"Lithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lithe contortion, Joe squirmed to an upright position, recovering his balance with a great effort, for he had been put out in his calculations of distance, and then, turning, he bowed to the crowds, revolving on the platform ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... tree Grew a shape; a nudity: Lithe and slender; silent as Growth of tree or blade of grass; Brown and silken as the bloom Of the trillium in the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... one of the chief characteristics of French classicism was compactness. The tragedies of Racine are as closely knit as some lithe naked runner without an ounce of redundant flesh; the Fables of La Fontaine are airy miracles of compression. In prose the same tendency is manifest, but to an even more marked degree. La Rochefoucauld and ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... great for words; but there was something more than anger: there was a revulsion of feeling, that made the woman he had loved seem hateful to him—hateful in her fatal beauty, as a snake is hateful in its lithe grace and silvery sheen. She had deceived him so completely; there was something to his mind beyond measure dastardly in her stolen meetings with George Fairfax; and he set down all her visits to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... forest from the marshes to the sea; it is alive with frogs and newts and snakes. You may see these serpents basking on the surface among thickets of the flowering rush, or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers—lithe monsters, slippery and speckled, the tyrants ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... hesitation; so, quickly ducking my head, I sprang upon him like lightning, and seized him by both wrists at the very instant that his pistol exploded; the bullet grazing the left side of my head, and neatly clipping off a lock of my hair. The fellow was as lithe as an eel in my hands, and made the most desperate efforts to stab me with his long, murderous-looking knife; but I had him fast in so powerful a grip that, after a furious struggle of a few seconds, he dropped both his ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... "His long, lithe figure straightened from its servile stoop, and a palpable degree of the authority which appeared gradually to fade from the fine countenance before him found an equally congenial residence in the expression ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare: nondescript packs, in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side with the wolf-dog and the lithe Abyssinian greyhound, scented and retrieved for their master the prey which he had pierced with his arrows. At times a hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother, would be followed by one of her young; or a gazelle, but slightly wounded, would be ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ideal soldier of Egypt. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but otherwise lean and lithe. In countenance, he was dark,—browner than most Egyptians, but with that peculiar ruddy swarthiness that is never the negro hue. His duskiness was accentuated by low and intensely black brows, and deep-set, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... chafed his neck to a lather. Marianne flashed into indignation and that, of course, made her scrutinize the rider more narrowly. He was perfect of that type of cowboy which she detested most: handsome, lithe, childishly vain in his dress. About his sombrero ran a heavy width of gold-braid; his shirt was blue silk; his bandana was red; his boots were shop-made beauties, soft and flexible; and on ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... majesty the queen, but without effect. So a young madcap Shadow, half against the will of the older ones of us, slipped upstairs into the nursery; and has, no doubt, succeeded in appalling the baby, for he is very lithe ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... clean kitchen of the deacon's house might be seen the lithe, comely form of Diana Pitkin presiding over the roaring great oven which was to engulf the armies of pies and cakes which were in due course of preparation on ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The natives are lithe in figure, with but slight muscular development, and are yet quite strong, appearing at all times as nearly naked as would be permitted among white people. They give up nearly all branches of occupation, trade, and industries to the Chinamen, and content themselves ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... band. Then she would pick up something else, and curve Her lovely neck, with cunning, bird-like grace, And watch the mirror while she put it on, With such a sweetly grave and thoughtful face; And then to view it all would sway, and swerve Her lithe young ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... several of the most alarming hollows around her hips and along her ridge-pole, she seemingly took on height and length. She grew smooth, even glossy; her tail no longer hung on her like a bell-cord, but became a lithe weapon of defense that could swat a fly with fatal precision on any given spot of her black-and-white area. It was only a little while until we were really proud to have her in the landscape, and the picture she made grazing against the green or standing in the apple shade was really ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... instep she was as white as Cynthia. Something above the medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees, a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and her temples,—her arms, half hid in a snowy ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... came from school, and welted him so over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a lithe uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-boo boy. He knew it was not healthy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... corners. Her jetty hair descended smoothly from under a red handkerchief down to her shoulders, and there, at the tips, became tangled and curling. Her figure was magnificent, and she swayed and swung from the hips with an easy grace, which reminded the onlookers of a panther's lithe movements. And there was a good deal of the dangerous beast-of-prey beauty about Chaldea, which was enhanced by her picturesque dress. This was ragged and patched with all kinds of colored cloths subdued to mellow tints by wear and weather. Also she jingled with coins and beads ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... fair the maiden, Than rose or lily more love-laden; Stately of stature, lithe and slender, There's naught so exquisite and tender. The Queen of France is not so dear; Death to my life comes very near If Flower-o'-the-thorn ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... yere is a long time ago. Them is days when I'm young an' lithe an' strong. I can heft a pony an' I'm six foot two in my moccasins. No, I ain't so tall by three inches now; old age shortens a gent ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... wept. Mark and Berrand were eagerly talking of the snake, praising its lustrous skin, marvelling at its jewelled eyes, foretelling its lithe progress through Society. She heard the murmur of their voices until far into the night. And sometimes she thought that distant murmur sounded like the hum of evil, or like the furtive whisper ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... late, but Norris was down first. He found Melissy superintending a drive of sheep which old Antonio, the herder, was about to make to the trading-post at Three Pines. She was on her pony near the entrance to the corral, her slender, lithe figure sitting in a boy's saddle with a businesslike air he could not help but admire. The gate bars had been lifted and the dog was winding its way among the bleating gray mass, which began to stir uncertainly at its presence. The sheep ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... A lithe figure in a buff travelling coat swung off the box-seat, and Lancelot was with us again. He had an arm around the girl's neck, and kissed her with no heed of the people; he had a hand clasped between the two hands of the Captain, who squeezed his fingers fondly. Then he looked ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the rocky wall, and so, what by strength, what by cunning, into the daylight through the rent in the roof. So when he was without he made a rope of his girdle and strips from his raiment, for he was ever a deft craftsman, and made a shift to heave up therewith the sad man, who was light and lithe of body; and then the two together dealt with the elders one after another, till they were all four on the face ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... vividly blue Italian sky, and against the shimmer of azure and gold the tall, dark poplars ranked beside the road struck a sombre note of relief. But the man himself seemed unconscious of the heat. He covered the ground with the lithe, long-limbed stride of youth and supple muscles, and presently swung aside into a garden where, betwixt the spread arms of chestnut and linden and almond tree, gleamed the pink-stuccoed walls of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... harmony with the day and the scene. He had a cheering figure, lithe and erect, with a springy stride, bespeaking the Montezuma blood said to flow in his Indian veins. Clad in a colored cotton shirt, blue jeans, and Spanish girdle, and treading the path with brown feet never deformed by shoes, he would have stopped an artist. Soon he bent his muscular shoulders to ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... trees were trilling audibly. Then came a sudden gust that swept the fronds of the taller ferns into their faces, and laid the thin, lithe whips of alder over their horses' flanks sharply. It was followed by the distant sea-like roaring of ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... result. Tears stream from the offended pupil; the other eye joins in the general tribulation; and Molly, standing in the centre of the grass-plot, with her handkerchief pressed frantically to her face, and her lithe body swaying slightly to and fro through force of pain, looks the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... looked very much of a man, so tall and lithe and white-faced, with his eyes of fire, his simplicity, and his tragic refusal of all that was for most men the best of life. Whatever his ideal, it was magnificent. Lenore had her chance then, but she was absolutely ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... the lithe, light step of a practiced walker, swinging a stick in his hand and carrying a knapsack on his shoulders. A few paces nearer, and his face became visible. He was a dark man, his black hair was powdered with dust, and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and fair, All things were glad and free; Lithe squirrels darted here and there, And wild birds filled the echoing air With ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... slight acquaintance with the extraordinary language of the blacks, and had many a chat with the woman, who also picked up a few words of comical English from me. She was a woman of average height, lithe and supple, with an intelligent face and sparkling eyes. She was a very interesting companion, and as I grew more proficient in her queer language of signs, and slaps, and clicks, I learnt from her many wonderful things about the habits and customs of the Australian aborigines, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Lyle stood by a statue that glittered in the sun, surrounded by a group of cavaliers; among them Lord Beaumanoir, Lord Mil-ford, Lord Eugene de Vere. Her figure was not less lithe and graceful since her marriage, a little more voluptuous; her rich complexion, her radiant and abounding hair, and her long grey eye, now melting with pathos, and now twinkling with mockery, presented one of those faces of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... had offered the sub-officer charged with his deportation sixty thousand francs to permit his escape. He was at once the Achilles and the Paris of the band. He was of medium height but well formed, lithe, and of graceful and pleasing address. His eyes were never without animation nor his lips without a smile. His was one of those countenances which are never forgotten, and which present an inexpressible blending of sweetness and strength, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the nether stocks and shoes were in like manner black and scarlet counterchanged. And yet, somehow, whether from the way of wearing it, or from the effect of the gold embroidery meandering over all, the effect was not distressing, but more like that of a gorgeous bird. The figure was tall, lithe, and active, the brown ruddy face had none of the blank stare of vacant idiocy, but was full of twinkling merriment, the black eyes laughed gaily, and perhaps only so clearsighted and shrewd an observer as Tibble would have detected a weakness of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Their appareille is verie diuers: and in fewe, one like another. Some go in Mantles of Wollen, some of Linnen some naked, some onely brieched to couuer the priuities, and some wrapped aboute with pilles, and lithe barckes of trees. Thei are all by nature blacke of hewe: euen so died in their mothers wombe acordyng to the disposicion of the fathers nature, whose siede also is blacke: as like wise in the Aethiopians. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... West was prominent as a frontier scout. Rev. J. M. McWhorter, who saw him frequently, gives this description of him: "A tall, spare-built man, very erect, strong, lithe, and active; dark-skinned, prominent Roman nose, black hair, very keen eyes; not handsome, rather raw-boned, but with an air and mien that commanded the attention and respect of those with whom he associated. Never aggressive, he lifted his arm against the Indians ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... was blank and ashen, like the face Of some poor wretch who drains life's cup too fast. Yet, swaying to and fro, as if to fling About chilled Nature its lithe arms of grace, Smiling with promise in the wintry blast, The optimistic Willow ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... around him superciliously with a cynical air of contempt, stood forward with a firm and elastic step before his silent worshippers. He was a stalwart savage, in the very prime of life, tall, lithe, and active. His figure was that of a man well used to command; but his face, though handsome, was visibly marked by every external sign of cruelty, lust, and extreme bloodthirstiness. One might have said, merely to look at him, he was ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... is seen to divide; The pathway of victory cleaves the dark flood;— And the foe is o'erwhelmed in a deluge of blood! The spirit of Alice no longer is bowed By the troubles, and tumults, and terrors, that crowd So closely around her:—the willow's lithe form Bends meekly to meet the wild ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... the topmost branch of the lithe and tough tree in order to take the full swing of this free creature in its sport with the western wind. There was something exhilarating in this elemental battle of the forces that urge and the forces that resist, and the harder the wind blew, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Aura, her lithe, young body in perfect condition, ran lightly and easily as a fawn. She made a pretty picture as she ran, with her long, black hair streaming out behind her, and the short silk tunic flapping about her lean, round thighs. She still held the Very Young Man by the hand, running just in advance of him, ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the Musician, as he stood Illumined by that fire of wood; Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe, His figure tall and straight and lithe, And every feature of his face Revealing his Norwegian race; A radiance, streaming from within, Around his eyes and forehead beamed, The Angel with the violin, Painted by Raphael, he seemed. He lived in that ideal world Whose language is not speech, but song; ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this Jerry-Jo stood up, turned and twisted his lithe body into such a grotesque distortion that he was quite awful to look upon, and left no doubt in the girl's mind as to whom he referred. He brought the Far Hill people into focus, ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... then beckons me to follow. All other men I have grouped beyond the border of my feminine nature and sought to waste no thought upon them. It was a shock to come, suddenly, in my own breakfast room, face to face with a type of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved majestically but which ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... your peasant-girl was seized upon by some errant knight of palette and brush, and painted for her beauty. These women are what you men call fine creatures. Their limbs are rounded and shapely, their figures full and lithe; they are what I've heard you say Homer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... brown and brawny as their fathers, but tingling with life to their finger-tips, ready for anything, and impossible of control except by one whom they feared as well as reverenced. And such a man was Alexander Murray, for they knew well that, lithe and brawny as they were, there was not a man of them but he could fling out of the door and over the fence if he so wished; and they knew, too, that he would be prompt to do it if occasion arose. Hence they waited ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... is unwise to whistle before you are out of the wood, and Brady's triumph was short-lived. Swift as a shadow, a lithe figure darted out from among the trees and planted itself directly ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... said the lady as she rode up, "I hope you are not hurt?" She was very handsome as she sat there trying not to laugh. A lithe figure in a gray habit and a broad-brimmed hat, fair as a Swede, but with dark eyes and heavy lashes. Just then she was showing her brilliant teeth, ostensibly in delight at her dear uncle's escape, and her whole expression was animated and ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... well by him. Like the spruce themselves he had grown straight and tall, but his form was sturdy too. There was a lithe strength about him that suggested the larger felines; the hard trails of the forest had left not a spare ounce of flesh on his powerful frame. His mold, except for a vague and indistinct refinement in his long-fingered and strong hands, was ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... air which belongs only to them—the air that dwells among the dunes in the solitary places, that is like the cool touch of Liberty upon the face of a man, that makes the brown child of the nomad as lithe, tireless, and fierce-spirited as a young panther, and sets flame in the eyes of the Arab horse, and gives speed of the wind to the Sloughi. The true lover of the desert can never rid his soul of its passion for the sands, and now my heart leaped as I stole into their ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... most thorough physical culture. Bath-rooms, with facilities for plunge and shower baths, are an important adjunct in promoting that healthy condition of the skin which follows from frequent bathing. An athletic field for outdoor sports is, likewise, a valuable accessory to develop a lithe ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... once more of voices in the next room: a man's light baritone in protest, followed by the taunt of her daughter's laugh. Although she left the mantel with lithe, swift step, it was with unusual deliberation that she opened the ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—which quickly became a genuine inability to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... drew up his hind feet and crouched as he had on the gravel. The man lay watching the bright bridge. The moonlight entered the window and flooded the room. The strong lines on the weather-beaten face of the Harvester were mellowed in the light, and he appeared young and good to see. His lithe figure stretched the length of the bed, his hair appeared almost white, and his face, touched by the glorifying light of ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... le'rnin' to speak on. I'll warrant this lad could get off more book-stuff in five minutes 'an mine ever heerd on." His eyes followed the boy as he went out to stand by Jack's elbow and ply this slow-witted gentleman with quick, eager questions. He was slender and rather tall for one of his age, but lithe and agile, as the skipper noted. "One o' mine could jes' trip him with a turn o' his hand," thought he; yet he regarded the lad with a mixture of kindness and respect, after all. There were other things in the world beside ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... powerful youth of twenty-four or five years; yet, though his limbs were sinewy and lithe, and though his deep round chest, thin flanks, and muscular shoulders gave token of much growing strength, it was still evident that, his stature having been prematurely gained, he lacked much of that ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... company. To-day, as he descended to Marechiaro, he revelled in the sun. Its ruthlessness made him feel ruthless. He was conscious of that. At this moment he was in absolutely perfect physical health. His body was lithe and supple, yet his legs and arms were hard with springing muscle. His warm blood sang through his veins like music through the pipes of an organ. His eyes shone with the superb animation of youth that is radiantly sound. For, despite his anxiety, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... log cabin, ere it was extinguished, was a scene for a painter,—the lithe, muscular figure, tanned face, and gleaming eyes of the lucky hunter shown by the flare of his birch torch, and the three staring listeners, with blankets draped about them, who feared to miss one point ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... curve of her red lips, in the softly rounded freshness of her cheek and brow, in the eyes that held dancing lights like stars, and in every gleaming tendril of her wonderful bright hair that burst forth from under the naive little sweeping cap that sat on her head like a crown. She was small, lithe, graceful, and she vibrated joy, health, eagerness in every glance of her eye, every motion of ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... as the lithe, graceful figure of the handsome and fascinating Mr. Abel Newt bent in passing, Arthur Merlin, who felt, at the instant Abel passed, as if his own feet were very large, and his clothes ugly, and ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... struggle or cry out frantically. He stood motionless while they adjusted the rope round his bronzed throat. They had judged him for a villain; they should at least know him a man. So he stood there straight and lithe, wide-shouldered and lean-flanked, a man in a thousand. Not a twitch of the well-packed muscles, not a quiver of the eyelash nor a swelling of the throat betrayed any fear. His cool eyes were ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... hack-drivers and hotel- runners who blocked the entrance to the city, I was roused by a sudden thrill of the instinct of danger that warns one when he meets the eye of a snake. It was gone in an instant, but I had time to trace effect to cause. The warning came this time from the eyes of a man, a lithe, keen-faced man who flashed a look of triumphant malice on us as he disappeared in the waiting-room of the ferry-shed. But the keen face, and the basilisk glance were burned into my mind in that moment as deeply as though I had known then what ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... old man had placed himself in position to begin the ascent, with both hands on the rope, and all his weight on one leg, the girl stooped down, and placing her lithe hands round his great wet fisherman's boot, deftly lifted the other foot and placed it in the right position on the ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... scrub, and before any one realised what was happening we were in the midst of a mob of pack horses, and face to face with the Quiet Stockman a strong, erect, young Scot, who carried his six foot two of bone and muscle with the lithe ease ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of the blackness behind him a lithe figure shot like a wildcat. One arm encircled the neck of the astounded guard, the hand pressing tightly over his mouth. The other hand caught his right wrist and twisted it backward, causing him to drop his revolver. The force of the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... house-roofs, the last spurs of true mountains) is covered with a grass like tall rye-grass, but growing in tufts. That is the famous Guinea-grass {78e} which, introduced from Africa, has spread over the whole West Indies. Dark lithe coolie prisoners, one a gentle young fellow, with soft beseeching eyes, and 'Felon' printed on the back of his shirt, are cutting it for the horses, under the guard of a mulatto turnkey, a tall, steadfast, dignified man; and between us and them are growing along the edge of the gutter, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the travellers saw a horseman coming towards them, and Kate recognised him as Tom Knowles, the overseer of Kaburie, for whom Gerrard had a letter from Mrs Tallis. He was a lithe, wiry little man of fifty, and Kate and her father exchanged smiles as, when he drew near, they saw that he was arrayed in his best riding "togs," was riding his best horse, and that his long grey moustache was carefully waxed. He had long ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... realization of all my dreams. That woman never left me; she died in my house, in my arms, loving to the last. Well, when I think of her, it is with a feeling of rage. If I strive to recall her, the same as I ever saw her during those five years, in all the radiance of love, with her lithe yielding figure, the gilded pallor of her cheeks, her oriental Jewish features, regular and delicate in the soft roundness of her face, her slow speech as velvety as her glance, if I seek to embody that charming vision, it is only ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... you over." And a moment later he was splashing through the shallow brook, holding the lithe, warm figure of his client high above the water. As he set her down upon the opposite bank she gave a pretty sigh of satisfaction, and naively told him that he was very strong for a man in ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... was in full swing when the deputy entered; scores of lithe dark men and their black-eyed partners were whirling in the fervid Spanish waltz; but as he crossed the threshold a discordant note arose: disturbance broke out in a corner of the hall; a woman screamed; a knife-blade flashed. Clark shoved his way through ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Mr. Robert Beaufort—it struck discord at his heart. "Who were those boys?" as they ran across the sward, eager to welcome their father home; the westering sun shining full on their joyous faces—their young forms so lithe and so graceful—their merry laughter ringing in the still air. "Those boys," thought Mr. Robert Beaufort, "the sons of shame, rob mine of his inheritance." The elder brother turned round at his nephew's question, and saw the expression on Robert's face. He bit ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... regular, and her mouth was small and red. Steady grey eyes. She was wearing a soft blue dress of linen, and her brown arms were bare to the elbow. In her hand she had a posy of wild flowers. Little shoes of blue, untanned leather, I think it is. She was slender and lithe to look at, and the flush of health glowed ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... into the sweetest smile; she stood on tiptoe, holding out to him her tiny arms. With a laugh of irrepressible pride and pleasure, Roger stooped to her and lifted her up. She nestled on his shoulder—a small Odalisque, dark, lithe, and tawny, beside her handsome, fair-skinned father. And Roger's manner of holding and caressing her showed the passionate affection with which he ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... light-haired, blue-eyed youth Who came from England to the South Seas in search of adventure. Tanned like a native and as lithe as a tiger, he became a real son of the sun. The life appealed to him and he remained and became ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... brother so generous and so wealthy, always ready to help him forward; with his talents; with his lithe and gorgeous beauty, the shadow of which hung on that canvas—what might he not have accomplished? whom might he not have captivated? And yet where and what was he? A poor and shunned old man, occupying a lonely house and place that did not belong to him, married to degradation, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... stood in the presence of this superb and magnetic actor without being indelibly impressed with the scene. His son, Edwin, was then just born. We first met when he was a handsome youth of sixteen. A lithe and graceful figure, buoyant in spirits, and with the loveliest eyes I ever looked upon. We were friends from the first, and it is a comfort to me to know that our friendship lasted nearly half a century, unbroken by a single act ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... pull-up with all Thomas's best strength, and the horses fell back on their haunches just in time for the little lithe figure to dart under their pawing hoofs and be saved! Everybody leaned out of the carriage for a glimpse of ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... shoulder a sort of chiffonier's sack, in which they threw whatever refuse stuff they found in the streets or received as charity. Their figures are generally superb; and their Eastern costume, to which they adhere as far as their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets off their lithe and graceful forms to great advantage. Their faces are almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illuminated by pairs of those dark swimming and propitiatory eyes, which exhaust the language of tenderness ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Festus on entering. 'There now—if I didn't think that's how it would be!' His voice had suddenly warmed to anger, for he had seen a door close in the back part of the room, a lithe figure having ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... did not rise to hand it to him, so he was obliged to get up and take it from where she sat. She perceived then that though extremely thin he was lithe and well-shaped. And in spite of her unconquered prejudice, she was obliged to own she liked his steely gray hawk-like eyes and his fine, rather ascetic, clean-shaven face. He did not look at her ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... cast a shadow of their colour down her graceful neck. Dark eyes shone above, fresh and dewy with love and youth, and smiled out with all ancientest witcheries and allurements in their depths. Her lithe, slender body was simply clad in a fair white cloth of some foreign fabric, and her waist, of perfectest symmetry, was cinctured by a broad ring of solid silver, which, to the young man, looked so slender that he could have clasped it about ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... strength seems to have been acquired more from athletic sports than by hard work. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim- waisted, big-hipped and handsome; he stepped along through the clinging sand with the lithe careless grace of a mountain lion. An old greasy wide-brimmed gray felt hat, pinched to a "Montana peak," was shoved back on his curly black head; his shirt, of light gray wool, had the sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... rode in a valley it was full of stones, and there the lady's horse stumbled and threw her down, that her arm was sore bruised and near she swooned for pain. Alas! sir, said the lady, mine arm is out of lithe, wherethrough I must needs rest me. Ye shall well, said King Pellinore. And so he alighted under a fair tree where was fair grass, and he put his horse thereto, and so laid him under the tree and slept till it was nigh night. And when he awoke ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... eyes narrowed in confidence of victory, came boring in, on his toes, quick for all of his bulk. Joe turned sideways, his movements lithe. He lashed out with his right foot, at this angle getting double the leverage he would have otherwise, and caught the other on the kneecap. The pugilist bent forward in agony, his mouth ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... feet, with a lithe rattan cane in his hand, and struck the insubordinate soldier twice across the face, each time raising an angry ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... bunk with the lithe, delicate grace of a cat. The monotony of sleep and labor was ended. Something had broken. Life was once again a ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... from being in accordance with the statutes of beauty, are of a singularly pleasing class, their faces beaming with animation and good humour. They are a small race, averaging 4 feet 5 inches, but there is perfect proportion in all parts of their form, and their supple, pliant, lithe figures are often models of symmetry. There is about the young Oraon a jaunty air and mirthful expression that distinguishes him from the Munda or Ho, who has more of the dignified gravity that is said to characterise the North American Indian. The ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the innocent hind, When the wolf was the hypocrite fang under hood, The snake a lithe lurker up sleeve, And the lion effulgently ramped. Then our forefather hoof did its work in the wood, By right of the better in kind. But now will it breed yon bestial brood Three-fold thrice over, if bent to bind, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... question was repeated, and the speaker came close to the burly youth and looked down at him. Now that the woman was within his range of vision Racey perceived that she was the Happy Heart lookout, a good-looking creature with brown hair and a lithe figure. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... dark, graceful head was turned toward the fiery fete on shore, and his busy thoughts were with that lithe, dripping figure he had seen through the sea-glasses, climbing into a distant boat. For the figure reminded him of a girl he had known very well when the world was younger; and the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... bowed low to the magister. Being about the court, he had for Udal's learning and office a reverence that neither the printer nor his grandfather could share. He unfastened his grey cloak at the neck and cast it into a corner after his hat. His figure flashed out, lithe, young, a blaze of scarlet with a crowned rose embroidered upon a chest rendered enormous by much wadding. He was serving his apprenticeship as ensign in the gentlemen of the King's guard, and because his dead father had been beloved by the Duke of Norfolk it was said that his full ensigncy ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... started. It was hard work, for the way was very rough, and poor Hannah weak. But Ann had a good deal of strength in her lithe young frame, and she half-carried Hannah over the worst places. Still both of the girls were pretty well spent when they came to the last of the bits of wool on the border of Bear Swamp. However, they ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... dark Paula. She stood a moment on the broad stone at the kitchen door, a dish of butter from the springhouse under the poplars in her hand, and watched Billy Brent and Curly bring in a bunch from up Long Meadow way. She thought how bright the spotted cattle looked, how lithe and graceful the men, and then her eyes lighted as they always did when she beheld the horses of Last's Holding—the ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... identification of the house. If ever a man's exterior gave promise of generous help, the features of this fellow by his side did. He was of about his own age, smooth shaven, with a frank, open face that gave him a clean and wholesome appearance. He had the lithe frame and red cheeks of an athlete in training—his eyes clear as night air, his teeth white as a hound's. But it was a trick of the eyes which decided Wilson—a bright eagerness tinged with humor and something of dreams, which suggested that he himself ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of the moon from the gigantic flowers that adorned the narrow strip of carpet by the bedside. Her dresses, suspended from a row of hooks in the corner—and showing, in gentle swells and curves, the lithe, graceful form of the little wearer, like moulds,—would have looked to any open eye, that dreadful night, like women hanging against the wall. This startling idea would have been helped along by two or three shadowy bonnets depending from pegs above them. The white somethings carelessly tossed ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... his the swift lithe strength that ever slays, And in its joyous slaying doubly sweet, Like some young god adown immortal ways, Crushing the ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... mounted over—those three husbands. There they lie tonight on Nakokai's platform—this beautiful, incredible 'Queen Daughter'—this gold goddess of the 'Shame Dance'—and about her those three husbands. Ah, my dear sir, but their big, lithe muscles! That is too much! To imagine them leaping up at the alarm in the moonlight, the overpowering and faithful husbands. No, he cannot put out his hand to take the gift. Pah! He is a criminal in nature, but he is afraid of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... accepted the helping hand Dick proffered. After a little, however, she recovered and went on without assistance. Dick could scarcely believe his eyes, as from time to time he stole a sidelong glance at this silent girl, who walked with lithe and rapid stride. She was wrapped in his long coat, yet it did not hide her slender grace. He could not see her face, which was ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... but not too tall, lithe and slim and sinuous as a mermaid, yet well enough rounded to make each delicate curve a charm, not merely of promise but of fulfilment. She wore a flowing morning-gown that made negligee seem to the suddenly intoxicated secretary the glorified costume for ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Now lithe and listen, gentlemen, That of mirth loveth to hear: Two of them were single men, The third ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... overgrown fellow, whose only redeeming qualities were his imperturbable good-humor and his ponderous wit, his family had regarded him with a sense of despair. In the first place, he was too big. His brothers were tall, lithe-limbed youths, who were graceful, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and had a general air of brilliancy. They figured well at college and in their world; they sang and danced in a manner which, combining itself with the name of De Willoughby, gave them quite an ennobled sort of distinction, a touch ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... middle age, their life told on them and made them weather-beaten, and not infrequently hard-visaged; but when they were young there were often among them straight, supple young fellows with clear-cut features, and lithe, willowy-looking girls, with pink faces and blue, or brown, or hazel eyes, and a mien which one might have expected to find in a hall rather than ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... this lithe supple young thing was as full of mischief and engaging roguery as any tortoiseshell kitten—with elfin glee her favourite sport was to fill her grandmother's bed with "ouliaries" (Good God! berries, so called because on sudden contact with bare flesh they burst with a ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... his Mary Brown. The light-brown ringlets were reduced to a white stratum of thin hair; the blue eyes were grey, without light and without speculation; the roses on the cheeks were replaced by a pallor, the forerunner of the colour of death; the lithe and sprightly form was a thin spectral body, where the sinews appeared as strong cords, and the skin seemed only to cover a skeleton. Yet, withal, he saw in her that identical Mary Brown. That wreck was dear to him; it was a relic of the idol he had worshipped through life; it was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... educated and trained. For a moment I could think of nothing but the marvellous grace of her movement as she slid her hand under the tarpaulin that covered the gold; then I thought I heard her catch her breath with surprise. But she turned back with an exquisite lithe grace that made me catch mine, and slid down in her seat as if she had never slid ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... perfectly proper except for one high moment of indecency thrown in at the end of each turn, as if to give the house its money's worth. But the real, overflowing compensation came when that little, lithe, hipless man in black jumped to his feet and stormed the audience with a dance of hands and arms, feet and legs, head, neck, and the whole body, which Mordkin in his finest frenzy could not have equaled or approached. Whatever was fiercest and wildest in nature and boldest ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... one who gave it but for the intervention of the second Indian, who seemed to take but a couple of bounds from the tree near which he was standing when he landed on the spot. The infuriated Winnebago was in the act of clambering to his feet, when he caught sight of the lithe, graceful warrior, standing only a couple of steps away, with loaded rifle pointed ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... he says, "her figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement she made was instinct with melody. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with excitement, for she felt that I was willing to admire her.... As she swept round ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... fitful dream of his Cousin Maria. She with a supernatural strength seemed to be holding the door against some unseen, unknown power that moaned and strove without, and threw itself in despairing force against the cabin. He could see the lithe undulations of her form as she alternately yielded to its power, and again drew the door against it, coiling herself around the log-hewn doorpost with a hideous, snake-like suggestion. And then a struggle and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... walked so fast. One might be vivacious, audacious, brilliant, at an Indian trot; but impassioned—never! The pace increased; they were actually hurrying. More than that, Maruja had struck into a little trot; her lithe body swaying from side to side, her little feet straight as an arrow before her; accompanying herself with a quaint musical chant, which she obligingly explained had been taught her as a child by Pereo. They stopped only at the hedge, where she had ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... restlessly protesting against the heat and flies; their Mexican drivers in the pulqueria, spending their last peso with their compadres, or with the escort of soldiers which was to accompany them—a little squad of small, lithe men, with round, yellow, beardless faces, bearing in a singular degree the stamp of being native to the soil. Their lieutenant, a gorgeously clad officer with a very distinguished air, was coming slowly down ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... The man was tall, lithe, strong, graceful, commanding. His jaw was the jaw of courage; his chin meant purpose; his nose symboled intellect, poise and power; his brow spelled brain. He was a handsome man, and he was not wholly unaware of the fact. In him was the pride of the North American ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... feet slashed through barbaric tangles clutching at him like fingers. As he prowled, wondering what splendor this could have been which was so misplaced in so dull a town and drooping into so early a neglect, birds took alarm and went crying through the branches. There were lithe escapes through the grass, and from the rim of the lake ugly toads plounced into the pool and set the water-spiders scurrying on ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... His face was rather narrow and long. It was not the face of an easy-going man as God had made it. But years had made it the face of a man that nothing could rouse. He was of medium height, with rather narrow shoulders, but upright and lithe. He was clean shaven and of a pleasant ruddiness. His eyes were a bluish gray, and looked out upon the world with a reflective attention through gold-rimmed eye-glasses, with which he had a habit of amusing himself while talking, examining their mechanism and ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... lithe figure of a pretty girl is often likened by Eastern poets to the waving cypress, a tree which we associate with the grave-yard.—"Who is walking there?" asks a Persian poet. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... scenes at Borth on the arrival of these excursions were occasionally almost indescribable. One scribe invokes the loan of the pencil of Hogarth adequately to portray it. "From a cover of stones close by springs an urchin lithe and swift; another and another, ten, twelve or more, 'naked as unto earth they came,' and away in single file across the beach into the sea. The vans move ponderously on, pushed by mermen and mermaids, and out spring any quantity of live Hercules. ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... I look about me. The first object that attracts my attention is the lithe form of my pursuer who is running up and down the bank lashing his tail in fury, and occasionally breaking forth in the most savage roars. In its yellow coat and cat-like movements I recognize the dreaded cougar—the tiger of the western mountains—an animal that, when once aroused, will not ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... all his might he tried to construct an image of the two girls from their voices. The one with the crystalline laugh was little and lithe, quick in movement, of a mobile face, with gray eyes and fair hair; the other was tall and pale, with full, blue eyes and a regular face, and lips that trembled with humor; very demure and yet very honest; very shy and yet very frank; there was something ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... prototype of a man contented with life and his part in it. He was wearing a morning coat and silk hat, his patent boots were faultlessly polished, his trousers pressed to perfection, his grey silk tie neat and fashionable. Notwithstanding his waxenlike pallor, his slim figure and lithe, athletic walk seemed to ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his eyebrow as it came down over his single eye-glass constantly disfigured him. What was his temper, his character, his soul, you might sit for a month before him and never discover. But from his deep massive chest, his long arms, his lithe step, and the poise of his head upon his broad shoulders, you would probably conclude that his enemy, if he had one, would do well not to frequent the same dark lane as ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... aside, however, and let all the lesser game pass by uncaught; his soul soared higher than even Uncle John, who looked on exceedingly amused at the small man's stratagem, and at the long dodging that took place between him and his father, the quick lithe Captain skipping hither and thither, and trying to pop in one side while his enemy was on the other; and the square, determined, little, puffing, panting boy, guarding his door, hands on knees, ever ready for a dart wherever the attempt ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... picked the lithe form of the gun-runner from the floor of the boat as Jack's knife fell across the remaining rope. With a splash and a loud cry, Ramon pitched overside into the stream. As he fell, though, he managed to clutch the side of the craft and he hung ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... two children intertwine Their arms about each other, Like the lithe tendrils of the vine Around its nearest brother; And ever and anon, As gayly they ran on, Each looked into the other's face, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Richard, not the better pleased with his new acquaintance that his speech and behaviour had an easy tone of superiority, which, if indefinably felt by the home-bred lad, was not therefore to be willingly accorded. His easy carriage, his light step, his still shoulders and lithe spine, indicated both birth ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... and straight, and fair and strong. And at the risk of causing a second fit among some of the critics, I must add, he probably wore silk socks, and was "beautifully groomed," too, as all young Englishmen are of his class and age. And how supple his lithe body seemed as he bent over the oars, while the boat shot out into the ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... seen: Murmex stocky, so burly that he did not look tall, square- shouldered, deep-chested, vast of chest-girth, huge in every dimension and yet neither heavy nor slow in his movements; Commodus tall, slender, sinewy, lithe and graceful, quick in every movement and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... A lithe old man came into the parlor. His waxed moustache and his white imperial made him look like an old soldier; but his glance betrayed, under his glasses, the fine softness of eyes worn by science and voluptuousness. He was a Florentine, a friend of Miss Bell and of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... familiar. She entered the lift at the second floor where the tea-room is, and she had the contented expression of one who had tea'd to her satisfaction. She got off at the same floor as Archie, and walked swiftly, in a lithe, pantherist way, round the bend in the corridor. Archie followed more slowly. When he reached the door of his room, the passage was empty. He inserted the key in his door, turned it, pushed the door open, and pocketed the key. He ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... reins of the chariot. Calling upon Apollo and all the other gods to witness him, he seized a lightning bolt, and for a moment the deathless Zeus and all the dwellers in Olympus looked on the fiery chariot in which stood the swaying, slight, lithe figure of a young lad, blinded with horror, shaken with agony. Then, from his hand, Zeus cast the bolt, and the chariot was dashed into fragments, and Phaeton, his golden hair ablaze, fell, like a bright shooting star, from the heavens above, into the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang |
