"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... maidenhair; dark rocks, wrapped in velvet moss. Trees holding up screens of green lace between your eyes and the blue water of the loch. Pebbles white and round as pearls, or silver coins dropped by fairies in a big "flit." That's one of your similes! Grass running down to the edge of the water, and full of bluebells. Water the colour of drowned wallflowers. I don't believe your Highland lochs can be prettier or more idyllic, though this ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wish'd success. Yes Tooke! tho' foul Corruption's wolfish throng Outmalice Calumny's imposthum'd Tongue, 20 Thy Country's noblest and determin'd Choice, Soon shalt thou thrill the Senate with thy voice; With gradual Dawn bid Error's phantoms flit, Or wither with the lightning's flash of Wit; Or with sublimer mien and tones more deep, 25 Charm sworded Justice from mysterious Sleep, 'By violated Freedom's loud Lament, Her Lamps extinguish'd and her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and mist and midges, Now the tired planes drone homeward through the haze, And distant wood-fires wink behind the ridges, And the first flare some timorous Hun betrays; Now no shell circulates, but all men brood Over their evening food; The bats flit warily and owl and rat With muffled cries their shadowy loves pursue, And pleasant, Corporal, it is to chat In this hushed moment with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... "Ye scenes, that flit my memory o'er, Deck'd in the smiles which then ye wore, In the same gay and varied dress, I cannot but admire and bless! What though some anxious throbs would beat, Some fears within my breast retreat, Yet then I found sincere delight, Whenever beauty met my sight, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... lake reposing, Calmly I'll watch, while light and gloom Flit o'er its face till night is closing— Emblem of life's short doom! But tho', by turns, thus dark and shining, 'Tis still unlike man's changeful day, Whose light returns not, once declining, Whose cloud, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the stained glass was open, to throw light upon the half-finished sketch and the box of colours, while the rest of the perfumed apartment was steeped in a soft subdued glow. Absorbed in his work he seemed not to have heard the carriage stop, the bell ring twice, and a lady's dress flit along the passage. He had: but it was not his mother's shabby black dress that he expected, it was not for her that he posed at his desk, nor for her that he had provided the delicate bouquets of fine irises and tulips, or the sweetmeats and elegant decanters ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... kinds of money and I might as well be a bum!—no automobile or nothin'. I should have had a car long ago; all the big leaguers own their own tourin' cars. There's no class to you any more, if you don't flit from place to place ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... right and left, keeping a little in the advance, and with its muzzle close down to the surface, as if searching for a spoor. Most of the time it was out of sight, hidden by the darkness, but every now and then it would flit like a shadow across their track, and they could hear an occasional sniff as it lifted ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... half-shut eyes) Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain New stratagems the radiant lock to gain. Ah, cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late, Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate! Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, She dearly pays for ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Seaton. "Going to pass that star we were headed for—too fast to stop. I'm giving it a wide berth and picking out another one. There's a big planet a few million miles off in line with the main door, and another one almost dead ahead—that is, straight down. We sure are traveling. Look at that sun flit by!" ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery. Being obliged to say something, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... saw nothing of the sunset. Dusk came on, and the fireflies began to flit round them, before the two, who were so occupied with each other, came to the Cottage gate. When they did so, they had yet a few last words ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... with the sun nearly below the horizon, its rays illuminate the tops of the trees, while all below is dark and gloomy. Bats are on the wing, the night-hawk careers above the trees, fire-flies flit about, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... now and then showing a black stripe and a little gleam of red or yellow on its head, it is this Kinglet. If you see such a pygmy again in autumn, exploring the bare twigs, it is this Kinglet. When light snow is first powdering the spruces and bending the delicate hemlock branches, dusky shapes flit out of the green cover. Are they dry leaves blown about by the gust? No, leaves do not climb about in the face of the wind, or pry and peep into every cone crevice, crying 'twe-zee, twe-zee, twe-zee!' They are not leaves, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... watching the little dark things flit by, like the gibbering ghosts of the suitors in the Odyssey, into the darkness of the cave; and then turned to long talk of things concerning which it is best nowadays not to write; till it was time ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... may be allowed so far to indulge the imagination, as to suppose a being entirely confined to the nether world—some 'dusky melancholy sprite,' like Umbriel, who could 'flit on sooty pinions to the central earth,' but who was never permitted to 'sully the fair face of light,' and emerge into the regions of water and of air; and if this being should busy himself in investigating the structure of the globe, he might frame theories the exact converse ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... garden walls The wind blows from the silver seas; Black shadow of the cypress falls Between the moon-meshed olive-trees; Sleep-walking from their golden bowers, Flit disembodied ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... White shapes flit to and fro From mast to mast; 10 They feel the distant tempest That nears them fast: Great rocks are straight ahead, Great shoals not past; They shout to one another ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... make certainty doubly sure, I visited the place a week or so later, and found that my previous conclusion had been correct. I flushed the little madame from the nest, and saw her flit with a chirp to the twigs above, where she sat quietly watching her visitor, exhibiting no uneasiness whatever about her cot in the bushes with its three precious eggs. It was pleasing to note the calmness and dignity with which she regarded me. But where was that important personage, the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... man of near forty who had rarely fired a shot in sport, never in anger, and a stoutly built irascible Irishman, for whom a good shot meant lynching or lasting opprobrium. Visions of Bob Acres and Sir Lucius O'Trigger flit before us. We picture Tierney quoting "fighting Bob Acres" as to the advantage of a sideways posture; and we wonder whether the seconds, if only in regard for their own safety, did not omit to insert bullets. The ludicrous side of the affair soon ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... your little letter. Here there are lots of funny little lizards that run about in the dusty roads very fast, and then stand still with their heads up. Beautiful red cardinal birds and tanagers flit about in the woods, and the flowers are lovely. But you never saw such dust. Sometimes I lie on the ground outside and sometimes in the tent. I have a mosquito net because ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... without shadow; there was a murmur of content in her voice when she spoke, and a ripple of content in her laugh when she laughed. But the light quivered on Dolly's lip, and gleamed and sparkled in her brown eyes, and light and shadow could flit over her face with quick ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... forth these efforts, the ass bad been flying along at an undiminished rate of speed, and the country swept past him on either side. He passed long lines of trees by the roadside, he saw field after field flit by, and the distant hills went slowly along out of the line of his vision. Hitherto he had met with no one at all along the road, nor had he seen any cattle of any kind. His efforts to arrest the ass had ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up, "come like shadows—so depart." The "tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me "blushes" almost in vain "with blood of queens and kings." I know how I should have felt at one time in reading such ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... bathing itself in that glory-giving light, I noticed a fluttering bird, and stood still to watch its antics. Now it would cling, head downwards, to the slender twigs, wings and tail open; then, righting itself, it would flit from waving line to line, dropping lower and lower; and anon soar upwards a distance of twenty feet and alight to recommence the flitting and swaying and dropping towards the earth. It was one of those birds that have a polished plumage, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... of the door behind Zachariah was reassuring. At any rate he was alive and far too sprightly to have suffered a broken leg or a cracked skull. A few seconds later she saw Kenny's shadow flit hurriedly past the window as he dashed toward the kitchen. For some time she stood perfectly still, listening to the confused jumble of voices in the house across the way, debating whether she should hurry over to explain,—and perhaps to assist in dressing poor Zachariah's ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... then the islands of the Papefigues and the Papimanes, where Rabelais begins his most obvious and boldest meddling with the great ecclesiastical-political questions of the day—all these things and others flit past the reader as if in an actual voyage. Even here, however, he rather skirts than actually invades the most dangerous ground. It is the Decretals, not the doctrines, that are satirised, and Homenas, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... longitudinal sections of the mental column, it is no less difficult with respect to transverse sections. Under ordinary circumstances, external impressions persist so that they can be transfixed by a deliberate act of attention, and objects rarely flit over the external scene so rapidly as to allow us no time for a careful recognition of the impression. Not so in the case of the internal region of mind. The composite states of consciousness just described never remain perfectly uniform for the shortest conceivable duration. ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... and the whitened skull, They crouch in fear or in whispers wail, For the lingering night, and the coming gale. But at even-tide, when the shore is dim, And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim, They rise on the wing of the freshened breeze, And flit with the wind o'er the ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... and inheritance of Lady Digby, by Daventry, Norbrook, the residence of Grant, Huddington, the house of Robert Winter, and Shrewsbury, to Holt, in Flintshire. In some uneasy nightmare during that pilgrimage, did a faint prescience of that which was to come ever flit before the eyes of Ambrose Rookwood, as to the circumstances wherein he should journey that road again? From Holt the ladies walked barefoot to the "holy well," which, according to tradition, had sprung up on the place where Saint Winifred's ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... is often a military band. And to organize the dancers—not always an easy task in a crowded hall—and see that the business of introductions goes on duly, a small staff of energetic professional gentlemen, styled M.C.'s (which in London, you know, stands for Master of the Ceremonies), flit ever hither and thither amongst the throng, now catching a wildly errant waltzing couple in politely resolute arms and sending them back into the regular ring, now getting up sets for Lancers and quadrilles, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... all nevah seen her no mo'. Mahs Larue done sold that Georgy plantation 'bout five yeahs back an' move up fo' good on one his wife own up heah. An' little while back I hear tell they gwine sell it, too, an' flit way cross to Mexico somewhah. This heah war jest broke ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... we are going to start directly," cried Lady Louisa, who was a fluttering creature of three-and-thirty, always eager to flit from one scene to another. "If we don't, I really think we shall be late—and there is some dreadful law, isn't there, to prevent people being ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... closer, are countless forms of brightness and of beauty. You will find them among the shining coals that glimmer in scarlet and gold before you when the embers lie clear and warm upon the hearth. You will behold them among the shadows that flit across the embers with delicate grace ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... of this portion of the ride is a delight. The senses are kept keenly alert, for not only have we the Lake, the bay and the mountains, but part of the way we have flowers and shrubs by the thousands, bees and butterflies flit to and fro, and singing streams come foaming white from the snowbanks above, eager to reach the Lake. As our car-wheels dash across these streamlets they splash up the water on each side into sparkling diamonds and on every hand come up the sweet scents of growing, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... soldierly stuff; but he felt a distinct shiver flit along his back. His past life had not lacked thrilling adventures and strangely varied experiences with desperate men. Usually he met sudden emergencies rather calmly, sometimes with phlegmatic indifference. This passionate outburst on the priest's part, however, surprised ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... been thrown into prison for her deed of madness and now the executioner's axe awaits her. She sits on the damp straw, rocking a bundle, which she takes for her baby, and across her poor wrecked brain there flit once more pictures of all the scenes of her short-lived happiness. Then Faust enters with Mephisto, and tries to persuade her to escape with them. But she instinctively shrinks from her lover, loudly imploring God's and the Saint's pardon. God has ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... arms about each other, and were so full of their own feelings that they never saw Uncle Fact's tall shadow flit across them, as he stole away over the soft sand. Poor old gentleman! he was in a sad state of mind, and didn't know what to do; for in all his long life he had never ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... me Was there but One who—but of her anon. I said with men, and with the thoughts of men, 60 I held but slight communion; but instead, My joy was in the wilderness,—to breathe The difficult air of the iced mountain's top,[131] Where the birds dare not build—nor insect's wing Flit o'er the herbless granite; or to plunge Into the torrent, and to roll along On the swift whirl of the new-breaking wave Of river-stream, or Ocean, in their flow.[132] In these my early strength exulted; or To follow through the night the moving moon,[133] 70 The stars and their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... pointed them to the nave; but they dared not demand more minute instructions. They had not the courage to ask for It. Priam could not speak. There were moments with him when he could not speak lest his soul should come out of his mouth and flit irrecoverably away. And he could not find the tomb. Save for the outrageous tomb of mighty Newton, the nave seemed to be as naked as when it came into the world. Yet he was sure he was buried in the nave—and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... to flit through Green Valley streets like a chattering blue-jay. But now nobody saw her, only now and then at night, slinking along through the dark. And many a kindly heart ached for her, remembering how Fanny loved ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... it sooner,' whispered one. 'Unseen we flit into those homes of men where there are children, and for every day that we find a good child who gives pleasure to its parents and deserves their love God shortens our time of probation. The child does not know when we fly through the room, and when we smile with pleasure at it one year ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... had been assiduous in laying up money, which before I had squandered as fast as I obtained it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... persons whose conduct intimated no purpose of plunder, and who, in all other points, appeared to consult his welfare and his wishes, it occurred to our hero, that, during the worst crisis of his illness, a female figure, younger than his old Highland nurse, had appeared to flit around his couch. Of this, indeed, he had but a very indistinct recollection, but his suspicions were confirmed when, attentively listening, he often heard, in the course of the day, the voice of another female conversing in whispers with his attendant. Who ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... out with great skill; the hero is a madman, not in itself an attractive arrangement, but there is such admirable method in his madness, such fine poetic feeling in the conception of character, and the ghosts who flit through the pages of the story are so exceedingly human, that one feels quite at home with Peter, and is really sorry when, all too soon, his madness passes away, and he awakes to a new life, to find himself an old man. Apart from its strong dramatic interest, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... shapes of human existence are not cast in iron nor hewn in everlasting adamant, but moulded of the vapors that vanish away while the essence flits upward to the Infinite. There is a spiritual essence in this gray and lean old shape that shall flit upward too. Yes; doubtless there is a region where the lifelong shiver will pass away from his being, and that quiet sigh, which it has taken him so many years to breathe, will be brought to a close for ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... because it rests upon the insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature. Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures of Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of things seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... and pounce eagerly on chairs and telephones; the usual Fussy Family waste precious minutes in trying to get seats together, and get separated in the end. Undecided persons flit from one side to another. Gradually they all settle down, and stop their ears with the telephone-tubes, the prevailing expression being one of anxiety, combined with conscious and apologetic imbecility. Nervous people catch the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... have these visions flown? Am I once more sunk to a level with my former self? Once I thought that religion was a substance with me,—not a shadow, to flit, to mock, and to vanish when its succour was most needed; yet now does my ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... this beach we stand, And o'er our heads the sea-fowl flit, Our eyes behold a glorious land, And soon shall ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Riviera shoulder to shoulder. I had the will to be the same, but he was different now; and though we left Gaeta in the flesh at her villa, entertaining guests, Gaeta in the spirit would still flit between us as we went. The Boy would be thinking of her; I should know that he was thinking of her, and—there would be an end ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... has covered it, Deep in the sand it lies; While over me the long weeds flit And veil ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Arthur. He had no command over himself or his horses for some minutes; and at intervals during the afternoon the full felicity of the idea would steal upon him, and the smile of reminiscence would flit across his ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face, and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide Shiffney kept him in conversation. Margot Drake stood close to him, and fixed her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul Lane had come ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... wildly as she struggled against such thoughts, there would come to Olive's fancy dreams of what her life might have been. The holiness of lovers' love, of wedded love, of mother-love, would at times flit before her imagination; and her heart, still warm, still young, trembled to picture the lonely old age, the hearth blank and silent, the utter isolation from all those natural ties whose place not even the dearest bonds of adopted ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... few feet, then his mouth flew open, but no sound came out. Had he seen a white streak flit across the snow? He had. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... civilization; and the knight warring to recover the tomb of God was the poem among soldiers, and in entire consonance with his nature, Tennyson's poetic genius flits back into the poetic days, as I have seen birds flit back into a forest. In Tennyson's poetry two things are clear. They are mediaeval in location; they are modern in temper. Their geography is yesterday, their spirit is to-day; and so we have the questions and thoughts of our era as ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... of crimes. The woods flit and fly—in summer there are bluebells; in the opening there, when Spring comes, primroses. A parting, was it, twenty years ago? Vows broken? Not Minnie's!... She was faithful. How she nursed her mother! All her savings on the tombstone—wreaths under glass—daffodils ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... not an easier or a pleasanter height to climb than the Motterone, if, in Italian heat, you can endure the disappointment of seeing the summit, as you ascend, constantly flit away to a farther station. It seems to throw its head back, like a laughing senior when children struggle up for kissings. The party of five had come through the vines from Stresa and from Baveno. The mountain was strange ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to Fifth had to be. And, as long as they lived or until the Procyon made port, all responsibility rested: First, upon First Officer Deston; and second, upon Second Officer Jones. Therefore Theodore and Bernice Jones came aboard Lifecraft Two, and Deston asked Newman to flit across to ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... object beyond gives a full view, which reveals a tender sadness resting in the depths of those powerful dark eyes. Lady Rosamond is in a deep study—one which is not of an agreeable nature—one which she is not most likely to reveal. Alternate shades of displeasure, rebellion and defiance, flit across her brow, which remain, in quiet and apparently full possession, until reluctantly driven forth by the final ascendancy of reason, at the cost of many conflicting feelings of emotion ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... sublimity around; a river runs through, and bright flowers grow to the waters' edge. There is a thick, warm mist that the sun seeks vainly to pierce; trees, lofty and beautiful, wave to the airy motion of the birds; but there, a group of Indians gather; they flit to and fro with something like sorrow upon their dark brow; and in their midst lies a manly form, but his cheek, how deathly; his eye wild with the fitful fire of fever. One friend stands beside him, nay, I should say kneels, for he is ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... to-day a butterfly, With gorgeous wings of golden sheen, Flit lightly 'neath a sapphire sky Amid ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... which beetled far above; and the convent-bells were proclaiming the festival of the ensuing day. The ravine was overshadowed by fig-trees, vines, and myrtles, and the outer towers and walls of the fortress. It was dark and lonely, and the twilight-loving bats began to flit about. At length the soldier halted at a remote and ruined tower apparently intended to guard a Moorish aqueduct. He struck the foundation with the buttend of his spear. A rumbling sound was heard, and the solid stones yawned apart, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of former ages, methinks he ought to do as much for the present time, and assure posterity that there never was such a lamb as Catherine II., and that, so far from assassinating her own husband and Czar Ivan,[2] she wept over every chicken that she had for dinner. How crimes, like fashions, flit from clime to clime! Murder reigns under the Pole, while you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised to hear that there is such ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Young looked back at the hut. It was dark. He saw three boats flit silently by him toward the city, as if phantoms guided them. They crossed the moonbeams, and Young lost them in the dark shadows near ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... And all my comfort flies; Like Noah's dove, I flit between Rough seas and stormy skies. Anon the clouds depart, The wind and waters cease, While sweetly o'er my gladdened heart Expands the bow of peace; Bow of peace, bow of peace, ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... to a standstill, the shops were closed, the streets silent. From time to time an inhabitant, intimidated by their silence, would flit rapidly along the pavement, keeping close ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... they set sail; the great lateen swinging lazily under the pressure of those light airs that flit to and fro over the islands at evening and sunrise. All the arts of civilization have as yet failed to approach the easiest of all modes of progression and conveyance—sailing on a light breeze. For here is speed without friction, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... own emancipation by the murder of those who hold him in bondage. Take away from him this cause of dissatisfaction, and this incentive to insurrection, and then these "impracticable hopes," which now sometimes flit before his imagination, will no longer embitter his hours of labor, and urge him to the commission of those horrid deeds of massacre, which, though they may glut a momentary revenge, must result disastrously, not only to the slaves engaged ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... with the flying steel. As night draws on, the single figures melt into the dusk, until only an obscure stir and coming and going of black clusters is visible upon the loch. A little longer, and the first torch is kindled and begins to flit rapidly across the ice in a ring of yellow reflection, and this is followed by another and another, until the whole field is full of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have been lying for ten years on their shelves; the inns and restaurants keep open all night; the Military Commandant, his secretary, and the local garrison put on their best uniforms; the police flit to and fro like mad, while the effect on the ladies is beyond ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... worthily of the fullness of childhood? We cannot behold the little creatures which flit about before us otherwise than with delight, nay, with admiration; for they generally promise more than they perform and it seems that nature, among the other roguish tricks that she plays us, here also especially designs to make sport of us. The first ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... power. Non omnibus dormio, said Mecenes, and in this state more than one husband has acquired a sad certainty. Some ideas yet originate but are incoherent. There are doubtful lights, and see indistinct forms flit around. This condition does not last long, for sleep soon ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... glimmer in the tents, and as I sit at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and glee. Boys laugh and shout,—a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some tent, not an officer's,—a drum throbs far away in another,—wild kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead slave-masters,—and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous sound of that strange festival, half pow-wow, half prayer-meeting, which they know only as a "shout." These fires ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... trace it home. It was in that enchanting time when men are still asleep in their nests, and even "My Lord Sun" has not arisen from his; when the air is sweet and fresh, and as free from the dust of man's coming and going as if his tumults did not exist. It was so still that the flit of a wing was almost startling. The water lapped softly against ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Teiresias alone among the shades of the dead was possessed of understanding, for all the others flitted about like shadows (Odyssey, x., 487-495). And can it be said that the others, apart from Teiresias, had really overcome death? Is it to overcome death to flit about ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... of this interesting idea; if they will contemplate it in all its attitudes, and trace it to all its consequences, they will not hesitate to part with trivial objections to a Constitution, the rejection of which would in all probability put a final period to the Union. The airy phantoms that flit before the distempered imaginations of some of its adversaries would quickly give place to the more substantial forms of dangers, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the unhappy political fate of the Slav. Their countries are mere eddies left by the mighty currents of European conquest and reconquest, backward lands untouched by machine industry and avoided by capital, whose only living links with the moving world are the birds of passage, the immigrants who flit between the mines and cities of America and these isolated European villages. Held together by national costume, song, dance, festival, traditions, and language, these people live in the pale glory of a heroic past. Most of those who come to America are peasants who have ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... weare chaplets on their hede Of fresh Woodbine, be such as never were To love untrue in word, thought, ne dede, But aye stedfast; ne for pleasaunce ne fere, Though that they should their hertes al to-tere, Would never flit, but ever were stedfast Till that ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... common relations of life,—to the hour of business and the hour of repose, to the hall of audience and the garden-walk, and giving equally its deceptive coloring to the thoughts that stir him when borne on the shoulders of men through a prostrate crowd, and those that flit dimly through his brain as he lays a weary head upon a solitary pillow. And hence, too, he becomes for himself, as well as for others, an object of constant contemplation,—valuing things as they contribute to his pleasure, and men as they subject themselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... soliloquizes: "What though she prefer a basilisk's kiss to mine? Because my short-lived joy may cause her eternal sorrow, shall I reject those pleasures sought so long, desired so earnestly? That will I not, by Heaven! Mine she is, and mine she shall be, though Reginald's bleeding ghost flit before me and thunder in my ear 'Hold! Hold!'—Peace, stormy heart, she comes." Reginald's ghost does not flit, because Reginald is still in the flesh, though not in very much flesh. He is Osmond's brother and Angela's father, and the wicked Earl thought that he had murdered him. It turns out, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... warbles a sweet assurance of this as I pass near by. Breaking off the clear crystal song, he turns his wee head from side to side eyeing me wisely as slowly I plod with moccasined feet. Then again he yields himself to his song of joy. Flit, flit hither and yon, he fills the summer sky with his swift, sweet melody. And truly does it seem his vigorous freedom lies more in his little spirit than in ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... my beer I sit, While golden moments flit. Alas! They pass Unheeded by; And, as they fly, I, Being dry, Sit idly sipping here ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... about the room, looking at everything, listening at the doors, looking up the chimney. Then they go to the clothes basket and raise the lid. Up come four arms, and then two house-fairies stand up in the basket, and get out with the help of the chair. They, also, flit about the room, looking at things. Meanwhile the brownies have taken the broom and dust pan, and begun to sweep, especially over by the outside door and by the wood box. The fairies take a chair, and climb up by the ...
— The Christmas Dinner • Shepherd Knapp
... filly, witch-ridden, Skims over the meadow; The house-dog is barking, The night-owl is hooting, The glow-worm is sparkling, The meteor is shooting; And forms, which lie So stiff and still, In their shrouds so chill, Through the live-long day, Now burst their clay, And flit through the sky, On their dusky pinions: Hell's dominions Keep holiday. Sisters, sisters, wherever your watches Are kept, fleet hither to me, Fleet hither, fleet hither, and leave earth's wretches ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... the lily blooms," he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, "to the cliffs round which the eagles flit,—what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On one side are the sylvan valleys, the thick grown ravines, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... leg swings 'cross on an outlaw hawse And my spurs clinch into his hide, He kin r'ar and pitch over hill and ditch, But wherever he goes I'll ride. Let 'im spin and flop like a crazy top, Or flit like a wind-whipped smoke, But he'll know the feel of my rowelled heel Till he's ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... of the luxury of the Renaissance, traveling was at that time very disagreeable; everywhere in Europe it was as difficult then as it is now in the Orient. Great lords and ladies, who to-day flit across the country in comfortable railway carriages, traveled in the sixteenth century, even in the most civilized states of Europe, mounted on horses or mules, or slowly in sedan-chairs, exposed to all the inclemencies of wind and weather, and unpaved ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... along the Rue de Rivoli and in the great square of the Revolution, the garden was left to the silence of its statues and its thousand memories. I often used to wonder, as I looked through the iron railing at nightfall, what might go on there and whether historic shades might not flit about in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... daffodil, and so on. They advance with slowly swaying motion, with wreaths uplifted until they reach the stage, where sit the guests of honor. There they bow low, then lay the garlands at their feet, and retire, forming ingeniously pretty groups and figures, while bees and butterflies flit in and out. See the bees pursuing the little pink rosebuds until at last they join hands and dance gaily away, only ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... rich and near at hand as in England, but a sort of voice of the woods, thin and far away, as fits these solemn places. Or you hear suddenly the hollow, eager, violent barking of dogs; scared deer flit past you through the fringes of the wood; then a man or two running, in green blouse, with gun and game-bag on a bandolier; and then, out of the thick of the trees, comes the jar of rifle-shots. Or perhaps the hounds are out, and horns are blown, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... morals, as you say, our ideas do not agree, and cannot agree,' she responded, and something menacing seemed to flit over her brows, while her lips ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... there were plenty of living men only biding their time and waiting their opportunity. It was only night that these people desired; a good black night so that no one could see them flit about. You felt in the small of your back as you rode along that ugly faces were looking at you from the silent houses, and that at any moment shots might ring out suddenly and bear you to the ground. But that was merely a preliminary feeling. Soon it added zest to the entertainment. What, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... giant-mother, 'which thou beholdest to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the shadows descending ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... know, by what time the moonlight On her nest of shadows will sit, Out on the dim lawn gliding That shadow of shadows will flit. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill; Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil. In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song. All adown the pale blue mantle of the mountains far away Stream the tresses of the twilight flying in the wake of day. Night comes; soon alone shall fancy follow sadly ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... fox, baying in the moonlight, steals into the gloom; the wolves howl in the ravine as thou rushest through—thou hearest not their cries, they fly before the wild splendor of thine eyes! Thou readiest the plain. Corpse-lights from the swamps flit on with thee; wildly laughing, thou criest: 'Race on with me, friends!' They dance round thy cap, and bathe thy breast with streams of pale, blue light; then, joined in brotherly embrace, for a moment ye speed together on; but the grave-lights are the first to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... evil spirits did flit about the banished Sintram, but it was without his calling them up. In his dreams he often saw the wicked enchantress Venus, in her golden chariot drawn by winged cats, pass over the battlements of the stone fortress, and heard ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... simple tone can rouse it; a smile, or even a sigh Can make the ghost-like shadows flit before my dreaming eye; 'Tis one of life's deep mysteries; in vain we seek to trace The hidden spell's dark origin that chains our feeble race: But, oh! may we not fancy, may we not sweetly think, 'Tis between us and another ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... The furrows of care shall be smoothed out of your manly brow: gentle hands will bind up your wounds—even the one you got from that girl a dozen years ago, if it isn't healed yet. The shadows of gloomy and soul-debasing Theory will flit away from your bewildered brain, and in this healthful atmosphere your spirit will regain its long-lost tone, and embrace once more the ethereal images of Hope and Joy and Faith. Probably you will yet find some one to love in this wide world of sorrow; anyway, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... goin' to bother us any! Make up yer mind to that same, boy," continued the tall vagrant, complacently. "When the time comes, an' the weather lets up on us a bit, why, we'll jest flit outen this region by the back door. I'm only mad as hops 'bout ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... pale head. "Look at these clouds which flit across the heavens; at these swallows which cut the air. D'Artagnan moves more quickly than the clouds or the birds; D'Artagnan is the wind which ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to you! how severe its voice! how forbidding its aspect! With what animation, on the contrary, do you enter into the mere pursuits of time and the world! What bright anticipations of joy and happiness flit before your eyes! How you are struck and dazzled at the view of the prizes of this life, as they are called! How you admire the elegancies of art, the brilliance of wealth, or the force of intellect! According to your opportunities you mix in the world, you meet and converse with ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... such as a coot, swims right away when it is tumbled into water for the first time. So chicks peck without any learning or teaching, very young ducklings catch small moths that flit by, and young plovers lie low when the danger-signal sounds. But birds seem strangely limited as regards many of these instinctive capacities—limited when compared with the "little-brained" ants and bees, which have from the first ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... guessing what thy sickness can be, nor will he scold thee at all, but he will rather beg every one to take all the care they can of thee. After that he will set off west to the Firths, and Sigmund with him, for he will have to flit all his goods home from the Firths west, and he will be away till the summer is far spent. But when men ride to the Thing, and after all have ridden from the Dales that mean to ride thither; then thou must rise from thy bed and summon ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... in the same field. You can't stand still half a minute except against a wall. Even when he makes friends with you, his favors never taste right. Messing with him is like drinking out of a pewter mug. And so it is everywhere. Let your shadow once flit across a Spaniard's path, and he'll always see it there. If you've never lived in any but these damned clockworky European towns, you can't imagine the state of things in a South American seaport—one half the population waiting round the corner for the other half. But I don't see that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... night. But few flowers are open; only those of the sweet-scented Paullinia greet me with a balmy fragrance, and thine, lofty mango, the dark shade of whose leafy crown shields me from the dews of night. Moths flit, ghost-like, round the seductive light of my lantern. The meadows, ever breathing freshness, are now saturated with dew, and I feel the damp of the night air on my heated limbs. A Cicada, a fellow-lodger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... of butterflies would go into ecstasies over the splendid varieties that flutter and flit in the air, and the countless multitude of different insects would be well worth special study; amongst the latter are verified the most curious mimetic facts that ever the unprejudiced mind of a man of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... with a massy key. "The lassie fund it," he whispered to Dickson, "somewhere about the kitchen—and I guessed it was the key o' this castle. I was thinkin' that if things got ower hot it would be a good plan to flit here. Change our base, like." The Chieftain's occasional studies in war had trained his tongue to a ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... ancient ribs of granite rock, Else to yon depths profound it you will hurl. A murky vapor thickens night. Hark! Through the woods the tempests roar! The owlets flit in wild affright. Hark! Splinter'd are the columns that upbore The leafy palace, green for aye: The shivered branches whirr and sigh, Yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan, The roots, upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... she'll be done honestly by, even if she is of humble station. 'Tis best, and cheapest too, in the long run.' The coachman was apparently imagining the dove about to flit away to be one of the pretty maid-servants that abounded in Enckworth Court; such escapades as these were not unfrequent among them, a fair face having been deemed a sufficient recommendation to service in ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... flit, as here I sit With wet-fring'd eyes, And never rime or reason to it— Like a maze of flies! The boys would jump and catch your shoulder Just for the fun of it— They tease you worse as you grow older Because you want none ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... air. All the faculties are on the alert, and the motion is astonishingly smooth and elastic. The machine responds instantly to the slightest movement of the operator; the air rushes by one's ears; the trees and bushes flit away underneath, and the landing comes all too quickly. Skating, sliding, and bicycling are not to be compared for a moment to aerial conveyance, in which, perhaps, zest is added by the spice of danger. For ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... It was getting cold fast! He wished that he had a com-unit. Because of the interference in the Burn he had left it behind—but with one he might be able now to locate some settlement. All that remained was to find the seashore and, with it as a guide, flit south towards the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... of Povi-whah have melted again into Mother Earth. Silent are the groves where the Ancient Others carved their homes from the rock walls of the heights. Wings of vivid blue flit in the sunlight from the portal of the star to bough of the pinyon tree—and a brooding silence rests over those high levels;—only the wind whispers in the pines, and the old Indians point to the bird of azure and tell of a Demon-maid who came once from ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... morning, and the piercing wind makes the khaki uniforms that flit here and there look altogether unseasonable. On the other side of the station is Rev. Father Ryan, the Roman Catholic chaplain, in khaki uniform and helmet, looking a soldier every inch of him,—a good man, too, and a gentleman, as we Aldershot folks ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... the flag! Up, up, betimes, and proudly speak of it; A lordly thing to see on tower and crag, O'er which,—as eagles flit, With eyes a-fire, and wings of phantasy,— Our memories hang superb! The foes we frown upon shall feel the curb Of our full sway; and they shall shamed be Who wrong, with sword or pen, The Code that keeps us free. For there's no sight, in summer or in spring, Like ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... of the happy hours Enjoyed by thee in fair Italia's bowers, Where, lingering yet, the ghost of ancient wit Midst modern monks profanely dares to flit. And pagan spirits, by the Pope unlaid, Haunt every stream and sing through every shade. There still the bard who (if his numbers be His tongue's light echo) must have talked like thee,— The courtly ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... with the fret-saw, and even in the long vacation on the seashore your time is taken up with rowing, sailing, and swimming; while I lie lost in idle thought on the sand, staring at the mysteriously changing expressions that flit over the countenance of the sea. And that is why your eyes are so clear. To be like ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... around them. Empires may rise and may fall, dynasties may perish, great wars may come and go, but, heedless of it all, those two shall embrace each other for ever and aye, in their lonely shrine by the side of the sounding ocean. I sometimes have thought that their spirits flit like shadowy sea-mews over the wild waters of the bay. No cross or symbol marks their resting-place, but old Madge puts wild flowers upon it at times, and when I pass on my daily walk and see the fresh blossoms scattered over the sand, I think of the strange couple who came from afar, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... valuable to you. It has been said that the difference between clever and ordinary men is often mainly {58} a difference in the power of directing and controlling the mind through the attention. Some minds go wool gathering or day dreaming, and flit from one thing to another in a desultory manner. Others go straight ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke all up. I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul then, and I was Consul-General—for the United ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Emperor replied, Who deemed it a lesson to cure them of pride; "And I trust that the thread of our lives will spin out, Ere we ever again attempt such a rout. Alas! we must own we were never designed To flit in the sunshine, or soar on the wind; Nature's changeless decree has allotted its share To each beast of the field, to each bird of the air, To each reptile that creeps, to each insect that flies; And who dares to rebel against ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... November, therefore, whenever the weather is anything like favourable, presents an animated scene. Eight-oars pass along, the measured pull of the oars in the rowlocks marking the time in musical cadence with their plashing dip in the water; perilous skiffs flit like fire-flies over the glassy surface of the river; men lounge about in the house-boats and barges, or gather together at King's, or Hall's, and industriously promulgate small talk and tobacco-smoke. All is gay and bustling. Although the feet of the strollers ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Shades that flit, besides the shades of the night; Rustling sobs besides the sobs of the wind; Steps of feet that pace with his on the right, Steps that pace on the left, and steps behind. "Nay, no fear that I shall be lone, at least! Lo, there are throngs ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... dies with sorrow! and where most I love, Sheds all its bitterness; delighting still To tell the many miseries that flit At times across me! Those I lightly prize Partake the sunshine of my happier hours, Although I seek them with far less delight! The loud laugh dwells not here, the sportive dance, The carol of unconscious levity, And yet how oft, how willingly ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... world was full of friendly, gracious, interesting people. Circumstance spun one to and fro among the groups and companies; how could one give a unique regard, when there were so many that claimed allegiance and admiration? He saw others flit from passion to passion, from friendship to friendship—Hugh's aim was rather to be the same, to be loyal and true, to be able to take up a suspended friendship where he had laid it down; the most shameful thing in the world seemed to him the ebbing away ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Square, or the Piazza, is more than the centre of Venice: to a large extent it is Venice. Good Venetians when they die flit evermore among ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... who is fairer than the children of men, who is all love, and hath no spot in him. Is it not a sweet word, a Redeemer to captives, a Saviour to sinners? And will not the soul rise up, and go forth out of itself? And will it not choose to flit(480) unto him who is the desire of all nations? Will it not go unto him for food and clothing? Love then is the soul's journey and motion towards Jesus, whom faith hath brought in such a good ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... because our sun is declining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening, or are they, as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the sun as it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian glory? Are they but the little evanishing clouds that flit between the people and the great objects for which the Constitution was established? I hopefully look toward the reaction which will establish the fact that our sun is still in the ascendant—that that cloud which has so long covered ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... himself told us what fancies he is willing shall flit through the minds of listeners to the overture to his opera. It was performed at a concert under his direction while he was a political refugee at Zurich, and for the programme of the concert he wrote a synopsis of its musical and poetical contents which I shall ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... cushions, presented a pitiful profile. She appeared much older, as though her age had been doubled by her tears. The brutal blow had made her freshness and her marvelous youth flit away with doleful suddenness. Her half-opened eyes were encircled with temporary wrinkles. Her nose had taken on the livid sharpness of the dead; her great mass of hair, reddening under the blow, was disheveled in golden, undulating tangles. Something ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... my theme Has died into an echo. It is fit The spell should break of this protracted dream. The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit My midnight lamp,—and what is writ, is writ; Would it were worthier, but I am not now That which I have been, and my visions flit Less palpably before me—and the glow Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the woodland, the home of wild beasts and of hostile ghosts, of deadly spirits and of fierce enemies, gleams luridly through every line. The fen and the forest are dim and dark; will-o'-the-wisps flit above them, and gloom closes them in; wolves and wild boars lurk there, the quagmire opens its jaws and swallows the horse and his rider; the foeman comes through it to bring fire and slaughter to the clan-village ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... cried Patty, jumping up and dancing about the room; "but I must flit, girls,—I have an engagement at five. Wait, what about motors? I'm sure we ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... mine, a Lady Cordelia Carne, who was murdered, when her husband was away, and buried down there, after being thrown into the moat. The old people say that whenever her ghost is walking, the water of the moat bursts in and covers the floor of the vaults, that she may flit along it, as she used to do. But of course one must not listen to ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... stones that held the houses of the dead. They are tapu; about them flit the veinahae, the matiahae, and the etuahae, dread vampires and ghosts that have charge of the corpse and wait to seize the living. Well have these ghoulish phantoms feasted; whole islands are theirs, and soon they will sit upon the paepae ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... having been duly invited, its eight occupants come in, and each finds a place on a palliasse. It is a warm, still night. The great doors of the Coach-house stand wide open. The stars are out thick by this time. Little black bats flit and swoop about in the darkness. If you keep very still you can just hear the gentle "hshshsh, hshshsh" of the sea. The candle flickers as the night gives a little sigh. A few Cubs are rolling about on their straw beds. "Shut up, all!" commands an imperious ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... emptiness of this silent mansion, Pierre continued seeking somebody, a porter, a servant; and, fancying that he saw a shadow flit by, he decided to pass through another arch which led to a little garden fringing the Tiber. On this side the facade of the building was quite plain, displaying nothing beyond its three rows of symmetrically disposed windows. However, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... unresolved melody. The melody which circumscribes itself like Giotto's O is almost as tangible a thing as a statue; it has almost contour. But this melody afloat in the air, flying like a bird, without alighting for more than a moment's swaying poise, as the notes flit from strings to voice, and from voice to wood and wind, is more than a mere heightening of speech: it partakes of the nature of thought, but it is more than thought; it is the whole expression of the subconscious life, saying more of himself than any person of the drama ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... should be as easy to expel an obnoxious thought from your mind as it is to shake a stone out of your shoe; and till a man can do that it is just nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over Nature, and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave, and prey to the bat-winged phantoms that flit through the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... streets are alive with the rush of numerous cahars[10] and sadoes, drawn by the agile native pony, and with itinerant vendors, who, bearing their baskets suspended from their shoulders by the pikulan, or cross-piece, each with a lamp fixed to the rearmost basket, flit to and fro ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold |
