"Sunbeam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The gloom of this eternal cell, which never Knew sunbeam, and the sallow sullen glare Of the familiar's torch, which seems akin[bl] To darkness more than light, by lending to The dungeon vapours its bituminous smoke, Which cloud whate'er we gaze on, even thine eyes— No, not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... was not quite so easy to feel genial. She entered the shop. The apprentice sate there at work, busily trimming a fine rice straw bonnet for the lodger within. She looked up joyously at Emilie's approach. She thought how often that kind German face had been to her like a sunbeam on a dull path; how often her musical voice had spoken words of counsel, and comfort, and sympathy, to her in her hard life. How she had pressed her hand when she (the apprentice) came home one night and told her, "My poor mother is dead," and ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... perhaps be said, and said here, as to my share in its composition. It is now twelve years ago since my friend—then Mrs. Brassey—asked my advice and assistance in arranging the Diary she had kept during the eleven months' cruise of the 'Sunbeam.' This assistance I gladly gave, and she and I worked together, chiefly at reducing the mass of information gathered during the voyage. I often felt it hard to have to do away with interesting and amusing matter in order to reduce the book even to the size in which it appeared. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... with a burst of energy that surprised me—"she did not die! She left me many, many months ago, it seems like years now. My Edie went out one afternoon to walk, like a beautiful sunbeam as she always was, and—and—she never ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a few weeks in the summer, to the unspeakable rejoicing of the whole family; but it was a break of light in a cloudy day; the clouds closed again. Only now and then a stray sunbeam of a letter found ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... spirit!—as if it mattered to Walden whether she was angry or not! He saw her well enough,—he noted her face 'red as a rose,' with its mobile play of expression, set in its frame of golden-brown hair,—it flitted, sunbeam-like between his eyes and the 'Book of Common Prayer'—and, when he ceased reading, while the village choir, rendered slightly nervous by the presence of 'the quality,' chanted the 'O come let us sing unto the Lord,' he was conscious of a sudden lassitude, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... give the little diagram originally drawn by Newton, to explain the experiment by which he first learned the composition of light. A sunbeam is admitted into a darkened room through an opening, H, in a shutter. This beam when not interfered with will travel in a straight line to the screen, and there reproduce a bright spot of the same shape as the hole in the shutter. If, however, a prism of glass, A B C, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... like motes in the sunbeam for a moment, and then are illumined no more. Legend takes some of them, and they become pictures; and the rest, it would seem, ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... woodlands. Soon they stood Where sea and river met, and trod a path Wet with salt spray, and drank the clement breeze, And saw the quivering of the green gold wave, And, far beyond, that fierce aggressor's bourn, Fair haunt for savage race, a purple ridge By rainy sunbeam gemmed from glen to glen, Dim waste of wandering lights. The sun, half risen, Lay half sea-couched. A neighbouring height sent forth Welcome of baying hounds; and, close at hand, They reached ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... though the group of stars about Hercules and the Scorpion was contracting, while Orion and Aldebaran and their neighbours were scattering apart. Flashing suddenly out of the darkness there came a flying multitude of particles of rock, glittering like dust-specks in a sunbeam, and encompassed in a faintly luminous cloud. They swirled all about me, and vanished again in a twinkling far behind. And then I saw that a bright spot of light, that shone a little to one side of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... their dazzling maze of frosty filaments shines a painted window in palpitation; its pulses of color interwoven in motion, intermittent in fire,—emerald and ruby and pale purple and violet melting into a blue that is not of the sky, but of the sunbeam;—purer than the crystal, softer than the rainbow, and brighter ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that Rodd was as clear.... Of all that she had left she did not even think, so worthless was it. A career, money, power, influence? With love, the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys that give moments of perfection wherein all is revealed and nothing ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... on Birdalone's outstretched arms the raiment she had brought with her, and it was as if the sunbeam had thrust through the close leafage of the oak, and made its shadow nought a space about Birdalone, so gleamed and glowed in shifty brightness the broidery of the gown; and Birdalone let it fall to earth, and passed over her hands and arms the fine smock sewed in yellow and white silk, so ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... I grew surly and having made an end of my rough surgery, I went and cast myself upon my bed of straw and, lying there, watching the sunbeam creep upon the wall, I fell to pondering this problem, viz: How came I thus striving to soothe the woes of this man I had hunted all these years to his destruction; why must I pity his hurts ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... in fairies, which forms so large a part of the folklore of Western Europe, is found among the American races. The Ojibbeways see thousands of fairies dancing in a sunbeam; during a rain myriads of them bide in the flowers. When disturbed they disappear underground. They have their dances, like the Irish fairies; and, like them, they kill the domestic animals of those who offend them. The Dakotas also ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the beating storm, But fled like a sunbeam, white and frail, To the sea, to the air, somewhere, somewhere — I have not ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Color soft and rich as the downy side of a peach, bloomed upon her cheek, which rested against the palm of one plump little hand. Her chin was dimpled, and around her pretty mouth lay a soft smile that just parted its redness, as the too ardent sunbeam ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Christ is soon coming into his kingdom. Then the thief will be remembered, be raised from the dead, and be with Christ in that paradise into which he will then introduce all his people. Thus all is as clear as a sunbeam, when the text is freed from the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... without wind, without character—one of the days on which Nature seems to take no interest in herself and creates no interest in others. The sky was overcrowded with low, ragged clouds, without discernible order or direction. Nowhere a yellow sunbeam glinting on any object, but vast jets of misty radiance shot downward in far-diverging lines toward the world: as though above the clouds were piled the waters of light and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... dress, 5 I clink the gilded chains of politesse, Nor ask thy boon what time I scheme Unholy Pleasure's frail and feverish dream; Nor yet my view life's dazzle blinds— Pomp!—Grandeur! Power!—I give you to the winds! 10 Let the little bosom cold Melt only at the sunbeam ray of gold— My pale cheeks glow—the big drops start— The rebel Feeling riots at my heart! And if in lonely durance pent, 15 Thy poor mite mourn a brief imprisonment— That mite at Sorrow's faintest sound Leaps from its scrip with an elastic bound! But oh! if ever song thine ear Might soothe, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... visits was to Alfred like losing a sunbeam, and his spirit felt very dreary after he had heard this sentence. Ellen knew her well enough to suspect that she was very sorry, but that she could not help herself; and Mrs. King caught the brother and sister making such grumbling speeches to each other about the old lady's ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... influence, even by the expression of his countenance, though he may speak no word. Where can we find a circle that is not shadowed, as by a cloud, if one countenance appears within it darkened by sullenness, ill-humor, or discontent? Where one that is not warmed and cheered, as by a sunbeam, if one enters it whose features glow with good-humor, contentment, and satisfaction? Then does not the command to love our neighbor make us even responsible for the expressions our faces wear? In relation to the plea for recreation and amusement, it can ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... rejoiced to see Mehetabel again in the house. He made her sit beside him. He took her hand in his, and patted it. A pleasant smile, like a sunbeam, ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... a graceful "picture" hat of black velvet, adorned with one drooping pale grey plume. A small knot of roses nestled among the delicate lace on her bodice, and the diamond dove-pendant Lord Blythe had given her sparkled like a frozen sunbeam against the ivory whiteness of her throat. She glanced at herself in the mirror with a smile,—wondering if "he" would be pleased with her appearance,—"he" had been what is called "difficult" of late, finding fault with some of the very points of her special ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... necessary—to work in a laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and buttons and thread manufactured ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Young ladies, and strawberries,—"only just out;" Fresh strawberries sold under all the house-eaves, And young ladies on sale for the strawberry-leaves: When cards, invitations, and three-cornered notes Fly about like white butterflies—gay little motes In the sunbeam of Fashion; and even Blue Books Take a heavy-wing'd flight, and grow busy as rooks; And the postman (that Genius, indifferent and stern, Who shakes out even-handed to all, from his urn, Those lots which so often decide if our day Shall ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... seraph tall, Of indolent imperturbable regard, Stood in the Tavern door to drink. As the first Lifted his glass to let the warm light melt In the slow bubbles of the wine, a sunbeam, Red and broad as smouldering autumn, smote Down through its mystery; and a single fleck, The tiniest sun-mote settling through the air, Fell on the grape-dark surface and ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... a most impulsive creature, however, quick and variable in her moods, unselfish in her character. Suddenly it dawned upon her that it was not fair to the rest of the party that she should be so dull. She had always been considered the sunbeam at home; why should she not try to become the ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... by the storm stricken low, A sunbeam thou seest through the shade Where Order and Peace are throned 'neath the smile Of a royal sisterly Maid:— For hope in the breast of the girl has her nest, Ever trusting, and ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... A sunbeam shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey, with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention distracted. His ideas, if such ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... Could she confess to him? It seemed as if his heart would break when he thought of her; so many recollections passed through his soul. He saw her a lively, laughing, petulant child; many a loving word, which she had said to him in the fullness of her heart, shot like a sunbeam through his breast and soon all ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... and myself had cast To stop him as he outward pass'd; But, lighter than the whirlwind's blast, He vanish'd from our eyes, Like sunbeam on the billow cast ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch thro' which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; The sphere-fire ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... tumbled cascades of silvery-gleaming China silk, the shimmering brocade pricked into luminous beads by a slanting sunbeam; while portraits of every epoch smiled through their yellowed varnish from frames ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the setting of the sun leave all here lustreless and dark and gloomy, although that must arise again to-morrow, what must the setting do of one who shall arise no more for ever; whose light of life was to one heart, what the sunbeam was to the streamlet, but which, unlike that sunbeam, shall never shine on the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... difficulty in persuading a friend that Miss Barrett was old enough to be introduced into society." Miss Mitford added that she was "certainly one of the most interesting persons" she had ever seen; "of a slight, delicate figure,... large, tender eyes, and a smile like a sunbeam." ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... conceivable degree; yet a single vertebra is the pattern and representation of the framework of them all, from eels to elephants. The identity reaches still further,—across a mighty gulf of being,—but bridges it over with a line of logic as straight as a sunbeam, and as indestructible as the scymitar-edge that spanned the chasm, in the fable of the Indian Hades. Strange as it may sound, the tail which the serpent trails after him in the dust, and the head of Plato, were struck in the die of the same primitive conception, and differ ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... upheaval of mountains, and, with mineralogy, the laws of crystallization. With chemistry, it analyzes, decomposes, and compounds the elements. If, like Canute, it cannot arrest the tidal wave, it is subjecting it to laws and formulas. Taking the sunbeam for its pencil, it pictures man's own image, and the scenery of the earth and the heavens. Has science any limits or horizon? Can it ever penetrate the soul of man, and reveal the mystery of his existence and destiny? It is certainly exploring ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and her face became quite still. I held my breath for a long time to listen to hers. Then I breathed hard, as though I could give her my breath, but when I looked at her more closely I saw that she had breathed her last. Her eyes were wide open, and seemed to be looking at a sunbeam which was coming towards her like a long arrow. Swallows flew past the window and flew back again, chirruping like little girls, and my ears were filled with sounds which I had never heard before. I looked up to the windows of the dormitories, hoping that somebody would hear what ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... too late. Stop a moment; does not that sunbeam yonder, just by the side of the town, glitter on ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the day, Behold, I pace amidst the gloom: Darkness is ever round my way, With little space for sunbeam room. ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... at me! It is my quarrel." He threw himself from his saddle, and his blade flashed forth like a sunbeam. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... centres in his use, and is complete. If for him there is not a future, why were the instincts of his nature given? Why the power to learn so much? To trace in the planetary system divine wisdom, and divine power; to see and know the same in the mite which floats in the sunbeam? If this is all he is ever to know, does this complete a destiny for use? if so, for what? Can it be, simply to propagate his species, and perish? and was all this grand creation of the earth, and all things therein, made to ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... illustrate that the world was all alike, nothing but trees, trees and trees—great trees rising as high as an arrow shot to the sky, lifting their crowns intertwining their branches, pressing and crowding one against the other, until neither the sunbeam nor shaft of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... ignorance. Mr. Winthrop don't regard me of enough importance to be intrusted with the merest trifles of everyday life, I thought, sorrowfully; but just then my eye fell on the ring, when it flashed into my gloomy heart a ray of light brighter than any sunbeam. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... elbow, and laid a quiet hand on her mistress's arm. "Sure we would all like it, Mam!" she said in her soothing, even tones. "'T would be like a sunbeam in the house, so it would. You'd better let the ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... with dazed, smiling eyes on the sunbeam. His hair was cropped close like a convict's, which accentuated the leanness of his face and the taut, rigid lines about his mouth. Under his discolored uniform, the body was spare almost to the point of emaciation. Through ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... man's love" had been very precious to her,—but it had not fulfilled all her heart's longing, though she considered herself an entirely commonplace woman. And what sort of a man would it be that could hold Morgana? As well try to control a sunbeam or a lightning flash as the restless vital and intellectual spirit that had, for the time being, entered into feminine form, showing itself nevertheless as something utterly different and superior to women as ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... in the dining-room grate; the golden light was dancing a jig all over the walls, hiding behind the curtains, coquetting with the silver, and touching the primroses on the plates to a perfect sunbeam; for father and mother were coming. Tom and Gypsy and Winnie were all three running to the windows and the door every two minutes and dressed in their very "Sunday-go-to-meeting best;" for father and mother were coming. Tom ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... she heard that he was out scouring the country on one of her uncle's horses. She had too many distressing matters to think of for so singular a young man to have any other place than that which is given to the fantastical in a troubled and serious mind. He danced there like the whimsy sunbeam of a shaken water below. What would be his opinion of Adiante if he knew of her determination to sell the two fair estates she inherited from a grandmother whom she had venerated; that she might furnish arms to her husband to carry out an audacious ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... field and hill, Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes; As if the music of a god's good-will Had taken on material attributes In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam, That runs its silvery scales from stream to stream; In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly, A golden note, vibrates then flutters on— Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan, That have assumed a visible entity, And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun, Behold, I seem, and am ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... said, after her mother had kissed her, "Why has papa don away? I 'ove my papa ever so much, and I asked him, before he went away, if he 'oved oo and Eddie and Allie, and he taid he did, and that he 'oved me, his 'ittle sunbeam, too, and ett he has don and left us all. I am so sorry papa ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... with her bannered hosts in cloth of gold, and moonrise with her innumerable helmets and shields and swords and ensigns of silver, the morning and the night being the two buttresses from which are swung a bridge of cloud suspended on strands of sunbeam, all the glories of the sky passing to and fro with airy ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... feel myself a part of the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam—or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... into me to-day—I feel cross, without the least bit of reason for so feeling. I guess I'm not well, for I'm sure I've felt like one great long sunbeam, I don't know how many months, and it doesn't ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... read the inscription; A veil hath enveloped my sight, What though through the painted windows Glows brightly the sunbeam's light. Thus gleams, O hall of my fathers, Thy image so bright in my mind, From the earth now vanished, the ploughshare Leaves ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... a dismal place, a low, wet valley, densely shaded and overgrown by trees, whose thick foliage scarcely admitted a single sunbeam to penetrate to the earth beneath. This gloomy passage was about half a mile in extent, and at its dark center the villains had posted themselves. Their plans were all fully matured, even down to the minute details. ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... reached the village. It was surrounded by high stone walls, which every now and then the dark spiral forms of a cypress or a cedar would overtop, and in the more distant and elevated part rose a tall palm tree, bending its graceful and languid head, on which the sunbeam glittered. It was the first palm that Tancred had ever seen, and his heart throbbed as he beheld ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... "Diana" among women, cold, passionless, correct, and strong-minded. Amoret is the "Venus," but without the licentiousness of that goddess, warm, loving, motherly, and wifely. Belphoebe was a lily; Amoret a rose. Belphoebe a moonbeam, light without heat; Amoret a sunbeam, bright and warm and life-giving. Belphoebe would go to the battle-field, and make a most admirable nurse or lady-conductor of an ambulance; but Amoret would prefer to look after her husband and family, whose comfort would be her first care, and whose love she would seek ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... It was a strange group that he peeped in upon, where the old family portraits seemed looking down with haughty contempt upon the slumbering invaders of their dignified solitude. The soubrette was the first to awake, starting up as a warm sunbeam shone caressingly full upon her face. She sprang to her feet, shook out her skirts, as a bird does its plumage, passed the palms of her hands lightly over her glossy bands of jet-black hair, and then seeing that the baron was quietly observing her, with eyes ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... church-bell, Mount to yon tall citadel, And its tallest donjon tower! To your mountain, eagle old, Mount, whose brow so white and cold, Kisses the last ray of even! And, O thou that lov'st to mark Morn's first sunbeam pierce the dark, Mount, O mount, thou joyous lark— Joyous lark, O mount to heaven! And now say, from topmost bough, Towering shaft, and peak of snow, And heaven's arch—O, can you see One white plume that like a star, Streams along the plain ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... transitory, so evanescent, as that of a great advocate. The very wand that enchants us is magical. Its effects can be felt; it influences our actions; it controls and possesses us; but to define it, or tell what it is, or how it produces these effects, is as far beyond our power as to imprison the sunbeam. In the presence of such majestic power we can only ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... desired a contrast to Sarah, there was Shirley. Shirley who sat in the wastebasket and beamed upon an approving world. Six year old Shirley was a born sunbeam and her brief fits of temper only seemed to intensify the normal sunshine of her disposition. She smiled and she coaxed answering smiles from the severest mortal; she dimpled and laughter bubbled up to meet her chuckling ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... as he pronounced these words, and for the first time he now perceived what it was that made his manner so irresistible. It was the smile, that changing and varying smile, which yet never entirely left the noble features. It seemed to mingle in all he said, like a warm and soothing sunbeam; and as the chaplain constrained himself to alter his opinion under its influence, he felt that the muscles of his mouth involuntarily assumed ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... arid sands of Egypt, you would have more chance of melting her. The winged words might fly uninterruptedly from your lips for a whole Olympiad; you could not move my resolution in the slightest. A heart of brass dwells in this marble breast of mine. Die or kill! When the sunbeam which has passed through the curtains shall touch the foot of this table let your choice have been ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... hours he spends upon a fragrant fir; His merry 'chink,' his happy 'Kiss me, dear,' Each moment sounded, keeps the copse astir. Loudly he challenges his rivals near, Anon aslant down to the ground he springs, Like to a sunbeam ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the sunbeam burns upon their scales, And shows rich glimpses of their Tyrian skins; They flash small lightnings from their vigorous tails, And winking stars are kindled at their fins; These shall divert thee in thy weariest mood, And seek thy hand for ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... her delicate eyebrows. She was wearing no hat, as it was more comfortable to recline against the cushions with uncovered head, but a fluffy white parasol belonging to her hostess was placed by her side, in case an obtrusive sunbeam penetrated the branches overhead. "I never know where the sun is going to move next. Men always do, don't they? I think it is so clever of them!" Madame had declared in her charming, inconsequent fashion as she fluttered away. Elma did not need the parasol as a shade, but it came in very ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... himself there was not a soul in his bedroom. The morning sun was streaming in at the window through the lower blind, and a quivering sunbeam, bright and keen as the sword's edge, was flashing on the glass bottle. He heard the rattle of wheels— so there was no snow now in the street. The lieutenant looked at the ray, at the familiar furniture, at the door, and the first thing he did was to laugh. His chest and stomach heaved with ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a princess who had such a beautiful head of hair, streaming down in curls to her feet, and brilliant as a sunbeam, that she was universally called the Fair One with Golden Locks. A neighbouring king, having heard a great deal of her beauty, fell in love with her upon hearsay, and sent an ambassador with a magnificent suite to ask her in marriage, bidding ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... the sun or blackened by the clay? It is good for you and for me to see them here, and to realize how soon all men are forgotten, how quickly their bones, mingling with others, give no more clue to the individual life to which they once belonged than a particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does to the matter ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... here. At morn I see Along the roofs the eldest sunbeam peep,— I live in daylight, limitless and free, While you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... sat still, pondering. The other men went out by and by and the room was quiet except for the rumble of traffic in the street and the rattle of an electric fan. A waiter pulled down a blind to shut out a bright sunbeam and Thorn found the shade and softened noises from ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... carried on frames attached to the car. Sunbeam engines originally supplied the motive power, but at a later date a 220 horse-power Renault was fitted aft and a 100 horse-power, Berliet forward. With the greater engine power the ship's capabilities ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... must have been born a sunbeam, I am so fine! It seems to me as if the sunbeams were always looking under the water for me. Ah, I am so fine that my own mother cannot find me! If I had my old eye which broke off, I believe I could weep; but I can't—it is not ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... oneself; and that everything has a cause? Truths of that kind we all acknowledge because they accord with all our reason. But that God appeared on Mount Sinai to Moses, or that Buddha flew up on a sunbeam, or that Mahomet went up into the sky, and that Christ flew there also—on matters of that kind we are ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... he was, the warriors were quicker, and the darkened slit became light with the noiseless speed of a twinkling sunbeam. The Indians needed no second ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... extended, to burst into rollicking melody. "I think it's a splendid book and you're a nangel to give it to me when you meant it for someone else. But it ought to have a name. Just dairy sounds so milky and barnlike; and I don't like 'sunbeam book' real well, either. What ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... corries,—supremely grand in their impressive desolation, uplifting their stony peaks around us like the walls and turrets of a gigantic fortress, and rising so abruptly and so impenetrably encompassing the black stretch of water below, that it seemed impossible for a sunbeam to force its shining entrance into such a circle of dense gloom. Yet there was a shower of golden light pouring aslant down one of the highest of the hills, brightening to vivid crimson stray clumps of heather, touching into pale green some patches of moss and lichen, and giving the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... ENTIRELY, is the grand principle of life, to be written upon the sacred standard of all temperance movements, and under which the contending host may be as sure of victory as if, like Constantine, they saw inscribed with a sunbeam upon the cloud, In hoc signo vinces.[F] But such being the eminent importance of total abstinence, it deserves to be presented in detail. We begin, therefore, with ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary,— Watched within a curtained room Where no sunbeam brake the gloom, Round the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... herself into his arms. "Don't cry, don't cry, my dear Emily," said he, the tears rolling down his rich ruddy cheek, "we shall find them again. We will go in search of them. Remember, I too am a sufferer. Have I not lost my right hand, the sunbeam of my house, my sweet, little, mischievous, pretty, fidgety Gatty," and he raised his eyes reverently to heaven, as if to invoke a blessing on his lost child; and this was Gatty's Father, who had left his court, and had come down purposely with Sir Walter ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... through the sky, Like the zephyr's softest sigh. Ah, then, who'd dream that aught so fair, Was fleeting as the Summer air? Yet in that hour Disease, so deceitful, stole upon thee, As blight upon a flower; And thou art dead! And thy spirit's past away. Like a dew-drop from the spray, Like a sunbeam from the mountain, Like a bubble from the fountain; And thou art now at rest, In thy damp, narrow cell, With the clod heap'd o'er thy breast; ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... opinion was the young and impetuous Alexander Hamilton. "The sacred rights of mankind," he exclaimed, "are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human destiny by the hand of divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... age, together with a lady who seemed to claim relationship to both, and to have the little one especially under her charge. Tom had often caught glimpses of this little girl, for she was one of those busy, tripping creatures, that can be no more contained in one place than a sunbeam or a summer breeze; nor was she one that, once seen, could be easily forgotten. Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... France. I trembled lest Eugenia should receive the tale, and flew in person to prevent her terrors. It was evening when I reached the hills of Languedoc, and looked impatiently towards my cheerful home beneath. I looked—the last sunbeam glared redly upon smoking ruins! Oh! oh! the blood now chills and curdles round my heart—the wolves of war had rushed by night upon my slumbering fold—fire and sword had desolated all. I called upon my wife and my infant. I trembled on their ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.—MILTON: The Doctrine and Discipline ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of business hours. In the office, for the sake of discipline, I frequently adopt a querulous manner, finding it necessary in dealing with office-boys, but the moment I leave shop behind me I become a different individual entirely, and have been called a moteless sunbeam by those who have seen only that side of my character. This, by-the-way, must be regarded as a confidential communication, since I am at present engaged in preparing a vest-pocket edition of the philosophical ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... HERALD for May presents us with a highly interesting account of Robert Louis Stevenson's career as an amateur journalist, together with a facsimile reproduction of the cover of "The Sunbeam Magazine", Stevenson's hand-written periodical. The column of reminiscences, containing letters from various old-time amateurs, is extremely inspiring to the younger members, showing how persistently the amateur spirit adheres to all who have truly acquired it. "Nita at the Passing Show" is a ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... wast Peleus' son, and next Menander; Then thine own self; next, a sunbeam shalt be; And nine score annual ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... a very creditable style, and manifests a desire to learn to do other kinds of work. She is neat and orderly in her habits, and ever acts in a ladylike manner, while in disposition she is cheerful as a sunbeam, and as playful as a kitten. For about one year, at irregular intervals, a young minister of the name of J. B. Howell, devoted one hour each week to her instruction, and she made some advancement, novel as his method was; but in June last he went to Brazil as a missionary, since which ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... in the sunbeam, In gums weep the trees And in dye; And if mourn meadow and stream— ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... not gainless is the loss; A glorious sunbeam gilds thy sternest frown, And while his country staggers neath the Cross, ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... sunbeam unto them? What tales have brooklets told? Is there within their diadem A single rival to the ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... hero left the shade, Again the deer before him strayed. With surer hope and stronger will The hunter longed his prey to kill. Then as his soul impatient grew, An arrow from his side he drew, Resplendent at the sunbeam's glow, The crusher of the smitten foe. With skillful heed the mighty lord Fixed well shaft and strained the cord. Upon the deer his eyes he bent, And like a fiery serpent went The arrow Brahma's self had framed, Alive with sparks that hissed and flamed, Like Indra's flashing ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... burn upon the hearth and the candle sink to its socket,—in short, go to sleep again in spite of pressing work. He can curse the expectant boots which stand holding their black mouths open at him and pricking up their ears. He can pretend not to see the steel hooks which glitter in a sunbeam which has stolen through the curtains, can disregard the sonorous summons of the obstinate clock, can bury himself in a soft place, saying: "Yes, I was in a hurry, yesterday, but am so no longer to-day. Yesterday was ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... terrible and sinful that Damie should talk so lightly—here, where she felt as if she were in church, or even in eternity—quite out of the world, and yet in the very midst of it. She herself opened the inside door; the room was dark as a grave, for the shutters were closed. A single sunbeam, shining through a crack in the wall, fell on the angel's head on the tile stove in such a way that the angel seemed to be laughing. Amrei crouched down in terror. When she looked up again, her uncle had opened one of the shutters, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... when he would draw her near To his eager heart's content, As a sunbeam slips from the finger-tips She slipped from his ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... the fogs were drawn upwards. Nepenthe became tangible—an authentic island. It gleamed with golden rocks and emerald patches of culture. A cluster of white houses, some town or village, lay perched on the middle heights where a playful sunbeam had struck a pathway through the vapours. The curtain was lifted. Half lifted; for the volcanic peaks and ravines overhead were still ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... voice of the tea-kettle died down to a plaintive simmer, simmer, and I heard Sunbeam say, "He's asleep." She always thinks I'm asleep ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... admit that this is the case, from the mote that floats in the sunbeam to multiple stars revolving round each other, are we willing to carry our principles to their consequences, and recognise a like operation of law among living as among lifeless things, in the organic as well as the inorganic ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... intellect at all, and yet they were implied, as it were, behind the others. Many times we have all found ourselves glad or sorry, and yet we could not tell what thought it was that reflected the sunbeam or cast the shadow. Took into Cynthia's suddenly exalted consciousness and see the picture, actual and potential, unroll itself in all its details of the natural, the ridiculous, the selfish, the pitiful, the human. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... even greater than her beauty. She talked well and gracefully—the play of her features, the movement of her lips, were something not to be forgotten; and her smile seemed to break like a sunbeam over her whole face—it ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... road—if road it could be called—wound for the first five miles through the heart of an immense forest, and being, in every sense of the word, a by-path, was completely overshadowed by projecting branches of trees, so closely interwoven, as to prevent a single sunbeam from making its way, even at noon, within the arch. We continued to move on, therefore, long after the sun had risen, without being sensible that there was not a cloud in the sky to screen us from his influence; whilst a heavy moisture continually emitted from the grass and weeds on both sides ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... was falling, in all forests there was a rumour, and among the rocks where I lay I caught a flutter of wings. The east grew rosy; out of the mysterious sea rose a golden ghost hidden in glory, till suddenly across the world a sunbeam fell. It touched the mountains one by one; higher and higher crept the tremulous joy of light, confident and ever more confident, opening like a flower, filling the world with gladness and light. It was ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... helped him to strike before he himself could be hurt. Once he was made blind, but as he wandered by the seashore the music of the singing waves which were his father's home gave him comfort and led him to a friend who guided him to Apollo. One bright sunbeam from Apollo's crown touched Orion's eyes and they saw more clearly than ever before. Nearly everything was Orion's friend, for with his great strength he was always ready to help those who could not ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... a rough stone, rising to a great height, shaped like a pillar in the stadium; and it tapers upwards in imitation of a sunbeam, keeping its quadrilateral shape, till it rises almost to a point, being made smooth by ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... angels rejoice in;—now, Maud, we must go. But to Benny: "I'm thinking to-night I may come And bring my friend with me, to see your new home." "O, if you will!" says the child with delight Rippling over his face like a sunbeam—and quite As joyously, Jenny: "O, madam, please do, For we've something at home that we ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... you foolhardy sunbeam caught With a single splash from my ewer! You that would mock the best pursuer, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... young English reader may benefit as much by the perusal of this work as Master Lucien, otherwise "Sunbeam," did by his journey through the Cordilleras of Mexico, and that they may enjoy the information herein imparted upon the wonderful works of the Creator, is the sincere ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... cried Gerard lustily. "I shall win to Rome yet. Holy St. Bavon, what a sunbeam of innocence hath shot across our bloodthirsty road! Forget thee, little Jeanneton? not likely, amidst all this slobbering, and gibbeting, and decanting. Come on, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... agitation in what seemed to be chaos the lost atom has dropped back to its place in the scheme of things, and even aspires (poor mite!) to do its infinitesimal business intelligently. So might a mote in a sunbeam feel itself ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... end of May there penetrated into the largest of the workrooms that rarest of visitants, a stray sunbeam. Only if the sun happened to shine at given moments could any of its light fall directly into the room I speak of; this afternoon, however, all circumstances were favourable, and behold the floor chequered with uncertain gleam. The workers were ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... these petty wrongs of one individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once. Its vastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who the speed of bird and wind And sunbeam's glance will lend to me, That, soaring upward, I may find My resting-place and home in Thee? Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and gloom, Adoreth with a fervent flame,— Mysterious spirit! unto whom Pertain ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the sun, he bored a tiny hole in the wall, and a thin sunbeam gleamed through. Then, taking a few grains of sand he blew them through the hole and in the sunbeam ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... have emerged,—from which of the seven circles of the Inferno did the scientist get his hint? Indeed, science everywhere reveals a carnival of mightier gods than those that cut such fantastic tricks in the ancient world. Listen to Tyndall on light, or to Youmans on the chemistry of a sunbeam, and see how fable pales its ineffectual fires, and the boldest dreams of ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... meanness, wish yourself away from their fretful cries and noisy sports? Then think that to-morrow may ripen the wicked wish; tomorrow death may lay his hand upon a little fluttering heart and it will be stilled forever. 'Tis then you will miss the sunbeam and the sweet little flower that reflected heaven on the soul. Then cherish the little ones! Be tender with the babes! Make your homes beautiful! All that remains to us of paradise lost, clings about the home. Its purity, its innocence, its virtue, are there, untainted ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... at a little distance, a group of boys were playing, their bare legs and white tunics flashing hither and thither as they ran. One of them, a tall slim lad, whose aureole of ruddy hair seemed to catch every wandering sunbeam, was evidently directing the game, for all seemed to look to him for orders. "A leader of men," smiled the Patriarch to himself, as a vigorous wave of the boy's hand brought all ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... arose,—yes, 't was many years ago, when, by the door of a rough, rude, but serviceable dwelling, a little boy sat on an old man's knee. He was a bright youth, with soft blue eyes, from which his soul looked out and smiled, and hair so beautiful that it seemed to be a dancing sunbeam rather ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... find the nest. He is the most shy, the most elusive of birds, living in the tops of the tallest trees, and flitting from one to another like a sunbeam, showing only a glint of a golden breast as he goes. One is maddened by the medley of calls and scraps of song, the trills and tremolos in the sweetest and most enticing tones, while not able to catch so much as a glimpse of the bonny bird who utters them. His love-song is utterly captivating, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... sick girl would reply, with a faint, heartbroken smile, which illumined her sorrowful face and showed all the ravages that had been wrought upon it, as a sunbeam, stealing into a poor man's lodging, instead of brightening it, brings out more clearly ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; 175 I make the netted sunbeam ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... rather than beautiful, but an artist would have revelled in the delicate strength of the softly rounded chin, and the quick bright play of her expression. Her hair, of a deep rich brown, with a bronze shimmer where a sunbeam lay athwart it, swept back in those thick luxuriant coils which are the unfailing index of a strong womanly nature. Her deep blue eyes danced with life and light, while her slightly retrousse nose and her sensitive ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... abroad. And indeed it is diffused but not effused. For that diffusion of it is a [-rJo-tc] or an extension. For therefore are the beams of it called [i-m'] from the word [KTEIVEO-Oa,,] to be stretched out and extended. Now what a sunbeam is, thou mayest know if thou observe the light of the sun, when through some narrow hole it pierceth into some room that is dark. For it is always in a direct line. And as by any solid body, that it meets ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... branches, which then, however, spread out at right angles to the stem, making the trees appear like gigantic umbrellas, and covering the whole morass with an impenetrable roof, through which not even a sunbeam could find a passage. On looking behind us, we saw the daylight at the entrance of the swamp, as at the mouth of a vast cavern. The further we went the thicker became the air; and at last the effluvia was so stifling and pestilential, that the torches burnt pale and dim, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... lonely house Ralph's laughter came like the embodied spirit of Youth. It searched out the hidden corners, illuminated the shadows, stirred the silences to music. A sunbeam danced on the stair, where, according to Doctor Dexter's recollection, no sunbeam had ever dared to dance before. Ah, it, was good to ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... like blood that wandered through. Rarely upon that cheek was shed, By health or by youth, one tinge of red, And never closest look could descry, In shine or shade, the hue of her eye, But, as it were made of light, it changed With every sunbeam ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton |
