"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... transepts, the towers being supported on great pointed arches. In the large east window the stained glass commemorates St. Sidwell, a lady murdered in the eighth century at a well near Exeter by a blow from a scythe at the instigation of her stepmother, who coveted her property. The cathedral is rich in monumental relics, and it has recently been thoroughly restored. Little remains of the ancient convent-buildings beyond the chapter-house, which adjoins ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... and bearing in relief a lamb and a cross. Her husband lies next in the range. The three graves have just been shorn of their tall grass,—in this other view you may see them half-hidden by it. A few flowering stems have escaped the scythe in the first picture, and nestle close against the poet's headstone. Hard by sleeps poor Hartley Coleridge, with a slab of freestone graven with a cross and a crown of thorns, and the legend, "By thy Cross and Passion, Good Lord, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... throat was paralyzed; the crumbs crowded themselves from the corners of his lips. He tried with limber fingers to stuff them down, or to assist the muscular action of swallowing, but finally expelled them in a cloud. Mort drew the parka hood over his partner's head, for the wind cut like a scythe and the dogs were turning tail to it, digging holes in the snow for protection. The air about them was like yeast; the light ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... every blow aimed at him, he coolly measured his own thrusts, inflicting severe wounds on his enemies' faces and heads; but the more he evaded them the more furious they became. At last he received a severe wound in the leg from a scythe, and feel on one knee; but without evincing the slightest pain, he still continued fighting with the savage mob, until, after a long and obstinate struggle, he fell without a murmur, or even ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... news is it likely an old man like me should bring? You ask me so eager-like that I misdoubt me but it's some colleen that's caught your eye!" Patrick's eyes twinkled merrily as he made his little joke. Dermot's face saddened, and he turned to his scythe once more. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... brown skin, an' de quick, clean way she gleam de wheat. Stripped to de wais' on de Alabama auction block she would bring near 'bout a thousan' dollars. Cleve 'gun to sweat. He turned so sick an' skeered dat he could hardly swing de scythe through de wheat. Marse Drew done took his baby away, an' now sumpin' way down in his heart told him dat he was gwine take Lissa. He didn' keer if he parted dem, 'twuz dollars he seed swingin' 'roun' his head—gol' dollars ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... pleasant interspaces, pleasanter even than those that lingered in my memory, I lay down, for, though the days were the first days of May, the grass was long and warm and ready for the scythe, the tasselled branches of the tall larches swung faintly in a delicious breeze, and the words of the old Irish poet came into my mind, "The wood was like a harp in the hands of a harper." To see the boughs, to listen to them, seemed a sufficient delight, and I began ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... uninteresting, but for a home-born feeling that comes over the kind heart as it approaches so close to the mowers on the meadow-field as to scent the fragrance of the hay; to hear the song of the Boblink, or the rhythmic whetting of the scythe; or passes the ends of those primitive, those pilgrim-fences of post and rail, that enter the brink of the river to mark the boundaries of the small, paternal, and though frequently sterile, the much loved fields into which this home of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... valleys lurks a strange old superstition that even Death must listen to the voice of Time in gold; that, when the scanty numbered moments of the sick are fleeting, a gold watch laid in the wasted palm, and pointing the earthly hours, compels the scythe of Death to pause, the timeless power to bow before the two great gods of the human ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... year were blotted away, And the strawberry grew in the hedge again; That the scythe might swing in the tangled hay, And the squirrel romp in the glen; The walnut sprinkle the clover slopes, Where graze the sheep and the spotted steer; And the winter restore the golden hopes, That ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Friedrich's time; had thrown powder in the eyes of men there, and been appointed to Professorships in the Ritter-Academy, to Chief-Heraldships,—"Historiographer Royal," and perhaps other honors and emoluments. The whole of which were cut down by the ruthless scythe of Friedrich Wilhelm, ruthlessly mowing his field clear, in the manner we saw at his Accession. Whereby learned grandiloquent Gundling, much addicted to liquor by this time, and turning the corner of forty, saw himself cast forth into ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... we have sold and sold fill scarce a scythe remains. Oh, dark the days this house hath seen Since, Pascal, thou so ill hast been; Now thou art well, arouse! do something for our gains Or rest thee, if thou wilt; with suffering we can fight; But, for God's love, oh! go not ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Time is the fiercest. If I were upon the high road to fame, if I had honestly determined to win immortality or perish in the attempt, I should look upon the gentleman with no clothing except a scanty forelock, and with no personal property save his scythe and hour-glass, as my greatest enemy,—and I should behold the perpetual efforts made to kill him with perfect complacency. This, I know, is not regarded as a strictly moral act; for this murderer of murderers is very much caressed by those who, in the name of Moses, would send ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the comely names, Mattock and scythe and spade, Couth and bitter as flames, Clean, and bowed in the blade,— A man and his tools make a man ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... green of beetroot, the yellow corn lighted up the landscape with gleams of pale gold; the fields looked as if they had drunk in the sunshine which poured down on them. Here and there the reapers were at work, and in the plots where the scythe had been put in the men might be seen see-sawing as they swept the level soil with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... uncovered, but long white whiskers grew down to his waist. About his body was thrown a loose robe of fine white linen. In one hand he bore a great scythe, and beneath the other arm he carried ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out of the tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these rude implements of war the most formidable was made by fastening the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole. [384] The tithing men of the country round Taunton and Bridgewater received orders to search everywhere for scythes and to bring all that could be found to the camp. It was impossible, however, even with the help of these contrivances, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... statue of straw, or carved the trunk of a tree, or cast a piece of chalk, and the other, the idol of shame and infamy, knows not that there is no need to wait for the keen tooth of the age and the scythe of Saturn in order to be put down, for through those self-same praises he gets buried alive then and there, while he is being praised, saluted, hailed, and presented. Just as it happened in a contrary way, so that much-praised Moecenatus, who, if he had had no other glory than ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... story; told him I had credit at the cabman's eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... power in the West. The methods employed were of the debilitating, paternal character long familiar to Canada. All emigrants with families were to be carried thither at the King's expense; and every settler was to receive in free gift a gun, a hoe, an axe, a ploughshare, a scythe, a sickle, two augers, large and small, a sow, six hens, a cock, six pounds of powder, and twelve pounds of lead; while to these favors were added many others. The result was that twelve families were persuaded ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... perceived how much Cyrus had at heart the scythe-bearing chariots and the cavalry and the war-horses with their armour, and he resolved to equip a hundred chariots for him out of his own cavalry force. [51] These he proposed to lead himself in a chariot of his own, four-poled and drawn by eight horses, all the eight protected by chest-plates ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... was come. Peasants clambered into the green nooks between the rocks to cut down with hook or knife the flowery grass, for there was no space for the sweep of a scythe. The best crop was on the bank of the Braunwasser, by the Debateable Ford, but this was cut and carried on the backs of the serfs, much earlier than the mountain grass, and never without much vigilance against the Schlangenwaldern; but this year the Count was absent at his Styrian castle, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... goody took a scythe over her neck, and went out into the hayfield with the mowers and began to mow; but the man was to mind the house, and do the work ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... not one: only the languidly-working engines of the Boreal. Here, it was clear, the Angel of Silence had passed, and his scythe mown. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... its nose with one hand in order not to feel the stench of the dead and corrupted Kings. In the middle of this scene is Death, who, flying through the air and draped in black, is showing that she has cut off with her scythe the lives of many, who are lying on the ground, of all sorts and conditions, poor and rich, halt and whole, young and old, male and female, and in short a good number of every age and sex. And because he knew that the people of Pisa took pleasure in the invention of Buffalmacco, who gave ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... have fled to the forest and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of the morrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... on them who have lost their lives. In the shallow water among the keys we fell in with several boats manned by whites and negroes engaged in fishing for sponges. Some waded out from the rocks, having a long pole with a scythe-like knife at the end of it, with which the sponges were cut off from the rocks. Others sat in the boats, using a bucket with a glass bottom, which, being sunk a few inches below the surface, enabled them to peer down into the water to a ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... man stood at the gate of the Norwegian graveyard, sharpening his scythe in strokes unconsciously timed to the tune he was whistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied with the ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... the truth out of your drivelling spy, The maniac whom you set to swing death's scythe. Nay; torture not the torturer—let him lie: What need of racks to ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... Space under the Hawthorn Hedge on the Brow of the Hill, listening to the Mower's Scythe, and the Song of Birds, which seemed enough for him, without talking; and as he spake not, I helde my Peace, till, with the Sun in my Eyes, I was like to drop asleep; which, as his own Face was from me, and towards the Landskip, he noted not. I was just aiming, for Mirthe's Sake, to steale ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... resting-place of the dead, but sheep still linger in some country districts. And there is often a temptation not always successfully resisted—when the Churchyard is large—that the crop of grass during the summer months should be allowed to grow without interference by scythe or machine, until fit to be cut for hay. But I do feel strongly that the temptation should be resisted. Nothing so quickly awakens doubtful feelings in the breast of a passer-by as to the zeal, energy and devotion of the Incumbent, ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... sang the little song carelessly, commonly, without a thought of the words, interrupting himself every now and then to sharpen his scythe, and then beginning again. To Eleanor it seemed the natural voice of the morning; one more, echo of the cry of universal parting, now for a day, now for a season, now for ever—which ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... refreshed from them; except that he does not like to kill things, he could trudge the whole day through fields and woods with his gun on his shoulder; though he does not golf, and cannot know whether or no it would bore him, he likes to wield the axe and the scythe in the groves and meadows of his summer place. When he stretches himself on the breast of the mother alike of flesh and grass, it is with a delicious sense of her restorative powers and no fear of rheumatism. If he rests a little longer ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... was the great marshy plateau, from which broad, dry, sterile slopes descended; while lower ground stretched away on their left. Then, behind them, spread the woods with deep thickets parted by clearings, full of herbage which no scythe had ever touched. And not a soul was to be seen around them; there was naught save wild Nature, grandly quiescent under the bright sun of that splendid April day. The earth seemed to be dilating with all the sap amassed ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the morning of the hallowed day! Mute is the voice of rural labor, hushed The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song. The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath Of tedded grass, mingled with faded flowers, That yestermorn bloomed waving in the breeze; Sounds the most faint attract the ear,—the hum Of early bee, the trickling of the dew, The distant bleating, midway up the hill. Calmness ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... majestic, serene as when the "morning stars sing together" in the choral of praise to Him, unto whom "all seemed good"; but in the moral and spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath, when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their silver chalices to meet the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... now a shorter day, higher wages, better food, and superior house accommodation. Mechanical appliances have made farm-work lighter and more agreeable. The drudgery of the threshing flail is now unknown; the hook and the scythe have given way to the reaping-machine: in every way hand labour has been lightened. But it is precisely this machinery that lessens the need for large numbers of agricultural labourers. It is also notorious that shoemakers, tailors, and blacksmiths, are not so much ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... narrow and rugged, wound its serpentine course amid grey rocks, luxuriant brambles, grasses, and flowering shrubs. There were no trees. The want of shelter on that exposed spot rendered their growth impossible. The few that had been planted had been cut down by the nor'-west wind as with a scythe. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... returns, and certify and determine results, he could understand how the "atrocious measure," as the great editor of the State called it, "was a ready chariot to the governor's chair." And in the summer convention the spirit behind the measure had started for that goal in just that way, like a scythe-bearing chariot of ancient days, but cutting down friend as well as foe. Straightway, Democrats long in line for honors, and gray in the councils of the party, bolted; the rural press bolted; and Jason heard one bolter thus cry his fealty and his faithlessness: "As charged, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... way through the mighty mass of their enemies with irresistible force. The elephants turned and fled. The foot soldiers seized the horses of some of the scythe-armed chariots and cut the traces. In respect to others, they opened to the right and left and let them pass through, when they were easily captured by the men in the rear. In the mean time the phalanx pressed on, enjoying a ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... they all are!" said Helen. "What can they be doing inside?" Margaret, who was growing less talkative, made no answer. The noise of the cutter came intermittently, like the breaking of waves. Close by them a man was preparing to scythe ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Child. Forced Labor, Premature Labor, hard, grinding, destructive Labor such as wastes the tissues of strong men; and The Child went down before it like grass before the scythe, for Childhood is meant for Growth and not for Waste and Toil. The Mind of The Child was dulled, the Body of The Child was stunted and crippled and broken: accidents fell upon him, with the Special Diseases of Labor ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... voice, and respiration ceased, and she fell forward, like the flower Virgil alludes to, which the scythe of the reaper touched as it passed over. The king, at these words, at this vehement entreaty, no longer retained either ill-will or doubt in his mind; his whole heart seemed to expand at the glowing breath of an affection which proclaimed itself in such ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... letters is an unfailing help to pass the time. A word will sometimes keep a player puzzling for hours, which is, of course, too long. "Pomegranate," "Orchestra," and "Scythe" are good ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... on the contrary, the plateau would reel and roll like a ship in a storm, coasting past abysses in which fragments of the mountain were falling, tearing up trees by the roots, and leveling, as if with the keen edge of an immense scythe, every projection ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Call buried hope to put life's garland on, and limping woes to trip like Nereids on a moonlit shore! For thee, frail sickness casts her pallid chrysalis and blooms a rosy angel! For thee, Death breaks his scythe and owns Life conqueror! (Drinks) Were this Antonius' cup.... Ha! Are you there, my devil? Another kiss, sweetheart! (Throws his arm about Mrs. Delormis. Helen cries out. Poe turns and ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... jump ball, which he evidently worked by putting on a little more steam, and it was the speediest thing I ever saw in the way of a shoot. He had a wide-sweeping outcurve, wide as the blade of a mowing scythe. And he had a drop—an unhittable drop. He did not use it often, for it made his catcher dig too hard into the dirt. But whenever he did I glowed all over. Once or twice he used an underhand motion and sent in a ball that fairly swooped up. It could not have been hit with a board. And best of all, ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... disadvantageous mode of employment of making Negroes collect grass for the cattle, by picking it by the hand blade by blade. Are no artificial grasses to be found in our islands, and is the existence of the scythe unknown there? But it is of no use to dwell longer upon this subject. The whole system is a ruinous one from the beginning to the end. And from whence does such a system arise? It has its origin in slavery alone. It is practised no where but in the land of ignorance and slavery. Slavery indeed, ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... to defend it whilst my father lifted the Mayor of Falmouth by his coat-collar and the seat of his breeches and flung him inside. Then we too backed and, ducking indoors under the arms of the little man in black—who stood on the step swinging the borough mace as though to scythe off the head of any one who approached within five feet of it—seized him by the coat-tails, dragged him inside and, slamming to the door (which shut with two flaps), locked and bolted it and leant against it with ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... self-possession, Pani Korytzka grew confused, and I gained one of those tiny victories which are comprised in the proverb, "The scythe hit upon a stone," or in ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... many a day; The ship from the strand she shoveth, and on his wonted way By the mountain hunter fareth where his foot ne'er failed before: She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river's shore: The mower's scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep. Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot, But her will with the lives of men-folk and their ending know we not. So therefore I ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Our hosts fulfil a liberal part. Nor lack we food to suit the mind, Our alma-mater here we find, And in her agricultural school We learn to farm by modern rule; Professor Walter fills the chair, But teaches in the open air. And by his side we tend the stock, Or swing the scythe, or bind the shock. Nor miss we academic lore, We walk where Plato walked before, And eloquent Demosthenes, Who taught their youth beneath the trees; Here with sharp eyes we love to scan The rules that point Dame Nature's plan, We mark the track of bear and deer, And long to see them reft ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... rattling of which held me appalled. The guns on either side followed mine in chorus, and almost momentarily we were pouring out such a hail of bullets, that amid the smoke and fire the great body of horses and troops were mowed down like grass before the scythe. The foremost in the cavalry ranks had no time to lift their carbines to reply, ere they were swept into eternity, and those coming behind, although making a desperate stand, fell riddled by bullets from our three terrible ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... bleating and affrighted sheep are plunged, unwillingly, into the pool, and now by the sturdy hand stripped of their fleecy coats. The bottle quickly passes, the simple tale goes round, the ballad purchased at the fair is sung; the mower whets his scythe, and the grass and the wild-flowers fall before it; the waggon, heavily laden, removes the odoriferous hay; and the neat-mown fields display a brighter green. The cuckoo, with his never-varying note is heard; but let us, when ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... revolts arranged, a yoke shaken off, in less of mortal time. Excepting an inspired Epic song and an original Theory of the Heavens, almost anything noteworthy may be accomplished while old Father Scythe is taking a trot round a courtyard; and those reservations should allow the splendid conception to pass for the performance, when we bring to mind that the conception is the essential part of it, as a bard poorly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... mown, and there were yet the marks of the scythe on the yellow-green ground, and the track of wheels where the hay had been carried. Following the tracks with his eyes, the view closed with the new hayrick in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Sir John Coniers," exclaimed Robin, rudely, "what honour had your gray hairs till the steel cap covered them? What honour, I say, under lewd Edward and his lusty revellers? You were thrown aside, like a broken scythe, Sir John Coniers! You were forsaken in your rust! Warwick himself, your wife's great kinsman, could do nought in your favour! You stand now, leader of thousands, lord of life and death, master of Edward and the throne! We have done this for you, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... charity to a sick member of Neville's flock, and were now returning through the after-glow of a golden sunset. The breath of the peach and apple blossoms filled the air with fragrance, and their pink and white bloom clothed the orchard trees with beauty. Swift swallows clove with their scythe-like wings the sky, and skimmed the surface of the dimpling wave, and the whip-poor-will's plaint of tender melancholy was borne faintly on the breeze. At a point of vantage commanding a broad view of the river, which, wimpling and dimpling in its beauty, flowed, a sapphire set in emerald, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... now that I came to work in Sund's parsonage?—well, that doesn't matter—I could swing a scythe, but how old I was I don't remember, for I don't rightly know how old I am now. The parson was a mighty good man, but God help us for the wife he had! She was as bad to him as any woman could be, and he hadn't a dog's chance with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the tocsin! Let this signal fan the flame of patriotism in your hearts, and be the death-knell of your oppressors! Take up arms! Scythes and pikes may take the place of muskets. They will soon be replaced by English weapons already arrived. Wielded by strong arms, even the peaceful scythe becomes fatal. Let every one arm himself, and share the glory of the liberators of the fatherland, fighting not only for himself but for the safety and happiness of future generations! He who is cowardly enough ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... hovered over the land, and dominated that rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze, seeking some favorable sign or merely looking to admire ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... round his scythe, Intomb me 'neath the bounteous vine, So that its juices red and blythe, May cheer these thirsty bones ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... that one could hardly look upon them without laughing. There were behind the Acrosticks two or three Files of Chronograms, which differed only from the former, as their Officers were equipped (like the Figure of Time) with an Hour-glass in one Hand, and a Scythe in the other, and took their Posts promiscuously among the private ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... division was nearly annihilated. One of his officers recounted that, as they were charging over the grassy plain, he threw himself down before a murderous discharge of grape and canister, which mowed the grass and men all around him as though a scythe had been swung just ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... that about every fourth man of them carried a firearm of some kind, with powder flask suspended by a cord round his neck, and bullet pouch attached to his belt, while the remainder carried cutlasses, pikes, and, in some cases, axes, cane knives, or even scythe blades lashed to the ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... caught him in the act of stealing. They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to carry about on a pike, leaving ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... and wearing bright robes. On one of the tables was a bronze pulpit in the form of a Gothic chapel; in another place was a lamp-support, which represented the Triumph of Death; Death was a woman with the wings of a bat; she was in a flowing robe; she had curved talons on her feet, and a scythe in her hand. This was a sculptured copy of Orcagna, from the Campo Santo of Pisa. In the middle of the dining-room, which was seen beyond an open door, stood a table, in the style of the eighteenth century. Altogether simple was this table, and like those under which, instead of carpets, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... whole scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... been a moment of serious danger. It was the general opinion that the night attack at Sedgemoor would have succeeded, and that the royal army would have been destroyed, if the rebels, instead of betraying their approach with musketry, had come to close quarters with axe and scythe. The king took advantage of what had happened, and he had the means of paying a force which amounted to ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... cut all the time we were in the Island, cut under every possible disadvantage, and yet cut with marvellous persistency. With this labour, of course, the frost mounds interfere, being most disastrous to the scythe, and yet the natives never leave a single blade of grass, cutting round and round, and between these curious little hillocks. On the hay crop so very much depends, for when that fails, ponies die, sheep and cattle have to be killed and ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... to my side In the cold mist of morning. "O wirra" she cried, "'Tis farewell now, mavourneen! When the crescent moon hung Like a scythe in the sky, I heard in the silence The ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... deacon and my deeply religious father alternately led the family devotions, and peace and comfort prevailed. The mowing machine, horse-hoe, corn-planter and power-rake dispensed with the drudgery of the scythe and back-breaking hand tools. A protective tariff had set the mill wheels rolling in the neighboring cities, thus furnishing excellent markets for all the products of the farm. The sky-scraping shoe manufactories, where ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... eight o'clock. There was an hour to wait before he would be allowed to go indoors. The shop was a baker's, and the window was full of cakes and confectionery. From an iron grid on the pavement there came the warm breath of the oven underground, the red glow of the fire, and the scythe-like swish of the long shovels. The boy blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence. Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was not ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... family of twenty was baked; the wooden plough tipped against the fence, to wait the "fall" cultivation; the big iron cooler in which the sap from the maple-trees was boiled, in the days when the snow thawed and spring opened the heart of the wood; the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard by; the fields of the little, narrow farm running back from the St. Lawrence like a riband; and, out on the wide stream, the great rafts with their riverine population floating down ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... at its feed, 240 Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude; Or rather like a stalled ox debarred From touch of growing grass, that may not taste A flower till it have yielded up its sweets A prelibation to the mower's scythe. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... on a mountain's highest ridge, Where oft the stormy winter gale Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds It sweeps from vale to vale; Not five 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 Of water, never ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... No—they shall live, and each fair name, Recorded in the book of Fame, Founded on Honour's basis, fast As the round earth to ages last. Some virtues vanish with our breath; Virtue like this lives after death. Old Time himself, his scythe thrown by, Himself lost in eternity, An everlasting crown shall twine To make a Wilkes and Sidney join. 210 But should some slave-got villain dare Chains for his country to prepare, And, by his birth to slavery broke, Make her, too, feel the galling yoke, May he be evermore ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... land could no longer remain a farmer; he had to yield the place to slaves, and he himself wandered forth without work. "The majority of these heads of families," says Varro in his treatise on agriculture, "have slipped within our walls, leaving the scythe and the plough; they prefer clapping their hands at the circus to working in their fields and their vineyards." Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune of the plebs, exclaimed in a moment of indignation, "The wild beasts of Italy have at least their lairs, but the men ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... can't afford docking—Dith from old age? Think ye the man really succumms under years, or is mowed down by Time? Nay, yon's just Potry an' Bosh. Nashins have been thinned by the lancet, but niver by the scythe; and years are not forces, but misures of events. No, Centenarius decays and dies bekase his bodil' expindituire goes on, and his bodil' income falls off by failure of the reparative and reproductive forces. And now suppose bodil' exhaustion and repair were a mere matter of pecuniary, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... not be told that we are friends to the spread of liberty: indeed, we think she may "triumph over time, clip his wings, pare his nails, file his teeth, turn back his hour-glass, blunt his scythe, and draw the hobnails out of his shoes;" but to show how this may be done, we must run over a few varieties of liberty for the benefit of such as do not enjoy the inestimable blessings of being free and easy: we quote these words, vulgar as they are; for, of all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... in a field as a Wanderer went by clad in a dark blue cloak and carrying a wanderer's staff in his hand. One of the thralls spoke to the Wanderer: "Tell them in the house of Baugi up yonder that I can mow no more until a whetstone to sharpen my scythe is sent to me." "Here is a whetstone," said the Wanderer, and he took one from his belt. The thrall who had spoken whetted his scythe with it and began to mow. The grass went down before his scythe as if the wind had cut it. "Give us the whetstone, give us the whetstone," ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... rest—its powerful hot, and a beautiful summer, sure,—the Lord be praised!' 'Thank you, Shane. I thought you were going to cut the hay-field to-day; if a heavy shower comes, it will be spoiled; it has been fit for the scythe these two days.' 'Sure, it's all owing to that thief o' the world, Tom Parrel, my lady. Didn't he promise me the loan of his scythe; and by the same token I was to pay him for it; and depinding on that, I didn't buy one, which ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... interpusxo. Scull (oar) remilo. Scullery lavejo, potlavejo. Sculptor skulptisto. Sculpture (art) skulptarto. Sculpture (statuary) skulptajxo. Sculpture (to carve) skulpti. Scum sxauxmo. Scurf favo. Scurrilous maldeca, maldelikata. Scurvy skorbuto. Scuttle, coal karbujo—eto. Scythe falcxilo. Sea maro. Seafaring mara. Sea-gull mevo. Sea-horse (walrus) rosmaro. Seal sigeli. Seal sigelo—ilo. Seal (animal) foko. Sealing-wax sigelvakso. Seam kunkudro. Seaman maristo, marano. Seamanship marveturarto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... pale, brown scales. Frond rigid and evergreen, one to two feet long, lanceolate, pinnate. Pinnae linear-lanceolate, scythe-shaped, auricled on the upper side, and with bristly teeth; fertile pinnae contracted toward the top, bearing two rows of sori, which soon become confluent and cover the entire surface. Indusium orbicular, ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... bows Rainey could see nothing of the whale, that must have sounded in fear of the killers, but he saw half a dozen scythe-like, black fins cutting the water in streaks of foam, all abreast, their high dorsals waving, wolves of the sea, hunting for the gray bowhead whale, to force its mouth open and feast on the delicacy of its living tongue. So Lund told ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... incessantly stimulated, of possession. Witness the Fouans, grown old, parting with their fields as if they were parting with their flesh; the Buteaus in their eager greed committing parricide, to hasten the inheritance of a field of lucern; the stubborn Francoise dying from the stroke of a scythe, without speaking, rather than that a sod should go out of the family—all this drama of simple natures governed by instinct, scarcely emerged from primitive barbarism—all this human filth on the great earth, which alone remains immortal, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... already long and almost ready for the scythe, was swept by shadows of the larches, those long, shelving boughs hung with green tassels, moving mysteriously above him. Birds came and went, each on its special errand. Never was Nature more inveigling, more restful. ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... came like hail upon the advancing men, reaping the ranks down as if with a scythe, while bursting shells cleared open spaces in their midst in a manner that was appalling; still, those in the rear pressed on to fill the places of the fallen, with a fierce roar of revenge, and the needle-gun answered the chassepot as quickly as the combatants could put the cartridges ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... lead. A scythe of death swept above the ground where stood Schwandorf and his riflemen. The Peruvian half-breeds collapsed and lay still. But Schwandorf, shocked into activity by the impact of that first word, dodged ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... by constant cutting and moisture. The scythe works best when the grass is wet, and the machine when it is dry. Sweep it and roll it during the winter. Pick off stones, sticks, or anything that "has no business" on it, as you would pick ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 'When men my scythe and darts supply, How great a king of fears am I! They view me like the last of things, They make and then they draw my stings. Fools! if you less provoked your fears, No more my spectre form appears. ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... but restrained by sense from goin' too fur. A silky mustache the same color of his hair, and both with a considerable number of white threads a-shinin' in 'em, jest enough so's you could tell that old Time hadn't forgot him as he went up and down the earth with his hour-glass under his arm, and his scythe over ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... simple, May. Old Father Time just measured the days off with his hour-glass in the first place, and marked them down with the point of his scythe. The world has known all about it ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said, is so afraid of the water-spirits that he will not bathe without a cross round his neck, nor ford a stream on horseback without signing a cross on the water with a scythe or knife. In some parts these water-spirits are supposed to be the transformed souls of Pharaoh and his host, when they were drowned, and the number is always being increased by the souls of those who ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... which scythe of mower has never cut sward, nor haymaker set foot; meadows loaded with such luxuriance of vegetation—lush, tall grass—that tons of hay might be garnered off a single acre; meadows of such extent, that in ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... undertakers, sextons, and grave-diggers: they were, it must be acknowledged, sufferers; for it is a well-known fact, that during the three months the college was suspended in the air, and therefore incapable of attending their patients, no deaths happened, except a few who fell before the scythe of Father Time, and some melancholy objects who, perhaps to avoid some trifling inconvenience here, laid the hands of violence upon themselves, and plunged into misery infinitely greater than that which they hoped by such a rash step to avoid, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... have been, as it were, stayed by him; there came into his mind a recollection of how he had once, on a summer's day, joined the mowers in one of the fields, and had mowed a few swathes with them for the pleasure of seeing the rich seeded grass fall before the gleaming scythe. At one of his strokes, he remembered, he had uncovered a little field-mouse, that sate in the naked field, its high covert having been swept bare from above it, and watched him with bright eyes of fear, while he debated whether he should crush it; he had done so, he remembered, carelessly, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him, his left arm swinging like a scythe, and, with the impact of a club, the blow caught the ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... reeled and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe; When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like a ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Uncle John he was busy cutting hay for a white family nearby, swinging the scythe with the vigor of a young man. In late afternoon he was found sitting on the doorsteps of his granddaughter's house after a supper which certainly had onions on the menu and was followed by ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... you are a dead child!" she wheezed, her pale eyes bulging from the sockets. "Cap'n Gates and the overseer came out here last night and just sowed all this patch with side-blades!" (Scythe-blades.) "Edges up! Sharp as razors and thick as thieves! Hundreds of them! To keep the negroes from stealing any more of them! I heard Cap'n Gates tell them he was going to do it, and the overseer told ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... called early to see 270 and 269; again in evening to 270; last stage of consumption; won't last long. (Here go those terrible bearers again! When, O when, will the Angel of Death sheathe his scythe and depart out ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... be—the magic of that name Defies the scythe of time, the torch of flame;[bp] On the same spot still consecrates the scene, And bids the Drama be where she hath been: This fabric's birth attests the potent spell—— Indulge our honest pride, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... despise others is a worse fault than any we are likely to see in them, and to make merry over their weaknesses shows our own weakness and our own malice too. Wit should be a shield for defense, and not a sword for offense. A mocking word cuts worse than a scythe, and the wound is harder to heal. A blow is much sooner forgotten than a ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... their pouched throats and scythe-like bills, stood in melancholy attitudes, and beside them were the white and scarlet ibis, and the purple gallinule. Roseate spoonbills waded through the shallows, striking their odd-shaped beaks at the crabs and cray-fish; and upon projecting limbs of trees perched the black darter, his ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... the best, but Isak had put off doing it for the present—perhaps it would never be done at all. Not that Isak was above taking advice from his son; Eleseus was no fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—but he was no master hand at that, no. He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... and court, sought refuge at this place from the plague, which was ravaging London. But there was another trouble that came upon him from which he could not escape, even here. Death, with his scythe, passed by the healthful shades of the country palace, but the executioner with his axe was ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... intensely speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland, have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing interest among the common people that they have in New England. Every man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was inwardly grinding and hammering on those problems of existence which are as old as man, and which Christian and heathen have alike pondered. The Germans call the whole New England theology ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants fell like grass beneath its scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held out—women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe—an evil more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lawn, the picture moved with life. A half-haze, precursive of the twilight, lent scenic softness to the forms of old men puffing their pipes before the doors, a maiden listlessly strolling on the sward, a swarm of children playing near the road, a distant toiler making his way home, bearing his scythe. The visitors went down into the place and Chrysler saw that the artistic shapes and ideal colors were worn with daily use, the men and women, serene-looking, were still the every day ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... not your scythe, Suppressors of our Vice. Whet not your scythe, Suppressors of our ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... wary. So now do I tell thee that Walkyn hath taken and burned Duke Ivo's great Castle of Brandonmere, that Winisfarne city hath risen 'gainst the Duke and all the border villages likewise—aha! master, there be scythe-blades and good brown bills a-twinkle all along the marches eager to smite for freedom and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... inhumanity. An experience is not human in the proper artistic sense (with which alone we are concerned) merely because it has befallen a man or a woman. There was an Irishman, the other day, who through mere inadvertence cut off his own head with a scythe. But the story is rather inhuman than not. Still less right have we to call everything human which can be supposed by the most liberal stretch of the imagination to have happened to a man or a woman. A story ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... high, Piper Tom climbed the hill, followed by his faithful dog. On his shoulder he bore a scythe and under the other arm was a spade. He entered Miss Evelina's gate without ceremony and made a wry face as he looked about him. He scarcely knew ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... having slain him and many of his people, they plundered the country, and gave the city to the flames." (Ch. vii.) "And Joramus directed all the eparchs in the cities and islands to make out and send to Tyre descriptions of the inhabitants, their ships, their arms, their horses, their scythe-bearing chariots, and their property of all kinds; and he ordered them to send to distant countries persons competent to draw up narratives of the same kind, and to record them all in a book. In this manner he obtained accurate geographical descriptions ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... entire companies of soldiers, on their way from one part of the duchy to another; while in the fields, women, prematurely old with labor, were wielding the hoe and the mattock, and the younger and stronger of their sex were swinging the scythe. In all the villages through which we passed, in the very smallest, troops were posted, and men in military uniform were standing at the doors, or looking from the windows of every inn ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... together to the farmer, but at first they came to Burns; and to show that he was worthy of them, he bought books on agriculture, calculated rotation of crops, attended sales, held the plough with diligence, used the scythe, the reap-hook, and the flail, with skill, and the malicious even began to say that there was something more in him than wild sallies of wit and foolish rhymes. But the farm lay high, the bottom was wet, and in a third season, indifferent seed ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... king, with a scythe raised in the air, looks closely at two boys wrestling beneath him in a field of grain, a ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... indies sentire se fieri meliorem. The good parts he hath he will learn to show to the full, and use them dexterously, but not much to increase them. The faults he hath he will learn how to hide and colour them, but not much to amend them; like an ill mower, that mows on still, and never whets his scythe. Whereas with the learned man it fares otherwise, that he doth ever intermix the correction and amendment of his mind with the use and employment thereof. Nay, further, in general and in sum, certain it ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... provoking charm for a spoiled beauty used to conquest. The big blue stars which lit his face expressed a resolve not to yield to any blandishment, and this no doubt piqued Gaeta, before whom all the boys and youths at Davos had gone down like grass before the scythe. Helen Blantock came after she had left the place, otherwise she might have had to fight for her rights as queen; but as it was, she had been without rivals and probably had known few dangerous ones elsewhere. Never had I seen her take as much ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... flange and the rail; flame, Fang, or flood' goes Death on drum, And storms bugle his fame. But we dream we are rooted in earth—Dust! Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there must The sour scythe cringe, and ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... thing going. Bulgaria - at least by the route I am crossing it - is a land of mountains and elevated plateaus, and the inhabitants I should call the "ranchers of the Orient," in their general appearance and demeanor bearing the same relation to the plodding corn-hoer and scythe-swinger of the Morava Valley as the Niobrara cow-boy does to the Nebraska homesteader. On the mountains are encountered herds of goats in charge of men who reck little for civilization, and the upland plains are dotted over with herds of ponies that require constant watching in the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong; gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... moon-daisies, growing among the long, lush grass; and all the roadsides were a tangle of vetches, campion, bugle, trefoil and speedwells. The wind was fragrant with the scent of newly turned hay; everywhere the mowers were busy, and the daisies were falling fast beneath the swinging scythe or the blades of the reaping-machine. In the Manor garden the roses had reached perfection, and the flower-beds were a mass of colour. The girls spent every available moment out-of-doors, making the most of the bright days, and enjoying their ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... it very hard for FitzMorris to concentrate his brain on anything for a long time; he was happily dreaming, let us hope, of carbon bisulphate, when the roar, "How's that?" woke him up. He had to give the man "not out"; there was nothing else to do. Twenty minutes later, with a scandalous scythe-stroke, Bridges ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... on several occasions buried their victims alive, except the head, which they left above ground; they would then hurl stones at the unfortunate creatures, or cut off the heads with a scythe. It was not a war of classes but of race, for the poor peasants amongst the Magyars and Szeklers fared just as badly at the hands of the infuriated Wallacks as ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... blind fury and with a bravery which only religious conviction can inspire. The English machine guns scatter their death-bolts so rapidly that a continuous roll of thunder is heard, and the dervishes fall in heaps like ripe corn before the scythe. The fallen ranks are constantly replaced by fresh reinforcements, but at last the dervishes have had enough and beat a retreat. At once Kitchener pressed on to Omdurman, but the bloody day is not yet at an end. The dervish horsemen rally yet once more. The Khalifa's standard is planted in the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... distinction. The garden with one towering sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August 1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The family was ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... on the eaves At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe, And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait Stretching their huge and dripping ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... tricolour bunting hung inert. In the midst of the canvas town, scarlet and gold and crystal, the merry-go-round glittered in the sun. The balloon-man walked among the crowd, and above his head, like a huge, inverted bunch of many-coloured grapes, the balloons strained upwards. With a scythe-like motion the boat-swings reaped the air, and from the funnel of the engine which worked the roundabout rose a thin, scarcely wavering ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... summit of the year to which the days climbed, from which they fell away, and it was held in the middle of August. Then nature was at her height in the Glen, and had given us of her fulness. The barley was golden, and, rustling in the gentle wind, wearied for the scythe; the oats were changing daily, and had only so much greenness as would keep the feathery heads firm for the handling; the potatoes having received the last touch of the plough, were well banked up and ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... thunder. On it came with a magnificent roar that shook the very earth, and revealed itself at last in the shape of a mighty whirlwind. In a moment the distant woods bent before it, and fell like grass before the scythe. It was a whirling hurricane, accompanied by a deluge of rain such as none of the party had ever before witnessed. Steadily, fiercely, irresistibly it bore down upon them, while the crash of falling, snapping, and uprooting trees mingled with the dire ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... ormolu clock, representing Time with a scythe and hour-glass, on the mantelpiece, but said nothing. As it began to chime the door opened and the Rector and Mrs. Beach ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... sat, dejected, and alone, Making in thought the public woes my own, When, first, arose the image in my breast Of England's sufferings by that scourge, the pest.3 How death, his fun'ral torch and scythe in hand, Ent'ring the lordliest mansions of the land, Has laid the gem-illumin'd palace low, And level'd tribes of Nobles at a blow. I, next, deplor'd the famed fraternal pair4 Too soon to ashes turn'd and empty air, 10 The Heroes next, whom ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants fell like grass beneath it scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held out—women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe—an evil more horrible than pest or ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... fathers' God will give him strength to defend the innocent, and her who hath none to help her. But if this may not be, let the virgins of our people mourn for me as for one cast off, and for the hart that is stricken by the hunter, and for the flower which is cut down by the scythe of the mower. Wherefore look now what thou doest, and whether there be any rescue. One Nazarene warrior might indeed bear arms in my behalf, even Wilfred, son of Cedric, whom the Gentiles call Ivanhoe. But he may ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... pyramids, not with carved traceries, nor lacy spires, but with solid blocks of granite fifty feet square! How they must have laughed in the depths of those sepulchres as they watched Time dull its scythe and pashas wear out their nails in vain against them. Let us build pyramids, my dear Sir John. They are not difficult as architecture, nor beautiful as art, but they are solid; and that enables a general to say four thousand years later: 'Soldiers, from the apex of these monuments forty centuries ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... clashing kettle-drums, cymbals, and other instruments, that played fast and furiously; while above all a knell in the church tower rang forth at intervals a slow, deep, lugubrious note; and all the time there glided in and out through the ring a grisly being—skull-headed, skeleton-boned, scythe in hand—Death himself; and ever and anon, when the dance was swiftest, would he dart into the midst, pounce on one or other, holding an hour-glass to the face, unheeding rank, sex, or age, and bear his victim to the charnel-house ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... household tasks, baking the sweet white bread and marking the fresh golden butter into square pats, while Giles went out to work in the waving grain; and Phyllida, watching from a window, would see the sun flash on the uplifted blade of her husband's scythe. ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... carelessness and largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in all that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and fragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to the scythe. It gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing wrested from it, nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness,—a generous land, bright with capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... cathedral; some, tardily begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes behind it; all are in sufficiently near accord, to leave a resonance in the air, as if the winged father who devours his children, had made a sounding sweep with his gigantic scythe in ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... ever seen a stove, or a furnace, or a friction match, or an envelope, or a piece of mineral coal. From the farmer we should have to take the reaper, the drill, the mowing machine, and every kind of improved rake and plow, and give him back the scythe, the cradle, and the flail. From our houses would go the sewing machine, the daily newspaper, gas, running water; and from our tables, the tomato, the cauliflower, the eggplant, and many varieties of summer fruits. We should have ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... came; and then Breckinridge was sent through a terrific storm of balls and shell, that cut down his gallant boys like grass before the scythe. On, into the Valley of the Shadow they strode; thinned, reeling, broken under that terrible hail—but never blenching. And the crest was won! but the best blood of Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and North Carolina was ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and its princely gardens, I feel like a grasshopper that, chirping about the grounds, escaped the scythe only by my littleness. Even now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... appear in the organ which is always the last to show the signs of failing life, namely the eyes; he would know, too, the cause of the sufferings which gave her that look as though death were near and she might drop at any moment beneath its scythe. The two signs, the two gestures—not denying their friendship but imploring caution —alarmed the young Breton. Evidently Pierrette wished him to wait and not attempt to see her; otherwise there was danger, there was ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... been rife with discord and revolutions; all the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another. I scarce expected my only son would live to be old enough to join the army. Thither, thither, where death with a scythe in both hands was cutting down the ranks of the armed warriors; thither, where the children of weeping mothers were being trampled on by horses' hoofs; thither, thither, where they were casting into a common grave ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... most shamefully neglected," replied Molly. "Simply a mass of weeds and the apples left rotting on the ground all this fall, so mother writes. William, our colored man, cut down the worst of the weeds with a scythe last summer and I kept the ground cleared where the hammock hangs. It's been such a rainy summer, I suppose that's why things grew so rank, but I'm sorry the old gentleman is neglecting his property after making such a ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... I took most pleasure in was the barley, which I looked upon as my legitimate harvest; the other crops seeming to be more like gardening than real harvest work. I cut every handful with a reaping hook, which took a long time; but as I had not a scythe this was my only way of cutting it down. True, the Channel Islands mode of harvesting the barley is to pull it up by the roots, a handful at a time, knocking the soil off the roots upon the toe of the boot; but this seemed to me such an un-English method ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... parts had fitted into the pattern, the gay green grass growing out of the stacked barrels and carts, and the sullen, silent, waiting mitrailleuse which can spit death in a wide swathe as it revolves from side to side, like the full stroke of a scythe on nodding daisies. The bark of it is as alarming as its bite—an incredibly rapid rat-tat that makes men fall on their faces when they hear, like worshipers at the bell of ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... time! Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! What power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity! On, still on, He presses and forever. The proud bird, The Condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... examining the character of these places, coasting along the shore of Cuba, he first discovered, not far from Alpha (that is from the end of it), a harbour sufficient for many ships. Its entrance is in the form of a scythe, shut in on the two sides by promontories that break the waves; and it is large and of great depth. Following the coast of this harbour, he perceived at a short distance from the shore two huts, and several fires burning here and there. A landing was ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt |
