"Rift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us a sparing lunch of thin sandwiches and a frugal flask of modest, blushing brandy, which we diluted at a stingy little fountain spring which dropped economically through a rift in the rock, as if its nymph were conscious that such a delicious drink should not be wasted. As it was, it refreshed us, and we were resting in a blessed repose under the green leaves, when we heard footsteps, and an ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... observation even the veriest amateur finds himself recognizing certain shapes or appearances—a narrow dark belt running slopingly across the equator from one of the main cloud zones to the other, or a rift in one of the colored bands, or a rotund white mass apparently floating above the equator, or a broad scallop in the edge of a belt like that near the site of the celebrated "red spot," whose changes of color and aspect ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... carrying home her dead sailor's bird; the village schoolmaster, in whom a rift in the clouds revives the memory of his little daughter; the old huntsman unable to cut through the stump of rotten wood—touch our hearts at once and for ever. The secret is given in the rather prosaic apology for not relating a tale about poor ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the Egyptian nobles afforded no protection against them. If a frog came close to them, the walls split asunder immediately. "Make way," the frogs would call out to the stone, "that I may do the will of my Creator," and at once the marble showed a rift, through which the frogs entered, and then they attacked the Egyptians bodily, and mutilated and overwhelmed them. In their ardor to fulfil the behest of God, the frogs cast themselves into the red-hot flames of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... we dig a grave? In such hard ground, knives would make no impression, and the body must be buried deeply, or it would be rooted up by the dingoes, whose howl we could plainly hear around us, as they bayed at the moon. We spread ourselves out in different directions, in the hope of finding some rift or recess that would answer the purpose, but in the imperfect light, we failed to discover anything, so were compelled to wait for dawn. I do not think any of us slept much. One of our little party suddenly snatched away in so unforeseen a manner, gave us all food for reflection—for which ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... with the results ascribed to it by Lamarck, and not the false Charles-Darwinian natural selection that does not correspond with facts, and cannot result in specific differences such as we now observe. But, waiving this, the "my's," within which a little rift had begun to show itself in 1866, might well become as mute in 1869 as they could become without attracting attention, when Mr. Darwin saw the passages just quoted, and the hundred pages or ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... and amused himself with the thought of the wonder there would be at home. Suddenly he heard the sound of a horse's hoof, and grasping his rifle, stooped down behind a fallen rock. A moment later a mounted Indian dashed past the mouth of the rift. He was scarce twenty yards away, but Dick noticed the eagle feathers of his head-dress, the rifle slung across his shoulder, and the leggings decorated with tufts of hair. It was but a moment, and then he was gone. Dick waited a minute or two, and then ran in to tell ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... (great) flowing deep (loch) to the loft (sky) reared. Mony clustered clowde clef alle in clowte[gh] Many a clustering cloud cleft all in clouts (pieces), To-rent vch a rayn-ryfte & rusched to e vre Rent was each a rain-rift and rushed to the earth; Fon neuer in forty daye[gh], & en e flod ryses Failed never in forty days, and then the flood rises, Ouer-walte[gh] vche a wod and e wyde felde[gh] Over-flows each wood and the wide fields; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water wylger ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... quarters for the most comfortable bed that was ever invented. It was great fun to lie listening to Rocky munching alongside, and to fall asleep with the out-of-door feeling, and the stars looking in from the rift ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... "Spit it out, Brenton! Rift it aff yer chist!" he adjured him. "Something has gone bad inside your Denmark, and I'm so far kindred to the blessed angels that ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... I had three distinct shocks in quick succession. Flashy, painted and rouged as I was I dreaded Orontides' eyes. There he was behind his counter, visible through a rift in the press of handsomely dressed customers of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... around for a few minutes and then going back the way she had come, did not strike Jack as being a tourist come to view the scenery. So far as he had been able to judge as he peeped out through a narrow rift in the ledge, she had paid very little attention to the scenery. She seemed chiefly concerned with the station, and her concern seemed mostly an impatience ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... door—through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a few instants before—her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and, without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from a rift in a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes that are simultaneous—however foreign in essence these scenes may be—as chemical waters will crystallize on twigs and wires. Even after that time any mental ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... discordant notes of the radio signal sounded monotonously in his ears, Bell stared down and, through a rift between two clouds, saw the other plane for an ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the final shock. To their unbounded amazement the "Sea Bee," instead of dashing against the cliffs, appeared to pass directly into them as though they were but shadows of a solid substance, and in another minute had shot, like an arrow from a bow, through a rift barely wide enough ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... rift of the earth called Tze-ye did he carry it, where the cliff homes of the Ancient Others lined the sides of the canyon and the medicine-men of Ah-ko spoke in hushed tones because of the echoing walls, and of the strong gods who had ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... again and as her head went down Wiley stared straight ahead and blinked. He had known the Colonel and loved him well, and his father had loved him, too; but that rift had come between them and until it was healed he could never be a friend of Virginia's. She distrusted him in everything—in his silence and in his speech, his laughter and his anger, in his evasions and when he talked ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... open ground to wait for daylight. De Spain was wakeful, and his eyes rested with curiosity on the huge bulk of Music Mountain, rising overwhelmingly above him. Through the Gap that divided the great, sentinel-like front of El Capitan, marking the northern face of the mountain rift, from Round Top, the south wall of the opening, stars shone vividly, as if lighting the way ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... 'northeast and by north.' This latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of forty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the center of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... by keeping cool-headed than any other way," rejoined Frank. "A crevasse, into one of which the professor has fallen, is not 'a hole' as you call it, but a long rift in the earth above which snow has drifted. Sometimes they are so covered up that persons can cross in safety, at other times the snow 'bridge' gives way under their weight and they are precipitated into the crevasse ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... stately house one instant showed, Through a rift, on the vessel's lea; What manner of creatures may be those That build upon ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... as though from a great distance, Vaillant's voice saying irritatedly, "Let Paula take care of him, Webber. Look at this—we're going to cross another rift—" ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... Robin, too was a pronounced, even an enthusiastic, "Welsleyite," and had practically forgotten "old London," as he negligently called the greatest city in the world. They were very happy in Welsley. In fact, the Dean's widow was the only rift in Rosamund's lute, that lute which was so full of sweet and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... sharpshooters flamed against them. Some galloped on and gave the orders. Some threw up their arms and fell, or, crashing to earth with a wounded horse, disentangled themselves and stumbled on through the iron rain. The sun drew close to the vast and melancholy forests across the river. Through a rift in the smoke, there came a long and crimson shaft. It reddened the river, then struck across the shallows to Malvern Hill, suffused with a bloody tinge wood and field and the marshes by the creeks, then splintered against the hilltop and made a hundred guns to gleam. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... as they could strip from the bones; but as every wagon left the place, climbing the divide beyond, the occupants forgot their sufferings and talked of the desert as something which they had left behind. For Furnace Creek canyon lay ahead of them, a rift in the black range which rose between them and the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... a story told By one of Black Beard's men Who had done evil things for gold, That one morning, out at sea, The fog made a sudden lift, And from the high poop, looking through the rift, He saw Twenty canoes, each with six warriors, Paddling straight toward the rising sun, Where the wind made a flaw— He swore he saw And counted twenty hulls, Circled about by screaming gulls— Then such a storm came down That some prayed on that hellion ship, But he did not— ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... liberal-democratic-socialistic conception of the state but to the concept itself, is to be found in the doctrine of Fascism. For while the disagreement between Liberalism and Democracy, and between Liberalism and Socialism lies in a difference of method, as we have said, the rift between Socialism, Democracy, and Liberalism on one side and Fascism on the other is caused by a difference in concept. As a matter of fact, Fascism never raises the question of methods, using in its political praxis now liberal ways, now democratic means and at times even socialistic ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the judges of the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... Marjorie, when, breathless and somewhat tired, the three explorers had reached a small turret room into which was shining a ray of sunshine from a rift in the clouds—'I wonder if you would laugh ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... highways, and by going back to what was old has found topics that are really fresh and delightful. The Italy of the ancient Romans is a foreign country to us, and must always continue so; but the Italy of the Middle Ages is nearer, not so much in time, as because there is no impassable rift of religious faith, and consequently of ideas and motives, between us and it. Far enough away in the centuries to be picturesque, it is near enough in the sympathy of belief and thought to be thoroughly intelligible. The chapter on the Brotherhood of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... of the happy, Such the minds of merry maidens: Like the early dawn of spring-time, Like the rising Sun in summer No such radiance awaits me, With my young heart filled with terror; Happiness is not my portion, Like the flat-shore of the ocean, Like the dark rift of the storm-cloud, Like the cheerless nights of winter! Dreary is the day in autumn, Dreary too the autumn evening, Still more dreary is my future!" An industrious old maiden, Ever guarding home and kindred, Spake these words ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... done before. She watched tenderly by the bedside of her son, and when he was recovered, and went to St. Paul's to return thanks, she sat by his side, and wore a white flower in her bonnet, and her grateful smile showed that there was a rift in the cloud of her mourning, and that God's sunlight ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... round again. The last thing attended to before putting on his coat was always carefully to brush and dispose his hair. Until within two or three years, he had been able to keep up appearances by coaxing a gray rift across the top of the bald place; but it had grown month by month thinner and grayer, and more difficult to keep in position, until at last he had bravely told himself it was a vanity and a delusion, and had consigned it ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... gloomy on either side, and the seething, boiling waters of the Humboldt - that for once awakens from its characteristic lethargy, and madly plunges and splutters over a bed of jagged rocks which seem to have been tossed into its channel by some Herculean hand - fill this mighty "rift" in the mountains with a never-ending roar. It has been threatening rain for the last two hours, and now the first peal of thunder I have heard on the whole journey awakens the echoing voices of the caon and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... watched the whole scene through the rift in the door with bated breath and great amazement. When he rose to his feet, he remained for a long time, rapt in a brown study, leaning against the wall and staring blankly before him, lost in wonder that two such different beings should be ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... This figure of himself and Soames was trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise, remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed he —or was it Soames?—moved ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... But no rift appeared in the artist's black sky of sorrow; she had not yet learned that, in drawing near the hand that holds the rod, the blow is lightened, and she bitterly demanded of her Maker to be released ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that gripped the revolver remained motionless. Through a rift in the leafy curtain I caught a glimpse of a bulk that was within a yard of our hiding place, and I knew that the youngster was waiting for the brute to speak to make certain that he was covering the right man. The ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of risk: very high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever vectorborne diseases: malaria and Rift Valley fever are high risks in some locations respiratory ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... But let me go on. I was also told that your information would be in our hands within twenty-four hours, and then, I learned that Ydo was conducting the negotiations. That was the rift within the lute. I immediately became frightened. I did not know what it meant. What I did know was that Ydo stops at nothing to gain her ends. And of course, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... sun was shining upon him through a rift in the wall. The church was full of smothered sounds—stifled groans from helpless men, stiffened by lying still, and trying to move. Jim managed to raise himself a little, at which Denny Callaghan gave ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... gleams of sunlight struggled through a rift in the clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the wild garden. The brown tiles of the roof glowed in the light, the mosses took bright hues, strange shadows played over the grass beneath ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... contrary," said Holmes, "it is the brightest rift which I can at present see in the clouds. However innocent he might be, he could not be such an absolute imbecile as not to see that the circumstances were very black against him. Had he appeared surprised at his own arrest, or feigned indignation at it, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... A rift had come in the smoke, and a column of boats, moving with well-timed oars, could for a moment be seen as it ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... hands ever forgot themselves so far as to applaud, as the least sign of approbation of Austrian military music would have been looked upon as treason to the Italian Fatherland. All public life in Venice also suffered by this extraordinary rift between the general public and the authorities; this was peculiarly apparent in the relations of the population to the Austrian officers, who floated about publicly in Venice like oil on water. The populace, too, behaved with no less reserve, or one might even say hostility, to the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... lie up against the sky, marked off into fields by whin hedges, till they look like sloping chequer-boards. Beyond them, in places, tower up the mountain-tops of dark Donegal, crusted over with black heather, seamed by rift and ravine, bare in places where these rocks, those bones of the mountains, have pushed themselves through the heather, till it looks like a ragged cloak. The sun shines, the rooks flap busily about, as noisy as a parliament, the air ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... knowledge as to the physiology and psychology of the sex life. That a great deal of domestic dissatisfaction and unhappiness could be obviated if wisdom and experience instructed the husband and wife in the matter I have not the slightest doubt. The first rift in the domestic lute often dates from difficulties in the intimate life of the pair, difficulties that need not exist if there were knowledge. That reason and love may coexist, that the beauty of life is not dependent on ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the cloud-rift broadens, spanning earth that's under, Wide our world displays its worth, man's strife and strife's success: All the good and beauty, wonder crowning wonder, Till my heart and soul applaud ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... supplied in each other's lives a long-felt want—if only, that is, she could control her curious aptitude for jealousy and the sexual impulse to vex. There, he felt, she broke the convention of their relations and brought in serious realities, and this little rift it was that had widened to a now considerable breach. He knew that in every sane moment she dreaded and wished to heal that breach as much as he did. But the deep simplicities of the instincts they had tacitly agreed to bridge over washed the piers of their ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... he took the book to the door. Above the tall houses of the narrow street was a rift ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... through the shade, and skirting swift The walls of Paradise, through night's dark rift Lilith fled far; nor stopped lest deadly snare Or peril by the wayside lurked. The air Grew chill. Loud beat her heart, as through the wind Echoed, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... the clouds lifting, some islet will be presented standing alone, with the tops of its trees dipping out of sight in pearly gray fringes; or, lifting higher, and perhaps letting in a ray of sunshine through some rift overhead, the whole island will be set free and brought forward in vivid relief amid the gloom, a girdle of silver light of dazzling brightness on the water about its shores, then darkening again and vanishing back into the general gloom. Thus island after island may be seen, singly or ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... office. He went to the window and stared upwards at the crazy patchwork of the sky. For all he knew, in such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, as he looked, he could make out a rift, and beyond that a ... hole ... a small patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was not black. There were no stars there, though points of light were clustered ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... painted mountains of a picture. The light was gone from the east, and there everything was chill and grey; the barren rocks looked so desolate that one shuddered with horror of the cold. But the sun fell gold and red, and the rift in the clouds was a kingdom of gorgeous light; the earth and its petty inhabitants died away, and in the crimson flame I could almost see Lucifer standing in his glory, god-like and young; Lucifer in all majesty, surrounded by his court ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... heron, and the crane Through the clear realms of azure drift, And on the hillside I can see The villages of Imari, Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift Their twisted columns of smoke on high, Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie, With sunshine streaming through each rift, And broken ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the sea. Before the moon was made, Moaning in vague immensity, Of its own strength afraid, Unresful and unstaid. Through every rift it foamed in vain, About its earthly prison, Seeking some unknown thing in pain, And sinking restless back again, For yet no moon had risen: Its only voice a vast dumb moan, Of utterless anguish speaking, It lay unhopefully alone, And lived but in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that the Pythagorean doctrine in its entirety was too high a one for its adherents, and a rift between Pythagorean religion and Pythagorean science was inevitable. Those who were capable of appreciating the scientific side of the movement would tend more and more to neglect the religious rule which it prescribed, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... concerned himself so seriously about the affairs of Elizabeth's heart. The very next day the rift ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... near the mouth, and rapid. From the top of a neighboring cliff, four hundred feet high, it could be seen trending back into the mountains some thirty or thirty-five miles. The mountains, devoid of snow, were seen under favorable circumstances through a rift in the clouds, and appeared brown and naked, with smooth rounded tops. During a tramp of some miles over a muddy way, composed of argillaceous clay and black pebbles, I observed fragments of quartz and ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... Without a friend to lead the way, himself Guiding us all. So having reached the abrupt Earth-rooted Threshold with its brazen stairs, He paused at one of the converging paths, Hard by the rocky basin which records The pact of Theseus and Peirithous. Betwixt that rift and the Thorician rock, The hollow pear-tree and the marble tomb, Midway he sat and loosed his beggar's weeds; Then calling to his daughters bade them fetch Of running water, both to wash withal And make libation; so they clomb the steep; And in brief ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... between successive rings of bright matter, which appeared nearly straight, owing to the inclination in which they lay relatively to us. These bright rings surrounded an undefined central luminous mass. Recent photographs by Mr. Russell showed that the great rift in the Milky Way in Argus, which to the eye was void of stars, was in reality ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... another to unfold. This includes home sympathies and household wisdom. Such fellowship makes of home a joy, and of toil a delight. When first the joy is reached, a foretaste of heaven is enjoyed. "For it is the one rift of heaven which makes all heaven appear possible; the ecstasy of hope and faith, out of which grows the love which is our strongest mortal instinct ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... the new bonds of commerce and travel, the sense of a common country and destiny began to take root in the hearts of men, and on occasion disclosed itself with the strength and nobility of a heroic passion. True, a new rift was appearing, in the doctrine of nullification and the question of slavery, but this evoked at times a more militant and again a more appealing aspect in the sentiment of union. Jackson seemed to rise from the rough frontiersman to the guardian of the nation when he gave the word, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... clearly what I saw not at the time,—that my weakness came upon me fr-rom my own lack of str-rength to make an effort. I was cr-rushed by a gr-rief when I left my land to come to America. I allowed it to paralyze my will. I let myself dr-rift, not caring enough about what became of me to exert myself to ward off poverty. Poverty never had been mine,—I did not r-realize it, but I did know well the meaning of self-r-respect and honor, and it was base of me to permit my ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... are in a maze, in a weltering world of woods; you can see neither the earth nor the sky, but a confusion of the growth and decay of centuries, and must traverse them by your compass or your science of woodcraft,—a rift through the trees giving one a glimpse of the opposite range or of the valley beneath, and he is more at sea than ever; one does not know his own farm or settlement when framed in these mountain treetops; all look ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... to think we are too comfortable in the hut and hope it will not make us slack; but it is good to see everyone in such excellent spirits—so far not a rift in the social arrangements. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... eyes were bright, her lips tremulous. He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers. Then she flashed a look at him—appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were expressed in it. Was she expecting him to dance? Did she want to mix with the rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of himself in this hurly-burly? A voice said, "Good-evening!" Before them stood Kasteliz, in a dark coat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... asked her whether she had heard from Temple latterly. 'No; dear little fellow!' cried she, and I saw in a twinkling what it was that the squire liked in her, and liked it too. I caught sight of myself, as through a rift of cloud, trotting home from the hunt to a glad, frank, unpretending mate, with just enough of understanding to look up to mine. For a second or so it was pleasing, as a glance out of his library ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by a river, now frozen to its bed. But, from the hut door, the rift which marks its course in the dark ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... it through the snow, following it upon snow-shoes. These give them the advantage of skimming along the surface, while the moose plunges through the deep rift, and is therefore impeded in its flight. Notwithstanding, it will frequently escape from the hunter, after a chase of several days' duration! Sometimes, in deep snow, a dozen or more of these animals will be found in one place, where they have got accidentally together. The snow will be trodden ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... apparently broken up, even thus early in the autumn; and for that day, and several days following, we had nothing but wind, rain, and storm. The sky was as dusky as Miss March's grey gown; broken sometimes in the evening by a rift of misty gold, gleaming over Nunnely Hill, as if to show us what September ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... husbands and wives sometimes goes unexplained, and the rift between them widens through life. I know some houses where the wife enters at one door and the husband at another; where if they meet on the stairs, they do not salute each other. Under the same roof they have lived for years and have not spoken. One word would heal all discord, and that ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... personality. His was the expansive temperament, or, to employ a modern phrase, the dynamic temperament. Antiquated as were his modes of thought, he would bewilder you with an excursion into latter-day literature, and like a rift of light in a fogbank you then caught a gleam of an entirely different mentality. One day I found him reading a book by the French writer Huysmans, dealing with new art. And he confessed to me that he admired Hauptmann's Hannele, though ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... that our last meeting in the little restaurant at the Capital had left no traces of embarrassment in me: I was, in fact, rather aggressively anxious to reveal myself to him as one who has thriven on the views he condemned, as one in whose unity of mind there is no rift. He was alone, apparently waiting for someone, leaning against a steam radiator in one of his awkward, angular poses, looking out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... desert plateau in east, highland area in west; Great Rift Valley separates East and West Banks of ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... stretched a line of moving horses, white against dark shadows. He could not see the head of that column; he scarcely heard a soft hoofbeat. A single star shone out of a rift in thin clouds. There was no wind. The air was cold. The dark space of desert seemed to yawn. To the left across the river flickered a few campfires. The chill night, silent and mystical, seemed to close in upon Gale; and he faced ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... so the ethereal vault; encroachment none 50 Was there, nor loss; only the inferior stars Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light In the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon, Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay 55 All meek and silent, save that through a rift— Not distant from the shore whereon we stood, A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place— Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams Innumerable, roaring with one voice! 60 Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour, For so it seemed, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... and had broken out at the head of the column as well as the rear. The situation was rendered more difficult by the violence of the rain, which raised a thick steam from the ground and made it impossible to see for any distance. Major Anley, in command of the rearguard, peering back, saw through a rift of the clouds a large body of horsemen in extended order sweeping after them. 'There's miles of them, begob!' cried an excited Irish trooper. Next instant the curtain had closed once more, but all who had caught a glimpse of that vision knew that ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and yet it was sad, to see how well we can make up our mind to what is inevitable. And such a sight brings up to one a glimpse of Future Years. The cloud seems to part before one, and through the rift you discern your earthly track far away, and a jaded pilgrim plodding along it with weary step; and though the pilgrim does not look like you, yet you know ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... of this hidden Yosemite are exceedingly rich in color. On almost every rift and bench, however small, as well as on the wider table-rocks where a little soil has lodged, we found gay multitudes of flowers, far more brilliantly colored than would be looked for in so cool and beclouded a ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... a rift in the dark clouds seemed sent as a heavenly messenger to guide them. By it the Eskimos as well as the sailor were enabled to judge of the position of land, and to steer, accordingly, in what western hunters ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... shot from a cover, as he forced the canoe up a swift rift, or turned an elbow in the stream, with his eyes fastened on the eddies. Of all the risky journeys, that on an ambushed river is the most risky, in my judgment, and that risk has ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... P. D. & Q. The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a "Where-to-Dine-Well" tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future divorce. Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets than he thought he had. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... into the chasm of the rivulet, crawled up on a heap of crumbling brick-work, and gained a hole above it, which he immediately began to widen, to admit of his passage through. Inch by inch, he enlarged the rift, crept into it, and found himself on a fragment of the bow of one of the foundation arches, which, though partly destroyed, still supported itself, isolated from all connection with the part of the upper wall which it had once sustained, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... a horrible rift All in the rock's hard side, A bleak and blasted oak o'erspread The ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Was there no hope, no outlook for the future, no rift in the black curtain, no glimmer through the night? Was good to be thus overthrown? Was evil thus to be strong and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... animal with its young, and, though not unsocial by nature, he was glad to be among strangers for the time. They climbed hither and thither over the rocks, and lifted their streaming faces for the views which the guide pointed out; and in a rift of the spray they really caught one glorious glimpse of the whole sweep of the Fall. The next instant the spray swirled back, and they were glad to turn for a sight of the rainbow, lying in a circle on the rocks as quietly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... none. Memory has softened down all the past into one uniform tone, as the mellowing distance wraps in one solemn purple the mountains which, when close to them, have many a barren rock and gloomy rift, All behind is good. And, building on this hope, he looks forward with calmness, and feels that no ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... try to," he protested. "Everything was all right until this political business came up between us. But that opened the rift. I couldn't do as he wanted me to, and my sympathies were with the corporations which I thought he was fighting unjustly. So when Mr. McVickar made me an offer, I accepted in good faith, believing that ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... could survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the London Graphic, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but really it was with difficulty ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... wi' him at his wark," thought Jack, and they walked along, only now and then giving utterance to some common place remark. Dick's conscience accused him. He felt that he possessed a secret that Jack could not share. There was a rift in the lute. Perfect confidence had ceased to exist between them. Why should it be so? he asked himself. Jack has committed no fault. Had the case been reversed he felt sure that Jack would have confided in him. Ah, but Jack ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... feet wide—appeared on the wall; widened, and as the sinking slab that made it dropped to the level of our eyes, we looked through a hundred-feet-long rift in the living rock! The stone fell steadily—and we saw that it was a Cyclopean wedge set within the slit of the passageway. It reached the level of our feet and stopped. At the far end of this tunnel, whose floor was the polished rock that had, a moment ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... convulsion of nature broke the African continent all along its spine, and formed this system of lakes. Another break occurs on the high plateau, from Portuguese East Africa in the south to British East Africa in the north, along the Great Rift Valley, with its magnificent escarpments and weird scenery, prolonged through Lake Rudolf to the Red Sea and on to the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley. Great volcanoes, now mostly extinct, though some to ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... on the grass under it, and one of them, a very handsome Christian boy, spoke to us in Italian and English. I scarcely remember a brighter and purer day than that of our departure. The sky was a sheet of spotless blue; every rift and scar of the distant hills was retouched with a firmer pencil, and all the outlines, blurred away by the haze of the previous few days, were restored with wonderful distinctness. The temperature was hot, but not ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... before they reached the big cemetery on the edge of Lexington. Through a rift in the trees the Major pointed out the grave of Henry Clay, and told him about the big monument that was to be reared above his remains. The grave of Henry Clay! Chad knew all about him. He had heard Caleb Hazel read the great man's speeches aloud by the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... steadily down on them; then it swayed violently, as two or three of the brutes immediately in front fell beneath the bullets, while their neighbors made violent efforts to press off sideways. Then a narrow wedge-shaped rift appeared in the line, and widened as it came closer, and the buffaloes, shrinking from their foes in front, strove desperately to edge away from the dangerous neighborhood; the shouts and shots were redoubled; the hunters were almost choked by the cloud of dust, through which they could see the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... refuge on the foot-pavements of the covered ways, the umbrellas flitting past in the downpour, and the cabs that dashed with increased clatter and speed along the wellnigh deserted roads. Presently there was a rift in the clouds; and a red glow arose in the west. Then a whole army of street-sweepers came into sight at the end of the Rue Montmartre, driving a lake of liquid mud before ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... at Delphi, at the foot of Mount Parnassus. At Dodona it was Zeus who spoke by the rustling of the sacred oaks. At Delphi it was Apollo who was consulted. Below his temple, in a grotto, a current of cool air issued from a rift in the ground. This air the Greeks thought[59] was sent by the god, for he threw into a frenzy those who inhaled it. A tripod was placed over the orifice, a woman (the Pythia), prepared by a bath in the sacred spring, took her seat on the tripod, and received the inspiration. At once, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls. The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or symptoms of stratification or dislocation. When the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... thou come unto her, from her palms she will not lift The dark face hidden deep within them like the moon in cloudy rift. ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... understood that the Rodneys are to be the guests of the Odell-Carneys while in London. It won't be the season, of course, so there won't be much of a commotion in the smart set. It is our dear Edith's desire to slip into the charmed circle through the rift that the Rodneys make. ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... pulpit or the class; or it may be just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings—not born from above—may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and leader in Christ. ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... wall, as he turned away from the Pierce car. A little apart from the human current she stood, still and expectant. As if to point her out as the chosen of gods and men, the questing sun, bursting in triumph through a cloud-rift, sent a long shaft of gold to encompass and irradiate her. To the end, whether with aching heart or glad, Hal was to see her thus, in flashing, recurrent visions; a slight, poised figure, all gracious ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... all. Only a journalist. But you perceive the widening rift in the family lute. (A silence.) Pardon this glimpse into the ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... clattering car through crowded streets, And floods with light the haunts of prowling thieves— That inner world, whose very life is love, Pure love, and perfect, infinite, intense, That world is now astir. A rift appears In those dark clouds that rise from sinful souls And hide from us its clear celestial light, And clouds of messengers from that bright world, Whom they called devas and we angels call, Rush to that rift to rescue and to save. The wind from their ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... Ducs de Valentinois. The palace is encircled with a charming little garden, a bit of colour and greenery squeezed in, as it were, between cliff and fortress, from which one looks down over precipices of red rock with the prickly pear clinging to their clefts and ledges, or across a rift of sea to the huge bare front of the Testa del Cane with gigantic euphorbias, cactus, and orange-gardens fringing its base. A bribe administered to Talleyrand is said to have saved the political existence of Monaco at the Congress ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... resignedly down for the night, while others again were ravenously devouring, no one knew what, something good, no doubt. Another thing that impressed him was the good order that prevailed in the artillery, which had its camp above him, on the hillside. The setting sun peeped out from a rift in the clouds and his rays were reflected from the burnished guns, from which the men had cleansed the coat of mud that they had ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... on the steamship Baroda, moving down the Red Sea, once thought to be an arm of the Indian Ocean, but which we now know to be only a portion of "the great rift valley,"—the longest and deepest and widest trough on the earth's surface, which extends from the base of Mount Lebanon and the Sea of Galilee, through the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, the dried up wadies, the Red Sea, and ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... out, upheaved From his right hip his ponderous other-arm. And hit and harmed had been Amyclae's king; But, ducking low, he smote with one stout fist The foe's left temple—fast the life-blood streamed From the grim rift—and on his shoulder fell. While with his left he reached the mouth, and made The set teeth tingle; and, redoubling aye His plashing blows, made havoc of his face And crashed into his cheeks, till all abroad He lay, and throwing ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... or as to the order of merit and precedence to be assigned to his works. No, on such matters they are apparently at one; but in other matters they are at one another. Thus the unity appears to be only superficial, a decent plaster hiding the rift occasioned by one of their number having literally translated into English IBSEN's latest Norwegian drama, of which translation the verbal correctness is impugned by another ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... which the enthusiasm of many English critics appears cold and constrained. So unfaltering a note of admiration sounds gratefully in the ears of Shakespeare's countrymen. Yet on closer investigation there seems a rift within the lute. When one turns to the French versions of Shakespeare, for which the chief of Shakespeare's French encomiasts have made themselves responsible, an Englishman is inclined to moderate his exultation ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification; famine natural hazards: geologically active Great Rift Valley susceptible to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions; frequent droughts international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Ozone Layer Protection; signed, but not ratified - ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... first upon the craggy clift Bewrayed this herb unto the mountain goat, That when her sides a cruel shaft hath rift, With it she shakes the reed out of her coat; This in a moment fetched the angel swift, And brought from Ida hill, though far remote, The juice whereof in a prepared bath Unseen the blessed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... deemed necessary to ensure the fertility of the earth and the multiplication of animals. Men who are credited with powers so lofty and far-reaching naturally hold the highest place in the land, and while the rift between the spiritual and the temporal spheres has not yet widened too far, they are supreme in civil as well as religious matters: in a word, they are kings as well as gods. Thus the divinity which hedges a king has its roots deep down in human ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... opened in a deep narrow crevasse, a long rift, evidently slashing back into the cliff, beneath the road on which I had been treading. I could see the moonlit water vanishing into a sort of gleaming lane between the vast overhanging walls. In a few moments I was near the entrance, but, as yet, I could not touch bottom ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... King gave ear; And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent, Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst With ignominy forth. Foundations next He laid with sacred pomp. Fair rose the walls: All day the March sea blew its thunder blasts Through wide-mouthed trumpets of ravine or rift On winding far to where in wooden cell The old man prayed, while o'er him rushed the cloud Storm-borne from crag to crag. Serener breeze, With alternation soft in Nature's course, Following ere long, great Easter's harbinger, Thus spake he: 'I must keep the Feast at ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the Thing next summer, Gizur the white, and Geir the priest, gave notice of Gunnar's outlawry at the Hill of Laws; and before the Thing broke up Gizur summoned all Gunnar's foes to meet in the "Great Rift".[27] He summoned Starkad under the Threecorner, and Thorgeir his son; Mord and Valgard the guileful; Geir the priest and Hjalti Skeggi's son; Thorbrand and Asbrand, Thorleik's sons; Eyjulf, and Aunund his son, Aunund of Witchwood and Thorgrim ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... brings no melting of her ice-bound heart. The glaciers grow every day. Michael cursed his fate. With all his treasures he can not buy his wife's love. It is all the worse for him that he is rich; splendor and great wealth widen the rift between them. Poverty binds close within its four walls those who belong to each other; laborers and fishermen, who have only one room and one bed, are more fortunate than he. The woodman, whose wife holds the other end of the saw when he is ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... in the mean time become self-possessed again, and again raised his gun to fire. Just as he pulled the trigger, however, his foot slipped, and with an exclamation of horror, Walter saw him carried rapidly toward the rift in the ice, and suddenly disappear. With the recoil of the gun the hunter had lost his balance on the slippery ice, and at the same moment that his shot struck the chamois, he ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Carmen. Ames had yielded to her previously expressed wish that he refrain from calling at the Hawley-Crowles mansion, or attempting to force his attentions upon the young girl. But in this matter he remained characteristically obdurate. And thereby a little rift was started. For the angry Beaubien, striving to shield the innocent girl, had vented her abundant wrath upon the affable Ames, and had concluded her denunciation with a hint of possible exposure of certain ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... beauty, which, gathering and increasing, culminates at West Point, a lofty eminence jutting upon a lake apparently without any outlet. The spurs of mountain ranges which meet here project in precipices from five to fifteen hundred feet in height; trees find a place for their roots in every rift among the rocks; festoons of clematis and wild-vine hang in graceful drapery from base to summit, and the dark mountain shadows loom over the lake-like expanse below. The hand wearies of writing of the loveliness of this river. I saw it on a perfect day. The Indian summer lingered, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... they reached the valley she was quite herself again. It was the middle of the afternoon when they entered the valley, and gazing back at old Snow-Top, with his towering summit piercing the skies, they thanked God for their deliverance. About the snowy peak there clung a rift of vapor, as if some passing cloud had caught upon it and ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... father looked. Would I send them one? And the address was like this: "Monsieur Benevent, Corporal of Infantry 18th Company, 5th Battalion, 299th Regiment of Infantry, Postal Sector No. 121." by which you will know the rural free delivery methods along the French front. This address is the one rift in the blank wall of anonymity which hides the individuality of the millions under Joffre. Only the army knows the sector and the numbers of the regiment in that sector. By the same kind of a card-index ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... dogged determination to be sufficient to him as a companion and a helper; and a little ashamed at his middle-aged—he was forty-seven—infatuation for a woman who was herself well on in the thirties. There were times when a rift came in the cloud of his passion for Vivie, when he looked out dispassionately on the prospect of the rest of his life—he could hope at most for twenty more years of mental and bodily activity and energy. Was this all too brief period to be filled up ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... the same contradiction as absolute scepticism has,—in fact, it is only its practical counterpart; for both scepticism and pessimism involve the assumption that it is possible to reach a position outside the realm of being, from which it may be condemned as a whole. But the rift between actual and ideal must fall within the real or intelligible world, do what the pessimists will; and a condemnation of man which is not based on a principle realized by humanity, is a fiction of abstract thought, which lays stress on the actuality of the imperfect ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the hand; his children and their mother were to be wards of the people, for he had despaired of his own life. Many were touched; to some the tribunate of Gracchus seemed like a rift in a dark cloud of oppression which would close around them at his fall, and their hearts sank at the thought of a renewed triumph of the nobility. Others were moved chiefly by the fears and sufferings of Gracchus. Cries of sympathy and defiance were ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... we alight, our water-way being blocked for nearly a mile. It is a charming walk to Les Vignes: to the left we have a continuation of the rocky chaos just described, to the right a path under the shadow of the cliffs, every rift showing maidenhair fern and wild-flowers in abundance, the fragrant evening primrose and lavender, the fringed gentian. The weather is warm as in July, and of deepest blue the sky above the glittering white ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... includes Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe; sudden onset of fever, headache, and muscle aches followed by hemorrhaging in the bowels, urine, nose, and gums; mortality rate is approximately 30%. Rift Valley fever - viral disease affecting domesticated animals and humans; transmission is by mosquito and other biting insects; infection may also occur through handling of infected meat or contact with blood; geographic distribution includes eastern and southern Africa where cattle ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... from Byfield, and brought it to focus upon one of these peepshow rifts: and lo! at the foot of the shaft, imaged, as it were, far down in a luminous well, a green hillside and three figures standing. A white speck fluttered; and fluttered until the rift closed again. Flora's handkerchief! Blessings on the brave hand that waved it!—at a moment when (as I have since heard and knew without need of hearing) her heart was down in her shoes, or, to speak accurately, in the milkmaid Janet's. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Less luck than her's, Medea dread, With which her rival she destroy'd, Great Creon's child, then proudly fled, When the robe bane-imbued, her gift, Enwrapp'd the new-wed bride in flame? But neither herb, nor root from rift Of lone rock ta'en, are here to blame; In every harlot's bed lies he Anointed with oblivion; Ah, ah, 'tis plain he walketh free Protected by some mightier one. But Varus! thou shalt suffer yet! Thou shalt re-seek these longing arms, And ne'er from me re-alienate Thy mind, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... I knew not,) help me as when life begun,— Rift the hills and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of the skiff incessantly, and its soft patter induced melancholy thoughts, and the wind whistled as it flew down into the boat's battered bottom through a rift, where some loose splinters of wood were rattling together—a disquieting and depressing sound. The waves of the river were splashing on the shore, and sounded so monotonous and hopeless, just as if they were telling something unbearably dull and heavy, which was boring ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... Imagine then our dismay when I reported my view of Mr. Carville in his brushed blue serge and Derby hat, his glazed linen collar and dark green tie, passing sedately down the Avenue, a neat child in each hand. There seemed to be no rift in this man's armour of respectability. He seemed determined to maintain a great and terrible contrast between his inner and outer life. O supreme artist! I stretched myself on my sofa ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... becoming more overshadowed by evening. The misty gloom, usual at twilight, became thicker; it was like a growth of darkness at the bottom of a well. The opening of the creek seaward, a narrow passage, traced on the almost night-black interior a pallid rift where the waves were moving. You must have been quite close to perceive the hooker moored to the rocks, and, as it were, hidden by the great cloaks of shadow. A plank thrown from on board on to a low and level projection of the cliff, the only point on which ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... condemns him. And how, as he walks, a Serpent stings him. And how he is recovered of his Wound. And how the little Rift is mended—but ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... fiercely that he killed him. Anxious to escape from his dark prison, Hiawatha waited till the giant sturgeon drifted on to the shore, then called for aid to his friends the sea-gulls, who worked with their claws and beaks till they made a wide rift in Nahma's side ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... sunset time, and the sky was overcast by dull grey clouds; but just over the Brahman quarter there was a rift in the grey, and the pent-up gold shone through. It seemed as if God were pouring out His beauty upon those Brahmans, trying to make them look up, and they would not. One by one we saw them go to their different courtyards, where the golden glow could not ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... had been roused to activity by Lottie's condition. They could now see a rift in the clouds, and one after another hurried to say that the storm was breaking, and it was not so bad; that boats could be seen, and perhaps they would soon ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... lot, let me remark," Jud Elderkin explained. "I do half believe he thinks he can see a rift in the cloud, and that some of these days hopes to get a chance to drag Jud Mabley out ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... of the window. A mild fresh air which seemed to be pouring over the earth through that rift in heaven which the sunset had made, breathed freshly on her face and the yellow light shone on her amber hair, which lay on her shoulders about the length of the hair of an angel in some ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... the cave the roof dipped sharply down, and the sides closed in, forming a tunnel about six feet high and five feet wide. This tunnel was three or four yards long, and then it opened out again into a second cave of fair size. The second cave was dimly lighted from a rift in the rock, forty feet above their heads. In two minutes Jack had made the circuit of it, and knew that, except for the fact that it was an inner cave, it offered them no refuge. The walls were smooth and unclimbable, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Shif'less Sol, "that after the fall Adam an' Eve left by that rift between the hills, an' thar the Angel stood with the Flamin' Sword to keep 'em out. O' course they might hev crawled back down the hillside here, an' in other places, but I guess they wuz afeard. It's hard to hev had a fine thing an' then to hev lost it, harder than never ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... risk: very high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever vectorborne diseases: dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and Rift Valley fever are high risks in some locations water contact disease: schistosomiasis respiratory disease: ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... into her face. It was as though she had been walking in an arbour and suddenly, through some rift in the boughs, found herself exposed to the scorching sun. She felt dominated by a force stronger than her own nature. A little afraid, she shrank instinctively away from him, and as she dared not look up, she did not see the expression of triumph, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... because he could not shout and because he could not loosen himself, there came a rift in his madness. He remembered who he was, and all the old hatreds and bitterness welled ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... above shifted a little. To those wrapped in true anticipation their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the upper edges of cloud were white ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... various marine objects are found there. And if the earth of our hemisphere is indeed raised by so much higher than it used to be, it must have become by so much lighter by the waters which it lost through the rift between Gibraltar and Ceuta; and all the more the higher it rose, because the weight of the waters which were thus lost would be added to the earth in the other hemisphere. And if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Aline's joy went out like a ray of moonlight swallowed up by a marauding cloud. She did not in the least understand what had happened, or what were the obligations to which he had committed her; but in any case the lute she had tuned had a rift in it, a big, bad rift, and it could make no music to-night. She felt suddenly at her worst instead of her best, as if she had tumbled off a bank of flowers in her prettiest frock into a bog. She longed to be cold and snappy and disagreeable, as a wife may ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... form within was rude and strong, Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung, Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift, And with rich metal loaded every rift, That heavy ruin they did seem to threat: And over them Arachne high did lift Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... murmur, and Eustace sulked all the rest of the day; indeed, this has always seemed to me to have been the first little rift in his adherence to his cousin, but at that time his dependence was so absolute, and his power of separate action so small, that he submitted to the decree even while he grumbled; and when he found that Lord Erymanth viewed it as very undesirable for a young ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came stealing westward silently over the still canopy of leaves, both combatants were still there; and they were still here, too, when the sun, silting in through a rift in the foliage, found and bathed them. The owl was crouched as she had been when the moon left her—crouched, and with her wings just a little open, like a bird about to take flight; but she had already taken ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... on the wood-work of the wharf, and on the burdock leaves that grew between gaps in the planking. High overhead the sky must have been cloudless, for we could see the moon, now and then, like a dim dinner-plate, when there was a moment's rift ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... to think it all very ordinary. She was more concerned about the wind, to which they had become once more exposed as they reached the end of the rift. On they pressed, five or six steps at each attempt, stopping to rest twice the length of time they actually traveled. It was necessary now to cling to the rock with both hands, and once Cunora lost her grip, so that she would have been blown to one side, or ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... windowless framework of the railway carriage, watching the valleys drop away, curve by curve, as the train climbed. Far below lay the lake, a blue rift glimmering between pine-clad heights. Then a turn of the track and the lake was swept suddenly out of sight, while the mountains closed round—shoulder after green-clad shoulder, with fields of white narcissus flung across them like fairy ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... his home and his social life in Richmond, it would seem that every need of The Dreamer's being was now satisfied and the days of his life were moving in perfect harmony. But "the little rift within the lute" all too soon made its appearance. It was caused by the alarm of Mr. White, the owner and founder of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... by that time, had become Nazarenes, were "all zealous for the Law"? Was not the name of "Christian" first used to denote the converts to the doctrine promulgated by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch? Does the subsequent history of Christianity leave any doubt that, from this time forth, the "little rift within the lute" caused by the new teaching, developed, if not inaugurated, at Antioch, grew wider and wider, until the two types of doctrines irreconcilably diverged? Did not the primitive Nazarenism, or Ebionism, develop into the Nazarenism, and Ebionism, and ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... sorrow or towards joy you lift The sharpness of your trembling spears? Or do you seek, through the grey tears That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue, A deeper, calmer rift?" ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... year up here in the wild Peak country, caring for a few sheep, and going down to the village not more than once or twice a week. There was a little spring welling up in a hollow not fifty yards away from the hut, which itself stood in a deep, natural rift among the high hills, so that men might search for it a lifetime ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... of human life to be seen. Overhead the storm still threatened and grumbled; below, the man and the house stood powerless, but undaunted. Far away to the south the sun shone out brightly through a rift in the clouds. "Always God's promise somewhere. God's sign to us ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... comment upon it. Quick as the act was done came the Father's approval. John's crowds were not the only intent lookers-on that day. Jesus stands praying. Since He is going this road it must be a-knee. Then the rift in the upper blue, the Holy Spirit straight from the Father's presence comes upon the waiting Man and the voice of pleased approval. And the heart of Jesus thrilled with the sound of that approving voice. He could go any length, down any steep, if ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... I watch thee, all unfettered sweeping High o'er the rift that weighs my pinion here, I yearn like thee my plume in ether steeping, To soar ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... convincing explanation of that loss of time. The smoke-stack, buff-coloured underneath, was white with salt, while the whistle- pipe glittered crystalline in the random sunlight that broke for the instant through a cloud-rift. The port lifeboat was missing, its iron davits, twisted and wrenched, testifying to the mightiness of the blow that had been struck the old Tryapsic. The starboard davits were also empty. The shattered ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... so. Were I the ghost that walk'd, I'd bid you mark Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in't You chose her: then I'd shriek, that even your ears Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow'd ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... well-worn path a short distance above the mine. The eastern sky now was light, and Rathburn saw a stone building above them. He also saw that they were on the steep slope of the big mountain on which the Dixie Queen was located, and that there was a rift in this mountain to the left which indicated the presence ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... led us to a point where, over a stony fall veil'd with brown bracken, it plunged into a narrow ravine. Standing on the lip, where the water took a smoother glide before leaping, we saw the line of the ravine mark'd by a rift in the pines, and through this a slice of the country that lay below. 'Twas a level plain, well watered, and dotted here and there with houses. A range of wooded hills clos'd the view, and toward them a broad road wound gently, till the eye lost it at their base. All this was plain enough, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... as to stand almost erect, were two aged men, who, with wild gesticulations, and solemn chanting, were apparently paying adoration to the setting sun, the last beams streaming over them through a rift in the western wall. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the true cavalryman and a particular indisposition to the discharge of firearms, he drew his saber. The man on foot made no movement in answer to the challenge. The situation was tense and a bit dramatic. Suddenly the moon burst through a rift in the clouds and, himself in the shadow of a group of great oaks, the horseman saw the footman clearly, in a patch of white light. It was Trooper Dunning, unarmed and bareheaded. The object at his feet resolved itself into a dead horse, and at a right angle across the animal's neck lay ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... few white cloudlets drifted across the rift of blue above, and a cool breadth of shadow darkened the pine on the great rocks. Something suggested a fringe of smaller firs along the edge of a moor in Lancashire, and for a moment my thoughts sped back ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the Scar Foot the western sky was toning down to grays, while beyond, and seen through an oval-shaped rift in their sombre colours, lay a distant streak of amber that, moment by moment, slowly disappeared under the closing lids of evening cloud—the eye of weary day wooed to slumber by the hush of illimitable sweeps of moor. ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather |
