"Parching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Herhor was pale; the tablets fell from Pentuer's fingers; Mefres held the amulet hanging on his breast, and prayed while his lips were parching. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... former Affections of Her Heart, and | the Generall Course of Her Life[q]; | [Note q: M^r. Greenham. 1. Treat. then it is our Dutie, not seuerely | for Afflict. Consc. fol. III. part to censure her passionatenesse, who | 2.] by reason of the parching Feauer of | the Spirit, as well as of the Body, | was disquieted in her Imagination | (as the Physitian of the body could | discerne) though not in her Memory. | Consider therefore O Man (as that | excellent Physitian of the Soule | ...
— The Praise of a Godly Woman • Hannibal Gamon
... is glowing as a brand; And faint before the parching heat, The strength forsakes the feeble feet: "Thou hast saved me from the robbers' hand, Through wild floods given the blessed land; And shall the weak limbs fail me now? And he!—Divine one, nerve ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Harvest walked by the side of his cornfields in the springtime. A frown was on his face, for there had been no rain for several weeks, and the earth was hard from the parching of the east winds. The young wheat had not been able to ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... most instructive speculation to the philosopher, who studies the wisdom of nature through the medium of things. As, on the one hand, the summit of the mountain may be supposed the point of absolute sterility, so, on the other, the sandy desert, moved by nothing but the parching winds of continents distant from the sources of abundant rains, finishes the scale of natural fertility, which thus diminishes in the two opposite extremes of hot and dry, of cold and wet; thus is provided an indefinite variety of soils and climates for that diversity of living ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... portable and simple preparation of subsistence that I know of, and which is used extensively by the Mexicans and Indians, is called "cold flour." It is made by parching corn, and pounding it in a mortar to the consistency of coarse meal; a little sugar and cinnamon added makes it quite palatable. When the traveler becomes hungry or thirsty, a little of the flour is mixed with water and drunk. It is an excellent article ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... had come over Larry. His only physical sensations were the quick hammering of his heart, and a parching dryness in his throat. Terror stiffened him. Though he would not have admitted it, he was paralyzed ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... winds are low, and when the tides are still, And the round moon rises inland over the naked hill, And o'er her parching seams the dry cloud-shadows pass, And dry along the land-rim lie the shadows of thin grass, Then aches her soul with longing to launch and sink away Where the fine silts lift and settle, and sea-things ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... had made not the slightest impression on her. The same freshness, the same robust, energetic slenderness, the identical flames of arrogant vitality in her green eyes. Instead of withering under the incessant parching of passion's flame, she seemed to grow ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and prolific; and, though not late, should have the benefit of the whole season. For parching, it is inferior to the Common Parching Corn before described, though it yields as much bulk in proportion to the size of the kernel, and is equally as white: but the sharp points often remain sound; and it is, consequently, less crisp ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... former impulse; the second motive becomes stronger than the preceding; that is, the fear of death, or the desire of preserving himself, necessarily prevails over the painful sensation caused by his eagerness to drink. But, (it will be said) if the thirst is very parching, an inconsiderate man, without regarding the danger, will risque swallowing the water. Nothing is gained by this remark: in this case, the anterior impulse only regains the ascendency; he is persuaded, that life may possibly be longer preserved, or that he shall derive a greater good by drinking ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Intense heat. Sultry, parching, enervating, sure precursor, if she had thought to remember, if she had been less engrossed in the bitterness of her questionings, of ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... semi-tropical. This they accounted for by its total immunity from cold, the density of the air at sea-level, and the warm moist breezes it received from the tepid ocean. The climate was about the same as that of the Riviera or of Florida in winter, and there was, of course, no parching summer. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... our Indians to prepare food for the ten days' journey ahead of them. Guzman's wife, and I suppose the wives of our other carriers, spent the morning grinding chuno (frozen potatoes) with a rocking stone pestle on a flat stone mortar, and parching or toasting large quantities of sweet corn in a terra-cotta olla. With chuno and tostado, the body of the sheep, and a small quantity of coca leaves, the Indians professed themselves to be perfectly contented. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... of overwrought temples and tombs, when arid plains and malodorous towns lose their power to interest, they journey north to Rajputana to revel in Jeypore, the unique—at least, lovers of Kipling do. And the effect on jaded senses is like a cooling draught after a parching thirst. Kipling called Jeypore "A pink city, to see and puzzle over," It surely is pink, all of it that is not sky-blue, and for various reasons it is more satisfying than any other town ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... unavailing attempts to ford the creek with infantry,—their entire right and centre, marched out the Charles City Road, and gave impetuous battle at New Market. The accounts and the results indicate that the Federals won the day at New Market, sheerly by good fighting. They were parching with thirst, weak with hunger, and it might have been supposed that reverses had broken their spirit. On the contrary they did not fall back a rod, during the whole day, and at evening Heintzelman's corps crowned their success by a grand charge, whereat the Confederates ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... this time the sound seemed to be forced back through the horn, and to die away upon my lips. The air was so hot and parching, that our horses' coats, which a short time previous had been dripping with sweat, were now perfectly dry, and the hair plastered upon them; the animals' tongues hung out of their mouths, and they seemed panting for cooler air. "Look yonder!" cried Carleton, and he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... correspondence on so barren a ground as I am, that make such poor returns. But my head akes at the bare thought of letter writing. I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shivering [? shrivelling] up in the candle flame, like parching martyrs. The same indisposit'n to write it is has stopt my Elias, but you will see a futile Effort in the next No., "wrung ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... have been swearing at the east wind for parching your verdure, and are now weeping for the rain that drowns your hay. I have these calamities in common, and my constant and particular one,-people that come to see my house, which unfortunately is more in request than ever. Already I have ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... this openly, one Sunday afternoon at Lydia's. They were sitting on the lake shore, for the day was parching hot. Both the young men were in flannels and hatless, and lolled on the grass at Lydia's feet, as she sat with her back against a tree. She noticed how Kent was all grace, and ease, while Billy, whose face had lately become thinner, was all ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... alike the circling seasons flow Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou sowest mightier ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... yards from the mountain path, This Thorn you on your left espy; And to the left, three yards beyond, You see a little muddy pond 30 Of water—never dry Though but of compass small, and bare To thirsty suns and parching air. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... gray to gray; the parching north wind poured down the plain and darkened the air with gritty dust; the sky, though cloudless, grew murkier every day. Then the wind shifted to the south, and the sky grew darker yet with surging heaps of clouds, and at last down ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... fat, luscious, and delicious, just out of the water, falling to pieces with its own richness—melting away like butter in your mouth. In Aberdeenshire you have the Finnan haddo' with a flavour all its own, vastly relishing—just salt enough to be piquant, without parching you up with thirst. In Perthshire there is the Tay salmon, kippered, crisp, and juicy—a very magnificent morsel—a leettle heavy, but that's easily counteracted by a teaspoonful of the Athole whisky. In other places you have the exquisite mutton of the country made into hams of a most delicate ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the bowl, benumb His aching sense With medicined sleep."—O awful in Thy woe! The parching thirst of death Is ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... Iliad, where the young Simois, struck by Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies parching by the side of the stream."[95] It is sufficiently notable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells thus delightedly on all the flat bits; and so I think invariably the inhabitants of mountain ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... days we came to an opening between the mountains, the only passage out of Dancali into Abyssinia. Heaven seems to have made this place on purpose for the repose of weary travellers, who here exchange the tortures of parching thirst, burning sands, and a sultry climate, for the pleasures of shady trees, the refreshment of a clear stream, and the luxury of a cooling breeze. We arrived at this happy place about noon, and the next ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... shaven off, there was a white blueness on the upper lip, that contrasted unpleasantly with the dark tinge which he had gallantly wrought for on the glowing sands of Egypt, and the bronzing of his general features from fierce suns and parching winds. His bare neck and hands were delicately fair, the former firm and muscular, the latter slender and tapering, like a woman's. He was reading a gazette, or some printed paper, when we entered; and although there was a tolerable clatter of muskets, sabres, and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... obstacle now to agriculture in the Crimea and in these regions generally, has been greatly increased by the disappearance of the forests of central and southern Russia, which formerly to some extent protected the coast-provinces from the parching northeast wind. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Indian Corn for us, might I not ask that you would try for a method of preserving the meal in a sound state for us? Oatmeal, which would spoil directly too, is preserved all year by kiln-drying the grain before it is ground,—parching it till it is almost brown, sometimes the Scotch Highlanders, by intense parching, can keep their oatmeal good for a series of years. No Miller here at present is likely to produce such beautiful meal as some of the American ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Tlanqua cemilhuique, compounded of tlanqua, to set the teeth, as with strong determination, and cemilhuitia, to run during a whole day. Sahagun, Historia, Lib. iii, cap. iii, and Lib. x, cap. xxix; compare also the myth of Tezcatlipoca disguised as an old woman parching corn, the odor of which instantly attracted the Toltecs, no matter how far off they were. When they came she killed them. Id. Lib. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... his foot in passing, and a crop of beans was planted, grown and gathered therefrom, without as much rain as will usually fall in a shower of fifteen minutes' duration, while vegetation on the next field was parching ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... and the Nymphs of the farm-yard, Theodotus the shepherd laid this gift under the crag, because they stayed him when very weary under the parching summer, stretching out to him ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... ordinary oven, makes something indistinguishable in flavor from some of the cereal coffees on the market. If no coffee is used in the cereal preparations, the claim that they are not stimulating is probably true. As for the nutritive value, parching the cereals undoubtedly renders some of the carbohydrates soluble, and a part of this soluble matter passes into the decoction, but the nutritive value of the infusion is hardly ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... bows full-creaming! Come set me round with many faithful spears Of confident remembrance — how I crushed Cat-lived rebellions, pitfalled treasons, hushed Scared husbands' heart-break cries on distant wives, Made cowards blush at whining for their lives, Watered my parching souls, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... open moor, the sun blazed with parching heat; here was freshness as of spring, the waft of cool airs, the scent of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... grow upon the sand, The aloes thirst with parching heat; Year after year they waiting stand, Lonely and calm, and front the beat Of desert winds; and still a sweet And subtle voice thrills all their veins: "Great patience wins; it still remains, After a century of pains, To you to ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists—over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead —about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sample—that this one specially does. I have already compared it to a little flowing liquid rill of Nature's life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the madness of contending hosts—the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell's heat and noise and competition above and around—should come melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God's hidden, untrodden recesses, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... orchards of fig, and apple, and pear, and pomegranate, and olive. Drought hurts them not, nor frost, and harvest comes after harvest without ceasing. Also there was a vineyard; and some of the grapes were parching in the sun, and some were being gathered, and some again were but just turning red. And there were beds of all manner of flowers; and in the midst of all were ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... at thy loved one's side, though hour by hour "The path runs on; though Summer's parching star "Burn all the fields, or blackest tempests lower, "Or monitory rainbows threaten far. "If he would hasten o'er the purple sea, "Thyself the helmsman or the oarsman be. "Endure, unmurmuring, each unwelcome ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... beautiful homes on this lofty hilltop, but they were all for sale at bargains, for their occupants have grown weary of the cloud bursts of the long dreary rainy season, then of the parching heats of the equally dreary dry season, when a pickaxe and crowbar are required to dig a potato unless you keep water running from the hose day and night. These people long to return to their old homes in New England where the varying seasons are ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... of years. Nature has been very lavish to the Malay, and she has provided him with a soil which returns a maximum of food for a minimum of grudging labour. The cool, moist fruit groves call aloud to all mankind to come and revel in their fragrant shade during the parching hours of mid-day, and the Malay has caught the spirit of his surroundings, and is very much what Nature has seen fit to ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... in silence, her face paler than ordinary, her hair blown about by the hot wind. The trees in the dark garden swayed and creaked, the air was parching and full of dust, the light glared brighter each moment. Surely it was very near? Surely it was nearer than Stralsund? "It's in Lohm," cried someone with conviction; and Anna turned ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... destitute of brooks or springs. Its banks were so high and precipitous, that there was rarely any place where the travellers could get down to drink of its waters. Frequently they suffered for miles the torments of Tantalus; water continually within sight, yet fevered with the most parching thirst. Here and there they met with rainwater collected in the hollows of the rocks, but more than once they were reduced to the utmost extremity; and some of the men had recourse to the last ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... said the hunter, "and mind, too, that you get back soon, because my throat is parching. I'd like to have one deep drink before ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of a class suited to resist the droughts, having hard, coriaceous leaves. Such is the shrubbery described in a former chapter, which, exempt from severe frosts on the one hand, and thriving in an arid soil and parching heat on the other, clothes half the surface of the island with perpetual verdure. There have been seasons when even these shrubs were so burnt up that the slightest accident might have caused a wide-spread ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... sic frigis.—Frigo is equivalent to frying, drying, parching; the word here has taken on a broader meaning, because the "frying" process is clearly out of question here. It appears that the terminology of frigo and that of asso in the next formula, has not been clearly defined. As a matter of fact, not many modern cooks ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... superfluous, some of them, but in the end something has been accomplished. After a March of whimsical suns and snows, an April of quite fantastical frosts and thaws, and a May, at least partially, of cold mists and parching winds, the flowers, which the florists have been forcing for the purpose, are blooming in the park; the grass is green wherever it has not had the roots trodden out of it, and a filmy foliage, like ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... taking her by the arme, conducted her vnto his castell, deuising of pleasaunt matters. And he was greatlye astonned, to see so rare a beautie, as appeared in the Princesse: whiche neither the wearinesse of the waye, nor the parching beames of the Sunne, coulde in any wyse so appaire, but that there rested ynough, to drawe vnto her the very hartes of the moste colde and frosen men of the world. And albeit the Lorde of Mendozza tooke great pleasure and admiration in beholding ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... lovely day in August, at the top of Ludgate Hill I met a gay young couple, and I think I see them still; They were drinking at the fountain to cool their parching lips, And they said to one another, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... came with renewed horrors,—'weak, distracted, and wanting everything,' says one of the prisoners, a British officer, in his narrative, 'we envied the fate of those whose lifeless corpses no longer needed sustenance. The sense of hunger was already lost, but a parching thirst consumed our vitals.' ... 'Almost lost to a sense of humanity, we no longer looked with pity on those who were the speedy forerunners of our own fate, and a consultation took place, to sacrifice some one to be food to the remainder. The die was going to be cast, when the welcome ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... and began their homeward voyage on the seventeenth of July. It was no easy task to urge their way upward, in the heat of midsummer, against the current of the dark and gloomy stream, toiling all day under the parching sun, and sleeping at night in the exhalations of the unwholesome shore, or in the narrow confines of their birchen vessels, anchored on the river. Marquette was attacked with dysentery. Languid and well-nigh spent, he invoked his celestial mistress. as day after day, and week after week, they won ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... days and nights the winding host Had through the little place been marching, And ever loud the rustics cheered, Till every throat was hoarse and parching. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... healthy, as well as an unhealthy season. Bencoolen is an exception to this rule, being unhealthy all the year through. Even vegetation suffers here from the south-east monsoon; and a nutmeg-plantation exposed to its dry, parching influence, has the appearance of a plantation of heather-brooms more than of any thing else.[9] The natives do not appear to suffer from the climate, but seem to be as healthy and long-lived as Asiatics generally. Of the character of these natives, I can say little that ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... him up, and cast him down: and there he sat all alone, astonished and confounded, like Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, when she sat alone upon the parching rock. Like Rizpah, he watched the dead corpses of all his hopes and plans, all for which he had lived, and which made life worth having, withering away there by his side. But it was told David what Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, had done. And it is told to ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... back again, enjoying the cozy warmth the more for this little reminder of the bitter chill. Here, where the air is cool, pure, and soft, let us think of a hoarding round some old house which the labourers are pulling down, amid clouds of the white, blinding, parching dust of lime, on a sultry summer day. I can hardly think of any human position as worse, if not intended directly as a position of torture. I picture, too, a crowded wharf on a river in a great ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of the stalks some beare foure heads, some three, some one, and some two: euery head containing fiue, sixe, or seuen hundred graines, within a few more or lesse. Of these graines, besides bread, the inhabitants make victuall, either by parching them, or seething them whole vntill they be broken: or boiling the flowre with water ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... churches built in it, which were served by so many priests. The austerities of St. Macarius were excessive; he usually ate but once a week. Evagrius, his disciple, once asked him leave to drink a little water, under a parching thirst; but Macarius bade him content himself with reposing a little in the shade, saying: "For these twenty years, I have never once ate, drunk, or slept, as much as nature required."[4] His face was very ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... due patience, the Put! Put! developed into a steady throb, they resumed work. But if after a spasm or two, silence reigned again, Roger would pull his hat over his eyes and start for the ranch, and eventually that day, water would be given the parching fields. In the meantime, Dick began to prepare a second five-acre patch ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... had risen, that icy wind which cracks the rocks, and leaves nothing alive on those deserted heights. It came in sudden gusts, more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!" Then he waited again. Everything was silent on the mountain! Then he shook with terror, and with a bound he was inside the inn. He shut and bolted the door, and then fell into a chair, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... given to this month which means end of the stem of the talo, or "arum esculentum." The month being unusually dry and parching, the scorching rays of the sun left little of the talo stem but a small piece at ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... here for a moment, to bathe his burning brow and quench his parching thirst. As he bent down to place his lips to the faucet, a dark figure sprang out from beneath the staircase behind, and darted through the alley door, ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... "Many parching summers are come and gone," continued the sage, "since I drank of the water of my own rivers. The children of Minquon* are the justest white men, but they were thirsty and they took it to themselves. Do ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... days of Shah Jehan. The great red bastions of the Fort frown over the same placid Jumna, and watch each morning the pearly dome of the Taj Mahal rise like a moon in the dawn-glow, shimmer through the parching glare of an Indian day, and at eve sink, rosy, into the purple shadows of swiftly-falling night, as they did when Shah Jehan sat "in the sunset-lighted balcony with his eyes fixed on the snow-white pile at the bend of the river, and his heart full of consolation of having ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... cup!' It's laughing, the cursed sun! See how it swells and swells Fierce as a hundred hells! God, will it never have done? It's searing the flesh on my bones; It's beating with hammers red My eyeballs into my head; It's parching my very moans. See! It's the size of the sky, And the sky is a torrent of fire, Foaming on me as I lie Here on the wire . . . the wire. . ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... late varieties to be chosen in the first place. The period of first sowing will allow for all, if kinds that flower at various times are chosen. In the Southern states a June sowing is recommended. A lath frame will keep the plants from parching. ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... half-way station, Moorahd (from moorra, bitter); this, although salt and bitter, is relished by camels. During the hot season in which we unfortunately travelled, the heat was intense, the thermometer ranging from 106 degrees to 114 degrees Fahr. in the shade. The parching blast of the simoom was of such exhausting power, that the water rapidly evaporated from the closed water-skins. It was, therefore, necessary to save the supply by a forced march of seven days, in which period we were to accomplish the distance, and to reach ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... back is supported. Besides, it began to be cold; notwithstanding the shiny, specious appearance of things, it was cold, except in a sheltered nook or two where the sun beat. This was nothing to be complained of by persons who had left the parching land in order to get cool. They knew that there would be a wind and a draught everywhere, and that they would be occupied nearly all the time in moving the little stools about to get out of the wind, or out of the sun, or out of something that is inherent in a steamboat. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... change, and consequently 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, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... made a fool of himself, which somehow didn't matter much; realized that he was alone—just as much alone as ever—which mattered quite a lot. All this and the chill shivering and the vast, aching weariness. He fell asleep and dreamed of desolate wastes and wanderings and parching heat. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... From every quarter threaten man's estate, And danger in a thousand forms prepare! They drive impetuous from the frozen north, With fangs sharp-piercing, and keen arrowy tongues; From the ungenial east they issue forth, And prey, with parching breath, upon thy lungs; If, waft'd on the desert's flaming wing, They from the south heap fire upon the brain, Refreshment from the west at first they bring, Anon to drown thyself and field and plain. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... before sundown the Yaqui went forth to build a campfire, and soon the others came out, heat-dazed, half blinded, with parching throats to allay and hunger that was never satisfied. A little action and a cooling of the air revived them, and when night set in they ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... I was parching some coffee-beans in the frying-pan, when I heard hoofs down the gully back of me. I never looked up when they come into the open nor when I heard ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... kept concealed in the bed of some stream far away in the gloomy forest, and wherever that river may wander, or however brightly its waters may sparkle in the sunny glades, no mortal who values his life may cool his parching lips with its freshness, or bathe his aching limbs in its clear depths. Only for solemn festivals is the Juruparis brought out by night and blown outside the place of meeting, and it is restored to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... off the carriage top down the oil cloth apron which protected Robert and his grandmother. Mrs. Tracy held her little girl in her lap, and leaned back with an expression of perfect happiness. The rain came just as her comfort had come, after so much parching suspense. Aunt Corinne wondered in silence if anything could be nicer than riding under a snug cover on which the sky-streams pelted, through a wonderland of fragrance. Every grateful shrub and bit of sod, the pawpaw leaves and spicewood stems, the half-formed hazel-nuts ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... have visited the fleet With Anicetus: sullen droop the sails Or flap in mutiny against the mast. Burdened with barnacles the untarred keels Drowse on the tide with parching decks unswabbed, And anchors rusting on inglorious ooze. All indolent the vast armada tilts, A leafless resurrection of dead trees. The sailors in a dream do go about Or at the fo'c's'le ominously meet. Should any foe upon the sea-line loom They'll light with ease upon ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... so startling upon the silence of the room that every shattered nerve in our hero's frame tingled and thrilled in answer to it. He stood petrified, scarcely so much as daring to breathe; and then, observing that his mouth was agape, he moistened his dry and parching lips, and drew his jaws ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... we entered Kiwyeh. At dawn, when leaving Mdaburu River, the solemn warning had been given that we were about entering Ugogo; and as we left Kaniyaga village, with trumpet-like blasts of the guide's horn, we filed into the depths of an expanse of rustling Indian corn. The ears were ripe enough for parching and roasting, and thus was one anxiety dispelled by its appearance; for generally, in early March, caravans suffer from famine, which overtakes both natives ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... into the conflict with the dog-days. Your Bengalee mounts defences of tattees and punkahs that cool down a hot wind, or whistle air into presence in a trice. Whereas in this part of the world, as the Sirocco blows, so it must steal into your room, parching your face, and covering you all over with a clammy stickiness, through which you may distinctly feel the subdolent shudder of incipient ague. When he has darkened his room, and spread cool mats on the floor, the poor Smyrniot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... marsh the poplar falls Smooth-skinn'd, with boughs unladen save aloft; Some chariot-builder with his axe the trunk Severs, that he may warp it to a wheel 575 Of shapely form; meantime exposed it lies To parching airs beside the running stream; Such Simoeisius seemed, Anthemion's son, Whom noble Ajax slew. But soon at him Antiphus, son of Priam, bright in arms, 580 Hurl'd through the multitude his pointed spear. He erred from Ajax, but he pierced the groin Of Leucus, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... came with her sunken eyes from the dust of the parching fields And tapped the door with her bony hands and her fingers gaunt and thin; Ah, Hearts grow faint at the hunger-cry and the arm of the master yields When all the world is a heap of dust ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... the afternoon of a sultry parching day when he at last arrived at Hillah. This dull little town, built at the beginning of the twelfth century out of the then plentifully scattered fragments of Babylon, has nothing to offer to the modern traveller save various annoyances in the shape of excessive heat, dust, or rather fine blown ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... reached the Meekers. It was August, and the sun had blazed throughout the day, with the parching heat; the smell of brick dust and scorched tin was hideous. His word. There was, too, a faint metallic clangor in the air. He knew that it came from the surface-cars, yet he could not rid himself of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... me that he had gone from daylight until 11:30, parching for a drink. The saloons were closed by order of Gen. Funston, but he managed to get ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... of sheep and cattle that never knew the shelter of fold or stable, nor the taste of man-grown grain or fodder, from the day of their birth to the day of their marketing. Winter and summer alike, under the parching sun, under the strangling drifts, that clinging, gray vegetation was ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 10 He must not flote upon his watry bear Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... utmost bounds 290 Of Scandinavia; thence the eye returns: And lo! great Lebanon—abrupt and dark With pines, and airy Carmel, rising slow Above the midland main, where hang the capes Of Italy and Greece; swart Africa, Beneath the parching sun, her long domain Reveals, the mountains of the Moon, the source Of Nile, the wild mysterious Niger, lost Amid the torrid sands; and to the south Her stormy cape. Beyond the misty main 300 The weary eye scarce wanders, when behold Plata, through vaster territory poured; And Andes, sweeping the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... replied Fornax, looking up from the little furnace wherein she was parching corn, "you are talking nonsense. The People of the Field have never taken holiday. Nobody ever heard of such ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... after the flood shall be dearth, And the rain no longer shall fall On the parching fields; and a pall, As of ashes, shall cover the earth; And dust-clouds shall darken the sky; And the deep water wells shall ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... Land, fertile, fair, and rich, rained upon by the genial showers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman's Cap, Wyld's Crag, or the lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams. No parching hot wind—the scavenger, if the torment, of the continent—blows upon her crops and corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue waters of the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the city which nestles in the broad shadow ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the warmth of the sun drying his skin while the sea hummed in his ears; he felt distinctly the sharp pain between his eyes, and a parching thirst. He groped around in a delirious search for water, which he did not find; he pressed his head and limbs against the earth in an exquisite relief from pain; and at last his bruised feet, his aching bones and head constrained him to a lethargy ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... compassion and with fear, now gazed at her little hands, which became as white as paper, and bitterly reproached himself because, having lost so much time in the preparation and in drilling the negroes to shoot, he had exposed her to a journey in a season of the year so parching. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... burned, with summer fired; For parching fields, for pining flowers, The spirits of the air desired The brook's bright life to shed ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... advanced, she was partly naked; her only covering being some old thrown away rags. Her fire was a few chips, and she was parching a little corn for supper. Thus she lived abandoned and forlorn; incapable from old age to work any longer, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... there was nothing about the ranch to indicate the undercurrent of trouble Tresler had so quickly discovered to be flowing beneath its calm surface. The sun was pouring down upon the wiltering foliage with a fierceness which had set the insect world droning its drowsy melody; the earth was already parching; the sloughs were already dry, and the tall grass therein was rapidly ripening against the season of haying. But in spite of the seeming peace; in spite of the cloudless sky, the pastoral beauty of the scene, the almost inaudible murmur of the distant river, the tide was flowing ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... process of our love and wisdom To each poor brother who offends against us— Most innocent, perhaps—and what if guilty? Is this the only cure? Merciful God! Each pore and natural outlet shrivell'd up By ignorance and parching poverty, His energies roll back upon his heart, And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison, They break out on him, like a loathsome plague spot. Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks— And this is ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... being colde and moist, these stones doe in the winter time, defend and keepe the sharpnesse of the Frosts and bleake windes from killing the heart or roote of the seedes, and also in the Summer it defends the scorching heate of the Sunne from parching and drying vp the Seede, which in this grauelly soile doth not lie so well couered, as in other soyles, especially if this kinde of earth be inuironed with any great hils (as most commonly it is) the reflection whereof makes the heate much more violent. And lastly, to obserue that there ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... complimented! Instead of the refreshing April-like showers, which beautify the sun-shine, she shall stand a deluge of complaisance, be wet to the skin with it; and what then? Why be in a Lybian desert ever after!—experience a constant parching drought and all her attributed excellencies will be swallowed up in the quicksands of matrimony. It may be otherwise with you; and it must be so; because there is such an infinite variety in your excellence. But does Mr. B. think it must ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... and, as luck would have it, this digging, which ought to have been nothing to our men fit as they were, in ordinary weather, was turned into a very high trial indeed by a khamsin. This red-hot and parching wind, blowing off the desert, makes thirst a positive torture when water is limited, and it was very limited at that time. We were getting rather less than half a gallon per man for all purposes, which is perhaps just about the quantity used by the ordinary man for cooking and drinking ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... poured into his mouth a few drops of medicine. He opened his eyes, and turned faintly on his pallet, but sank back, as though exhausted. Again he stretched out his hand, as if in search for something, which failing to find he moaned heavily. Giulietta perceived at once that parching thirst was consuming him. From the balcony a flight of steps led to the garden; she flew down them to the fountain, whose pure, cold water made the shadow of the surrounding acacias musical as ever. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... taken off after remaining upon the rocks some twelve days, without nourishment and exposed to all the horrors of starvation. Worse yet than that, deprived of shelter from a vertical sun, without water to restore the fluids which his fierce rays extracted from their parching bodies. An immense number of birds were flying over and around these jagged peaks, and who knows how greatly these may have added to the torture of the shipwrecked crew, when failing nature denied the power ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the stems are generally close to the heating apparatus, it is advisable to bind them up with moss or haybands, neatly clipped, as far as the parching heat extends. The moss or haybands being damped morning and evening with the syringe, will keep the bark and stems in a healthy state, and will frequently induce a mass of roots to be produced there. That by watering occasionally with liquid manure will contribute ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... to the worship of the divine as the beneficent power of nature which blesses man. On the other hand, he changed under the impression of the harmful phenomena of nature, the dark and close-packed clouds which hold back the rain and intercept the sunshine, the parching heat of summer, which dries up the rivers and hinders growth and fruitfulness, and these also he erected into objects of awe and religious adoration. From this view of nature sprang the Indian mythology. The oldest divinity (Deva) of the ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... part comely were both men and women; the most of them light-haired and grey-eyed, with cheek-bones somewhat high; white of skin but for the sun's burning, and the wind's parching, and whereas they were tanned of a very ruddy and cheerful hue. But the thralls were some of them of a shorter and darker breed, black-haired also and dark-eyed, lighter of limb; sometimes better knit, but sometimes ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... describe. But most wonderful of all is the monsoon which rages over the country, wrapping the earth sometimes in sheets of lightning which turn sea, sky and earth to one vivid world of flame. The wind is dry and parching, so that all windows are kept carefully closed at night; but, indeed, the mosquitoes are sufficient excuse for that. I have seen nothing ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the foe replied—"A Turk and I Have never yet been bound in friendly tie; And soon thy head shall, severed by my sword, Gladden the sight of Persia's mighty lord, While thy torn limbs to vultures shall be given, Or bleach beneath the parching blast of heaven." ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... rolled down the drive to the gate, and out upon the sunny road. The dust rose in clouds, whitening the elder, the stickweed, and the blackberry bushes. The locusts shrilled in the parching trees. The sky was cloudless and intensely blue, marked only by the slow circling of a buzzard far above the pine-tops. There were many pines, and the heat drew out their fragrance, sharp and strong. The moss that thatched the red banks was burned, and all the ferns were shrivelling ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... through that long parching afternoon they had toiled on, with the draught cattle growing more listless, the horses sluggish and restless; and a general feeling of weariness seemed to ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... shower just before he had set out, and now, although rain had ceased, the sky remained blackly overcast and a curious, dull stillness was come. The air had a welcome freshness and the glistening pavements looked delightfully cool after the parching heat of the day. In the quiet square, no doubt, it was always restful in contrast with the more busy highroads, and in the murmur of distant traffic he found something very soothing. About him then were peace, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... hand.] The window cut me—give me a drink—I'm parching. [She gets water in a dipper from bucket on bench. TRAVERS drinks with the tin rattling on his teeth. Noise of a galloping horse passes. He drops the dipper.] I don't think they saw me ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways Thy verse distils ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... many warnings to lay to heart—against Indian surprises in the mountains, against mosquitoes on the plains, against quicksands in the Platte, against stampedes among the cattle, against alkaline springs and the desert's parching heats. And quite as important as any of these was that against the Latter Day Saint with the Book of Mormon in his saddlebag and his ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... his eyes as if from a distant prospect, and they dropped to the stove, where I had corn parching. He nodded, as if amused, but did not answer at once, and taking from my hand the feather with which I stirred the corn, softly whisked some off for himself, and smiled at the remaining kernels as they danced ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... preceded and followed. It is then that Nature, who seems from the creation to have bestowed all of grandeur and sublimity on the stupendous Americas, looks gladly and complacently on her work; and, staying the course of parching suns and desolating frosts, loves to luxuriate for a period in the broad and teeming bosom of her gigantic offspring. It is then that the forest-leaves, alike free from the influence of the howling hurricane of summer, and the paralysing and unfathomable snows of winter, cleave, tame and stirless ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... by birth a shepherd's daughter, My wit untrain'd in any kind of art. Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleased To shine on my contemptible estate: Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs And to sun's parching heat display'd my cheeks, God's mother deigned to appear to me, And in a vision full of majesty Will'd me to leave my base vocation, And free my country from calamity: Her aid she promised and assured success: In complete glory she reveal'd herself; And, whereas I was black and ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... less departs Into all regions that demand the moist; And many heaped-up particles of hot, Which cause such burnings in these bellies of ours, The liquid on arriving dissipates And quenches like a fire, that parching heat No longer now can scorch the frame. And so, Thou seest how panting thirst is washed away From off our body, how the ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... lies beyond a desert 'cross which hosts of Death are marching, And a hot sirocco wanders under skies all red and parching, Lined with skeletons of armies through the centuries fierce and acre Bones of heroes and of sages marking Time's lapse year by year, Unmoistened by the night-dews 'mid the solitudes of fear ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... each cardoon, like a full moon, Fairy-spun of the thistle floss; And the beech grove, and a wood dove, And the trail where the shepherds pass; And the lark's song, and the wind-song, And the scent of the parching grass! ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... partner here; I come to tell you where to find A treasure, which I left behind: I had not time to let you know it, But follow me, and now I'll shew it." John trembled at the awful sight, But hopes of gain suppress'd his fright; Oft will the parching thirst of gold, Make ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... this infant colony, of which we are especially speaking, has already been peopled! The majestic rusa, captured in the sultry forests of Bengal, and the elegant gazelle, which has once bounded over the parching deserts of Barbary, have become intimate and make their couch with the white reindeer, brought from the icy wastes of Lapland. The misshapen but harmless kangaroo of New Holland is a fellow-lodger with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... Hollowed in smooth hard brightness, now dissolved To infinite soft depth, and smoulder'd down Low as the roofs, dark burning blue, and soared Clear to that winking drop of liquid silver, The first exquisite star. Now the half-light Tidied away the dusty litter parching Among the cobbles, veiled in the colour of distance Shabby slates and brickwork mouldering, turn'd The hunchback houses into patient things Resting; and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... tumbling, the pillow continually descending into the depths of infinity, but never getting any where—the bed rolling like a dismantled hulk upon a stormy sea—the room filled with steaming and hissing urns—a fearful thirst parching my throat, while myriads of horrid bearded Russians were torturing me with tumblers of boiling-hot tea dashed with vodka—thus I lay a perfect victim of tea. I could even see Chinamen with long queues ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... summer heat; flies increased in myriads; clouds of locusts darkened the sky; and hot winds blew, scorching and parching everything. The infantry had vanished to the north, to perilous adventures in the unknown; and the mounted men were grieved to the very depths of their souls to be left thus behind to stagnate on this sun-baked Sahara. The days passed monotonously, with ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... source of the food supply. Her son, the corn god, became, as the Egyptians put it, "Husband of his Mother". Each year he was born anew and rapidly attained to manhood; then he was slain by a fierce rival who symbolized the season of pestilence-bringing and parching sun heat, or the rainy season, or wild beasts of prey. Or it might be that he was slain by his son, as Cronos was by Zeus and Dyaus by Indra. The new year slew ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... joke and banter. The situation was serious. Some tried to smoke, but their parching thirst was thus only aggravated—they ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... marched through the large Indian village Isaac saw unmistakable indications of war. There was a busy hum on all sides; the squaws were preparing large quantities of buffalo meat, cutting it in long, thin strips, and were parching corn in stone vessels. The braves were cleaning rifles, sharpening tomahawks, and mixing war paints. All these things Isaac knew to be preparations for long marches and for battle. That night he heard ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the summer before, and had served no further use than the grazing of some picketed cows. Then, one parching July day it had been cut, to kill the thistles and pigweed that overran it, and in the following May had been plowed, dragged, and sown to wild timothy. The few mounds dotting it had been turned under with the belief that, between the fallow and the new plowing, the gophers would be driven ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... may be, When the meadows parching lie, Beware, lest this little brook of life Some ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... New Day, shining behind the dark. With us shall go Power, Knowledge, Justice, Truth. The time is full! A new world awaits us. Its fruits, its joys, its opportunities are ours for the taking! Fear not the hardships of the road—the storm, the parching heat or winter's cold, hunger or thirst or ambushed foe! There are bright lights ahead of us, leave the shadows behind! In the East a new star is risen! With pain and anguish the Old Order has given birth to the New, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... see the bloom destroyed ruthlessly by thousands who cut it to decorate touring automobiles and fruit and vegetable stands beside the highways, who carry it from its native location and stick it in the parching sun of the seashore as a temporary shelter, I feel that the bloom stems might as well be used for food as ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to be far off. From hence they advanced three days' march, through much snow and a level plain, a distance of fifteen parasangs; the third day's march was extremely troublesome, as the north wind blew full in their faces, completely parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind, and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to everyone ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... alkali country, the lack of water for the same length of time would have meant little more than discomfort, but the parching, drying effect of the deadly white dust entailed untold suffering upon the traveller ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... on the success of their plot. There was despair on his face, a piercing note in his voice, anguish in his soul; the flames of hell were already consuming him, the thirst of the bottomless pit already parching his lips; his hand convulsively clutched the thirty ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Harvest walked by the side of his cornfields in the early year, and a cloud was over his face, for there had been no rain for several weeks, and the earth was hard from the parching of the cold east winds, and the young wheat had not been ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... inextinguishable thirst for happiness which brought them all there, wounded either in body or in spirit; Pierre also felt it parching his throat, in an ardent desire to be quenched. He longed to cast himself upon his knees, to beg the divine aid with the same humble faith as that woman. But his limbs were as though tied; he could not find the words he wanted, and it was a relief ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Pandavas (to a match of dice). Whither then had this virtue of thine gone? When many mighty car-warriors, encompassing the boy Abhimanyu in battle, slew him, whither had this virtue of thine then gone? If this virtue that thou now invokest was nowhere on those occasions, what is the use then of parching thy palate now, by uttering that word? Thou art now for the practice of virtue, O Suta, but thou shalt not escape with life. Like Nala who was defeated by Pushkara with the aid of dice but who regained his kingdom by prowess, the Pandavas, who are free from cupidity, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in fourteene, and is about ten foote high, of the stalkes some beare foure heads, some three, some one, and two: euery head ctaining fiue, sixe, or seu hundred graines within a fewe more or lesse. Of these graines besides bread, the inhabitants make victuall [b 3] eyther by parching them; or seething them whole vntill they be broken; or boyling the floure with ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot
... planted tree into that of another. The twelfth of August.... It set me thinking of heathery moorlands and grouse, and of those legions of flies that settle on one's nose just as one pulls the trigger. It all seemed dim and distant here, on this parching road, among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland underwear when, suddenly, a little tune ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... they rested, one stayed in that place, and the next night another dropped behind; and so it was at the end of each day's journey. They crossed a great plain where waters of mirage rolled over a cracked and parching earth, and the rim of the world was hidden in a bluish mist. So they came at last to another range of hills, not so high, but tumbled thickly together; and beyond these, at the end of the hundred days, to the Big Water, quaking along the sand at the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the purer mind, Whence with his keen eyes he may penetrate All mists and fogs that baser spells create. Love? What is love? Not the wild feverish thrill, When heart to heart the thronging pulses fill, And lips that close in parching kisses find No speech but those;—the best remains behind. The tranquil spirit—the divine assurance That this life's seemings have a high endurance— Thoughts that allay this restless striving, calm The passionate ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... as rapidly as the heat would permit. She crossed the Park, and, striking into Fulton Street, continued toward the river, but turned into Water Street. The old peach-women at the corners, sitting under huge cotton umbrellas, and parching in the heat, saw the lovely face going by, and marked the peculiarly earnest step, which the sitters in the streets, and consequent sharp students of faces and feet, easily enough recognized as the step of one who was bound upon some especial errand. Clerks looked idly at her from open ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... confines of China and Thibet, sweeps across the Bay of Bengal, whence its lowest strata imbibe a quantity of moisture, moderate in amount, yet still leaving the great mass of air far below saturation. Hence it reaches Ceylon comparatively dry, and its general effects are parching and disagreeable. This character is increased as the sun recedes towards its most southern declination, and the wind acquires a more direct draught from the north; passing over the Indian peninsula and almost totally digested of humidity, it blows down the western coast of the island, and is known ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... water in a tropical country, or the blessings of a cool, pure draught. I have been in districts of Ceylon where for sixteen or twenty miles not a drop of water is to be obtained fit for an animal to drink; not a tree to throw a few yards of shade upon the parching ground; nothing but stunted, thorny jungles and sandy, barren plains as far as the eye can reach; the yellow leaves crisp upon the withered branches, the wild fruits hardened for want of sap, all moisture robbed from vegetation by the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... one servant who carried his provisions. It is said that he never spoke harshly to this man, no matter what food he placed before him, but that he would often help him to do his work when he was at leisure from military duty. He drank only water when campaigning, except that when suffering from parching thirst he would ask for some vinegar, and sometimes when his strength fairly failed he would drink ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... daughter, Mertice, eighteen times in three hours, this being the number of her demands for water to drink. When interviewed after the eighteenth lap, Mr. Lasbert said: "I wouldn't do it another time, not if the child were parching." Shortly after that he made ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley |
