"Serpent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would never be content to marry Will Dudley, even if she succeeded in winning him from Rachel. Poor Rachel! I felt so sorry for her; she has so little, and she's so sweet and content, and so innocent that a serpent has entered into her Eden. It sounds rather horrid to call your own sister a serpent, but circumstances alter cases, and it really is appropriate. I think Vere expected me to fly into another rage, but I didn't feel angry at all, only sorry ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dinner, he took Laura by the hand, and asked her if she would be "so sweet as to play to him." She complied, through sheer astonishment. He sat by the piano, with his watch-chain resting in folds, like a golden serpent, on the sea-green protuberance of his waistcoat. His immense head lay languidly on one side, and he gently beat time with two of his yellow-white fingers. He highly approved of the music, and tenderly admired Laura's manner of playing—not as ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... small drug-stores in the great city of Quito. The serpent is used as the badge of apothecary art. Physicians have no offices, nor do they, as a general rule, call upon their patients. When an invalid is not able to go to the doctor, he is expected to die. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... The fact was nothing, the condition of mind which it indicated brought great grief to the discoverer. She judged that Joan was little better than heathen after all; she greatly feared that the girl had perished but half-believing. Any soul which could thus cherish the slough of a serpent must most surely have been wandering afar out of the road of faith. The all-embracing credulity of Joan was, in fact, a phenomenon beyond Mary's power to estimate or translate; and her present discovery, therefore, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Hou Mars, which god of Armes was, Hath set tuo Oxen sterne and stoute, That caste fyr and flamme aboute Bothe at the mouth and ate nase, So that thei setten al on blase 3510 What thing that passeth hem betwene: And forthermore upon the grene Ther goth the flees of gold to kepe A Serpent, which mai nevere slepe. Thus who that evere scholde it winne, The fyr to stoppe he mot beginne, Which that the fierce bestes caste, And daunte he mot hem ate laste, So that he mai hem yoke and dryve; And therupon he mot as blyve 3520 The Serpent with such strengthe assaile, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... force which Providence has assigned them. The angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors before him; the lion, the leopard, and the tiger, seek only with their talons and their fangs to gratify their sanguinary fury; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom, and uses the same wiles, as did his sire before the flood. Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery, enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction; arrogates the tremendous ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... to realize more than they had seen in the visions of hope, when, in an evil hour, the husband was tempted "to look upon the wine when it is red," and to taste of it, "when it giveth its colour in the cup." The charmer fastened round its victim all the serpent-spells of its sorcery, and he fell; and at every step of his degradation from the man to the brute, and downward, a heartstring broke in the ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... intersecting lines of gold, red, and blue, exposed his round, strong arms, the left furnished with a large metal wristband, meant to lessen the vibration of the string when he discharged an arrow from his triangular bow; and the right, ornamented by a bracelet in the form of a serpent in several coils, held a long gold scepter with a lotus bud at the end. The rest of his body was wrapt in drapery of the finest linen, minutely plaited, bound about the waist by a belt inlaid with small enamel and gold plates. Between the band ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... Every nation on earth, whether friends or enemies, will unite in despising you. 'Tis an incendiary war upon society, which nothing can excuse or palliate,—an improvement upon beggarly villany—and shows an inbred wretchedness of heart made up between the venomous malignity of a serpent and the spiteful imbecility of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... crime of inexpressible atrocity—a crime that defiles the sacred springs of domestic confidence, and is calculated to strike alarm into the breast of every Englishman who invests largely in the choicer vintages of Southern Europe. Like the serpent of old, you have stung the hand of your protector. Fortunate in having a generous employer, you might without discovery have continued to supply your wretched wife and children with the comforts of sufficient prosperity, and even with some of the luxuries ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... the mistakes of the old translators were often much more beautiful than the original. A splendid example is given in the verse of Job, chapter twenty-six, verse thirteen: "By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent." By the crooked serpent was supposed to be signified the grand constellation called Draco, or the Dragon. And the figure is sublime. It is still more sublime in the Douai translation. "His obstetric hand hath brought forth the Winding Serpent." This ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... slave replied, "The King and the inhabitants of this city are worshippers of a snake; their idol is a great serpent, to whom they have erected a large and magnificent temple, where he is attended by a great number of priests: the priests mislead the people, and what they wish takes place. Now, the King has one Princess—the daughter of his wife by a former marriage—she is black like a negress; ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... "Bone of our bone; born and educated among us! Mr. Hancock is deeply affected; is determined, in conjunction with Major Hawley, to watch the vile serpent, and his deputy, Brattle. The subtlety of this serpent is equal to that of the ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... with a reawakened sense of the cruel unfairness of life. Her flesh crept with the touch of her rain-soaked clothing. And in her thoughts temptation stirred like a whispering serpent. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... with a Cross before him, and an attendant on each side, and passed on to Naples and the hospitals "braving all danger in imitation of his Master," I verily believe there might have happened a revolution. Such events from much less causes being frequent enough. Where is the "wisdom of the serpent"? ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... escape from the black and our deliverance from the perils of the sea; and thus we did till nightfall, when we lay down and fell asleep for excess of fatigue. But we had hardly closed our eyes before we were aroused by a hissing sound like the sough of wind, and awaking, saw a serpent like a dragon, a seld-seen sight, of monstrous make and belly of enormous bulk which lay in a circle around us. Presently it reared its head and, seizing one of my companions, swallowed him up to his shoulders; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... will lead the freedman over the Red Sea of our troubles. It will be the brazen serpent, upon which he can look and live. It will be his pillar of cloud by day, and his pillar of fire by night. It will lead him to Pisgah's shining height, and across Jordan's stormy waves, to Canaan's fair and happy land. Sir, the ballot is the freedman's Moses. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... which they could preserve themselves; while if your Majesty has all that profit—as beyond doubt, God helping (for whose honor it is being done), you will have it, by encouraging your royal forces and by enforcing your holy purposes—all the heads of that many-headed serpent of the enemy ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the dreadful sign was sent. Straight to the tree his sanguine spires he roll'd, And curl'd around in many a winding fold; The topmost branch a mother-bird possess'd; Eight callow infants fill'd the mossy nest; Herself the ninth; the serpent, as he hung, Stretch'd his black jaws and crush'd the crying young; While hovering near, with miserable moan, The drooping mother wail'd her children gone. The mother last, as round the nest she flew, Seized by the beating wing, the monster slew; Nor long survived: ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... and varsovienne, from Warsaw. The tarantella, like the tarantula spider, takes its name from Taranto, in Italy. The tune of the dance is said to have been originally employed as a cure for the lethargy caused by the bite of the spider. Florio has tarantola, "a serpent called an eft or an evet. Some take it to be a flye whose sting is perillous and deadly, and nothing but divers sounds of ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... and window-sash with his gold. It will give a rich dowry to Marietta But when Marietta brought in the fragments of the shattered cup, when Manon saw the Paradise lost, the good man Adam without a head, and of Eve not a solitary limb remaining, the serpent unhurt, triumphing, the tiger safe, but the little lamb gone even to the very tail, as if the tiger had swallowed it, then Mother Manon screamed forth curses against Colin, and said: "One can easily see that this fall came from ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... edge. The girls, unconscious of danger, were playing and splashing the water with their paddles, until the canoe floating with the current, drifted near the shore. Five stout Indians lay there concealed, one of whom, noiseless and stealthy as the serpent, crawled down the bank until he reached the rope that hung from the bow, turned its course up the stream, and in a direction to be hidden from the view of the fort. The loud shrieks of the captured girls were heard, but ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... lighted at what he thought was Dick's mistake, and forgetting himself, half turned in the revolving chair, while the muzzle of the revolver was shifted for just the fraction of a second. It was enough. With the quickness of a serpent, Dick's hand shot out, and the heavy weight caught the negro above the right ear, and with a groan he slid from the chair ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... known in Europe. This remedy is the serpent-stone, allowed to be factitious, and is brought from India, where they are made by the bramins who have the secret of composing them, which they so carefully conceal, that no Europeans have hitherto been able to discover how they are made. The serpent-stone is about the size of a bean, white in the middle, but of a fine sky-blue on the outside. When a person is bitten by a serpent, this stone is applied to the wound, to which it soon sticks fast of itself, without the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... trembling hands of Gertrude, on her white handkerchief—Miss Montgomerie now proceeded to apply, covering a considerable portion around the orifice of the two small wounds, inflicted by the fangs of the serpent, with the dense mass of the vegetable preparation. The relief produced by this was effectual, and in less than an hour, so completely had the poison been extracted, and the strength of the arm restored, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... both, than he who never felt it would believe. And that is the thing, cousin, that maketh me speak of it as of a thing proper to this matter. For, cousin, as it is a right hard thing to touch pitch and never defile the fingers, to put flax unto fire and yet keep them from burning, to keep a serpent in thy bosom and yet be safe from stinging, to put young men with young women without danger of foul fleshly desire—so it is hard for any person, either man or woman, in great worldly wealth and much prosperity, so to withstand the suggestions of the devil and occasions ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... complained to the Pope, that the naked figures of the last judgment were unworthy of a house of prayer. The artist introduced his censor in his painting as Minos judge of the infernal regions, with long ears like those of the other devils, and a serpent's tail. Paul III when appealed to is said to have answered, that if his Ceremoniere had been in Purgatory, he might have helped him out, but out of hell there was no redemption. This Papal witticism Platner could not find in any writer earlier than Richardson (See Beschreibung der ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Boers. The creature is reported to have been seen in crossing the interior deserts, but this is believed to be a fiction invented in the Caravans. In Congo there is a small species a few sizes larger than the Conger eel, while in the section of country visited by CUMMING the Boa is the biggest serpent Going. ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... Pause, O, ye youths! before you yet begin A course that may lead you to every sin! Restrain your feet from entering those holes Which prove the ruin of so many souls. Would ye not pause, if right across your path There lay a monstrous serpent, full of wrath? Would we, fool-hardy, rush into his jaws To certain death? or would ye rather pause? Youths, ye have cause, yea, weighty cause, to dread This horrid serpent, on strong liquor fed, Which lurks in every place where Rum is sold, Though they may be all covered o'er with ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... was a long, hard journey, on account of the melon-vines, that not only blocked the road, but even chased him. Many a narrow escape had he from being crushed to death in the embrace of some young tendril that would shoot out, wriggling and writhing toward him like a great green serpent. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... at all, but a kind of pantomime demon. You take Goliath, the whale that swallowed Jonah, a selection from the least respectable citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah at their worst, Bluebeard, Bloody Queen Mary, Guy Fawkes, and the sea-serpent—or, rather, you take the most objectionable attributes of all these various personages, and mix them up together. The result is the South African mine-owner, a monster who would willingly promote a company for the putting on the market of a new meat extract, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... things, and ye believe not; how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... to him; for Saul is in the agony of that recurring spiritual conflict from which only David's song can deliver him; and when the boy-shepherd has crept his way into the darkness of the tent, he sees the monarch with arms outstretched against its poles, dumb, sightless, and stark, like the serpent in the solitude of the forest ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... was Gerty's brief rejoinder, and she added, after a moment devoted to her cigarette, "now that's where it pays to have the wisdom of the serpent. I really flatter myself," she admitted complacently, "that I've a genius, I did it so beautifully. Your young innocent would have mangled matters to the point of butchery and have gloried like a martyr ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Maxwell, youngest daughter of Henry Braddon, solicitor, and widow of John Maxwell, publisher, was born in London in 1837. Early in life she had literary aspirations, and, as a girl of twenty-three, wrote her first novel, "The Trail of the Serpent," which first appeared in serial form. "Lady Audley's Secret" was published in 1862, and Miss Braddon immediately sprang into fame as an authoress, combining a graphic style with keen analysis of character, and exceptional ingenuity in the construction of a plot of tantalising complexities ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... movement, he withdrew His daughter; while compress'd within his clasp, 'Twixt her and Juan interposed the crew; In vain she struggled in her father's grasp— His arms were like a serpent's coil: then flew Upon their prey, as darts an angry asp, The file of pirates; save the foremost, who Had fallen, with his ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... lighted so that anything suspicious would have been detected instantly. The guard's whistle rang out shrill and clear, and Catesby had a glimpse of Mr. Skidmore making himself comfortable as he swung himself into his van. The great green and gold serpent with the brilliant electric eyes fought its way sinuously into the throat of the wet and riotous night on its first stage of over two hundred miles. Lydmouth would be the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... lady!" said the artist; "I pity her from my inmost soul. Doesn't the himmortal bard observe how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child? And is it true, ma'am, that that young woman has been the ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... reader. And yet I believe that it has some solid foundation. The single instances are not perhaps such as could be pressed very far, but they derive a certain weight when taken together and as parts of a wider circle of ideas. The application of the type of the brazen serpent to Jesus in c. xii. may have been suggested by John iii. 14 sqq., but we cannot say that it was so with certainty. The same application is made by Justin in a place where there is perhaps less reason to assume a connection with the fourth Gospel; ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... very superb, and while they amuse, they afford the reader much opportunity for reflection. Elsie Venner is a romance of destiny, and a strange physiological condition furnishes the key-note and marrow of the tale. It is Holmes' snake story, the taint of the serpent appearing in the daughter, whose mother was bitten by a rattle-snake before her babe was born. The traits inherited by this unfortunate offspring from the reptile, find rapid development. She becomes a creature of impulse, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... into a ditch next the hillside in which the water was already a foot and a half deep and with the others climbed up the mountainside for our very lives. We had to do so as the water glided up after us like a huge serpent. Any one ten feet behind us would have been lost beyond a doubt. I glanced back at the train when I had reached a place of safety, but the water already covered it and the Pullman car in which the ladies were ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Elephant, and so staying him, thrusteth his head into his tronke and exhausteth his breath, or else biteth him in the eare, whereunto he cannot reach with his tronke, and when the Elephant waxeth faint, he falleth downe on the serpent, being now full of blood, and with the poise of his body breaketh him: so that his owne blood with the blood of the Elephant runneth out of him mingled together, which being colde, is congealed into that substance which the Apothecaries call Sanguis Draconis, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... voces [Lat.]; flatter, make things pleasant; have an ax to grind. dodge, sidestep, bob and weave. Adj. cunning, crafty, artful; skillful &c 698; subtle, feline, vulpine; cunning as a fox, cunning as a serpent; deep, deep laid; profound; designing, contriving; intriguing &c v.; strategic, diplomatic, politic, Machiavelian, timeserving^; artificial; tricky, tricksy^; wily, sly, slim, insidious, stealthy; underhand &c (hidden) 528; subdolous^; deceitful &c 545; slippery as an eel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thing done was to set about the restoration of the boatswain, and this task was undertaken by Chichester, the doctor, while Dyer, assisted by two of the men who had come aft with the lanterns, proceeded to free the senseless body from the curious serpent-like thing that still enwrapped it. And when this was presently done, not altogether without difficulty due to muscular contraction, Dyer stood for some moments thoughtfully and somewhat doubtfully regarding the ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... very much afraid that my pen will be transformed into a venomous serpent when I employ it to address thee, my dear brother, and no wonder, for I like to pay my debts, and, as I received ten dollars' worth of scolding,[7] I should be guilty of injustice did I not return the favor. Well! such a lecture I never before had from anyone. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Adam and Eve of Milton's imagination yielded to the nearly all-powerful Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some sense invented this difficulty; for in the book of Genesis there is no such inequality. The serpent may be subtler than any beast of the field; but he is not necessarily subtler or cleverer than man. So far from Milton having justified the ways of God to man, he has loaded the common theology with ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... these brethren came in, when they were all restored to England, if ever they were restored, their example, that of sufferers, would carry the day, and their service would for ever be that of the Anglican Church. The other exiled brethren, on receiving this invitation, had enough of the wisdom of the serpent to ask, "Are we to be allowed to use our own prayer book?" The answer of the godly of Frankfort evaded the question. At last the Frankfort Puritans showed their hand: they disapproved of various things in the Prayer Book. Knox, summoned from Geneva, a reluctant visitor, was already one of ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... walls, affecting the mind with pleasing thoughts—and tempting to self-indulgence. There were lounges, where one might recline at ease, while he sipped the delicious compounds the richly furnished bar afforded, never once dreaming that a serpent lay concealed in the cup that he held to his lips—a serpent that one day would ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... strange kind of gnat.] We haue not yet found any venomous Serpent or other hurtfull thing in these parts, but there is a kind of small flie or gnat that stingeth and offendeth sorely, leauing many red spots in the face, and other places where she stingeth. They haue snow and haile in the best time ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... day. But no! he approached the table on which the medicines stood, looked at the watch, took up one of the phials and a cup, measured the draught, drop by drop, then he turned and looked round him stealthily, and then he drew from his breast a pale blue, coiling serpent, which he threw into the cup, and held it to the patient's lips, who drank, and instantly felt a numbness creep over his frame which ended in death. Edward fancied that he was dead; he saw the coffin brought, but the terror lest he should be buried alive, made him start up with ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... blissful prospect Mr. Port was not to be lured; and Dorothy, who combined a good deal of the wisdom of the serpent with her presumable innocence of the dove, perceived that it was the part of prudence not further to ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... meanwhile, glided on gradually and imperceptibly, serpent-like, or rather snail-like, till he was about ten yards distant from Richard's person, when, starting on his feet, he sprung forward with the bound of a tiger, stood at the King's back in less than an instant, and brandished aloft the cangiar, or poniard, which he had hidden ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Bridge, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great stands out in bold relief on a pedestal of granite; the mighty Czar, casting an eagle look over the waters of the Neva, while his noble steed rears over the yawning precipice in front, crushing a serpent beneath his hoof. The spirit of Peter the Great still lives throughout Russia; but it is better understood in the merciless blasts of winter than in the soft glow of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... dirty green dress; and no doubt I shall be standing beside a pool of dirty blue water, with a purple sky overhead, and a white moon in it. The chances are he will dislocate my neck, and give me gaunt cheeks like a corpse, with a serpent under my foot, or a flaming dragon stretching his jaws behind my back.' Papa was deeply shocked at my levity. Was it for me, an artist (bless the mark!), to baulk the high aims of art? Besides it was vaguely hinted that, to reward me, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of Christ and begin to consider our past, we simply go to pieces. We must turn our eyes to the brazen serpent, Christ crucified, and believe with all our heart that He is our righteousness and our life. For Christ, on whom our eyes are fixed, in whom we live, who lives in us, is Lord over Law, sin, ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... p. 82. "Faith worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 282. "Soon shall the dust return to dust, and the soul, to God who gave it. BIBLE."—Ib., p. 166. "For, in the end, it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. It will lead thee into destruction, and cause thee to utter perverse things. Thou wilt be like him who lieth down in the midst of the sea. BIBLE."—Ib., p. 167. "The memory of the just shall be honored: but the name of the wicked ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... horned viper, cerastes is the name under which you gentlemen of science know it, and it is the most deadly of all Egyptian snakes. It is commonly known as Cleopatra's Asp, for that is the serpent which was brought in a basket of figs to the paramour of Caesar in order that she might not endure the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... impression on his irresolute mind than all the rhetoric of Petrarch. Undoubtedly, the petty lords of Italy were fearful of the vipers of Milan. It was thus that they denominated the Visconti family, in allusion to their coat of arms, which represented an immense serpent swallowing a child, though the device was not their own, but borrowed from a standard which they had taken from the Saracens. The submission of Genoa alarmed the whole of Italy. The Venetians took measures to form a league against the Visconti; and the Princes of Padua, Modena, Mantua, and Verona ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... some unseen calamity was near us—a serpent, for instance, whose deadly fangs might have proved fatal, or some other unknown or invisible foe, with power to work ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... word!" nodded the Pedler, glancing up at me through his narrowed eyelids, and chuckling. "A paradise you might call it—ah! a paradise or a—garden of Eden, wi' Eve and the serpent and all!" and he broke out into a cackling laugh. And, in the look and the laugh, indeed about his whole figure, there was something so repellent, so evil, that I was minded to kick and trample him down into the ditch, yet the leering triumph in ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... lay still across their path, like a great serpent. Cochrane looked at it startledly. Then he saw that the round, glistening seeming snake was fastened to the ground by rootlets. It was a plant which grew like a creeper, absorbing nourishment from a vast root-area. Somewhere, no doubt, it would rear upward ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and six feet through, a blunt-ended, untapered serpent that glistened a moist crimson color in the rays of the sun. The trees quaked and rocked as it brushed against them in its deliberate advance. Dead leaves many feet across and too heavy for the combined efforts of both men to have budged, were pushed lightly this way ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... shock which this feeling brought to the young doctor there was a greater shock in the sudden thought of the possible source of the riches which the pearls represented. A feeling of horror rushed over him, as if he had seen that soft, white throat encircled by a serpent, and he sprang forward to ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... vapour about prosody, of which they know nothing, and imagine to be new what antedates the Upanishads. The haunting beauty of Mr. de la Mare's delicate art springs from an ear of superlative tenderness and sophistication. The daintiest alternation of iambus and trochee is joined to the serpent's cunning in swiftly tripping dactyls. Probably this artifice is greatly unconscious, the meed of the trained musician; but let no singer think to upraise his voice before the Lord ere he master the axioms of prosody. Imagist ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... just a trifle disconcerted at the way he had caught the tone. The tone was of course to be caught, but need it have been caught so in the act? The creature was even cleverer, as Maud Stannace said, than she had ventured to hope. Verily it was a good thing to have a dose of the wisdom of the serpent. If it had to be journalism—well, it was journalism. If he had to be "chatty "—well, he was chatty. Now and then he made a hit that—it was stupid of me—brought the blood to my face. I hated him to be so personal; but still, if it would make his fortune—! ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... not alone betrayed to the ears of the young lady. The sage-fowl's inherent weaknesses were paraded before her; the hoot of the owl was imitated with ludicrous solemnity; other fowl were described with wonderful attention to detail; and the inevitable rattlesnake was pointed out to her as a serpent whose chief occupation in life was that of posing in the shadow of the sage-brush as a target for the ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to admire in Schlangenbad. The great wide road leading to it from Eltville testifies to its former popularity in the days of family coaches and postilions. Nowadays an ugly steam tram transports the traveller from the Rhine to the "Serpent's Bath," and nearly poisons and chokes him en route with the horrible smoke it emits. Half of the tram is open to the air at the sides, like a char-a-banc; and when we travelled by it a little party of Germans ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... the leaves in the woods letters and numbers and figures of men,—the same symbols which he had seen in the skies. On May 12, 1828, the Holy Spirit appeared to him and proclaimed that the yoke of Jesus must fall on him, and he must fight against the Serpent when the sign appeared. Then came an eclipse of the sun in February, 1831: this was the sign; then he must arise and prepare himself, and slay his enemies with their own weapons; then also the seal was removed from his lips, and then he confided his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Morbihan, or 'Little Sea,' an inland sea which gives its name to a department in the south of Brittany. The tumulus is 25 feet high, and covers a fine gallery 40 feet long, the stones of which bear the markings alluded to. Whorls and circles abound in the ornamentation, serpent-like figures, and the representation of an axe, similar to those to be seen in some of the Grottes aux Fees, or on the Dol des Marchands. The sculptures appear to have been executed with metal tools. The passage ends in a square sepulchral chamber, the supports of which ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... such images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth. He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled a serpent; his right hand rested upon the head of another serpent. This, according to the laws of interpreting allegories, we should understand to signify that the god had been renowned for his wisdom; that with the wisdom of the serpent he had executed judgment; and that his meditations were ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... that shame, His ears with wax were stopped fast, Therefore Richard was not aghast, He struck the steed that under him went, And gave the Soldan his death with a dent: In his shielde verament Was painted a serpent, With the spear that Richard held He bare him thorough under his sheld, None of his armour might him last, Bridle and peytrel all to-brast, His girthes and his stirrups also, His ruare to grounde wente tho; Maugre her head, he made her seech The ground, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... camping-place I nearly trod on a large puff-adder; this I killed with a stone. Almost immediately afterwards the boy who had been sent for firewood came up with a vicious-looking black and yellow serpent squirming, broken-backed, on his stick. This was more than my nerves could stand, so after filling the billy and the canteens with water, we retired to a spot a few hundred yards away, up the hillside. Here the vegetation was less ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... two sides a man and a woman, fine strong figures both, stand looking forth, the man courageously, the woman a little more timidly. And at the back, as if to signify the mutual dependence of man and woman, the hands seek to touch. A serpent encircles the base of the group, symbolizing wisdom-or as some prefer to interpret it, everlasting life. This serpent is probably not the one that had so much to do with the life of ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... streams with honey, and is overflowing with milk. In one region grows no poisonous herb, nor does a querulous frog ever quack in it; no scorpion exists, nor does the serpent glide amongst the grass, nor can any poisonous animals exist in ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of darkness, had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had shorn his hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him; Hercules was struggling with Death itself; he had fallen under the influence of those malign constellations—the Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after all? We can imagine the anxiety with which those early men and women watched for the first indication of a lengthening day; and the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... alone," whispered Unaco, turning to Paul. "White man knows not how to go on his belly like the serpent." ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... rule well treated. A Slavonic king, Daxo, offers Ragnar's son Whitesark his daughter and half his realm, or death, and the captive strangely desires death by fire. A captive king is exposed, chained to wild beasts, thrown into a serpent-pit, wherein Ragnar is given the fate of the elder Gunnar in the Eddic Lays, Atlakvida. The king is treated with great respect by his people, he is finely clad, and his commands are carried out, however ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... through its lens, the most natural human relations appeared unnatural. Thus, not the primmest patterns of family life could hope for mercy in their eyes; over the family, too, man, as read by these young rigorists, was held to leave his serpent's trail of desire. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... a murmur from the others: and Colonel Hoskyns gave me a look of very high disdain, as if I had been a toad or a serpent. For myself I said nothing: I remained with my eyes down. Once or twice before I had seen His Majesty in this very mood. For the most part he was the least suspicious man I had ever encountered; but once his suspicion was awake there was none harder to persuade. So he had ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... to strike a blow at this monster. Did he realize the magnitude of the work before him—one which thousands of patriotic men have since attempted and signally failed to accomplish? It was like taking the meat away from a tiger, or trying to lift the Mitgard serpent. Judge Hoar found himself quite alone in the president's cabinet, and with the exception of Sumner, Garfield, and a few others, senators and representatives united against him in a massive phalanx. Even the friendship of General Grant was unable to protect him from the ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... basis of fact. It is fond of small birds and field mice and is what may be called a meadow snake. When frightened it speeds away at an incredible rate. The Coachwhip Snake, found in the southeast, is even more agile than the Black Snake, and like that serpent, will eat smaller snakes. It gets its name from its slender structure and similarity of the appearance of its scale distribution to a plaited whip. The Striped Racer of the southwestern states is very ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... of the worship of AEsculapius was at Epidaurus, where there was a splendid temple, adorned with a gold and ivory statue of the god, who was represented sitting, one hand holding a staff, the other resting on the head of a serpent, the emblem of sagacity and longevity; a dog crouched at his feet. The temple was frequented by harmless serpents, in the form of which the god was supposed to manifest himself. According to Homer, his sons, Machaon and Podalirius, who were great warriors, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Culpepper's Herbal; it was full of pictures of plants and herbs, but I did not much care for that. Then there was Salmon's Modern History, out of which I picked a good deal. It had pictures of Chinese gods, and the great hooded serpent which ran strangely in my fancy. There were some law books too, but the old English frighted me from reading them. But above all, what I relished was Stackhouse's History of the Bible, where there was the picture of the Ark and all the beasts getting into it. This delighted me, because it ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... party under the shade of pepal trees beside the inverted boat, and the lunch basket, surrounded by the villagers of all ages. In front on the dust, in sunlight, a brown woman danced and whipped her bare flesh with a cord like a serpent, and another woman in soft, hanging, Madonna-like draperies, with a kid astride her hip and asleep on her breast, beat a tom-tom vigorously. The dancing woman's steps were the first of our sword dance—you see them round the world; she had ragged black hair, dusty brown skin, with various bits of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... underneath was posted the guard of four. Behind them twinkled many camp-fires on a distant plain, before them wound a road ploughed by the passage of an army, strewn with the relics of a rout. On the right, a sluggish river glided, like a serpent, stealthy, sinuous, and dark, into a seemingly impervious jungle; on the left, a Southern swamp filled the air with malarial damps, swarms of noisome life, and discordant sounds that robbed the hour of its repose. The men were friends as well ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... and turning herself from side to side, like some savage animal, strong and lithe and full of deadly rage, but unable to spring, trapped and shut within iron bars. Her face had changed to a livid white, and looked hard and pitiless, and her eyes had a fixed stony stare like those of a serpent. And at intervals, as she moved about the room, she clenched her hands with such energy that the nails wounded her palms. And from time to time her rage would rise to a kind of frenzy, and find expression in a voice strangely ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... him in sullen, contemptuous silence, loathing and yet dreading him more than they did a serpent, for he conducted a house of ill-repute for the exclusive use of white men and Negro girls, and, being diligent in endeavoring to bring to his home any and all Negro girls to whom his white patrons might take a fancy, had great influence ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... poems in the volume, "Lamia" is the most suggestive. It is the story of a beautiful enchantress, who turns from a serpent into a glorious woman and fills every human sense with delight, until, as a result of the foolish philosophy of old Apollonius, she vanishes forever from her lover's sight. "The Eve of St. Agnes," the most perfect of Keats's mediaeval poems, is not a ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... is an Arabian tradition that the devil begged all the animals, one after another, to carry him into the garden, that he might speak to Adam and Eve, but they all refused except the serpent, who took him between two of its teeth. It was then the most beautiful of all the animals, and walked upon legs and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... middle of the fifth century that we have any dated monuments belonging to the Western types. Among these are the names of the allied states of Hellas, inscribed on the coils of the three-headed bronze serpent which supported the gold tripod dedicated to the Delphian Apollo, 476 B.C. This famous monument was transported to Byzantium by Constantine the Great, and still stands in the Hippodrome at Constantinople. Of equal interest is the bronze Etruscan helmet in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... suffered cannot be doubted, and within that closed wall may have been the very spot where he bowed in his agony, and where he heard the tongue of Judas utter his treacherous "Rabbi!" and where he felt the serpent-breath of the traitor as ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... digression we will now return to our Snakes. All the monstrous forms which figure in the stories we have just been considering appear to be merely different species of the great serpent family. Such names as Koshchei, Chudo Yudo, Usuinya, and the like, seem to admit of exchange at the will of the story-teller with that of Zmei Goruinuich, the many-headed Snake, who in Russian storyland is represented ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... seemed to promise greater advantages and simplicity, we began experiments together, using as our text-book the pamphlet by T. Tokuno, published by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and the dextrine and glycerine method was soon abandoned. The edition of prints, however, of Eve and the Serpent designed by J. D. Batten, printed by myself and published at that time, was produced partly by the earlier method and partly in the ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... "these sentiments do honour to your humanity; but I must not give way to them. They only serve to set in a stronger light the venom of this serpent, this monster of ingratitude, who first robs his benefactor, and then reviles him. Wretch that you are, will nothing move you? Are you inaccessible to remorse? Are you not struck to the heart with the unmerited goodness of your master? ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... doigts.'[697] 'Il a au deuant son membre tire et pendant, & le monstre tousiours long d'vn coudee.—Le membre du Demon est faict a escailles comme vn poisson.—Le membre du Diable s'il estoit estendu est long enuiron d'vne aulne, mais il le tient entortille et sinueux en forme de serpent.—Le Diable, soit qu'il ayt la forme d'homme, ou qu'il soit en forme de Bouc, a tousiours vn membre de mulet, ayant choisy en imitation celuy de cet animal comme le mieux pourueu. Il l'a long et gros comme le ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... accustomed weight, was dashed about as if empty. The horses rushed headlong and left the traveled road. Then, for the first time, the Great and Little Bears were scorched with heat, and would fain, if it were possible, have plunged into the water; and the Serpent which lies coiled round the north pole, torpid and harmless, grew warm, and with warmth felt its rage revive. Booetes, they say, fled away, though encumbered with his plow ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... laughed at Lee's supposing that the Doctor meant to make a meal of the deadly serpent, and Lee laughed as loudly ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... street) La carne (the flesh) La fiebre (the fever) La fuente (the fountain) El hambre (f.), (the hunger) La mente (the mind) La noche (the night) La parte (the part) La quiete (the quiet) La sangre (the blood) La serpiente (the serpent) La torre ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... among our ship's company, viz., the sight of a twenty-five feet bottle-nosed whale, which every one rushed to see, and which for some time played around the ship, accompanied by a couple of porpoise. The animal caused as much excitement as if it had been the mythical sea serpent itself. We saw them in dozens afterwards, but never with the same enthusiasm. Of course, the first whale had to be immortalised, and two of our party sketched and painted it; not without difficulty, however, for the rolling of the ship sent the water-colours or the turpentine sliding ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... mentioned there is a delineation of the Fall, in which the serpent has given to it a human head with a most sweet, crafty expression. Now in these two instances the style is somewhat rude; but there are passion and feeling in it. This is not a question of mere execution, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... jaws to a sea-snake in a large bottle of spirits—an unpleasant looking little serpent, said to be poisonous. In a glass case was the complete shell of a lobster, out of which the crustacean had crawled; and beside this were some South Sea bows and arrows, pieces of coral from all parts of the world, a New Zealand paddle ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... blood. The second angel crying likewise, at thy bidding, O Lord, emptied his vial; and when the third angel had emptied his, three animals of the shape of frogs crawled out of the river; and then from over the mountains came a great serpent to devour the frog-shapen beasts, and after devouring them he vomited forth a great flood, and the woman that had been seated on it was borne away. It was Thaddeus that spoke the last words, and he would have continued if Jesus' eyes had not warned him that the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... greedy teeth For that greatest of guilt; God's wrath they knew And bitter remorse; hence bearing their crimes, 410 Their sons must suffer for the sin of their parents Against God's commands. Hence, grieved in soul They shall lose the delights of the land of bliss Through envy of the serpent who deceived our elders In direful wise in days of yore 415 Through his wicked heart, so that they went far hence To the dale of death to doleful life In a sorrowful home. Hidden from them Was the blessed life; and the blissful plain, By the fiend's cunning, was fastened close 420 For many ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... upstairs feeling extraordinarily comforted. I had a perfectly beastly time ahead of me, but now it was all glorified and coloured with the thought of the girl who had sung 'Cherry Ripe' in the garden. I commended the wisdom of that old serpent Bullivant in the choice of his intermediary, for I'm hanged if I would have taken such orders from ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan |
