"Firefly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assure us that his ill health more than once threatened the mighty task he had in hand. These, to be sure, are most important revelations. But Khalid here misses his cue. Inspiration does not seem to come to him in firefly-fashion. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... deep and dark, Waiting for the firefly's spark; If you wish to see him now, Follow me, and ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... folk as well, was different from his neighbors. For instance, there was Jasper Jay. He was the noisiest chap for miles around. And there was Peter Mink. Without doubt he was the rudest and most rascally fellow in the whole district. Then there was Freddie Firefly, who was the brightest youngster on the farm—at least after dark, when his ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was that it made them feel comfortable and at home. They generally attributed the homelikeness to Lucille, who was dangerously near looking matronly, rather than to Marjorie, who would be more like a firefly than a matron even ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... shalt not then, O Karna, utter such speeches. When Partha will, with hundreds of arrows, quell thy pride, then wilt thou behold the difference between thyself and Dhananjaya. Those two best of persons are celebrated among the gods, the Asuras and human beings. Thou that art a firefly, do not, from folly, think disrespectfully of those two resplendent luminaries. Like the Sun and moon, Keshava and Arjuna are celebrated for their resplendence. Thou, however, art like a fire-fly among men. O learned one, O son of a Suta, do not think disrespectfully ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... that? A firefly? No, a light. The other man had discovered a hut, and had procured a lighted palm tassel dipped in oil. Poor as it was the light served to show the way until the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... to say of these poems that they will bear a comparison with most of the productions of modern Spanish literature. The style is bold, free, energetic. Some of the pieces are sportive and graceful; such is the address to The Cucuya, or Cuban firefly. This beautiful insect is sometimes fastened in tiny nets to the light dresses of the Cuban ladies, a custom to which the writer gallantly ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... enjoy her,' said sweet Aunt Truth, with that bright, cordial smile of hers that was like a blessing. 'She has a very loving heart, and is easily led. How pretty the girls look, and how different they are! Polly is like a thistledown or a firefly, Margery like one of our home Mayflowers, and I can't help thinking my Bell ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... darkling, dust of the milky way, Shifting and drifting, firefly legions at play; Fading and glowing, lights of a starry maze, Coming and going, drift of a ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... southern lights, aurora australis. lightning; chain lightning, fork lightning, sheet lightning, summer lightning; ball lightning, kugelblitz [G.]; [chemical substances giving off light without burning] phosphorus, yellow phosphorus; scintillator, phosphor; firefly luminescence. ignis fatuus [Lat.]; Jack o'lantern, Friar's lantern; will-o'-the- wisp, firedrake^, Fata Morgana [Lat.]; Saint Elmo's fire. [luminous insects] glowworm, firefly, June bug, lightning bug. [luminous fish] anglerfish. [Artificial light] gas; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... luck at Firefly Lake," suggested Whopper. "That isn't as large as this lake, but it is certainly a nice sheet of water. And the hunting around there ought to be just as good as ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... your Majesty," said Beeswing with Ripple and Firefly, "will order our regiment—the seventh—to encamp under the sedges on the shore, half to keep watch, while the other half sleep in the swaying branches of ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Flitting through the dusk of evening, With the twinkle of its candle Lighting up the brakes and bushes, And he sang the song of children, Sang the song Nokomis taught him: "Wah-wah-taysee, little firefly, Little, flitting, white-fire insect, Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Red Bone men opposite must rely on their ears alone hereafter, for they could not see through this darkness. McKay was visible enough to his own party, but not to the enemy. The blond man in the hammock watched the somber figure of his comrade, followed the flight of a big firefly whose light floated near, thought of the two bushmen out in the dark, and looked again at the still ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Disease, sickness, and death have all to be accounted for. They know nothing of malaria, filth, or contagion. Hence they hold that an enemy causes these things, and friends have to see that due punishment is made. The large night firefly helps to point in the direction of that enemy, or the spirits of departed ones are called in through spiritists' influence to come and assist, and the medium pronouncing a neighbouring tribe guilty, the time is near when that tribe ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... ever paid any attention to Freddie Firefly in the daytime. But on warm, and especially on dark summer nights he always appeared at his best. Then he went gaily flitting through the meadows. And sometimes he even danced right in Farmer Green's dooryard, together with a hundred or two of ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... he ran and ran; and all was black and empty before him. On and on he ran, never daring to look back; and at last he saw a lantern, so far away that it looked like the gleam of a firefly; and he made for it. It proved to be only the lantern of an itinerant soba-seller, [2] who had set down his stand by the road-side; but any light and any human companionship was good after that experience; and he flung himself down ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... I should have a better chance of doing something if I were to obtain the command of the Firefly schooner; the lieutenant commanding her ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... dearly, of poetic wanderings with Shelley through woods and by the river, one of which she remembers long afterwards, when, making her note to the "Skylark," she recalls how she and Shelley, wandering through the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the firefly, heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems. Precious memories which helped her through many after years devoid of the sympathy she yearned for. At the Baths they had the pleasure of a visit from Medwin, who gave a description of how Shelley, his wife ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... bed, had gone to him with the lie of having converted me. But when I told of the scene between my grandfather and me at Carvel Hall, of the tears of joy that the old gentleman shed, and of how he had given me Firefly as a reward, the captain rose from his chair and looked out of the window into the blackness, and swore a great oath all to himself. And the expression I saw come into the colonel's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The firefly wakens: waken ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the Fireflies flashed with anger and then the old Firefly said. "I think we can have revenge if all of you will do as I tell you, and if I am not much mistaken those Goblin fellows will remember us the next time they have a frolic, even if ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... makes the black hulls cast A firefly radiance down the deep; The inlet gleams, the long clouds sweep, The sails flit up, ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... The Cupbearer The Wisdom of the Indians The Dumb Oracle Duke Virgil The Claw Alexander the Ratcatcher The Rewards of Industry Madam Lucifer The Talismans The Elixir of Life The Poet of Panopolis The Purple Head The Firefly Pan's Wand A Page from the Book of Folly The Bell of Saint Euschemon Bishop Addo and Bishop Gaddo The Philosopher and the Butterflies Truth and Her Companions The Three Palaces New Readings in Biography ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... shone for a moment a wisp of light like a firefly in the darkness, and then another, moving a little below it. Several times this was repeated in different places in the darkness, the point of light gleaming for a moment only and ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Inn was stirring like an ant-hill, with firefly lanterns flitting up and down, and a cheery glow about the open door. The horses of the company, scrubbed unreasonably clean, snorted and stamped in little bridled clumps about the courtyard, and the stable-boys, not scrubbed at all, clanked at the pump or shook out wrinkled ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... which deck the suburb of San Pietro d'Arena. It was the month of May—a month of May in that garden of the world—the blossoms of the fruit-trees were fading among thick, green foliage; the vines were shooting forth; the ground strewed with the fallen olive blooms; the firefly was in the myrtle hedge; heaven and earth wore a mantle of surpassing beauty. Torella welcomed me kindly, though seriously; and even his shade of displeasure soon wore away. Some resemblance to my father—some look and tone of youthful ingenuousness, lurking still in spite of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... The firefly came in the twilight dim My red, red rose to woo— Till quenched was the flame of love in him, And the light of his lantern too, As my rose wept with dew-drops three And hid in the leaves in ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... observer a quiet that was not untouched by awe. Where nature was suggestive of the long repose of ages, the brief passions of a single generation became as the flicker of a candle or the glow of a firefly in the night. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... "O spare, good wolf, my weanlings! their milky mothers spare! Harm not the little lad that hath so many in his care! What, Firefly, is thy sleep so deep? It ill befits a hound, Tending a boyish master's flock, to slumber over-sound. And, wethers, of this tender grass take, nothing coy, your fill: So, when it comes, the after-math shall find you feeding still. So! so! graze on, that ye be full, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... are still in the world as the ministers of God, though invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of their path in which they waited on Jesus; ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... too cold and damp "For a soul so warm and true; "And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,[1] "Where, all night long, by a firefly lamp, "She paddles ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... coming a long way off, her lantern bobbing along like a firefly, and walked faster. Impatience brought a cold sweat out upon his forehead and then he needs must call her name ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the firefly, Wah-wah-taysee, Flitting through the dusk of evening, With the twinkle of its candle Lighting up the brakes and bushes, And he sang the song of children, Sang the song Nokomis taught him: "Wah-wah-taysee, little firefly, Little, flitting, white-fire ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... little carelessly, 'I have always heard that the more horses you have the less work you get out of them. Where do you want to go, Cousin James? Can't you take Firefly in the dog-cart?' ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... time, for it would take him so long to get back to Nassau street, you know. He had not paddled his scow more than half an hour over the dark but moon-streaked waters of the lake, when he met with the maiden who, all night long, by her firefly lamp, doth paddle her light canoe. This estimable female steered her bark alongside the scow, and to the startled Mr. P. she ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... striving; he saw nobility enshrined in a "small" act; he marked how, set in the scales of the eternal balances of scope and eternity, a copper penny set against a million dollars were as two feathers; they rode light, and there was little choice between them. He had known that firefly cluster of lights above to be the majestic processional of worlds. He saw himself as small; the universe as big. And the knowledge did not crush; it elevated. Throughout the whole of creation ran the fine chain of divine ordinance, of a law that flowered in beauty. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... is then certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first, the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no more control it in its political career than the gleam of the firefly guides its oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are usually obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by which it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... right, Rankin," he said slowly. "The Lord knows Mollie gets restless enough at times. People were like ants in a hill where she was raised, and that life was a part of her." He took a last puff at the cigarette, and with a toss sent the smoking stump spinning like a firefly into the darkness. "And Flossie can't grow up wild—I know that. I'll talk your suggestion over with Mollie first, but I think I'd be safe in saying right ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Ah! you may think you know a man for years, and you don't: you don't know more than an inch or two of him. Why, of course, Tom Redworth would be uxorious—the very man! And tell us what has become of the Firefly now? One never sees ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... three or four placed under an inverted wineglass one can see to read fine printed matter in the nighttime. It is the common people mostly who use these insects as evening ornaments on their persons, though sometimes the most refined ladies wear them. The firefly has a hook-like integument on its body by which it is easily fastened to the hair or dress without any harm to itself. It seems as though nature had anticipated this peculiar use of the "lightning-bug," and so provided the necessary means for the purpose. The country people bring them to market ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... speechless bliss, he draws his evening meal from nature's commissariat. The snail lolls in his shell and thinks himself a king in the grandest palace in the world. And how brilliant is the horizon of the firefly when he winks ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... thoughtfully. "As a general thing that odd, moving light is seen in low, damp places. Often it is noticed in graveyards in the country, and is believed to be induced by a condition of the atmosphere, causing something like phosphorescence. You know what a firefly or lightning bug is like, don't you, Horatio? Yes, and a glow-worm also? Well, they say that there are black-looking pools of stagnant water lying around the old quarry; and yes, I think the lights seen might come ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... There was no great interest in straining one's eyes after them, so I found out the Phillipses, and having told Dawson, who was escorting Clara, that Hanmer was looking for him to make out the list of "the eleven," I was very sorry indeed when the sound of a gun announced that the Hon. H. Chouser's Firefly had won the cup, and that the other two yachts might be expected in the course of half-an-hour. Nobody waited for them, of course. The herring boats, after a considerable deal of what I concluded from the emphasis to be swearing in Welch, in which, however, Captain Phillips, who was umpire, seemed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... wandering from ghostly passage to passage, one hears no step but that of the watchman with staff and lantern. Presently there appears, far off, a light like a low-flying firefly, as it comes nearer, it is seen to proceed from the Mellah lamp of open-work brass that a servant carries ahead of two merchants on their way home from Elbali. The merchants are grave men, they move softly and ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... had begun. A rising moon was bright upon the tops of the shade trees, where their branches met overhead, arching across the street, but only filtered splashings of moonlight reached the block pavement below; and through this darkness flashed the firefly lights of silent bicycles gliding by in pairs and trios—or sometimes a dozen at a time might come, and not so silent, striking their little bells; the riders' voices calling and laughing; while now and then a pair of invisible ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... half-mile or more ahead, maintained its volume, and as he approached through thick underbrush, being able to find no other way, he dismounted and led his horse. Presently he saw beads of flame appearing among the bushes, seen a moment, then gone like a firefly, and as he went further he heard voices. He had no doubt that it was the Southern pickets in the undergrowth, and, calling ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... them, looking in the direction of the big gate, saw a light shining apparently on one of its posts. He called the attention of the rest to it. They wondered what it could mean. It could not be a firefly. It was not the light of a lantern in the hands of some one walking; the light was too steady. The Judge said to George: "My son, run down the lane, and see what that light means." George needed no urging, but at once went with swift pace to the gate. ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... was on her hand and she sat so motionless that the place seemed deserted, save for an errant firefly that vainly palpitated in the gloom. The glow that had flamed beneath Nicholas's kiss still lingered in her face, and she was conscious of a faint, almost hysterical impulse to weep. The fever in her veins had given ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... a grave too cold and damp For a soul so warm and true; And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where all night long, by a firefly lamp, She ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... glow, that made David think her good looking; her serene, brunette richness, with its high lights of coral and scarlet, that made her radiate an aura of warmth, startling in that woodland clearing, as the luster of a firefly in ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... keel of some greater ship of space. He remembered how at home there had been a certain burning twinkle that peeped through the screen of the dogwood tree. As he moved on his porch, it seemed to flit to and fro, appearing and vanishing. He was often uncertain whether it was a firefly a few yards away, or a star the other side of Time. Possibly Truth ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... herself a success—that is, much followed by the men and much complimented by the women. Her triumph, however, did not culminate until the next appearance of "The Firefly," containing a song "To the Evening Star," which everybody knew to stand for Mrs. Redmain. The chaos of the uninitiated, indeed, exoteric and despicable, remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so deep ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... get away at first, and back they trooped. A second trial was a failure. But at the third they were off in a line as straight as a chalk-mark. There were Essex and Firefly, Queen Bess and Mosquito, galloping away side by side, and Black Boy a neck ahead. Patsy knew the family reputation of his horse for endurance as well as fire, and began riding the race from the first. Black ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to the house by his servant, and set off on his way. He saw a faint light through the chinks of the blinds of the house, like the glimmer of the firefly. It gave him, as he passed, a silent sort of longing. The mansion in Rokjio, to which he was proceeding this evening, was a handsome building, standing amidst fine woods of rare growth and beauty, and all was of comfortable appearance. Its mistress was ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... reigned over that uplifted region. Above, near the summit of the mountain, flashed the red eye of a charcoal burner's fire; beneath only the plateau sloped to a ragged edge easterly, for the lake was hidden under the shoulder of the hills. No firefly danced upon this height; but music there was, for a nightingale bubbled his liquid notes in a great myrtle not ten yards from where ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... bird, a songster gay, Would soothe their souls, with multifarious song, Singing his farewell-hymns to dying Day, As fade his smiles the darkening glades along; And when the frowns of night more thickly throng, The amorous firefly led them at that hour, O'er wooded hills, and marshes deep and long, To their sweet rest, which sank, with grateful power, Along their wearied nerves, in ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... a sail after the first three days, and those I saw took no notice of me. About the sixth night a ship went by scarcely half a mile away from me, with all its lights ablaze and its ports open, looking like a big firefly. There was music aboard. I stood up and shouted and screamed at it. The second day I broached one of the AEpyornis eggs, scraped the shell away at the end bit by bit, and tried it, and I was glad to find it was good enough ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... coast; his Linnaean name is sparus. On the shore are to be picked up occasionally two small kinds of shells peculiar to Sicily, of which our intelligent acquaintance is so obliging as to give us specimens. We never saw or heard of a firefly in Sicily. Professor Costa of Naples, though he doubted the fact of there being none, had never seen any in his frequent entomological trips to that island. This beautiful insect, so common about Florence and Rome, and in central Italy, is extremely rare about Naples; nor does ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... and the Firefly" (JAFL 20 : 314) shows the firefly making use of the same ruse the dragon-flies employ to get the monkeys to slay one another. The first part of this variant is connected with our No. 60. The "killing fly on head" incident we have already met with in No. 9, in the notes ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... lightnings held her with ghastly fascination. Suddenly all the guns ceased. Faintly in the distance she heard a tumult of human voices in the high notes of a savage cheer; the rattling din of rifles; the purring of automatics; and then, except for the firefly flashes of scattered shots around Engadir, silence and darkness. But she knew that chaos would soon be loosed again—chaos and murder, which were the product of her own chicanery. The Grays would find themselves in the trap of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... her that season the Firefly, and many misinterpreted her illy suppressed excitement and the scrutiny of those lambent eyes sending out their flame signals in search of answering lights. Even her secretary did not know that the dark shadows which ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... eerie is the lonely wood, But lo! the faeries light their firefly lamps, Elusive foxfire flames from marish damps; Hastes to the morris-dance an elfin brood; A far bell chimes, the cricket cheerly shrills, The droning beetle sounds his hoarse bassoon And hylas trill; eftsoon the rising moon The ambient ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... firefly, I will give you water to drink. The water of that. place is bitter; the water ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... wondrous reforms, quite beyond the describing; The odor of coffee they delight in inhaling, And promise the country to alter laws ailing. From the brow of the scholar coffee chases the wrinkles, And mirth in his eyes like a firefly twinkles; And he, who before was but a hack of old Homer, Becomes an original, and that 's no misnomer. Observe the astronomer who 's straining his eyes In watching the planets which soar thro' the skies; Alas, all those bright bodies seem hopelessly far Till coffee discloses his own ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Briscoe, who had returned unheard, smoking vigorously, and looking in the darkness as if a firefly were gliding to their side. "We shan't see the moon to-night. It must have set a couple ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... in what was going on with my companions; but upon making a sweep of the horizon, I perceived a few in sight, scattered here and there, evidently occupied with the carcasses of the slain. Climbing again into the saddle, I rode to the nearest, and found Firefly busily engaged in stripping a skin from a cow, and as it smoked from his bloody fingers, I must own, a slight nausea affected the regions of my stomach. Hot, naked, and fierce from excitement, the savage was tearing away at his butchering task, and I was glad ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Yoosoof conceived that the captain of the 'Firefly' might be obliged to take this course to get rid of the negroes already on board, who were of course consuming his provisions, besides being an extremely disagreeable cargo, many of them being diseased and covered with sores, owing to their cruel ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... busily out of the bayou past misty reed-girt islands into the indolent waters of the great lake, dragging after her the fleet of forty odd canoes. A cigar under the awning of the tiny poop suggested a great firefly in the blue shadows, where lounged zu Pfeiffer with his favourite brandy and seltzer ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... coffee plantations, and indeed throughout the rural portions of the country, there is a curious little insect called a cocuyo, answering in its general characteristics and nature to our firefly, though it is quadruple its size, and far the most brilliant insect of its kind known to naturalists. They float in phosphorescent clouds over the vegetation, emitting a lurid halo, like fairy torch-bearers to elfin crews. One at first sight is apt to compare them ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... with all the histories of her former loves. She would detail to them "how Jack sighed and squeezed her hand; how Tom went down on his knees; how Dick swore and Sam vowed; and how—she was still Miss Martineau." And thus would she narrate and they listen until the sun went down, and the firefly danced, while the frogs lifted up their voices ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the stars—wondrous night of wakefulness and hopeful music, throughout which I lay entranced at the foot of a wooded hill and was never for a moment uncompanioned by nightingale, cicala and firefly—I began to suffer from footsoreness, a bodily affliction against which romance, that certain salve for the maladies of the soul, is no remedy, or very little. Crossing the hills, over burning roads, through thorny brakes or by slopes ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... car vestibule to the tracks—only a drawn misery in her face. That was Doc over there, pacing up and down on the platform in the darkness—wasn't it weird the way his cigar glowed bright and then went out and then glowed bright again—like a gigantic firefly! ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... followed up the river as we rode, And rode till midnight when the college lights Began to glitter firefly-like in copse And linden alley: then we past an arch, Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings From four winged horses dark against the stars; And some inscription ran along the front, But deep in shadow: further on we ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... "Richard, this is Firefly. I have got her for you from Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, for you are now old enough to have a good mount of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... yet found a means whereby he can make a heat without increasing the temperature, as nature does it in the glow worm, or in the firefly. A certain electric energy will produce both light and heat, but it is found that much more of this energy is used in the heat than in ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... people who had gathered at the foot of the lawn were very silent; Dr. Howe, whose cigar glowed and faded like a larger firefly than those which were beginning to spangle the darkness, was the only one ready to talk. "Well," he said, knocking off his cigar ashes on the arm of his chair, "everything ready for to-morrow, girls? Trunks packed and gowns ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... of animated flame made a tiny meteor streak against the blackness of the foliage—where a firefly quested for its mate, switching on its marvelous little searchlight. Beyond, on the smooth, broad roadways, four-eyed chariots of power shot silently through the avenues of trees—the autos, like living dragons, half tamed ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... faded from the elms, And in the denser darkness of the boughs From time to time the firefly's tiny lamp Sparkles. How often in still summer dusks He paused to note that transient phantom spark Flash on the air—a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... love her. But 't was somehow so: he did discover Beauty in her, of the holding kind. Some men love the light, an' some the shade. Round that little Indian girl there played Soft an' shadowy tremblings, like the dark Under trees; yet now an' then a spark, Quick 's a firefly, flashing from her eyes, Made you think of summer-midnight skies. She was faithful, too, like midnight stars. As for Blackmouth, if you'd seen the scars Made by wounds he suffered for her sake, You'd have called ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... grassy bank we captured a firefly and shut him in between the glass and the face of our pocket compass. With such a guide we shaped our course for the Rapidan. After traveling nearly all night we lay down exhausted upon a bluff within sound of the river, and slept until sunrise. Hastening to our feet again, we hurried down to ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's one of them looking for ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... nursery rhymes of all countries many refer to insects, birds, animals, persons, actions, trades, food or children. In Chinese rhymes we have the cricket, cicada, spider, snail, firefly, ladybug and butterfly and others. Among fowls we have the bat, crow, magpie, cock, hen, duck and goose. Of animals, the dog, cow, horse, mule, donkey, camel, and mouse, are the favorites. There are also rhymes on the snake and frog, and others without number on places, things ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... Briefly, "The Firefly of France" is in the manner of the romance—in the manner of Dumas, of Walter Scott. It is a story of love, mystery, danger, and daring. It opens in the gorgeous St. Ives Hotel in New York and ends behind the Allied ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... rose with her flushing face, And the fuschia with her form of grace, The balsam bright, and the lupin's crest, That weaves a roof for the firefly's nest; The myrtle clusters, and dahlia tall, The jessamine fairest among them all; And the tremulous lips of the lily's bell, Join in the music we ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... lay over the salt meadows; the fairy trilling of the little owl had ceased. Marsh-fowl were sleepily astir; the last firefly floated low into the shrouded bushes and its lamp glimmered ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... emphasizes the darkness. Now and then you may see the larva of one of these, which is the glow-worm beside the path. You may get a very faint real illumination from him, lighting perhaps the space of your fingernail as he crawls along. He, too, merely serves to make the darkness visible. The firefly of the tropics is more spectacular. He blazes forth like a meteor, setting all the thicket aglow for a moment. The lights of our fireflies are more like a frosting of the darkness, as when the moon shines in winter and the light glints from ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... for the position of leader by the veteran A.C. Gregory, and on the 14th of August he left Brisbane in the Firefly, having on board a party of volunteer assistants who had been stirred by the widespread sympathy with the missing men to take an active part in the relief expedition. Unfortunately, those under Landsborough were, with one exception, unacquainted ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... brilliant Jamaican fireflies cruising about. The Guardsman refused at first to believe that any insect could produce so bright a light, and bemoaned the loss of his mental faculties, until I caught a firefly and showed him its two lamps gleaming ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... silence, which immediately closed around it. I leaned out of the window, my heart beating as though it must burst. After a brief space the silence was cloven once more by that note, as the darkness is cloven by a falling star or a firefly rising slowly like a rocket. But this time it was plain that the voice did not come, as I had imagined, from the garden, but from the house itself, from some corner of this ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... midsummer day had grown into a gray, firefly-lighted night, I laid me down on the narrow bed where I had slept as a child, and my mother kissed me as though I were a child. It seemed to purify me from all the sins of all the absent years, except, indeed, of that one unpardonable sin against ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the light had been darting about the room like a very much enlarged firefly, Jimmy did not know. It seemed to him like hours, for it had woven itself into an incoherent waking dream of his; and for a moment, as the mists of sleep passed away from his brain, he fancied that he was dreaming ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... of France played recklessly enough that evening. Algiers was en fete, and Cigarette was sparkling over the whole of the town like a humming-bird or a firefly—here and there, and everywhere, in a thousand places at once, as it seemed; staying long with none, making music and mirth with all. Waltzing like a thing possessed, pelting her lovers with a tempest storm of dragees, standing on the head of a gigantic Spahi en tableau amid a shower ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... plain to be seen why they did not invite us," said one old Firefly. "They did not need us because the moon ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... brilliant lines of illuminated cups, each a crimson, or white, or emerald star. Moreover, at the steps of the terrace below, there was a great bustle of boats; and each boat had its pink paper lantern glowing like a huge firefly in the darkness; and there was a confusion of chaffering and calling with brightly dressed figures descending by the light of torches, and disappearing into the unknown. Then these boats began to move away—with their glow-worm lanterns swaying in the black night. The hotel seemed ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... become a dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep; and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... better than all the lamps," said Martin, and put it out. He sat on his bunk and the gleam of his cigarette came and went. It was like a big firefly in the half dark cabin. "To-morrow," he said to himself, with a tingle running ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... fact, I am more interested in them than in anything else, not excepting the telephone—which makes Aladdin's lamp look like a firefly in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... been for my habitation, which I intended to make small. In five days it was finished; then, after lighting a fire, I stretched myself out in my dry bed of moss and leaves with a feeling that was almost triumphant. Let the rain now fall in torrents, putting out the firefly's lamp; let the wind and thunder roar their loudest, and the lightnings smite the earth with intolerable light, frightening the poor monkeys in their wet, leafy habitations, little would I heed it all on my dry bed, under my dry, palm-leaf thatch, with glorious fire to keep me company ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... pace, for it was growing late, and the shadows creeping from tree to tree. At length he saw a light in the distance. It was a very little light, not much larger than a star, and at first Ned thought it might be a giant firefly. However, he kept on and after a while it turned out to be a little candle in the window of a poor woodcutter's hut. Knocking on the door, it was presently opened by a strange looking man. He had long hairy ears like a donkey and was dressed in ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... Hugh, when the mast was fairly established, and the rigging properly arranged, "may I call my vessel the 'Firefly?'" ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Lytton at his villa, meeting there Mr. and Mrs. Walpole, Frederick Tennyson, and young Norton (Mrs. Norton's son), who married the Capri girl. She was not present, I am sorry to say. We walked home to the song of nightingales by starlight and firefly-light. Florence looks to us more beautiful than ever after Rome. I love the very stones of it, to say nothing of the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... not see, he would not desist. As he read he perceived the light becoming dim, and found the lamp ready to expire. With a sigh he laid down; but scarcely had he done so ere the wind began to rage furiously. The lamp, void of oil, was on the point of extinction, only a faint spark like that of a firefly remained. In that dim light a remarkable circumstance occurred. Astonished by the noise of the shutters, Nagendra looked towards the door near the bed. In that open doorway, shown by the dim light, a shadowy form appeared. The shape was that of a woman; but what he saw further ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee |
