"Lightning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... * And sore despair despaireth me For friend who erst abode wi' me * Crowning my cup with gladdest gree: It minds me o' one who jilted me * To mourn my bitter liberty. Say sooth, thou fair sheet lightning! shall * We meet once more in joy and glee? O blamer! spare to me thy blame * My Lord hath sent this dule to dree, Of friend who left me, fain to flee; * Of Time that breeds calamity: All bliss hath fled the heart of me * Since Fortune proved mine enemy. He[FN307] brimmed a bowl ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... granddaughter's brow Madame Valcour saw the murk of the storm. "The lightning must strike some time, you are thinking, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... reader thinks; but, in reality, it was only an electric current, awakening a series of related thoughts; as a flash of lightning at night illumines at once a crowd of objects in a landscape, which the mind perceives, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... reason that while he had been engaged in conversation with General Putnam, a storm that had been threatening that afternoon and evening, broke upon them, the wind blew a gale and the rain poured down in torrents, the lightning was incessant and the roar of the thunder terrific. It was indeed ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... noise, and at the same moment I saw that the said officer, raising his sabre, gave the young man a blow on the forehead with it, using the cutting edge, by which the latter fell down upon the step by the wall of' the Casa Marchesini, but with almost the rapidity of lightning he got up again, and when he was standing I saw the blood was flowing from the place where he was struck.... Because this act produced upon me a disagreeable impression I ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... time - like the second note," was all he said. "McCormick, since we know where the lightning is going to strike, don't you think it would be wiser to make our headquarters in one of ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... that he which weareth the bay leaf had been free from lightning, and the eagle's pen a preservative against thunder; that labour had been enemy to love, and the eschewing of idleness an antidote against fancy; but I see by proof, there is no adamant so hard, but the blood of a goat will make ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... one of the boys, who was driving a trim-looking bay, and who had crossed the line at the ending of the course second only to a pacer that could "speed like a streak of lightning," as the boys said,—"Hellow, deacon; ain't you going to shake out old shamble-heels, and show us fellows what speed is to-day?" And the merry-hearted chap, son of the principal lawyer of the place, laughed heartily at his challenge, while the other drivers looked at ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... did so, with a lightning movement of which the most astute observer could never have supposed him capable, Sam Tuk whipped a loaded rubber tube from his sleeve and struck Kerry a shrewd blow across the back of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... incident was connected with it. The roots of a cypress tree were found entwined about his skull and a scion from the tree was carried to England and planted in the garden adjoining Windsor Palace. It is a still more curious fact that the tree beneath which Andre was captured was struck by lightning on the day of Benedict Arnold's death in London. Further reference will be made to Andre in our description of Tarrytown, and also of Haverstraw, where Arnold and Andre met at the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... lightning, yet preserues the skinne, So did these words split Lucklesse-fortunes hart, Her smiling Superficies, lockt within A deepe exulcerated festring smart; Heere shee perceiu'd her first disgrace begin, And wordlesse from the heauens takes her depart. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Morven, and stopped in the midst of his course. Dark he leaned on his spear rolling his red eyes around. Silent and tall he seemed as an oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven. His thousands pour around the hero, and the darkness of battle gathers ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... to Tom, and in that instant Chow jumped the intruder. With surprising agility for his rotund bulk, the cook bore down on him and let fly a gnarled fist at the stranger's jaw. Tom followed up like lightning, grabbing the man's wrist and yanking his ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... hearts, and," added I, in a whisper, "glances; Jupiter, partly because of your lightning, which you lock up in the said glances,—principally because all things are subservient to you; Neptune, because you are as changeable as the seas; Vulcan, because you live among the flames you excite; ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wind abated in the course of an hour, but the deluge of rain continued until about three o'clock in the morning; the sky was lighted up by almost incessant flashes of pallid lightning, and the thunder pealing from side to side without interruption. Our clothing, hammocks, and goods were thoroughly soaked by the streams of water which trickled through between the planks. In the morning all was quiet, but an opaque, leaden mass of clouds overspread ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... But in so doing he fell in with a natural enemy, which came near proving fatal. A terrific thunderstorm, gradually growing into a tornado, crossed the path of the ship. The ocean was lashed into waves mountain high. The crash of the thunder rent the sky. A stroke of lightning struck the main-mast, and ripped up the deck, narrowly missing the magazine. The ship sprung a leak; and the grewsome sound of the pumps mingled with the roar of the waves, and the shrieking of the winds. For several days the stormy weather continued. Then followed ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... lightning in her folds she kept, The sky, the stars, the dew— Impassioned, in her youth she swept On Vimy, ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... fox, who kept on flattering him all the way until Titehugge thought him the first-ratest fellow in the whole world. Presently they came to the hollow tree, and Titehugge, without waiting to ask any questions, shinned up like a streak of lightning, and began smelling down the hole. 'But, it looks very dark down here,' cried he at last 'and I ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... contest—blinding their eyes to the "lines of empire" in the "infant face of that cradled Hercules," and the tremendous sprawlings of his nascent strength—and seeking to degrade those forests into whose depths a path for the sunbeams must be hewn, and where, lightning appears to enter trembling, and to withdraw in haste; forests which must one day drop down a poet, whose genius shall be worthy of their age, their vastitude, the beauty which they inclose, and the load of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... bare to the clouds above, and to the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. But above the brows of these scarped cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few steps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches, angular, and wild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of the ravine,—and we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness; the swathes of its corn glowing and burning from field to field: its pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards, and flowery garden, and goodly with steep-roofed ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... rendered sweeter by distance, while the whippoorwill's sprightly song echoed along the adjacent groves. Far in the eastern horizon hung a pile of brazen clouds, which had passed from the north, over which, the crinkling red lightning momentarily darted, and at times, long peals of thunder were faintly heard. They walked to a point of the beach, where stood a large rock whose base was washed by every tide. On this rock they seated themselves, and enjoyed ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... lightning flash he saw his car with himself and Miss Grammont—Miss Seyffert had probably fallen out—traversing Europe and Asia in headlong flight. To a sunlit ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... his tribe not one was more highly esteemed than Ug, the son of Zug. He was one of the nicest young prehistoric men that ever sprang seven feet into the air to avoid the impulsive bite of a sabre-tooth tiger, or cheered the hearts of grave elders searching for inter-tribal talent by his lightning sprints in front of excitable mammoths. Everybody liked Ug, and it was a matter of surprise to his friends that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... see, the Spaniard was coming in our direction, and coming like greased lightning. The six-pounders on the superstructure had not been able to stop her, and things began to ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... knew the place better than I did, took care to warn one of the roughest of my boatmen to seize hold of a bar which was before him, and which "Lamp" knew would be charged later with electricity, and to hold on to it for dear life. We heard a rumbling sound inside, and finally saw flashes resembling lightning, and we naturally seized on whatever was before us to await the opening of "Hell." After more sheet lightning the veil was drawn aside and there were before us representations of human beings in every attitude of agony. At the same moment the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... he could not understand. He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... walked out amid the first mutterings of the storm. He found a taxi and drove to his rooms. For an hour he sat before his window, watching the lightning play, fighting the thoughts which beat upon his brain, fighting all the time a losing battle. At midnight the storm had ceased. He walked back through the rain-streaming streets. The air was filled with sweet and pungent perfumes. The heaviness ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... picture affected a lover of art who stood before it: "The Scourging of Heliodorus is full of energy, power, and movement. The horse and his rider are irresistible, and the scourging youths, terrible as embodied lightning; mortal weapons and mortal muscles are powerless as infancy before such supernatural energies. Like flax before the flame—like leaves before the storm—the strong man and his attendants ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... parts of the State were known to be at large in that neighbourhood. Obviously this man, who displayed such a disinclination to meet the police, must be a criminal, and just as obviously must he be one of the men wanted for the gold escort robbery. The sergeant decided in one lightning flash on a plan that he hoped would startle the man into betraying himself. The moment Bradby turned to retreat and found himself hemmed in, the other walked over to him, scrutinised him carefully, ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... did go on, and, roaring over the roof, made conversation difficult. The bushmen called it a "bit of a storm"; but every square inch of the heavens seemed occupied by lightning and thunder-bolts. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the Emperor is passionately fond). He is a very tall powerful man, and his way is to be placed at the top of the machine, when a man mounts astride on his shoulders, and another on his, and so on till there are fourteen; when a signal is given, with the rapidity of lightning down they go. On this occasion the Emperor took the Johnstones on his back, and she says their astonishment at the position they occupied, and at the rapidity of the descent, was beyond everything amusing. They were asked how they liked it, and they said they thought ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... very slow and stupid at mathematics, and the new mistress was so quick, she worked away like lightning, and I could not follow her. She would rush through a proposition in Euclid, proving that some figure was, or was not equal to some other figure, and leave me stranded vainly trying to understand the first proof when she was at the last, and I couldn't ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... ramparts are left. On its watch-tower, the Torre de la Vela, 85 ft. high, the flag of Ferdinand and Isabella was first raised, in token of the Spanish conquest of Granada, on the 2nd of January 1492. A turret containing a huge bell was added in the 18th century, and restored after being injured by lightning in 1881. Beyond the Alcazaba is the palace of the Moorish kings, or Alhambra properly so-called; and beyond this, again, is the Alhambra Alta (Upper Alhambra), originally tenanted by officials and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... about coming back. I can dump him into the river, without help. It is going to be a bad night," the fellow said, uneasily looking up at the storm clouds that were gathering. As the lightning began to flash and the thunder to roll distantly, Rigoletto turned toward Mantua, while Sparafucile ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... as her face. And when he ask her name and she tell him, her firz' name, and say tha'z the name of her grand'-mere, he's am-aze'! But when he see her mother meeting them he's not surprise', he's juz' lightning-struck. ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... simple creature. Even now, after all that's happened, she'd be pleased like a child if you took her to a fair where there were merry-go-rounds. Oh, don't hate her. And don't hate Roger." Wildness flashed through her like lightning through a dense dark cloud. "Don't hate him, Richard! Take your mind off both of us. We're all right. I can manage everything quite well. I'm hard. I haven't got all those fine feelings you think I have. I'm quite hard. I can arrange everything beautifully. Roger's happy ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... A Guide, Containing Directions for Treatment in Bleeding, Cuts, Bruises, Sprains, Broken Bones, Dislocations, Railway and Steamboat Accidents, Burns and Scalds, Bites of Mad Dogs, Cholera, Injured Eyes, Choking, Poisons, Fits, Sun-stroke, Lightning, Drowning, etc., etc. By Alfred Smee, F.R.S. Illustrated with numerous Engravings. Appendix by Dr. Trall. Price, prepaid, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... on, hot and breathless. Low growls of distant thunder were heard at intervals, and in the eastern sky the lightning played. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... foam-covered surface of the water. The other boats pulled away to avoid the same fate, which it seemed likely would be theirs, for the old lone whale was savagely bent on mischief it was very evident, when he suddenly sounded, dragging out the line like lightning after him. A second line was secured to the first, but that reached the bitter end before the first mate's boat, engaged in trying to rescue the drowning men, could come up, and it was cut to save the boat from being dragged under water. Not till then could the captain ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... purple folds his bier! See, O see the latest trophies, which our hero's glory sealed, When his glaive with gore was drunken on great Karpinissi's field! In the murkiest hour of midnight did we at his call arise; Through the gloom like lightning-flashes flashed the fury from our eyes; With a shout, across our knees we snapped the scabbards of our swords, Better down to mow the harvest of the mellow Turkish hordes; And we clasped our hands together, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Friendship, you may expect as the Due of your Generosity. What at present in your ill View you promise your self from me, will be followed by Distaste and Satiety; but the Transports of a virtuous Love are the least Part of its Happiness. The Raptures of innocent Passion are but like Lightning to the Day, they rather interrupt than advance the Pleasure of it. How happy then is that Life to be, where the highest Pleasures of Sense are but the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... down on him as any of you," airily responded Vose; "and, if I git the chance to draw bead on him, I'll do it quicker'n lightning. Fact is, the hope of having that same heavenly privilege was as strong a rope in pulling me up the trail after you as was the wish to keep you folks from gettin' lost. But, pards, Hercules is rested and I guess likely your animals are the ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... grew worse to bear, the parching and scorching of each day being carried over into the next. What the newspapers call a heat-wave was drawing to its culmination, which generally reaches the verge of the unbearable, even to the well and strong, just before the "change"—that lightning change to coolness, and even coldness, which comes while one draws a breath. How many a life has hung upon the chance of the blessed moment coming ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the storm broke. But it was useless. Long before we had gained the edge of the valley the rain had commenced in the mountains,—small local storms, resembling delicate violet-coloured veils, hung in the dense pall of the clouds. There were far flashes of lightning, and the subdued roar of distant thunder, rapidly growing louder as the storm approached. Unable to escape a drenching, we paused a moment to wonder at the sight; to marvel—and shrink a little too—at the wild, incessant lightning. ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... anchored halfway down the harbour. Next day we got out to sea on our voyage to Sydney. We were all glad to leave Port Essington—it was like escaping from an oven. During our stay the sky was generally overcast, with heavy cumuli, and distant lightning at night, but no rain fell, and the heat was excessive. These were indications of the approaching change of the monsoon—the rainy season, with a wind more or less westerly, usually commencing in December and continuing ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... penetrating through the soil, lodged some inches deep in solid chalk rock. Upon being raised, the stone was found to weigh fifty-six pounds. It fell in the afternoon of a mild but hazy day, during which there was no thunder or lightning; and the noise of the explosion was heard through a considerable district. It deserves remark, that in most recorded cases of the descent of projectiles, the weather has been settled, and the sky clear; a fact which plainly places them apart from the causes which operate to produce ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... my shirt, when lo! upon my breast I beheld imprinted a picture of the direful deed—seared in by rays more potent than the sun's—photographed there, as if by the lightning's fierce stroke! ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... so. No matter how or where the blow was aimed, a movement of Pomp's paw, quick as a flash of lightning, knocked it aside, and he ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... earth, a few feet further down, and against which he struck, broken his fall in some measure, and shunted him off to the opposite wall of the rock. This latter proved to be a slope so steep that it let him slide, like lightning, to the bottom, a depth of about thirty feet or more, where he was stopped with such violence that he lay stunned ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... polar light is the act of discharge, the termination of a magnetic storm, as in an electrical storm a development of light — the flash of lightning — indicates the restoration of the disturbed equilibrium in the distribution of the electricity. An electric storm is generally confined to a small space beyond the limits of which the condition of the atmospheric electricity remains ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And I never saw a boat that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... patriots were too small to fight regular battles, or even to hold strong posts. They had to hide in the woods and swamps, and only came out when they saw a chance to strike a blow. Then the blow fell like lightning, and the men who dealt it ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... those black, indistinct figures, leaping out of the smoke, converging on the coach, their naked arms uplifted, their voices mingling in savage yells. Like lightning he worked his rifle, heart throbbing to the excitement, oblivious to all else; almost without realization he heard the deeper bellow of Moylan's Winchester, the sharp bark of a revolver at his very ear. Gonzales was all right, then! Good! He never thought of the girl, never ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... simple, honest, and unsophisticated beyond any class of men I have ever seen. They are no milksops either. Under the serenity of those blue eyes and smooth, fair faces, burns the old Berserker rage, not easily kindled, but terrible as the lightning when once loosed. "I would like to take all the young men north of Sundsvall," says Braisted, "put them into Kansas, tell them her history, and then let them act for themselves." "The cold in clime are cold in blood," sings Byron, but they are only cold through superior self-control ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... overhanging the flood. Not much could be seen from it, but it was in the midst of an elemental uproar. Some electric lamps shining through the trees made high lights on the crests of the rapids, while the others near were in shadow and dark. The black mass of Goat Island appeared under the lightning flashes in the northwest sky, and whenever these quick gleams pierced the gloom the frail bridge to the island was outlined for a moment, and then vanished as if it had been swept away, and there could only be seen sparks ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... orthodox models, and was only deterred from making a confidante of Kate by the slight considerations of having never, in all his life, spoken to the object of his passion, and having never set eyes upon her, except on two occasions, on both of which she had come and gone like a flash of lightning—or, as Nicholas himself said, in the numerous conversations he held with himself, like a vision of youth and beauty much too bright to last—his ardour and devotion remained without its reward. The young lady appeared no more; so there ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... even sat on his knee and kissed him. And all his love, and the fumes of the alcohol of the wine mounted to his head, and gradually made him so helplessly intoxicated, that he fell from his chair inert, and as if he had been struck by lightning, without opening his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... done last winter.' And Rollo's eyes flashed and laughed at her, a kind of soft lightning. Hazel laughed the least bit too, in return; but then her head went down as low as it gracefully could, and under the shadow of her broad hat she questioned. Had she betrayed herself then, to him? What has she said? what had she done, that night? Her face rested on her hand in the ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... spiritual ecstasy; and I remember visiting a public exhibition in Bond Street, exclusively of most curious and intricate pictures, asserted to have been inspired by dead artists, some being elaborate flourishings of scenes and figures, said to be thus depicted as with lightning speed. As to living artists, there are in existence several excitable youths and damsels who write and draw very rapidly in an ecstatic state; and I myself possess a dreamy conglomerate of microscopic faces crowded together, and stated to have been drawn thus instantaneously to prove to us ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... him. There came a zigzag flash of lightning searing his brain, a crash that filled the world for ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... and thatches and tiles, and flowery door-yards and kitchen-gardens, such as could not be had for millionaire money with us, and villagers in their church-going best, whom, as they lived in the precious scene, our lightning progress suffered us to behold in a sort of cinematographic shimmer. Clean white shirt-sleeves are the symbol of our race's rustic Sunday leisure everywhere; and the main difference that I could note between our own farmer-folk and these was that at home they would be sitting ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... was thought that Dromas was no match at all for the gigantic Bladud, but when the wonderful agility of the former was seen— the ease with which he ducked and turned aside his head to evade blows, and the lightning speed with which he countered, giving a touch on the forehead or a dig in the ribs, smiling all the time as if to say, "How d'ye like it?" men's minds changed with shouts of surprise and satisfaction. And they highly ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... that with thundering and lightning he put Greece into confusion; such discourse may serve to confound things, it seldom tendeth to compose them. If reason will not pierce, rage will scarce avail to drive it in. Satirical virulency may vex men sorely, but it hardly ever soundly converts them. "Few become wiser or better ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... going out of the sky, so that we saw the first shell like a sheet of curved lightning making for the village as we approached from the Ghent side. There was a deadly attraction about the thing that made you feel that it and you were the only objects in God's universe, and that you were about to be merged in each other. It looked as if it were rushing out of heaven ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the heavy rain-drops began to fall. They stood for some minutes at the casement, watching the coruscations of the lightning as it played over the black and heavy waters of the lake. Lucilla, whom the influences of nature always strangely and mysteriously affected, clung pale and almost trembling to Godolphin; but even in her fear there was delight in being so near to ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his proud, powerful position flashed through him like lightning. He woke from his dreams into new life, flung his golden goblet far into the hall, so that the wine flew round like rain, and cried: "We have had enough of this idle talk and useless noise. Let us hold a council ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tree who shelterest kind, The grave from winter’s snow and wind, May lightning never lay thee low, Nor archer cut from thee his bow; Nor Crispin peel thee, pegs to frame, But may thou ever bloom the same; A noble tree the grave to guard Of ...
— Alf the Freebooter - Little Danneved and Swayne Trost and other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... thanksgiving. From their mouths and their faces it spread over their bodies and shone through their garments. Ere I could say, "Lo, they change!" Adam and Eve stood before me the angels of the resurrection, and Mara was the Magdalene with them at the sepulchre. The countenance of Adam was like lightning, and Eve held a napkin that flung flakes of splendour about ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... offer; but he had perceived that his offer had been renewed, and had, in fact, been accepted, during this little parley as to the pathway. There was hardly any necessity for further words. So he must have thought; for, as quick as lightning, he flung his arms around her, and kissed her again, as he had kissed her on that other terrible occasion that occasion on which he had felt that he ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... of enemies were close behind them. Two or three hundred yards away they would stop with equal suddenness, whirl about in a circle, as though flight were interrupted on all sides of them, then tear back with lightning speed to rejoin the herd. In twos and threes and fours they performed these evolutions again and again. But there was another antic that held Rod's eyes, and if it had not been so new and wonderful to him he would have laughed, ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... did he expect the travellers to come from? Gentlemen would never travel in other than private conveyances?" And these representatives of conservatism threw back their heads and laughed over the absurdity of the lightning express in embryo. Governor Wentworth standing before the fire was commenting on some of Governor Shirley's measures, giving his own judgment on the matter, with a directness more bold than wise, and the circle about him were discussing affairs with the freedom of speech that Americans have always ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... set? Parnassus' self is rough! Give thou the thought, The golden ore, the gems that few forget; In time the tinsel jewel will be wrought. Stand thou alone, and fixed as destiny, An imaged god that lifts above all hate; Stand thou serene and satisfied with fate; Stand thou as stands the lightning-riven tree, That lords the cloven clouds of gray Yosemite. Yea, lone, sad soul, thy heights must be thy home; Thou sweetest lover! love shall climb to thee Like incense curling some cathedral dome, From many distant vales. Yet thou shalt be, O grand, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... on yon rock, a maiden's form, Far o'er the wave a white robe flashing, Around, before the blackening storm, On the loud beach the billows dashing; Along the waves, now red, now pale, The lightning-glare incessant gleameth; Whirling and fluttering in the gale, The snowy robe incessant streameth; Fair is that sea in blackening storm, And fair that sky with lightnings riven, But fairer far that maiden form, Than wave, or flash, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... good one this; it brought a light to the thin, impassive faces. There was an answer to the trick of the other day! This Pelle was a deuce of a fellow! Three cheers for "Lightning ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... song last Spring, it came to me all of a sudden. There was the most beautiful she-blackbird that the world has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are at night, her feathers were blacker than the night itself, and nothing was as yellow as her beak; she could fly much faster than the lightning. She was not an ordinary she-blackbird, there has never been any other like her at all. I did not dare go near her because she was so wonderful. One day last Spring when it got warm again—it had been cold, we ate berries, things were quite different then, but Spring came and it got warm—one day ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... best way to confide ourselves entirely to His care, and to think as little about it as we possibly can. All our precautions remind me of the boy who hid up in the cellar during a terrible thunderstorm, in the hope that the lightning would never find him there, little dreaming, that his place of safety exposed him to as much danger as a stand on the house-top. A man may run away from a battle, and escape from a fire, but it seems to me of little use attempting to fly from a pestilence which lurks in the very air ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... moved up, and we were admitted in groups of three. Name, age, occupation, place of birth, condition of destitution, and the previous night's "doss," were taken with lightning-like rapidity by the superintendent; and as I turned I was startled by a man's thrusting into my hand something that felt like a brick, and shouting into my ear, "any knives, matches, or tobacco?" "No, sir," I lied, as lied every man who entered. As I passed ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... used to play patience. Even in calm weather there was always a moaning in the chimney, and in a storm the whole house would rock and seem as though it must split, and it was quite terrifying, especially at night, when all the ten great windows were suddenly lit up by a flash of lightning. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... I, "I shall be most happy to be your guest for this night; I am ignorant of the country, and it is not pleasant to travel unknown paths by night—dear me, what a flash of lightning!" ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... speedy remedy were applied, mounted the lofty tower from whence he diffuses clouds over the earth, and hurls the forked lightnings. But at that time not a cloud was to be found to interpose for a screen to earth, nor was a shower remaining unexhausted. He thundered, and brandishing a lightning-bolt in his right hand launched it against the charioteer, and struck him at the same moment from his seat and from existence! Phaeton, with his hair on fire, fell headlong, like a shooting star which marks the heavens with ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... reservoirs of electricity trembling in the bosom of yet distant clouds? Do not our own highly charged nervous batteries occasionally give the first premonition of coming thunderstorms? Long before the low angry growl that came suddenly from some lightning lair in the far south, below the sky-line, Regina anticipated the approaching war of elements, and settled ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... He no longer felt fearful, he only wondered with a strange impersonal wonder, as a man wonders about the vital affairs of another. Then from wondering about himself he began to wonder about the girl who sat opposite to him. With the rain came a little lightning, and by the first flash he saw her clearly. Her beautiful face was set, and as she bent forward searching the darkness with her wide eyes, it wore, he thought, an almost ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... needs him for a guide and friend, To shield her with his greater strength from harm. We reached the forest; wandered to and fro Through many a winding path and dim retreat, Till I grew weary: when I chose a seat Upon an oak-tree, which had been laid low By some wind storm, or by some lightning stroke. And Roy stood just below me, where the ledge On which I sat sloped steeply to the edge Of sunny meadows lying at my feet. One hand held mine; the other grasped a limb That cast its checkered shadows over him; And, with his ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... friar—a very common sight in Florence; but the glance had something peculiar in it for Tito. There was a faint suggestion in it, certainly not of an unpleasant kind. Yet what pleasant association had he ever had with monks? None. The glance and the suggestion hardly took longer than a flash of lightning. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... screwing his forehead up into a series of funny wrinkles, as he usually did when trying to look serious or thoughtful, "he told me the path he used lay right under a big sycamore tree that must have been struck by a stray bolt of lightning, some time or other, for all the limbs on the north side had ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... grieved though it might or might not be, Winnebago still had the fortitude to savour this with relish. Winnebago had died deaths natural and unnatural. It had been run over by automobiles, and had its skull fractured at football, and been drowned in Lake Winnebago, and struck by lightning, and poisoned by mushrooms, and shot by burglars. But never had Winnebago citizen had the distinction of meeting death by being thrown from his horse while hunting. While hunting. Scarlet coats. Hounds in full cry. Baronial halls. Hunt ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... for she is a King's daughter." It is certain that some of the ejected priests pursued her to the grave with invectives. Her death, they said, was evidently a judgment for her crime. God had, from the top of Sinai, in thunder and lightning, promised length of days to children who should honour their parents; and in this promise was plainly implied a menace. What father had ever been worse treated by his daughters than James by Mary and Anne? ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... over the Mexican valley. The thunder, reverberating from the rocky amphitheatre of hills, bellowed over the waste of waters, and shook the teocallis and crazy tenements of Tenochtitlan—the few that yet survived—to their foundations. The lightning seemed to cleave asunder the vault of heaven, as its vivid flashes wrapped the whole scene in a ghastly glare for a moment, to be again swallowed up in darkness. The war of elements was in unison with the fortunes of the ruined city. It seemed as if ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... other Evangelists, was an Angel of God. And therefore Matthew said: "The Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow." The Angel is this Nobility of ours which comes from God, as it has been said, of which our argument speaks, and says to each one of these sects, that is, to whoever seeks perfect Happiness in ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... himself in Gold, Prostrate as holy ground Ile worship thee. Our Ladies Chappel henceforth be thou nam'd; Here first Loves Queen put on Mortality, And with her Beauty all the world inflam'd. Heaven's Chambers harbouring fiery Cherubins, Are not with thee in Glory to compare. Lightning, it is not Light which in thee mines, None enter thee but streight entranced are. O! if Elizium be above the ground, Then here it is, where nought but ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... heath wrapped in one of those storms of wind and rain and thunder and lightning, which this wizard only of all the children of men knows how to raise, that he chooses for his physiological exhibition of majesty, when the palace-door has been shut upon it, and the last 'additions of a king' have been subtracted. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... extraordinary rapidity one after the other; but long experience of the weapon and my own nimbleness enabled me to avoid them. But no sooner had I stepped back into position for the third time than, with lightning dexterity, I unslung my bow and let fly an arrow at my antagonist which I had purposely made heavier than usual by weighting it with fully an ounce of gold. Naturally he failed to see the little feathered shaft approach, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the old mare on purpose, 'cause she stands thunder and lightning better than what ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... air, which increased as the day grew older. It was not, however, until about an hour after sunset, and just as we were sitting down to dinner in the cuddy, that the outbreak commenced; which it did with a sudden, blinding flash of lightning that darted out of the welkin almost immediately overhead, instantly followed by a deafening crash of thunder that caused the Indiaman to tremble to her keel; the sensation being not unlike what one would expect to feel if the craft were being swept rapidly along over a sandy bottom which ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... there came a sharp struggle between his hands as lacking in science as the fight of a wild animal for freedom, and as effectual. With a gasping effort the boy wrenched himself free and was gone. He went like a streak of lightning, and the two men were left facing ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... and wings.' Sometimes I hate Alan; he's conventional and stodgy—the funny thing is that he admires Sheila. She'll wake him up; she'll stick pins into him. No, I don't want Alan hurt—I want every one in the world to be happy, happy—as I am. . . . The next day was the thunder-storm. I never saw lightning so near—and didn't care a bit. If he were struck I knew I should be; that made it all right. When you love, you don't care, if only the something must happen to you both. When it was over, and we came out from behind the stack and walked home through ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a moment's pause. The thoughts flashed by like the lightning impressions of a dream, and a voice said in his ear, the voice of the new Charley with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you—as it must—take up The Idiot; and if you are impressed by the epical magnitude of War and Peace, study that other epic of souls, The Brothers Karamazov, which illuminates, as if with ghastly flashes of lightning, the stormy hearts of mankind. Tolstoy wrote of life; Dostoievsky lived it, drank its sour dregs—for he was a man accursed by luck and, like the apocalyptic dreamer of Patmos, a seer of visions denied to the robust, ever fleshly Tolstoy. His influence on Tolstoy was ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 12 P.M. heavy rain; very heavy for about twenty minutes, with a threatening aspect in the horizon at 7 A.M. to south by east, from which direction the rain came: thunder and lightning; latter very frequent. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... material things: and that there are some lessons of equal or greater authority which these masters neither taught nor received. And until the school of modern landscape arose Art had never noted the links of this mighty chain; it mattered not that a fragment lay here and there, no heavenly lightning could descend by it; the landscape of the Venetians was without effect on any contemporary in subsequent schools; it still remains on the continent as useless as if it had never existed; and at this moment German and Italian landscapes, of which ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... porch, his attention was instantly drawn to a yellow glow in the west, a distant torch, the flame of which illuminated the angry night. He stared at it for a moment before he realized its meaning. A well was afire! Lightning had wrecked a derrick and ignited the stream of oil. No wonder, he told himself, for this field was dotted with towers well calculated to lead lightning out of the skies, and amid a play of destructive forces such as this nothing less than a miracle could have prevented something ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Like lightning little Billy sprang forward and planted his right fist on the point of the Arab's nose with such vigour that the blow caused him to stagger backwards. Before he could recover Billy followed him up with a left-hander on ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... to take that tally stick to try by it to show the pace at which the thing now went. Rosalie, when all was done, could run the tally over (you have to) in thought, that lightning vehicle that makes to crawl the swiftest agency of man's invention: runs through a lifetime while the electric telegraph is stammering a line; reads memory in twenty volumes between the whiff and passing of some remembered scent that's opened them; travels a life again, cradle to grave, between the ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... there came a sullen, tearing sound; and the top of the near pile, which had been half cut through, began to lean slowly, slowly. A yell of desperate warning arose. Goodine dropped his axe, turned like lightning, and made a tremendous leap for safety. He gained the edge of the landing-front, slipped on an oozy stone, and fell back with a cry of horror right beneath the toppling mass ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and colourless. Eventually, I cut the elms down, the biggest, carrying perhaps 100 cubic feet of timber at 9d. a foot at the time, was only worth 75s., though it must have destroyed scores of pounds worth of fruit during its many years of growth. The elm seems particularly liable to be struck by lightning, possibly owing to its height, and several suffered in this way during my time ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... thought that thought, Charles appeared to form a sudden and resolute determination. With one lightning swoop he seized the doctor's hair in his powerful hand, and tried to lift it off bodily. He had made a bad guess. Next instant the doctor uttered a loud and terrified howl of pain, while several of his hairs, root and all, came out of his scalp in Charles's hand, leaving a few drops of blood on ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... axis was satisfactorily begun, and that each year would show an increasing improvement in climate, many of the delegates, after hearing Bearwarden's speech, set out for their homes. Those from the valley of the Amazon and the eastern coast of South America boarded a lightning express that rushed them to Key West at the rate of three hundred miles an hour. The railroad had six tracks, two for through passengers, two for locals, and two for freight. There they took a "water-spider," six hundred feet long by three hundred ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... lightning, and I caught a sight of his face. He had dark, deep-set eyes and they seemed to spit fire at the fat brute in the chair, and his two brown hands shut tight; but he said nothing, not a blessed word, only looked as if all the rest of his body was turned ...
— Sarreo - 1901 • Louis Becke
... dead among the lily pads of the fountain—there were few things except Moti that the Maharajah loved better than his little red-spotted fishes. He wanted very particularly to know why they should have died in this unanimous and apparently preconcerted way. The gods had probably killed them by lightning, but the Maharajah wanted to know. So he sent for the Englishman, who did not mind touching a dead thing, and the Englishman told him that the little red-spotted fishes had undoubtedly been poisoned. Moti was listening when the ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... A flash of lightning and a crashing peal that rent the skies put the matter beyond a doubt. Miss Drewitt, turning very pale, began to walk at a rapid pace in the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. 18 And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall in any wise hurt you. 20 Nevertheless in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... in one way, but it had its disadvantages. He had no idea what progress he was making, and it seemed ages before his hand came against what he thankfully realized was the bark of a tree. Almost simultaneously there was a blinding flash of lightning, so vivid that for a full moment the sleeping camp lay revealed, and Eustace had time to grasp the fact that he was well within the outskirts of the wood. The crash of thunder almost overhead brought him to his feet. Now was the time to make some ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... train possessing a certain consideration. For the benefit of a public easily gulled and enamored of grandiloquent terms, it was advertised as the "Denver Fast Express"; sometimes, with strange unfitness, as the "Lightning Express"; "elegant" and "palatial" cars were declared to be included therein; and its departure was one of the great events of the twenty-four hours in the country round about. A local poet described it in the "live" paper of the town, cribbing from an old ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various |
