"Serried" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neighbourhood have older associations than this—associations which carry the mind of the traveller far into the Middle Ages—for hard by the town is Rolandseck; while a feature of the district is the Siebengebirge (Seven Mountains), a fine serried range of peaks which present a very imposing appearance when viewed from any of the heights overlooking Bonn itself, and which recall ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... ghastly. They showed no eyes, properly speaking. The eyes seemed to have receded, turned over, disappeared in some way. All that the lifted lids showed Willis was two deep, triangular patches of blood-red membrane. And above the prominent, thatched brows rose the noble bloodhound forehead, serried wrinkle over wrinkle to the lofty ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... of order, in squadrons of fifty each, but not in serried ranks, for they had not the skill to keep in line, though they rode well and boldly. And before each squadron rode a lady who for her beauty or her rank, or for both, was captain, and wore upon her steel cap a ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... path, guided not by sight, but by pure instinctive groping. In his present exalted state, indeed, he had no need of eyes. What matters earthly darkness to angelic feet? He could pick his own way through the gloom, though all the fiends from hell in serried phalanx broke loose to thwart him. He would reach the top at last; reach the top; reach the top, and there fight that old serpent who lay in wait to destroy him. At last he gained the peak, and stood with feet ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... the lute that 'minds of Mangonel; * Whose strings are ropes that make each shot to tell: And note the pipes that sound with shriek and cry, * The pipes that cast a fearful joyful spell; Espy the flagons ranged in serried rank * And crops becrowned with ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... peace. He sat upon a car glittering with silver; he wore a plaid of striking colors; and he brought in his train a pack of war-hounds. At the sight of the Roman legions, few in number, iron-clad, in serried ranks that took up little space, he contemptuously cried, "There is not a meal ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... his shoulders and was about to answer when suddenly a sound of shouting deep and glad rose from the serried companies upon their left. Then the voice of an officer ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... Durkin!" MacNutt was saying, with an oath, as they swung around the corner into the blinking and serried lights of Eighth avenue. "It's that damned groundhog I'm goin' ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... much quieter and emptier than it had been on the Saturday when Sylvia had first seen it. But all the people playing there, both those sitting at the table and those who stood in serried ranks behind them, looked as if they were ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and supporting it, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... and a most unsatisfactory young man—and so, no doubt, he is. Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they felt, in fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of the ten. Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their epithets upon Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called them Pharisees; as dull as ditch-water—and so, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an open space, and then you suddenly emerge from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying smooth and free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come pressing forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet exactly on its margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly like soldiers on parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite precision, yet with free curving lines such as Nature alone can draw. With inexpressible ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... lighted candles, one on the first night and two on the second, and so on till there were eight burning in a row, to say nothing of the candle that kindled the others and was called "The Beadle," and the child sang hymns of praise to the Rock of Salvation as he watched the serried flames. And so, in this inner world of dreams the child lived and grew, his vision turned back towards ancient Palestine and forwards towards some vague Restoration, his days engirdled with prayer and ceremony, his very games of ball or nuts sanctified by Sandalphon, the boy-angel, to whom ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise into the air, With orient colours waving; with them rose A forrest huge of spears; and thronging helms Appear'd, and serried shields in thick array Of depth ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... exceedingly lucky he was to get the place. He put up a hat-rack in the little square hall, and hung up his hats and caps and coats; and passers through the small triangular square late at night, looking up over the little serried row of wooden "To Let" hatchets, could see the light within Oleron's red blinds, or else the sudden darkening of one blind and the illumination of another, as Oleron, candlestick in hand, passed from room to room, making final settlings of his furniture, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of steamers. Citizens crowd the decks of boats that are not to go, in order to see the sight. Steamer after steamer straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes swinging by, under a tremendous head of steam, with flag flying, black smoke rolling, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... witness anything like it. For two days this formidable host marched the long stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, starting from the shadow of the dome of the Capitol, and filling that wide thoroughfare to Georgetown with a serried mass, moving with the easy yet rapid pace of veterans in cadence step. As a mere spectacle this march of the mightiest host the continent has ever seen gathered together was grand and imposing; but it was ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... then is this that remembers The words that she sang on that morning of glory;— O love, set a word in my mouth for our meeting; Cast thy sweet arms about me to stay my hearts beating! Ah, thy silence, thy silence! nought shines on the darkness! —O close-serried throng of the days that I ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... In serried ranks around me rise Two thousand tried and trusty friends; Instructive, famous, witty, wise, Each gladly his assistance lends To suit, at will, my varying mood; But none that aid will e'er intrude, Or break, unsought, ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Champlain forms the margin of the most varied and altogether delightful wilderness to be found anywhere upon this continent east of the Rocky Mountains. The serried peaks to the westward are in plain view from its shores, their foot-hills ending in lofty and often abrupt ridges where they meet the lake. Three impetuous rivers, the Saranac, the Salmon and the Ausable, ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... pursued; 440 Before that tide of flight and chase, How shall it keep its rooted place, The spearmen's twilight wood? 'Down, down,' cried Mar, 'your lances down! Bear back both friend and foe!' 445 Like reeds before the tempest's frown, That serried grove of lances brown At once lay leveled low; And closely shouldering side to side, The bristling ranks the onset bide. 450 'We'll quell the savage mountaineer, As their Tinchel cows the game! They come as fleet as forest deer, We'll ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... sunshine. Officers gallop hither and thither shouting commands. Regiments form and reform. Swords flash out and flash back again. A noble background of trees frames the gay picture with cool green foliage. There is a sudden stillness. The closely serried ranks are rigid and moveless. The ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... with blocks of ice, stretched upward in a straight line from the upper lip of the crevasse to the great ice-fall on the sky-line where the huge slabs and pinnacles of ice, twisted into monstrous shapes, like a sea suddenly frozen when a tempest was at its height, stood marshaled in serried rows. They stood waiting upon the sun. One of them, melted at the base, had crashed down the slope, bursting into huge fragments as it fell, and cleaving a groove even in that ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... ilex woods together and throngs them close, as a sheep-dog gathers the sheep. They crowd for shelter, and a great wall, leaning inland also, with its strong base to the sea, receives them. It is blank and sunny, and the trees within are sunny and dark, serried, and their tops swept and flattened by months of sea-storms. On the farther side there are gardens—gardens that have in their midst those quietest things in all the world and most windless, box-hedges and ponds. The gardens take ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... shirt-sleeves in the middle of a large high room—a room without windows, but with a wide skylight at the top, that of a place of exhibition. It was furnished as a library, and the serried bookshelves rose to the ceiling, a surface of incomparable tone produced by dimly-gilt "backs" interrupted here and there by the suspension of old prints and drawings. At the end furthest from the door of admission was a tall desk, of great extent, at ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... 'Corn', in 'The Atlantic Monthly', 70, 228, Aug., 1892, which, since it consists of but four lines and is more like Lanier's poem than are the others, may be quoted: "Drawn up in serried ranks across the fields That, as we gaze, seem ever to increase, With tasseled flags and sun-emblazoned shields, The glorious army ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the winding Tennessee, And rugged Lookout sentinels heroic dust of sixty-three— Where Chickamauga's gory field re-echoed to the cannon's roar, And shot and shell through serried ranks a bloody pathway tore, And mountain slope and wood and field were lumined with the blaze Of musketry from Blue and Gray in those September days— They come again, the gallant few, survivors of the fray, Their breasts with hallowed memories ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... Federation Aeronautique Internationale had been speaking. He paused now to look out over the sea of faces that filled the great hall in serried waves. He half turned that he might let his eyes pass over the massed company on the platform with him. The Stratosphere Control Board—and they had called in their representatives from the far corners of Earth to hear the memorable words of this ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... then as usual, Mac conquered, and Gifford Barrett was led, an unwilling victim, to the awning where sat Mac's mother, beyond her a serried rank of Mac's relatives and, beyond them all, a tall girl in a black suit who ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... called upon to handle a mass of questions that were both of extreme complexity in themselves, and also involved collision with trade interests always easily alarmed, irritated, and even exasperated. With merchants and manufacturers, importers and exporters, brokers and bankers, with all the serried hosts of British trade, with the laws and circumstances of international commerce, he was every day brought into close, detailed, and responsible contact:—Whether the duty on straw bonnets should go by weight or by number; what was the difference between ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... defenceless under this serried attack, and in the presence of a man who spoke at once as a doctor, a confessor, and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... blow, Unbroken was the ring; The stubborn spear-men still made good Their dark impenetrable wood, Each stepping where his comrade stood, The instant that he fell. No thought was there of dastard flight; Linked in the serried phalanx tight, Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, As fearlessly and well; Till utter darkness closed her wing O'er their thin host and wounded King. Then skilful Surrey's sage commands Led back from strife his shattered bands; And from the charge ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... simple prairie folk, I thought. How should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the most blase people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers speak in public, but—I looked out over that assemblage, and I was horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a Nonconformist minister from Canada, and I told ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... on every side. Upon this solid mass of men the Swiss could make no impression. In vain they charged with the fiery courage which had so often gained them the victory; they could find no vulnerable point in the serried columns, and it seemed that the brave mountaineers must all perish, and leave their homes again to the mercy of the Austrian soldiers. But, when almost in despair, the tide of battle was turned by the acts of a single Swiss soldier, Arnold Winkelried, of Unterwalden. He communicated ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... Jordan's shore, And all thy steel-clad barons are at rest; Thy turrets sound to warder's tread no more; Beneath their brow the dove hath hung her nest; High on thy beams the harmless falchion shines; No stormy trumpet wakes thy deep repose; Past are the days that, on the serried lines Around thy walls, saw ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... charioteer, bear me thither, making the steeds adopt a tolerable speed,—thither, that is, where are seen the Valhikas with diverse weapons uplifted in their arms, and the countless Southerners headed by the Suta's son and whose division is seen to present a serried array of elephants and steeds and cars and in which stand foot-soldiers from various realms." Having said this much unto his driver, avoiding the Brahmana (Drona), he proceeded, telling his charioteer, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... accustom itself to new conditions. When the Polyergus or Amazon ants desire to increase their band of slaves, one first remarks extreme excitement in the neighbourhood of the nest. They all come out helter-skelter, but this disorder lasts only for a short time; they soon form in line, and a regular serried column is formed, longer or shorter according to the swarm; it has been found to measure more than five metres long by fifteen centimetres broad. The Amazons advance, often changing their direction like a dog who is seeking a scent: this is exactly what they are ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... and swords, boots of steel and shining helmets; shields at their necks, and in their hands lances. And all had their cognizances, so that each might know his fellow, and Norman might not strike Norman, nor Frenchman kill his countryman by mistake. Those on foot led the way, with serried ranks, bearing their bows. The knights rode next, supporting the archers from behind. Thus both horse and foot kept their course and order of march as they began; in close ranks at a gentle pace, that the one might ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... withdrawn the binding of the sheaf was loosened. He could breathe with comfort, and he could also see. He peered out, and found the whole face of Nature changed. The waving cornfield had gone. In its place was a razed expanse of stubble. The corn-sheaves stretched in serried piles across it. The harvesting had been neatly timed. Behind the hedge was the crimson glow of sunset. After all, that ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... speaking fired our foes, And with a sudden rush of oars in time They smote the deep sea at that clarion cry; And in a moment you might see them all. The right wing in due order well arrayed First took the lead; then came the serried squadron Swelling against us, and from many voices One cry arose: Ho! sons of Hellenes, up! Now free your fatherland, now free your sons, Your wives, the fanes of your ancestral gods, Your fathers' tombs! Now fight you for your all. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... thought was there of dastard flight; Linked in that serried phalanx tight, Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, As fearlessly and well. The stubborn spearmen still made good Their dark impenetrable wood, Each stepping where his comrade stood The instant that ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... Serried breast to breast and in complete order, the horsemen of Martino turned to fly; the foot rabble who had come for spoil remained but for slaughter. They endeavoured to imitate their leaders; but how could they all elude the rushing chargers and sharp lances of their antagonists, whose blood ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... disorderly weed-growth which had encumbered it, began to make manifest its proper crop—long lines of gray and white, like sprouting sage, at first but a dot here and there, to indicate the direction, then a scattering, then distinct clumps, finally a thick, serried row. In the distance, a bugle sounded, followed by a long ruffle of drums, and Colonel Broadcastle stepped quickly to the window of ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... Trojan spies beheld How, o'er the Argive leaguer, all the air Was pure of smoke, no battle-din there swell'd, Nor any clarion-call was sounding there! Yea, of the serried ships the strand was bare, And sea and shore were still, as long ago When Ilios knew not Helen, and the fair Sweet face that makes ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... in the water, crammed with marines, one oar still there, jammed between the row-lock and the rower's forced-back chin; on the ship's starboard deck, in the long stretch of space between the two masts, the blue-jackets had evidently been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried disorder, to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... sit brooding, with the pall straight before us, the funeral guns are heard indistinctly booming from the far forts, with the tap of drums in the serried street without, where troops and citizens are forming for the grand procession. We see through the window in the beautiful spring day that the grass is brightly green; and all the trees in blossom, show us through their archways the bronze and marble statues breaking the horizon. But there ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... quiet hour to look over his books by myself. The windows were open to the garden; the sunny stillness, the mild light of the English summer, filled the room without quite chasing away the rich dusky tone that was a part of its charm and that abode in the serried shelves where old morocco exhaled the fragrance of curious learning, as well as in the brighter intervals where prints and medals and miniatures were suspended on a surface of faded stuff. The place had both colour and quiet; I thought it ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter. This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively, her moon ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... were ranged in chronological order, dated and complete. A great cupboard was devoted to the dolls; in the china room at Windsor a special table held the mugs of her childhood, and her children's mugs as well. Mementoes of the past surrounded her in serried accumulations. In every room the tables were powdered thick with the photographs of relatives; their portraits, revealing them at all ages, covered the walls; their figures, in solid marble, rose up from pedestals, or gleamed from brackets ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... some mind behind it all, Hugh felt, but what a mind! how leisurely, how fanciful, how unfathomable! For whose pleasure were all these bright eccentric forms created? Certainly not for the pleasure of man, for Hugh thought of the acres and acres of wheat now rising in serried ranks in the deep country, with the poppies or the marigolds among them, all quietly unfolding their bells of scarlet flame, their round, sunlike faces, where no eye could see them, except the birds that flew ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a pretty lane, where those of our escort who were in front stopped, and those who were behind rode up and begged us to keep close together, as for many leagues the country was haunted by robbers. Guns and pistols being looked to, we rode on in serried ranks, expecting every moment to hear a bullet whizz ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Fourth! and you may well add your voice to swell the choral honors of the time. How the tall old pines, withered by the biting scathe of Eld, rise to the view, afar and near; white shafts, bottomed in darkness, and standing like the serried spears of an innumerable army! The groups around the beacon are gathered together, but are forced to enlarge the circle of their acquaintance, by the growing intensity of the increasing blaze. Some of them, being ladies, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... left the region of fenced-in lawns and rhododendron bushes and came to the open space that stretched away beyond the bandstand. The bandstand was still there, and a military band, in sky- blue Saxon uniform, was executing the first item in the forenoon programme of music. Around it, instead of the serried rows of green chairs that Yeovil remembered, was spread out an acre or so of small round tables, most of which had their quota of customers, engaged in a steady consumption of lager beer, coffee, lemonade and syrups. ...
— When William Came • Saki
... his ride, and began to coast down the long slope, leaving a trail of grey dust to mark his flight. There was a peculiar exhilaration in the dry heat of the October afternoon. Flocks of crows passed over his head with raucous cries. The cornstalks were stacked in serried array, like Indian wigwams, and heaps of apples, red and yellow and russet brown, lay ungathered ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... domes, I 2 With lust of carnage fired, And opening teeth of serried spears Yawned wide around the gates that guard our homes; But went, or e'er his hungry jaws had tired On Theban flesh,—or e'er the Fire-god fierce Seizing our sacred town Besmirched and rent her battlemented crown. Such noise of battle as he fled About his ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... brown-and-green fields immediately surrounding it. Perhaps Cap'n Ira and Prudence were out there now, watching from the front yard the white-winged Seamew threading so saucily the crooked passage into the cove, the sand bars on one hand and the serried teeth of the Lighthouse Point Reef on ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... woven since the die was cast in 1905. Until this signal fact has been grasped no useful analysis can be made of the evolution of present conditions. Standing behind this policy, and constantly reinforcing it, are the serried ranks of the new democracy which education and the great increase in material prosperity have been so rapidly creating. The soaring ambition which springs from the sea lends to the attacks developed by such a people the aspect of piracies; and ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... hearts so solemnly, As forts laid low for ever, And towns that now in ruins lie: As fair and fertile meadows That wav'd with golden grain, Now wrapt in forest shadows And run to waste again. As graves full of the buried, Who fell in the dread hour Of battle in ranks serried, Whose like ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... attack. Many of the positions occupied by the Republicans during the campaigns seemed impregnable. Prepared as skilfully as they had been selected, in them some troops would have been unconquerable. But at the moment when they must be lost without a serried front, the reverse slopes would be covered with flying horsemen, whilst but a handful of the defenders remained in the trenches. Nor, except on the feeblest and most local scale, would the defenders at any time venture anything in the nature of a counter stroke, though ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... present the only analogy in the present day to that claim of internal jurisdiction for which the Church struggled so gallantly in the middle ages. No one who sees the serried ranks with which she encounters all investigation from without would imagine the severity with which she administers justice within. Like the Westphalian Vehm-gericht, the mystery of feminine courts is only equalled by their terrible sentences. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... again, twitching back his full lips to show the brilliance of tightly serried teeth, stopped in his tracks, and turned to look at the mountains. He swept a long brown hand across them. "Look," he said, "up there is the Alpujarras, the last refuge of the kings of the Moors; there are bandits up there sometimes. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... handkerchief to the top, and planted the pole on the mound. Then he placed the buck at the foot of the pole, covered it with an armful of reeds, took a long look around, and started off once more. He was resolved to keep straight on, path or no path, but after a tussle with the serried ranks of reeds, with their razor- like leaves, he soon gave up that idea as hopeless, and took again to the paths—going very slowly, and taking his direction at intervals. But, try as he would, there were the kinks and twists in the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... was put to the sword, and the legate, while beating a hasty retreat, was routed in the defiles of Beth-Horon, where two centuries before the Syrian hosts had been decimated by Judas the Maccabee. The two legions were cut to pieces. The fierce valor of the untrained national levies had broken the serried cohorts of the Roman veterans, and in the unexpectedness of this deliverance the party of rebellion for a time was triumphant among all sections of the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... singing abruptly. Then the consciousness of the serried ranks of faces below there came with almost overwhelming force upon him, and he dared not look at her again. He felt the blood rushing to ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... scientific mind and the nicer sense of order. For the display of my snail-shells I used bits of card-board and plenty of gum-arabic; and I was affluent in "duplicates," my plan being to get a large card and then cover it with specimens of the shell, in serried ranks. I also called literature to my aid, and produced several little books containing labored descriptions of my collection, couched, so far as possible, in the stilted and formal phraseology of the conchological works to which I had access, but with occasional outbursts ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... part, I slid three-quarters of the way down a pipe, lost my grip somehow and tumbled sock upon the serried ranks of a brutal and licentious constabulary. They broke my fall, and afterwards I did my best. But, as Farrell had justly complained, there were too many of them. So now you know," Jimmy wound ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was one of imposing grandeur. The auditorium filled the entire space of the first-four stories. It seated five thousand people within easy reach of the speaker's voice. The line of its ceiling was marked outside by the serried capitals of Greek columns springing from their massive bases on the ground. The grand stairway was of polished marble, its wainscoting and walls ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... your serried columns! I will not bend the knee! The shackles ne'er again shall bind The arm which now is free. I've mailed it with the thunder, When the tempest muttered low; And where it falls, ye well may dread The lightning of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... a rather small but very black and regular hand, the result being serried rows marching like a regiment down the page, the hand of the man who is accustomed to do everything in an orderly and masterful way, and who can no more allow his words to straggle over a sheet of paper than ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... led the way in among the twisted trunks, planted closely together in serried ranks, and I followed sharp at his heels. The moment we were out of sight he turned and put down his gun against the roots of a big tree, and I ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... that strain, Onward the people crowd In serried, billowing train. And those so slow to yield, On many a hard fought field, Muster together Like a dark cloud In summer weather, Whose threatening thunders suddenly are stilled,— And all the world is filled With smiling rest. Victory ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Memories of departed monarchs spoke from the rich hangings of the room in tones that were not less eloquent for being silent. Here the FIRST GENTLEMAN OF EUROPE had displayed the rounded symmetry of those calves which had defied the serried legions of the French and, in their lighter moments, had captured the wayward fancies of the fair or mitigated the harshness of a statesman. This was the chamber where the SAILOR KING, bluff but not undignified, had jested with his intimates, had smoothed a frown from the rugged brow of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... brilliantly lighted with torches and with gas, a great crowd of people had gathered. Not only passers-by who had stopped to look on, but more especially workmen, loafers, poor women, and ladies of questionable appearance, stood in serried ranks on both sides of the row of carriages. Humorous remarks and coarse witticisms in the vulgarest Parisian dialect hailed down upon the passing carriages ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... ye may sit and look: boldly or in thought, all France, and all Europe, may sit and look; for it is a day like few others. Oh, one might weep like Xerxes:—So many serried rows sit perched there; like winged creatures, alighted out of Heaven: all these, and so many more that follow them, shall have wholly fled aloft again, vanishing into the blue Deep; and the memory of this day still be fresh. It is the baptism-day of Democracy; sick Time has given it birth, the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is the chain of volcanic crater-cones and dome-shaped eminences which rise from the plateau, amongst which the Puy de Dome towers supreme. Their individual forms stand out in clear and sharp relief against the western sky, and gradually fade away towards the south into the serried masses of Mont Dore and Cantal, around whose summits the evening mists are gathering. Except the first view of the Mont Blanc range from the crest of the Jura, there is no scene perhaps which is calculated to impress itself ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... it being impossible to overtake the swimming and diving herd. Then all at once the animals turned, for something happened which brought them tearing back through the water as rapidly as they had tried to escape; and now, as they came swimming back, it was without any diving, but with serried front, eyes flashing, and tusks gleaming, in a grand charge upon the boats, and with a force sufficient to tear them into matchwood and drown their occupants in ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... history of Freemasonry has such a Grand Lodge been convened as that on which my eye rests at this moment and there is, further, an inner view to be taken, that so far as my eyes can carry me over these serried ranks of white and blue, and gold and purple, I recognize in them men who have solemnly taken obligations of worth and morality—men who have undertaken the duties of citizens and the ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... hundred of us gentlemen should scatter such a rout. Before they gain the level plain, home with the lance charge we, And then, for every blow we strike, we empty saddles three. Count Raymond Berenger shall know with whom he has to do; And dearly in Tebar to-day his raid on me shall rue." In serried squadron while he speaks they form around my Cid. Each grasps his lance, and firm and square each sits upon his steed. Over against them down the hill they watch the Franks descend, On to the level ground below, where plain and mountain blend. Then gives my Cid the word ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... ten thousand angry fiends had burst the gates of hell, Now thrills upon our startled ears. By heaven! the traitors come! We see their gleaming banners, we hear the throbbing drum. In solid ranks, their countless hordes from the dense woods emerge, And roll upon our serried lines like ocean's angry surge. Our ranks are silent—on each face the light of battle glows: 'Ready!' At once our polished tubes are levelled on our foes. Now leaps a livid lightning up—from rank to rank it flies— A fearful diapason rends the arches of the skies. The wooded hills seem ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... might take any vegetable or fruit. The blush upon the peach is in striking contrast to the serried walls of the seed within; who will explain the mystery of the apple, the queen of the orchard, or the nut with its meat, its shell, and its outer covering? Who taught the tomato vine to fling its flaming many-mansioned ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... must come to an end. And so when the marsh grass on the lowlands lay in serried waves of dappled satin, and the corn on the uplands was waist high and the roses a mob of beauty, Kate threw her arms around Peggy and kissed her over and over again, her whole heart flowing through ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... knew where,—the strange dangers that awaited them: fierce Spaniards with slender blades as red as the crimson borders of their white coats; wild Numidian riders that always fell upon the rear of Rome's battle; serried phalanges of Africans, veterans of fifty wars; naked Gauls with swords that lopped off a limb at every stroke; Balearic slingers whose bullets spattered one's brains over the ground; Cretans whose arrows could dent an aes at a hundred ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the place of honor, despite my protests, and soon I found myself lying between my host and his wife, while the other members of the household lay in serried rank beyond her on the mats that filled the hollow between the palm-trunks. All slept with the backs of their heads upon one timber, and the backs of their knees over the other, but I found comfort on the soft pile between them. My companions slumbered peacefully, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the elm trees of the Row a little drama in which he was directly interested was being played out not many hundred yards away. Elaine and Comus were indulging themselves in two pennyworths of Park chair, drawn aside just a little from the serried rows of sitters who were set out like bedded plants over an acre or so of turf. Comus was, for the moment, in a mood of pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund of pointed criticism and unsparing anecdote concerning those of the promenaders or loungers whom he knew personally or by sight. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... strength we gain. I know it has been said our times require No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm, But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys Believe the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet, If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat The bitter harvest of our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... clinging to the clavicles of their roots, and their leafy tops turned to the lee—in this prostrate alignment slowly to wither and decay! A forest, thus fallen, presents for a time a picture of melancholy aspect. It suggests the idea of some grand battle-field, where the serried hosts, by a terrible discharge of "grape and canister," have been struck down on the instant: not one being left to look to the bodies of the slain—neither to bury nor remove them. Like the battle-field, too, it becomes the haunt of wolves ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... "Gentlemen assistants, advance, and seize Master Atkinson, Master Brewster, Master Davenant, and especially Master Rattlin;" the said Master Rattlin having very officiously wriggled himself into the first rank. Such is the sanctity of established authority, that we actually gave back, with serried files however, as our opponents advanced. All had now been lost, even our honour, had it not been for the gallant conduct of young Henry Saint Albans, a natural son of the Duke of Y—-, who was destined for the army, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Fife and Drum Temperance Band. In a moment five-and-twenty fifers were blowing "See, the conquering hero comes," with all their breath, and marching to the beat of a deafening drum. Behind them came a serried crowd with the stranger in its midst, and a straggling train of farmers' gigs and screaming ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ill he saw the foemen were come off the level ground, and were mounting the bent slowly, and not in very good order or in ranks closely serried. Then he strode forth three paces, and waved his sword high above his head, and cried out: "A Christopher! A Christopher! Forward, banner of the Realm!" And forth he went, steady and strong, and a great shout arose ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... surrounding walls. The work dragged on slowly; and the materials found occupants from the first year. The Mason-bees had chosen the interstices between the stones as a dormitory where to pass the night in serried groups. The powerful Eyed Lizard, who, when close-pressed, attacks wide-mouthed both man and dog, had selected a cave wherein to lie in wait for the passing Scarab (A Dung-beetle known also as the Sacred Beetle.—Translator's ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... him; every thing is done in the nick of time. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery, charge to the right or the left, or straight before them, dash through the enemy's front, or scour the flanks, or sweep the rear, perambulate squares, and perforate encampments, just as if the serried ranks of the Sikhs had been unsubstantial creatures of the imagination, or mist-wreaths from the "wet nullah," which a lively fancy had invested with human form and warlike panoply. But one hundred and fifty-one gallant men killed, and four hundred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... savage, almost menacing, in the aspect of these lower mountains, pressing in serried ranks around their white-capped chief. They seemed to shut us far away from the human world below, and one felt that he had placed himself entirely in the hands of nature. This was her realm, where she acknowledged no laws but ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... political friends—and they had delivered glowing orations in the wide, double parlors, the impassioned speakers standing on a temporary dais, now in the cellar; and the enthusiastic listeners disposed more or less comfortably on these serried rows of "folding chairs," which folded sometimes, and let down the visitor in scarlet ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... seek protection in the port of Cavite, seven miles further down the coast; but during the north-east monsoons they can safely anchor half a league from the coast. All ships under three hundred tons burden pass the breakwater and enter the Pasig, where, as far as the bridge, they lie in serried rows, extending from the shore to the middle of the stream, and bear witness by their numbers, as well as by the bustle and stir going on amongst them, to the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... leading into the vast series of caverns that lay beyond the throne room of King Roquat could be seen ranks upon ranks of the invaders—thousands of Phanfasms, Growleywogs and Whimsies standing in serried lines, while behind them were massed the thousands upon thousands of General ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Fast asleep, some of 'em, after too much beef. Imagine myself a prisoner, in disguise of course, escaping from the Tower in the olden time. Then, fearing the collapse of another buckle or button, or the sudden "giving" of a seam, I steal cautiously past the Guards—then past serried ranks of soldiers under the colonnade—then—once more in the street of Bow, and I am ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... that the companies of the Seventh, should the day arrive, will charge upon horrid batteries or serried ranks with as much alacrity as they marched ashore on the greensward of the Naval Academy. We disembarked, and were halted in line between the buildings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... wine; the mountains were a mosaic of color; the trees burned red and yellow, glowing torches of autumn, and accentuating all their ephemeral and regal splendor; among them, yet never of them, were the green austere pines marching in their serried ranks, on, on up the hillsides ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the thermometer was 32 degrees, with a powerful sun shining, and it fell to 28 degrees at 4 p.m., when the north wind set in. At sunset the moon rose through angry masses of woolly cirrus; its broad full orb threw a flood of yellow light over the serried tops south of Pundim; thence advancing obliquely towards Nursing, "it stood tip-toe" for a few minutes on that beautiful pyramid of snow, whence it seemed to take flight and mount majestically into mid-air, illuminating Kinchin, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... "Ho! vassals! sound the trump! 'tis Izdubar, To arms! our foes are on us from afar!" His weapons seizes, drives his men in fear Before him with his massive sword and spear, And as a tempest from his lips he pours His orders, while his warrior steed he spurs Along his serried lines of bristling spears; Among ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... the serried stalls. The Jews scattered before him like dogs. The member of the P.P.R. crawled under a barrow. Even the blacksmith froze up. David drew the moral ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... unloading, steamers are arriving, and throngs of donkey-boys and dragomans go down in haste to meet them. Servants run to and fro on errands from the many dahabiyehs. Bathers leap into the brown waters. The native craft pass by with their enormous sails outspread to catch the wind, bearing serried mobs of men, and black-robed women, and laughing, singing children. The boatmen of the hotels sing monotonously as they lounge in the big, white boats waiting for travellers to Medinet-Abu, to the Ramesseum, to Kurna, and the tombs. And just above them rise ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... way upward, until it paused again near the summit of the range, on the "divide," the boundary line between the east and the west. There were the serried ranks of the mountains, vast, solemn, grand; and in that awful solitude, under the spell of that eternal silence, a sense of the infinite hushed every tongue, and each one stood with bated breath, as if on holy ground. On every side ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... thought culminates in vision, and the Christ stands full before his eyes. All that is supernatural in the Saul is viewed through the fervid atmosphere of David's soul. The magic of the wonderful Nocturne at the close, where he feels his way home through the appalled and serried gloom, is broken by no apparition; the whole earth is alive and awake around him, and thrills to the quickening inrush of the "new land"; but its light is the tingling emotion of the stars, and its voice the cry of the little brooks; and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... steps leading from the front door were covered with fine carpeting, which also stretched away to the street, to the spot where the guests were to alight from their carriages. On both sides of the carpet stood serried ranks of the Stadtholder's lackeys in their flashy gold-trimmed liveries. They were headed by the count's two stewards, with golden wands in their hands, broad gold bands about their shoulders, and monstrous three-cornered hats upon their heads. It was very fine to look ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... longer do they tarry at their council: now they apparel and arm themselves, and issue forth towards the north-west by an ancient postern towards that side whence they thought that those of the host would least expect to see them come. In serried ranks they sallied forth: of their men they made five battalions; and there were no less than two thousand foot-soldiers well equipped for battle and a thousand knights in each. This night neither star nor moon had shown its rays in the sky; but before they had reached ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... San Marco was filled by a multitude who showed no other movement than that which proceeded from the pressure of new-comers trying to force their way forward from all the openings: but the front ranks were already close-serried and resisted the pressure. Those ranks were ranged around a semicircular barrier in front of the church, and within this barrier were already assembling the Dominican Brethren ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the groups of shabbily dressed men and women and children who gathered in the roadway in front of the poulterers' and butchers' shops, gazing at the meat and the serried rows of turkeys and geese decorated with coloured ribbons and rosettes. He knew that to come here and look at these things was the only share many of these poor people would have of them, and he marvelled greatly at their wonderful patience ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Alessandro, in a panic, cried, "Would God that we had never come here!" and turned in maddest haste to fly. I took him up somewhat sharply with these words: "Since you have brought me here, I must perform some action worthy of a man"; and, directing my arquebuse where I saw the thickest and most serried troop of fighting men, I aimed exactly at one whom I remarked to be higher than the rest: the fog prevented me from being certain whether he was on horseback or on foot. Then I turned to Alessandro and Cecchino, and bade them discharge their arquebuses, showing them how to avoid being ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... work published in French that is one of the few things worth a writer's having, and the French translators are the most alert and efficient in the world. One has only to see a Parisian bookshop, and to recall an English one, to realize the as yet unattainable standing of French. The serried ranks of lemon-coloured volumes in the former have the whole range of human thought and interest; there are no taboos and no limits, you have everything up and down the scale, from frank indecency to stark wisdom. It ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... So much for the serried masses of the centre of our anti-tuberculosis army, upon which we depend for the heavy, mass fighting and the great frontal attacks. But what of the right and the left wings, and the cloud of skirmishers and cavalry which is continually feeling the enemy's position and cutting ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... host; For not an eye the storm that viewed Changed its proud glance of fortitude, Nor was one forward footstep stayed, As dropped the dying and the dead. Fast as their ranks the thunders tear, Fast they renewed each serried square; And on the wounded and the slain Closed their diminished files again, Till from their line scarce spears'-lengths three, Emerging from the smoke they see Helmet, and plume, and panoply, - Then waked their fire at once! Each musketeer's revolving ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... pallid by those green curtains that hang all around, in which one would fancy that the light-rays become rarefied, in order to give to the vision of the people walking about the room a certain contemplative justice, the slow crowd goes and comes, pauses, disperses itself over the seats in serried groups, and yet mixing up different sections of society more thoroughly than any other assembly, just as the weather, uncertain and changeable at this time of the year, produces a confusion in the world of clothes, causes to brush each other as ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... towns hail their yearly advent with delight. They usually make their first appearance about the second week in November, and are always followed by a great number of very large sharks and saw-fish, which commit dreadful havoc in their serried and helpless ranks. Following the sea-salmon, the rivers are next visited in January by shoals of very large sea-mullet—blue-black backs, silvery bellies and sides, and yellow fins and tails. These, too, will not take a bait, but ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... again wends its way in the sunshine up the slope to the proud mansion of the Trimbergs. The venerable Walther von der Vogelweide again opens the festival of song. Wolfram von Eschenbach, followed by a band of young disciples, musingly ascends the mountain-side. The ranks grow less serried, and in solitude and sadness, advances a man of noble form, his silvery beard flowing down upon his breast, a long cloak over his shoulder, and the peaked hat, the badge of the mediaeval Jew, on his head. In his eye gleams a ray of the poet's grace, and his meditative glance ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... in heart they were, who believed in God and the Bible,— Ay, who believed in the smiting of Midianites and Philistines, Over them gleamed far off the crimson banners of morning; Under them loud on the sands, the serried billows, advancing, Fired along the line, and in regular ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... into the street. The hubbub of the preachers and the shouting of the people had died away, for the regiments had fallen into their places, and stood silent and stern, with the faint light from the lamps and windows playing over their dark serried ranks. A cool, clear moon shone down upon us from amidst fleecy clouds, which drifted ever and anon across her face. Away in the north tremulous rays of light flickered up into the heavens, coming and going like long, quivering fingers. They ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... supreme, Dazzling command and rich dominion, The winds thy heralds and thy vassals all The silver-belted planets and the sun. Where'er the radiance of thy coming fall, Shall dawn for thee her saffron footcloths spread, Sunset her purple canopies and red, In serried splendour, and the night unfold Her velvet darkness wrought with starry gold For kingly raiment, soft as cygnet-down. My hair shall braid thy temples like a crown Of sapphires, and my kiss upon thy brows Like cithar-music lull thee to repose, ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... and rifle. The country has heard much of the heroism and sacrifices of those loyal youths who fell on the field of battle; but it has heard little of the still greater number who died in prison pen. It knows full well how grandly her sons met death in front of the serried ranks of treason, and but little of the sublime firmness with which they endured unto the death, all that the ingenious cruelty of their foes could inflict upon them while ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... upon our forces. Sir Charles McCarthy saw that there was but one means of resistance left, and received the tumultuous enemy at the point of the bayonet. For some time, the steadiness and courage of the English prevailed over the barbarian rage of the multitudes that threw themselves upon their "serried ranks," and the Ashantees fell in rapid succession; but it soon became evident that the strictest discipline of such an inferior body, could not withstand the increasing crowds that poured upon them: the English soldiers, finding themselves so hemmed in that their ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the front rank, as these could be best relied upon to withstand the charge of the English horse. The gates were thrown open, and in close ranks the garrison sallied out, forming, as soon as they passed through, in the order arranged. So close and serried was the hedge of spears, so quiet and determined the attitude of the men, that, numerous as they were, the men of Buchan and the English lords shrank from an encounter with such adversaries, and with the ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... the green miles of whispering leaves, the land appeared to rise in long, level bluffs, still thronged with serried trees; a great arm of the sea, a mile or two in breadth, extended east of north, and thither, the mariner dreamed, might lie the long-sought pathway to the Indies. A tongue of land, broadening as it ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Four thousand serried bayonets squared the base of the hill, and made a compact, bristling hedge to hold back the common people. Through it marched the doomed Imperialists, each with his confessor and a platoon of guards, and so toiled on up the slope. The archduke looked ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... of early December, London opened its eyes on a frigid grey mist. There are mornings when King Fog masses his molecules of carbon in serried squadrons in the city, while he scatters them tenuously in the suburbs; so that your morning train may bear you from twilight to darkness. But to-day the enemy's manoeuvring was more monotonous. From Bow even unto Hammersmith there draggled a dull, wretched vapour, like the wraith ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill |
