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Scythe   Listen
verb
Scythe  v. t.  To cut with a scythe; to cut off as with a scythe; to mow. (Obs.) "Time had not scythed all that youth begun."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books



... bright and pleasant little town, As everywhere, a noiseless scythe hath swept; The bright, the green, the flow'ret all cut down, For heart ties ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... love me and my type. She had lived all her life in the middle of Romance, and the very fire and passion of her South must make me dim prose to her. I remember the flicker of Salazar's returning candle, cast in lines like an advancing scythe across the two walls ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... Miss Time, that gray headed old weaver, who is never still, but sets up there in that ancient loom of hern a weavin', while her pardner is away mowin' with that sharp scythe of hisen from mornin' till night, and from night till mornin', jest so stiddy did she keep on weavin'. Noiseless and calm would the quiet days pass into her old shuttle (which is jest as good to-day as it wuz at ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... inner walls of the towers have been cut away, completely adapting them for 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, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. It needs new paint and shingles and vines should be trimmed and tied, But what it needs most of all is ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... scythe, feeling brisk and blithe, In the breeze-tempered heat of this fine day; I'll haste to the field with the wheaten yield, And there will I ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... charity. Put it to her as an opportunity. She'd drop anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's something like a mowing machine: a grand good thing, but needs a scythe to follow round and pick ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost

... of walking to see any of his patients' families, if he had any professional object in his visit. Whenever the narrow sulky turned in at a gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing corn, or swishing through the grass with his scythe, in wave-like crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheelbarrow, or trudging lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated, short-legged oxen, rocking along the road as if they had just been landed after a three-months' voyage, the toiling native, whatever he was doing, stopped ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... They have most ample cause for what they do. O fruitful Britain! doubtless thou wast meant A nurse of fools, to stock the continent. Tho' Phoebus and the Nine for ever mow, Rank folly underneath the scythe will grow. The plenteous harvest calls me forward still, Till I surpass in length my lawyer's bill; A Welsh descent, which well paid heralds damn; Or, longer still, a Dutchman's epigram. When, cloy'd, in fury I throw down my pen, In comes a coxcomb, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... to suffer great hardship even when they reached Kentucky. The only two implements the men invariably carried were the axe and rifle, for they were almost equally proud of their skill as warriors, hunters, and wood-choppers. Next in importance came the sickle or scythe. The first three tasks of the pioneer farmer were to build a cabin, to make a clearing—burning the brush, cutting down the small trees, and girdling the large—and to plant corn. Until the crop ripened he hunted steadily, and his family lived on the abundant game, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... been crying," the boy said shrewdly. "So I have, but not because I've been punished. The reason my eyes are so swollen up is because I killed our old toad by mistake this morning. I was trying to see if I could swing the scythe so's to help Ivory in haying-time. I've only 'raked after' and I want to begin on mowing soon's I can. Then somehow or other the old toad came out from under the steps; I didn't see him, and the scythe hit him square. I cried for an hour, that's what I did, and I don't ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... 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 ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... freight-trains, on the decks of vessels, in cattle-yards and mines, on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen, the demand for courage is incessant; and the supply never fails. There, every day of the year somewhere, is human nature in extremis for you. And wherever a scythe, an axe, a pick, or a shovel is wielded, you have it sweating and aching and with its powers of patient endurance racked to the utmost under the length of ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... apace, the latter end of December, which was my second harvest, I reaped it with a scythe, made of one of my broad swords. I had no fatigue in cutting down my my first crop it was so slender. The ears I carried home in a basket, rubbing it with my hands, instead of threshing it: and when the harvest was over, found my half peck of seed produced near two bushels ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... awakened all things that be, The lark and the thrush and the swallow free, And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe And the matin-bell and the mountain bee: 20 Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim: The beetle forgot to wind his horn, The crickets were still in the meadow and hill: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... 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 ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... the immediate shore of the lake, and across the shoulder of what is known as Minnesota Point,—a long scythe-shaped sand-bar, six miles in length, caused by the action of the waves, separating the waters of Duluth Bay from those of the lake,—and extending along the ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... Is she to come to work here for ever? To come to tea here for ever? To come backwards and forwards here, in the same way, for ever?' 'How can you talk about "for ever" to a maimed creature like me? Are we not all cut down like the grass of the field, and was not I shorn by the scythe many years ago: since when I have been lying here, waiting to be gathered into ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... garden, once fairly laid out and planted, but now sadly neglected. The broad terrace walk was overgrown with weeds; the stone steps and the carved balusters were broken in places, and covered with moss; the once smooth lawn was unconscious of the scythe; the parterres had lost their quaint devices; and the knots of flowers—tre-foil, cinque-foil, diamond, and cross-bow—were no longer distinguishable in their original shapes. The labyrinths of the maze were inextricably tangled, and the long green ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... the sun came out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green in my face. "God have mercy on your soul," says he, lifting a scythe; "or on your own," says I, raising the loy. SUSAN. That's ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... Phyllida worked happily at the 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

... everything, contains an abundance of important features of which we do not as yet know anything. With the same scientific exactitude the laboratory must investigate the milking, or the making of butter, the feeding of the cattle and the picking of the fruit, the use of the scythe and the axe, the pruning and the husking. The mere fact that every one, even with the least skill, is able to carry out such movements with some result, does not in the least guarantee that any one carries them out to-day with the best ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... to escape from the fever heat and turmoil of Paris during the Exhibition to the green banks and sheltered ways of the gently undulating Marne! With what delight we wake up in the morning to the noise, if noise it can be called, of the mower's scythe, the rustle of acacia leaves, and the notes of the stock-dove, looking back as upon a nightmare to the horn of the tramway conductor, and the perpetual grind of the stone-mason's saw. Yes! to quit Paris at a time of tropic heat, and nestle down in ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... imagination meadows, on 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 speaking of them you may not use the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... Don Luis saw the great blade of a scythe cleaving the air at the height of his head. Had he hesitated for a second, for the tenth of a second, the awful weapon would have beheaded him. As it was, he just had time to flatten himself against the ladder. The scythe whistled ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... and passed his forefinger across his forehead, brushing the sweat away from above his quiet eyes. He moistened the tip of his thumb and slid it along the blade of his hemp hook—he was using that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... 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 ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... Sobieska to help him. She came at six o'clock, armed with a bottle of 'remedy' for a wound in the leg, did the work of two while she sang songs which made even Maciek blush, until the afternoon, and then took her 'remedy'. The cure then pulled her down so much that the scythe fell from ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... what love is, feels! "Seiz'd with desire of me he flames, forgets "His flocks, and caverns. All thy anxious care "Thy beauty, Polyphemus! to improve, "And all thy anxious care is now to please. "And now with rakes thou comb'st thy rugged hair; "Now with a scythe thou mow'st thy bushy beard: "Thy features to behold in the clear brook, "And calm their fire employs thee. All his love "Of slaughter; all his fierceness; all his thirst "Cruel of blood, him leaves; and on the coast, "Ships safely moor, and safe again depart. "Meantime at ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... run serious risk from scythe and plough while sitting on the nest. Landrails have before now been decapitated by the swing of the scythe, and a case is on record in which a sitting partridge, seeing that the plough was coming dangerously near her nest, actually removed the whole clutch of eggs, numbering over a score, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... so much from a ravenous appetite, as from the rage of destroying every vegetable substance that lies in the way; and their work of destruction is frequently so regular in a field of corn, as to have the appearance of being cut with a scythe. Where they are bred, from eggs that are deposited in the earth the autumn before, they stop during the months of April, May, and June; towards the latter end of July, they get strong, and have wings, when they rise together, sometimes so numerous as to form a black cloud, which darkens the rays ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... 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 flowering pleasantly; ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... This sharp scythe you see us bear, Brings the world at length to woe: But from life to life we fare; And that life is joy or woe: All heaven's bliss on him doth flow Who on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... of us the inventor is the true hero for he multiplies the working value of life. He performs an old task with new economy, as when he devises a mowing-machine to oust the scythe; or he creates a service wholly new, as when he bids a landscape depict itself on a photographic plate. He, and his twin brother, the discoverer, have eyes to read a lesson that Nature has held for ages under the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... 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 a halfpenny to spare. He ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... darkness, dealt destruction with as unerring hand as their more famous English brethren. Shouts and cries rose on either side; the English bore back before the sweeping stroke of Nigel Bruce as before the scythe of death. For the brief space of an hour the strife lasted, and still victory was on the side of the Scots—glorious victory, purchased with scarce the loss of ten men. The English fled back to their camp, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... trivial things. 'In all manner of conversation.' There is nothing that grows so low but that this scythe will travel near enough to the ground to harvest it. There is nothing so minute but it is big enough to mirror the holiness of God. The tiniest grain of mica, upon the face of the hill, is large enough to flash back a beam; and the smallest thing we can do is big ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... infidel! shalt writhe Beneath avenging Monkir's scythe; And from its torment 'scape alone To wander round lost Eblis' throne; And fire unquenched, unquenchable, Around, within thy heart shall dwell; Nor ear can hear, nor tongue can tell The tortures of that inward ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... horses! As a preliminary calamity, half-starved cows were turned in to nibble the grass, and incidentally to trample and crush flowers and ferns into one ghastly ruin. And at the same moment, as if inspired by the same spirit of destruction, some idle railroad "hand," with a scythe, laid low the whole bank of grapevines. Ruthless was the ruin, and wrecked beyond repair the spot, after man's desolating hand passed over it; a scene of violence, of dead and dying scattered over the trampled and torn-up sod; "murder most foul" in the eyes of a Nature-lover. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... 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 ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... they avoided death by a timely flight, and she fell from the height of her desires to penury in England. Much of this tale she concealed from Raymond; nor did she confess, that repulse and denial, as to a criminal convicted of the worst of crimes, that of bringing the scythe of foreign despotism to cut away the new springing liberties of her country, would have followed her application to any among ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... One of these kings is the portrait of Uguccione della Faggiuola of Arezzo, in a figure represented as holding his nose with his hand in order not to smell the odour of the dead kings. In the middle of this scene is Death, flying through the air and clothed in black, while he raises his scythe to take the life of many who are on the earth, of every state and condition, poor, rich, lame, whole, young, old, men, women, and, in short, a multitude of every age and sex. And because Orcagna knew that the invention of Buffalmacco ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... was also a runaway, and, after the fashion of his native land, had gone through the process of oiling her, as the marriage ceremony. They had built a cave on a rising mound in the swamp, and this was their home. This man's name was Picquilo. His only weapon was a sword made from a scythe which he had stolen from a neighboring plantation. His dress, his character, his manners, and his mode of fighting were all in keeping with the early training he had received in the land of his birth. He moved about with the activity of a cat, and neither ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... covering stone. Such a legend lived among us. Now it is fulfilled. The Russians shot there three Bolsheviki and the Chinese two Mongols. The evil spirit of Beltis Van broke loose from beneath the heavy stone and now mows down the people with his scythe. The noble Chultun Beyli has perished; the Russian Noyon Michailoff also has fallen; and death has flowed out from Uliassutai all over our boundless plains. Who shall be able to stem it now? Who shall tie the ferocious hands? An evil time has fallen upon the Gods and ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... his left arm swinging like a scythe, and, with the impact of a club, the blow caught the burglar in ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... outstretched gaff. As the poor fellow had missed a fish once or twice that day (being as I have before said much indisposed with a severe cold and a splitting headache), I was, at this delay, fearful of the sequel, and observed with horror his wild, scythe-like sweep with the gaff. I could feel also, but too surely, that the fish had received a violent blow; but the sound of its continued splashing in the water and the steady strain upon the line allowed me to breathe again, and to ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... him out into a hay-field, and there, with his head pillowed on the hay, with the soft blue sky above him, and the scent of flowers in the air, with the low of cows and hum of bees in the distance, and the sweet scythe music sounding near him, and the touch of the girl's fair soft hand on his brow, my little heir passed away without even a moan, only a little sigh of relief, of happiness, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... fashionable legs in riding-breeches and puttees! She carried not a parasol nor a riding-crop, but a great reaping-hook swung across her shoulder, and she smiled as impudently, as immortally, as if she were Youth and had slain old Time and carried off his scythe. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... boy I wuz follin' wid my father's scythe. It fell on my arm and nearly cut if off. Dey got somethin' and bind it up. Eventually after a while, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... when the fall became too rapid for further voluntary progress. I let down a stone for 18 feet, when it stuck fast, and would move neither one way nor the other. The upper wall of this fissure was clothed with moss-like ice, and ice of the prismatic structure,—with here and there large scythe-blades, as it were, attached by the sharp edge to the rock, and lying vertically with the heel outwards. One of these was 11 inches deep, from the heel to the rock, and only one-eighth of an inch thick ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... looked at the throat of Gaznak and aimed with Sacnoth, and again Gaznak lifted his head by the hair; but not at his throat flew Sacnoth, for Leothric struck instead at the lifted hand, and through the wrist of it went Sacnoth whirring, as a scythe goes through the stem of ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... 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 accursed, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... Natives in Divine things, conducted the worship, and taught them much by his good example. His influence was increasing, when one morning a Sacred Man threw at him the kawas or killing-stone, a deadly weapon like a scythe stone in shape and thickness, usually round but sometimes angular, and from eighteen to twenty inches long. They throw it from a great distance and with fatal precision. The Teacher, with great agility, warded his head and received the deep cut from it in his left hand, reserving ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... desolate—the blank surface of the world with its flying scud, the blank yellow-gray sky, the range, all iron and white, the blue-black scars of leafless trees, the green-black etchings of firs. The wind cut across like a scythe, sharp, but making no stir above the drift. It was all dead and dark—an underground world which, Prosper felt, never could have seen the sun, had no memory of sun nor moon nor stars. The roof of Pierre's cabin made a dark ridge above the ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... illustrated vividly by the miracles of modern invention. The hand of man unaided was not able to cope with his expanding opportunities; the giant steam and the magician electricity came at his call to work their wonders. The plow and scythe of the New England colonist on his little farm were metamorphosed into the colossal steam-driven shapes, in which machinery seems transmuted into intelligence, as he moved to the conquest of the acres of the West which ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... Stephen Shepley, Benjamin Snow, and Rodney Wallace bought the Lyon Paper Mill and the Kimball Scythe Shops at West Fitchburg, and began the manufacture of paper under the name of the Fitchburg Paper Company, Stephen E. Denton was taken into the firm as a partner soon after. He had charge of the business at the mill. In July, 1865, Rodney Wallace and Benjamin Snow bought the interest ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... 'tis sunny September, Though here 'tis a waste of snows, So bleak that I scarce remember How the scythe through ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... carpentry business, having, as he said, practised the art when he made up his mind to become a settler. He had also learned to mow, and he and Rupert spent some hours, scythe in hand, cutting down the tall grass for the purpose of securing fodder for the horses through the winter months, as also to prevent the necessity of burning close round the homestead, as it is necessary to do, in case one of the fires, which are constantly occurring, should ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... and he exhibits a picture, conceived in an entirely different spirit, in this Academy. Turning to my notes I find it thus described: "A small canvas containing three mowers in a flowering meadow. Two are mowing; the third, a little to the left, sharpens his scythe. The sky is deep and lowering—a sultry summer day, a little unpleasant in colour, but true. At the end of the meadow the trees gleam. The earth is wrapped in a hot mist, the result of the heat, and through ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... and terrific Scythe of Time (for I now discovered the literal import of that classical phrase) had not stopped, nor was it likely to stop, in its career. Down and still down, it came. It had already buried its sharp edge a full inch in my flesh, and my sensations grew indistinct and confused. At one time ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... back alive were, so he pictured it, one in a million, brought a distinct feeling of panic. He could see the air literally filled with bursting shrapnel, while red-hot bullets from machine-guns swept the earth as clean as a scythe goes through the ripening wheat. Man simply could not endure in a hell like that! It was ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... said to that proud wooer, 'Lord Eurymachus, if there might be a trial of labour between us two, I know which of us would come out the better man. I would that we two stood together, a scythe in the hands of each, and a good swath of meadow to be mown—then would I match with thee, fasting from dawn until evening's dark. Or would that we were set ploughing together. Then thou shouldst see who would plough the longest and the best furrow! Or would that we two ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum

... Chronicle than from contemplating such representative, works of art. Moreover, the Florentine masters took heed to paint, under the shade of orange groves, on the flower-starred turf, fair ladies and gallant knights, with Death lying in wait for them with his scythe, while they were discoursing of love to the sound of lutes and viols. Nothing was better fitted to convert carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness of God on the lips of women. To rebuke the covetous, the painter would show to the life the Devils pouring molten gold down the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... round the neck of the fibula, because it is superficial and lies against the unyielding bone. It may be compressed by a tourniquet, or it may be bruised or torn in fractures of the upper end of the bone. It has been divided in accidental wounds,—by a scythe, for example,—in incising for cellulitis, and in performing subcutaneous tenotomy of the biceps tendon. Cases have been observed of paralysis of the nerve as a result of prolonged acute flexion of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... to be ready for death when it comes, but as yet I am not extending an invitation to the gentleman with the scythe. Are you, my worrying reader, anxious to be mowed down before your time? Quit your worrying, and don't urge the Master Reaper to harvest you in until He ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... revived at dinner to undertake any controversy on behalf of a better future for the whole human race; to blithesome Thomas who will never grow up, making words dance a tune, quoting Horace in order to forget the shells, all himself with his coat off and swinging a peasant's scythe; to Philips the urbane, not saying much but coming to the essential point, our scout and cartographer, who knew all the places on the map between the Somme and the Rhine and heard the call of Pittsburgh; to Russell, that pragmatic, upstanding expert in squadrons and barrages, who saved all our ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... cause is the same which, in long ages gone, Roused up your great sires, so gallantly known, When, braving the tyrant, the sceptre and throne, They rushed to the conflict, despising the odds; Armed with bow, spear, and scythe, and with sling and with stone, For their ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... hills and back country, to allow the undimmed heaven to shine down upon the happy festival of families and nations. The cattle stood still in the fields without a low; the trees were quiet as in friendly recognition of the spirit of the hour; no reaper's hook or mower's scythe glanced in the meadow, no rumbling wain was on the road. The birds alone, as being more nearly akin to the feeling of the ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... 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 the day is over, placed in some secluded ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... of the great 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 flying ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many serious reflections. Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy stages ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... of these times is Death. He does not admit of any class distinctions. He mows down a proletarian and a Marshall Field with the same scythe. How imperfectly the world is arranged. It should be possible to shift the bearing of children and the dying from the rich to the poor—for ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... harvester surveys His sorry crops of yesterdays; Of trampled hopes and reaped regrets, And for another harvest whets His ancient scythe, eying the while The budding year with cynic smile. Well, let him smile; in snug retreat I fill my pipe with honeyed sweet, Whose incense wafted from the bowl Shall make warm sunshine in my soul, And conjure mid the fragrant haze Fair memories of ...
— The Smoker's Year Book • Oliver Herford

... upon the earth by the sin of Adam, it happened that wheat being sown, yet oats would sprout and grow. This ceased with the appearance of Noah: the earth bore the products planted in it. And it was Noah who, when he was grown to manhood, invented the plough, the scythe, the hoe, and other implements for cultivating the ground. Before him men had worked the land with ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... liked learning, and it pleased the men, too, and taught me skill. Poor old dog, then; no snapping. The poor fellow's legs are regularly crushed, as if he had been hit with an iron bar used like a scythe." ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... Time swings round his scythe, Intomb me 'neath the bounteous vine, So that its juices, red and blithe, May cheer these thirsty bones ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... ring must be renewed: as soon as the ants arrive at it, not one of them will attempt to cross over.—Ant hills are very injurious in dry pastures, not only by wasting the soil, but yielding a pernicious kind of grass, and impeding the operation of the scythe. The turf of the ant hill should be pared off, the core taken out and scattered at a distance; and when the turf is laid down again, the place should be left lower than the ground around it, that when the wet settles into it, the ants ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... and the laird was out in his fields. His oats were nearly ready for the scythe, and he was judging where he had best begin ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... 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

... note, sounding as if a scythe-blade were being held against a rapidly-revolving grindstone, and then the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... for Albinia's preferences, but thoroughly penetrating, and giving energy to, her East-Indian husband, and making the whole country radiant with sunny beauty—the waving hay-fields falling before the mower's scythe, the ranks of hay-makers tossing the fragrant grass, the growing corn softly waving in the summer breeze, the river blue with reflected sky, the hedges glowing with stately fox-gloves, or with blushing wreaths ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... kingly mantles, fragments of armor, wrecks of crowns, and cast at my feet thousands of broken sceptres. I then enquired what would become of the thrones of to-day. What the first became, was the reply—and Time waved the direful scythe which levels all things under its merciless strokes—these also will be. I asked if a like destiny was in store for the Throne of Peter. Time was ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of death, with calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are spouting radiating torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as corn falls, not before the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has reached, or can reach, the little earth-bank behind which the defenders keep their ground. The attack has failed; and failed from no lack of valour, of methodised effort, of punctilious ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... event—seventeen years of age. Ever since his birth the world has 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 the mangled remains of darling first-borns; ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... he felt his earlier manhood coming back as he rode along that pleasant afternoon, past the fields where the newly-mown hay, fresh from a recent shower, sent forth its fragrance upon the summer air, while the song of the mowers mingled with the click of the whetting scythe, made sweet, homelike sounds which he loved to hear. Why did he lean so constantly from the carriage, and why when Victor exclaimed, "The old ruin is there yet," referring to Grassy Spring did he, too, look across ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... 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! ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... grey dots crawling over the crest of the hill, the shots that announced their detection, the uprising of them in a solid mass, sweeping towards the trenches; the withering fire, reaping in its victims like a scythe. They were wondering every second of the time, "How far have the Germans got? Have they pushed us out?" But no order came to advance to re-capture the trenches, so they presumed ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... and wonder." To his friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please his sisters were grotesque, and some both ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... 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, without ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... When Death's sharp scythe has mowed the hero down, The muse again awakes him to renown; She tells proud Fate that all her darts are vain, And bids the hero live and strut about again: Nor is she only able to restore, But she can make what ne'er was made before; Can search the realms of Fancy, and create ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... Marcel stood with his fellow gunners on the parapet of Rodriguez Canal and looked out across the field—smoke-hung under the cloudless morning sky. The British dead, in their scarlet uniforms, were lying row on row, one behind the other, like grain cut down by the mower's scythe. The boy's heart sickened. But a prolonged cheer came ringing along ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... those who bring news of a thousand events contrary to thy desires.... Thou wanderest at will, now quickly, now slowly, across the green meadow, through the wood, over the grassy hill, or by the stream. Now here, now there ... thou handlest the hatchet, axe, scythe, or hoe.... To enjoy in sober comfort at almost all seasons, with thy dear children, the fruits of thine own tree, the tree planted by thyself, this brings a ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... 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 ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... finished striking, and the convulsive little Hay-maker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... 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 artillery of that sweeping storm ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... that the 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 were trampled in ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... and elms and chestnuts, growing singly, which had attained great size. The rest of the space between the ruins and the hill was a close-cropt sward, which the daily pasture of the sheep kept in much finer order than if it had been subjected to the scythe and broom. The whole scene had a repose, which was still and affecting without being monotonous. The dark, deep basin, in which the clear blue lake reposed, reflecting the water lilies which grew on its surface, and the trees which here and there threw their arms from the banks, was ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... his fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth, where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked, before he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... see a scythe about him, but to every girl he took a different form. He was Billy Edgar, or Jules Vigo, or Rice Jones, or any other gallant of Kaskaskia, according to the varying faith which beating hearts sent to the eyes that ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... it is 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 ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... beer; Which freely drink to your lord's health, Then to the plough, the commonwealth, Next to your flails, your fans, your fats, Then to the maids with wheaten hats: To the rough sickle, and crook'd scythe, Drink, frolic boys, till all be blithe. Feed, and grow fat; and as ye eat Be mindful that the lab'ring neat, As you, may have their fill of meat. And know, besides, ye must revoke The patient ox unto the yoke, And all go back unto the ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... best and sweetest in wooded coverts, provided they be neighboured by water, no matter whether in pool or rill, he resigned himself to that intermediate state between thought and dream-land which we call "revery." At a little distance he heard the low still sound of the mower's scythe, and the air came to his brow sweet with the fragrance ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... flight for his very existence; "ducking under like a poor unfledged partridge-bird," as one described it, "before the mower; darting continually from nook to nook, and there crouching, to escape the scythe of Death." For Literature Proper there was but little left in such a life. Only the smallest broken fractions of his last and heaviest-laden years can poor Sterling be said to have completely lived. His purpose had risen before him slowly in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... wreathed garland, from a green And virgin meadow bear I, O my Queen, Where never shepherd leads his grazing ewes Nor scythe has touched. Only the river dews Gleam, and the spring bee sings, and in the glade Hath Solitude her mystic garden made. No evil hand may cull it: only he Whose heart hath known the heart of Purity, Unlearned of man, and ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... it happened, that, in bodies, the van of which were admirably well armed in their own fashion, the rear resembled actual banditti. Here was a pole-axe, there a sword without a scabbard; here a gun without a lock, there a scythe set straight upon a pole; and some had only their dirks, and bludgeons or stakes pulled out of hedges. The grim, uncombed, and wild appearance of these men, most of whom gazed with all the admiration of ignorance upon the most ordinary production of domestic ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... something for your children at home. If you had not asked it the Government would have done it all the same, although I had not said so before. I can say this, that when a band settles down and actually commences to farm on their lands, the Government will agree to give two hoes, one spade, one scythe, and one axe for every family actually settled; one plough for every ten families, five harrows for every twenty families, and a yoke of oxen, a bull and four cows for every band; and enough barley, wheat and oats to plant the land they have ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... two bas-reliefs. In one the face was smiling with half-open, voluptuous lips, and the eyes, a little drooping, told of some delicious thrill of passion. Opposite this was the figure of Time, winged and frowning, with huge scythe-blades in his mighty hands. She shuddered; those relentless blades had indeed mown down the little day of her love's triumph. What devil had prompted the Italian Frisoni to illustrate this terrible truth upon the very palace ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay



Words linked to "Scythe" :   cut down, mow, edge tool



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