping aslant from Polydeuces' lunge Locked their left hands; and, stepping out, upheaved From his right hip his ponderous other-arm. And hit and harmed had been Amyclae's king; But, ducking low, he smote with one stout fist The foe's left temple—fast the life-blood ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... shudder," she says, "until I reasoned the matter out,"—a single, silent, motionless object; the figure of a woman leaning against its lattice. By careful scrutiny she made it out to be only a sorcery of moonbeams that fell aslant from the farther side through the skylight of the belvedere's roof and sifted through the lattice. Would that there were no more reality to the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... highest point his railway was to reach. He spent the night there, arriving just too late to see the last dying glow of sunlight upon the snowy flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt framed like an open portal a portion of the white field lying aslant against the west. In the transparent air of the high altitudes everything seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable liquid; and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of the expected diligencia the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the scythe has gone over, except the white clover, which almost alone shows in the aftermath, or, as country people call it, the 'lattermath.' Near me a titlark every few minutes rose from the sward, and spreading his wings came down aslant, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... foothills blew aslant the smokes of a thousand fires. Over the vast landscape passed many moving figures. Young Indian men, mostly Sioux, some Cheyennes, a few Gros Ventres of the Prairie, all peaceable under the tacit truce of the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the maple shade. Both had dark faces set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of villainy ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thereby, so that in no wise may I find firm foothold and escape my bane, for as I fain would go ashore, the great wave may haply snatch and dash me on the jagged rock—and a wretched endeavour that would be. But if I swim yet further along the coast to find, if I may, spits that take the waves aslant and havens of the sea, I fear lest the storm-winds catch me again and bear me over the teeming deep, making heavy moan; or else some god may even send forth against me a monster from out of the shore water; and many such pastureth the ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... of the mast Black Duncan stood commanding in loud shouts that could not reach the boy through the wind's bellowing, and as he shouted, he lent, like a good seaman, vigour to a spar and pushed off the besieging timbers, all his weight aslant upon the wood, his arms tense, a great and ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... king of day, Rejoicing in the east. The lessening cloud, The kindling azure, and the mountain's brow Illumed with liquid gold, his near approach Betoken glad. Lo! now apparent all, Aslant the dew-bright earth and colored air He looks in boundless majesty abroad, And sheds the shining day that, burnished, plays On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams, High ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... may be required. Adjoining it is an ante-room and a chamber projected towards the sun, which the latter room catches immediately upon his rising, and retains his rays beyond mid-day though they fall aslant upon it. When I betake myself into this sitting-room, I seem to be quite away even from my villa, and I find it delightful to sit there, especially during the Saturnalia, when all the rest of the house rings with the merry riot and shouts of the festival-makers; ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... May-fly, they trembled enough now as he hurriedly put up his tackle and disjointed his rod: and still, and again while he hastened across to the cottage above the rocky spit—the cottage with the larch plantation above and in the garden a laburnum aslant and in bloom—his eyes sought the beach for ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... forward, so that when he dropped 'twas across the fallen trysail. This served him an ill turn: for one of the cutlasses, catching in a fold of it, turned aslant and cut him cruelly over the bridge of the nose. But the sail being tanned, and therefore almost black in the darkness, it served him a good turn too; for after his enemies had passed on and were busy making prisoners of the rest of the crew, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wide hall stood Kenric with his sword in hand. Behind him were ranked a good three hundred fighting men. In their midst was the maid Aasta the Fair, wearing, as all the men wore, a coat of mail and a brass headpiece. In firm ranks they all stood with pikes and spears aslant to meet the ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... the darkness to the north and west, slinking low under the bushes, his tail drooping, his ears aslant—the wolf as the wolf runs on the night trail. The pack had swung due north, and was traveling faster than he, so that at the end of half an hour he could no longer hear it. But the lone wolf howl to the west was nearer, and three times Baree gave ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the pride of life expressed ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... impression on me that I always stood there shuddering for fear of a repetition of the accident, which fortunately did not occur. When I finally grew tired of waiting I stepped through a lattice gate, always hanging aslant and always creaky, into a garden plot running along close by the skittle-alley and parallel with it. It was a genuine peasant's garden, with touch-me-nots and mignonette in bloom, and in one place the mallows grew so tall that they formed a lane. Then when the sun went down ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide; And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan, Yet you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on. And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs, And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... he was always free of the handsome salons wherein the Friends of Humanity devoted themselves to roulette, auction bridge, baccarat and chemin-de-fer: and of this freedom he now proceeded to avail himself, with his hat just a shade aslant on his head, his hands in his pockets, a suspicion of a smile on his lips and a glint of the devil in his eyes—in all an expression accurately reflecting the latest phase of his humour, which was become largely one of contemptuous ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... some spring, revealed a narrow, secret shelf. His hand went into the dimness and came out bearing a silver goblet. This he set carefully upon a neighboring table, and looked at Alexander somewhat aslant ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... do. My boat had drifted up the river again with the tide, stern foremost, but a little aslant, and had run against the warp by the schooner's bows. I must pull out again, for otherwise the people on board would hear me. I pushed gently off from the warp and took the sculls, when suddenly I heard voices back ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the house, and the snow beat aslant upon the windows. Sometimes the coal in the stove settled with a crumbling sound, and the four panes of mica flashed a sudden new crimson. As he sat holding her head on his shoulder, Trescott found himself occasionally trying ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... on the mist afar, as dim as in a dream! Anear it speeds, there are masts like reeds and a tossing plume of steam! Fleet, fierce, and gaunt, with bows aslant, she dashes proudly on, Whence and whither, her prey to gather, the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... man knew it must be almost six o'clock; for the light came aslant the gap and the chill of the upper snow crept down from the mountain. A pretty business this, it seemed to him: twenty miles back of beyond; horses sent on at random ahead; a gang of murderers ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the rest above, passing over both branches, the regiments inextricably intermingled, rendering all military formation impossible. The color-bearers kept well to the front with their flags, closely furled, aslant backward over their shoulders. Displayed, they would have been torn to rags by the boughs of the trees. Horses were all sent to the rear; the general and staff and all the field officers toiled along on foot as best they could. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... bantering air: a light, half-caressing, half-ironic, shone aslant in his eye. Ah, Graham! I have given more than one solitary moment to thoughts and calculations of your estimate of Lucy Snowe: was it always kind or just? Had Lucy been intrinsically the same but possessing the additional advantages of wealth and station, would your manner to her, your value ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... damsel was eyeing the locket somewhat disdainfully and giving me grudging thanks for it when there came a hurried knock at the door. The next moment Theodore poked his ugly face into the room. He, too, had taken the precaution of assuming an excellent disguise—peaked cap set aslant over one eye, grimy face, the blouse of ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... him from her eyes, which seemed That blue which, lying on the white sea-bed And gazing up, the sunbeam overhead Would show, with green entinctured, and the warp Inwoven of golden shafts, blended yet sharp; So that a glory mild and radiant Transfigured them. Upon him fell aslant That lovely light, while in her cheeks the hue Of throbbing dawn came sudden. So he knew Her best before she spoke; for when she spoke It was as if the nightingale should croak In April midst the first ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned, The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant With the heather that twitched in the wind; But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these, Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... squeaked as I went. Overhead, the October moon was in her last quarter, and might have been a slice of finger-nail for all the light she afforded. Two-thirds of the time the wrack blotted her out altogether; and I, with my stick clipped tight under my armpit, eyes puckered up, and head bent aslant, had to keep my wits alive to distinguish the road from the black heath to right and left. For three hours I had met neither man nor man's dwelling, and (for all I knew) was desperately lost. Indeed, at the cross-roads, two ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... aslant the trees, I saw the first green of the year, as the buds were burgeoning and breaking into tiny leaves. The white statues of goddesses—a little crumbled and weather-stained after the winter—were bathed in a pale sunshine. Psyche stretched out her ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... proud beauty of the daughter with her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered such an involuntary disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey to look after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet was fluttering in exactly the same corner to the inch as before; and the Beauty, loitering by herself a little in advance, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... wonder who is his patient!" observed Mrs. Levice, as Ruth quietly returned to her seat. A sunbeam fell aslant the girl's preoccupied face. The doctor's few words had given her food ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... the next flat, which formed a separate lodging. Sonia's room looked like a barn; it was a very irregular quadrangle and this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wall with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light. The other corner was disproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any furniture in the big room: ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... year, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin (in their manuscript dress of receiving Mr. and Mrs. Lammle at breakfast) were on the South-Eastern Railway with me, in a terribly destructive accident. When I had done what I could to help others, I climbed back into my carriage—nearly turned over a viaduct, and caught aslant upon the turn—to extricate the worthy couple. They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt. The same happy result attended Miss Bella Wilfer on her wedding-day, and Mr. Riderhood inspecting Bradley Headstone's red neckerchief as he lay asleep. I remember ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and smoke-house, there were long ranges with granaries and storehouses and cattlesheds. But it all looked awfully poor and dilapidated. The houses had gray, moss-grown, leaning walls, which seemed ready to topple over. In the roofs were yawning holes, and the doors hung aslant on broken hinges. It was apparent that no one had taken the trouble to drive a nail into a wall on this place ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... said James; and then, getting; no reply, he looked into her face. A gleam of sunlight filtered through the bushes and fell aslant Jane Merrick's eyes; ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; Therewith fantastick garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples;[51] There, on the pendent boughs her cornet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... clinging chords, the sustaining calm was illustrated, not broken, by a serpentine phrase of one lone oboe, pianissimo over the piano-surface, which it crisped not, but on and above which it breathed like the track of a sunbeam aslant from a parted cloud. The slightest possible retardation at its close brought us to the refrain of the simple adagio, interrupted again by a rush of violoncello-notes, rapid and low, like some sudden under-current striving to burst through the frozen sweetness. Then spread ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... inspiration. He climbed hurriedly down off the rock, got his own looking glass and climbed back again. He turned the glass so that the sun shown on it aslant and threw a glare toward her. Then he lifted the telescope quickly to see if she noticed the sparkle. After a moment he decided that she had seen it but did not quite know what had caused it. At any rate, she was still looking that ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... on his arm the faithful saint Looks up with a broad and tranquil joy; His brows and his heavy beard aslant Under the dimpled chin of ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... wild whirls of spray at the veiled grandeur of the fall, or to listen to the thunder beneath me; the whole hill was sounding as if it were a huge, bellowing drum. I hoped that by waiting until the fall was blown aslant I should be able to climb to the lip of the crater and get a view of the interior; but a suffocating blast, half air, half water, followed by the fall of an enormous mass of frozen spray from a spot high up on the wall, quickly discouraged me. The whole cone was jarred by the blow and some ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... struck his breast with his hand, and saying deliberately, in his native language:—"I made that, for I am a great musician,"—he again played his wonderful composition. There was no candle in the room; the light of the rising moon fell aslant through the window; the sensitive air trembled resonantly; the pale, little room seemed a sanctuary, and the head of the old man rose high and inspired in the silvery semi-darkness. Lavretzky approached and embraced him. At first, Lemm did not ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... bodies bare above the dropped blankets, moved stately or squatted on their heels watching the emigrants as they bartered for supplies. Trappers in fringed and beaded leather played cards with the plainsmen in shady corners or lounged in the cool arch of the gateway looking aslant at the emigrant girls. Their squaws, patches of color against the walls, sat docile, with the swarthy, half-breed children playing about their feet. There were French Canadians, bearded like pirates, full of good humor, filling the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... was standing by the window, his arms hanging loosely at his sides; he looked out aslant up the lane; his profile was turned towards me. He made no answer to ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a black ship that, sailless and with masts pitifully aslant, was fixed on the sand among the surf, and the movement of the water made her appear to labour forward as if in dying throes making ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Alpha of the Dragon, which was the pole-star of the period, had that precise position with respect to the true pole of the heavens which is indicated by the slope of the long passage extending downwards aslant from the northern face of the Great Pyramid; that is to say, when due north below the pole (or at what is technically called its sub-polar meridional passage) the pole-star of the period shone directly down that long passage, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... patches on the sun-smitten green, like gouts of arterial blood. White vapors round the mountain peaks rose tortuously toward the blue; while seaward, rain still filled the air as with black sand drifting down aslant, through gaps in which we could descry far off a steel-bright strip of fair weather that joined sea and sky, cutting under a fairy island so that it seemed suspended in ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... began to show faint splendors, and the winds of morning drove aslant the candle flames. Ferne shook his head and his countenance darkened somewhat with vain regrets and sharp memories of old agonies. "Not that, my friend! I am changed, but God knows—not I—what other change would come did He lift His rod. Once ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... himself standing right in front of his own peculiar row of gravestones, consisting of eight or nine slabs of slate, adorned with carved borders rather rudely cut, and the earliest one, that of his Bessie, bending aslant, because the frost of so many winters had slowly undermined it. Over one grave of the row, that of his gifted grandson, there was no memorial. He felt a strange repugnance, stronger than he had ever felt before, to linger by these graves, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... little white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and to touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one degree removed from a positive miracle, that he wasn't carried up bodily into the air as a colony ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... and crimson tail, And set his head aslant, And, in his sharp, impatient way, Asked, ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... into the mysteries of reading and writing by the aid of a broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil, it is "pleasant and quiet" to watch the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, and the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... throng. Thee, Menelaus, then the blessed Gods Forgat not; Pallas huntress of the spoil, Thy guardian then, baffled the cruel dart. 150 Far as a mother wafts the fly aside[7] That haunts her slumbering babe, so far she drove Its course aslant, directing it herself Against the golden clasps that join'd his belt; For there the doubled hauberk interposed. 155 The bitter arrow plunged into his belt. It pierced his broider'd belt, stood fixt within His twisted hauberk, nor the interior quilt, Though penetrable least to arrow-points ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... beer—that is, intrinsically good, a genuine product of malt and hops. He would rather grumble at it, unless, perchance, it was a gift; and even then would criticise it behind the donor's back, holding the quart cup aslant so as to see the bottom in one place, and get a better view of the liquor. The great breweries whose names are household words in cities, and whose interest it is to maintain a high standard of quality for the delectation of their million consumers, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... pebble, and balancing it carefully on my right thigh as I rode, I flipped it forward with all the strength of my thumb and finger. I meant it to fall a few paces before us in the path, where it could be seen. But alas for my hopes! At the critical moment my horse started, my finger struck the scrap aslant, the pebble flew out, and the bit of stuff fluttered into a whin-bush close to my stirrup—and ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... something that Addison had read, or in some picture that he had seen in one of the magazines in the garret. But the old Squire, who had a spice of Yankee inventiveness in him, had improved on Addison's first notion by suggesting a glass roof, set aslant to a south exposure, so as to utilize the rays of the sun ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... does it consist of? It straggles along a rough and ill-laid lane, under a little wold, once a sheep-walk, now long ploughed up. The soil of the wold is pale, so that in the new-ploughed fields there rest soft, creamlike shadows when the evening sun falls aslant. There are two or three substantial farmhouses of red brick, comfortable old places, with sheds and ricks and cattle-byres and barns close about them. And I think it is strange that the scent of a cattle-byre, with its rich manure and its oozing pools, is not ungrateful to the human sense. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the leaders of the rioters had rubbed the dust from their eyes and came towards me, the foremost of them, Cyrus Vetch, shouting to his comrades to spit me like a toad. He had recognized me, and sprang towards the doorway where I stood with staff aslant, the trembling watchman still whirling his rattle behind. Mad with rage he cut at me with his sword, which bit deep into the staff, by that very fact becoming ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... touch, and her gaze, as if fascinated, was drawn into his. But when the flow of words ceased, and he bent to kiss her, the spell seemed to lose its power over her. In an instant she wound herself out of his arms, and with startled eyes aslant whispered: ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... turned toward the red-brick house that sat above the mill-pond. Eagerly he looked for the old mill, and he stopped in physical pain. The dam had been torn away, the old wheel was gone and a caved-in roof and supporting walls, drunkenly aslant, were the only remnants left. A red-haired child stood at the gate before the red-brick house and Hale asked her a question. The little girl had never heard of the Widow Crane. Then he walked toward his old office and bedroom. There was a voice inside his old ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... to the ford in a lumbering run. Bruce sprang upon the tailboard to ride, the dogs chased the cow and calf to the crossing. The wheels grated ominously against great submerged boulders; the surging waves rose almost to the wagon-bed; the wind struck aslant the immense, cumbrous cover, threatening to capsize it; and, suddenly, in the midst of the transit, a sound, as clear as a bugle in the rare icy ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... spring, Drink in the fragrances of the young year, The field-wall meets one grimly squared and straight. Beyond it rise the old tombs, gray and restful, And the upright slates record the generations. Stiffly aslant before the northern blasts, Like the steadfast, angular beliefs Of those whom they commemorate, the headstones stand, Cemented deep with moss and invisible roots. The rude inscriptions charged with faith and love, Graceless as Death himself, yet ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... times. And I must tell you,' he added, 'of my enjoyment in looking on your pastures in autumn,—the sun shining aslant upon them of an afternoon,—and in noticing what shades of scarlet and crimson were given to the picture by the whortleberry leaves, which, I found, contributed most to the coloring of the landscape. I also ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... reading extracts to her in the morning, while Ruth had been engaged in preparing herself to teach in the Sunday-school. She wondered vaguely how pleasure could be derived, even by the most religious persons, from seeing favorite texts twined in and out among forget-me-nots, or falling aslant in old English letters off bunches of violets; but she was old enough and wise enough to know that one man's religion is another man's occasion of stumbling. Books are made to fit all minds, and small minds lose themselves in large-minded books. The thousands ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the body. The animal has to do this by means of one or other ear; (55) as may be seen, when she is on the point of being caught by the hounds. (56) At that instant you may see her drop and shoot out aslant one of her ears towards the point of attack, and then, apparently throwing her full weight on that pivot, turn sharp round and in a moment leave her assailants ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... thrown open to the conservatory. Distant masses of plants and flowers, mingled in ever-varying forms of beauty, are touched by the melancholy luster of the rising moon. Nearer to the house, the restful shadows are disturbed at intervals, where streams of light fall over them aslant from the lamps in the room. The fountain is playing. In rivalry with its lighter music, the nightingales are singing their song of ecstasy. Sometimes, the laughter of girls is heard—and, sometimes, ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... a happy silence, into which, as from another planet, there drifted light laughter, and sweet gay voices of girls, and the stir and rustle of many people moving about. On the Mayne fence the judge's black Panch sat, neck outstretched, emerald eyes aslant, ears cocked uneasily at these unwonted noises. At a little distance a bluejay watched him with bright malevolent eyes, every now and then screaming insults at the whole tribe of cats, and black Panch in particular. Flint snapped his fingers, and Panch, with a spring, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler |
