"Swart" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wrought for me. I, on my part, have envied you the possession of a certain Arab slave, a living statue, a moving bronze, that you have amongst your retainers. Let us, like Homeric heroes, make an exchange. Give me your statue-man, your swart Apollo, and accept from me what many have been pleased to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Among all the swart elderly faces it was an easy matter to pick the man who had given back to him the steed. The eyes of Don Ruy sought him eagerly, and more than ever wondered at the youth of him, and the countenance fairer ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... proof of the pit and the stake, it was the woman, arms about me, leg-twining, who fought with me and restrained me not to go out through the dark to my desire. She was part-clad, for warmth only, in skins of animals, mangy and fire-burnt, that I had slain; she was swart and dirty with camp smoke, unwashed since the spring rains, with nails gnarled and broken, and hands that were calloused like footpads and were more like claws than like hands; but her eyes were ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... referring to a white man, "Contrary to his Masters Consent hath ... got wth child a certaine molato wooman Called Swart anna." "David Lewis Constable of Haverford Returned a Negro man of his And a white woman for having a Bastard Childe ... the Negroe said she Intised him and promised him to marry him: she being examined, Confest the same: the Court ordered that she shall receive Twenty one ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... but he pushed his steps most hastily until he had brought his wife and children to the citadel of Saegor. When the sun rose, [when] the peaceful luminary of the nations went forth, then, I have heard, the Master of Glory sent 2540 sulphur out of heaven, and swart flame for the punish- ment of men, swelling fire, since they had offended the Lord for a long period in former days: thus the Ruler of spirits gave them retribution. Utmost terror seized upon 2545 ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... dazzling deluge round the Line; The realms of frost, where icy mountains rise, 'Mid the pale summer of the polar skies?— It was Humanity!—on coasts unknown, The shiv'ring natives of the frozen zone, And the swart Indian, as he faintly strays 'Where Cancer reddens in the solar blaze,' She bade him seek;—on each inclement shore Plant the rich seeds of her exhaustless store; Unite the savage hearts, and hostile hands, In the firm compact of her gentle bands; Strew her soft ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... and rice, And bound them to my girdle in a sack. Then over all I flung a snowy cloak, And beckoned to the maiden. So she stole Forth like my shadow, past the sleeping wolf Who wronged my father, o'er the woolly head Of the swart eunuch, down the painted court, And by the sentinel who standing slept. Strongly against the portal, through my rags,— My old, base rags,—and through the maiden's veil, I pressed my knife,—upon the wooden hilt Was "Adeb, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... beloved for many a year, was mine, A grove of sacrifice, on Ida's height, Darksome with maple and the swart pitch-pine. This wood, these trees, my ever-dear delight, Gladly I gave to speed the Dardan's flight. But doubts and fears my troubled mind assail. O calm them; may a parent's prayer have might, And this their birth upon our hills avail To guide ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... through our summer; on fisheries, factories, wheat fields, pine forests; on meadows wealthy with grains or grass, and orchards bending beneath their burdens, this enlarging prosperity must be maintained; and on the steamships, and the telegraph lines, which interweave us with all the world. The swart miner must do his part for it; the ingenious workman, in whatever department; the ploughman in the field, and the fisherman on the banks; the man of science, putting Nature to the question; the laborer, with no other capital ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... parapets, and forts, were garnished with wreaths, emblems, and poetical inscriptions in honour of the Prince. The soldiers themselves, attired in verdurous garments of foliage and flower-work, their swart faces adorned with roses and lilies, paraded the bridge and the dyke in fantastic procession with clash of cymbal and flourish of trumpet, dancing, singing, and discharging their carbines, in all the delirium of triumph. Nor was a suitable termination to the festival wanting, for Alexander, pleased ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... those who wed above! De Wilton and Lord Marmion wooed Clara de Clare, of Gloucester's blood; Idle it were of Whitby's dame, To say of that same blood I came; And once, when jealous rage was high, Lord Marmion said despiteously, Wilton was traitor in his heart, And had made league with Martin Swart, When he came here on Simnel's part And only cowardice did restrain His rebel aid on Stokefield's plain, And down he threw his glove: the thing Was tried, as wont, before the king; Where frankly did De Wilton own That Swart in Gueldres he had known; And that between them ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... figures," muttered the Dark Master, still staring down into the bowl of dark water. "The man has the face of Yellow Brian, yet he is swart; the woman I sure never saw before. Corp na diaoul! What is the meaning of this? Who ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... young Greek, with wave of hand, Showed the swart pagan at his side; So, motioning to the gathered band, That none could choose but understand, "Let this man drink," he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in his own self-defense, to tell the truth and to expose his slanderers, you would not hear him, but you struck him first." Again and again, as at the end of a paragraph of unadorned but trenchant sentences the small, firm-knit figure quivered with a leonine energy, the great, swart head was thrown backward, and the deep voice swelled into a tone of triumph or defiance, the listeners could not forbear to applaud. Once, even Seward broke forth: "I have never had so much respect for him as I ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... iourney onely from the shore, haue bene cast away in tempest, hauing no skill to guide themselues neither by Sunne nor Starre) that they haue seene great vessels laden with rich and precious merchandize brought downe that great riuer by blacke or swart people. [Sidenote: M. Ienkinson in his voyage to Boghar speaketh of the riuer Ardok.] They call that riuer Ardoh, which falleth into the lake of Kittay, which they call Paraha, whereupon bordereth that mighty and large ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... Suddenly the swart figure of Time stood up before the gods, with both hands dripping with blood and a red sword dangling idly ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... into the room, and I was conscious of a puff of Oriental airs, and a delightful, languid tranquillity. I was not surprised that the figure before me was clad in full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt about the middle with a rich shawl. Followed him a swart attendant, who hastened to spread a rug upon which my visitor sat down, with great gravity, as I am informed they do in farthest Ind. The slave then filled the bowl of a long-stemmed chibouk, and, handing it to his master, retired behind him and began ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... enemy's defeat and flight, the slaughter that ensues, and with cries of joy calls upon the flocks of wild birds, the "swart raven with horned neb," and "him of goodly coat, the eagle," and the "greedy war hawk," to come and share the carcases. Never was so splendid a slaughter seen, "from what books tell us, old chroniclers, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... book had dropped from my hand and I was well-nigh drowsing, when I saw, as plain as day, the queerest figure possible clicking open our garden gate. He looked to be some sort of South American half-breed,—swart face under rough black hair, and striped blanket gathered over dirty white trousers. Now I had seen many a strange man disembark from ships, but, never such a one as this, and when I saw that he was ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... modified by climate—are the means by which such changes are effected. The savage living in the open air, not trammeled with much clothing, anointing his skin with oil, eating uncooked food, delighting in the chase and in battle, and living thus because his surroundings indicate it, becomes swart and athletic, fierce, cunning and cruel—takes ethnologically the lowest place. Of literature, science, art, he knows nothing: for him will is justice, fear law, some miserable fetich God. Still, in his nature lie dormant all the capabilities of the noblest manhood, awaiting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... upon whom a quiet settled as they drew together in brief conference. Presently the city marshal sauntered out, leaving his comrades of the long trail to carry on their revelry alone. A gangling young man, swart-faced, fired by the contending crosses of alcoholic concoctions which he had swallowed, approached Morgan where he leaned against the bar. This fellow straddled as if he had a horse between his legs, and he was dusty and ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... were a young woman and a young man. The latter personage, a man of from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, with a mien sometimes lively and sometimes dull, making good use of two large eyes, shaded with long eye-lashes, was short of stature and swart of skin; he smiled with an enormous, but well-furnished mouth, and his pointed chin, which appeared to enjoy a mobility nature does not ordinarily grant to that portion of the countenance, leant from time to time very lovingly ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Antaeus heard, Deep in great oak-woods, the mysterious word Which said, "Go forth across the unshaven leas To meet unconquerable Hercules." Leaving his cavern by the cedar-glen, This Titan of the primal race of men, Whom the swart lions feared, and who could tear Huge oaks asunder, to the combat bare Courage undaunted. Full of giant grace, Built up, as 'twere, from earth's own granite base. Colossal, iron-sinewed, firm he trod The lawns. How vain against a demi-god! ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... and there a clearing With its farm-house rude and new, And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, Where ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... swart countenance grew darker as he spoke, for he well knew the extremity of danger into which the reckless youth was compelling him to run, but he did not hesitate. Instead, however, of following in the steps of one who was fleeter of foot than himself, he ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... at them, but made no answer; in a second or two afterwards, another, that of a young lad, appeared beside the first, equally swart and begrimed, but having tangled black hair, descending in elf-locks, which gave an air of wildness and ferocity to the whole expression of the countenance. Lady Staunton repeated her entreaties, clinging to the rock with more energy, as ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... alarm. Now listened in joy The lank wolf in the wood and the wan raven, Battle-hungry bird, both knowing well That the gallant people would give to them soon A feast on the fated; now flew on their track 210 The deadly devourer, the dewy-winged eagle, Singing his war-song, the swart-coated bird, The horned of beak. Then hurried the warriors, Keen for the conflict, covered with shields, With hollow lindens— they who long had endured 215 The taunts and the tricks of the treacherous strangers, The ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... surrounded by a fruity pulp, and whilst the pulp is very pleasant to taste, the beans themselves are uninviting, so that doubtless the beans were always thrown away until ... someone tried roasting them. One pictures this "someone," a pre-historic Aztec with swart skin, sniffing the aromatic fume coming from the roasting beans, and thinking that beans which smelled so appetising must be good to consume. The name of the man who discovered the use of cacao must be written in ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... finished he sighed deeply, ecstatically. He bent his lean frame over the counter and, despite his swart coloring, seemed to glitter upon her—his eyes, his teeth, his ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... at her perfect face, then at one of the doves that had perched on her shoulder, and thought of treacherous swart Sepoys, of Bengal tigers, of all the tangled work that lay before him in Hindoostan jungles, a shadow fell over the young man's brow, and a dull pain seemed to tighten the valves of his heart. Just then his appointed lot in the Master's vineyard did not smile as alluringly as the sunny slopes ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. 'Untie it,' he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... do?" said Yourii, speaking in a low voice that yet was not low enough. He was not sure if he ought to shake hands in a church. Several members of the congregation looked round, and their swart, parchment-like faces made him feel more uncomfortable. He actually blushed, but Sina, seeing his confusion, smiled at him, as a mother might, with love in her eyes, and Yourii ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... trade, Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. "Why ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern And folds his arms that find no bread to earn, And bows ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Menocal, who gave him a venomous look and passed into the bar without speaking. What the young fellow might feel or think gave Lee no concern, though he might have taken warning from that hostile regard. For it was by Charlie's instructions that a short, stout, swart Mexican went from a native saloon to the depot that evening, where he presently identified Bryant and lounged nearer the spot. Dave at length noticed him and called Lee's attention to the fellow, whose face had a particularly sinister cast and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... thus strangely lighted up by fire, lanthorn, and the reflection of Wolfert's red mantle, might have mistaken the little doctor for some foul magician, busied in his incantations, and the grizzled-headed Sam as some swart goblin, obedient ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... dream from out the wave, I see a city rise, I stand entranced, as by a spell, Upon the Bridge of Sighs. The low and measured dip of oars Falls softly on my ear Blent with the tender evening song, Of some swart gondolier. ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... bending to their tasks, each broad back swinging in unison forward and back over the thwart, each brown throat bared to the air, each swart head uncovered to the glare of the midday sun, each narrow-bladed paddle keeping unison with those before and behind, the hand of the paddler never reaching higher than his chin, since each had learned the labor-saving fashion of the Indian canoeman. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... when he was angry. He was a strange man and much feared, sullen in countenance, and silent by nature. It was said that his grandmother was a chieftainess among the red Kaffirs, but if so, the blood showed more in his son and only child than in himself. Of this son, who in after years was named Swart Piet, and his evil doings I shall have to tell later in my story, but even then his dark face and savage temper had earned for him the name of "the ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... illuminated sign of milder or warmer feelings struck me as wholly new in his visage. It changed it as from a mask to a face: the deep lines left his features; the very complexion seemed clearer and fresher; that swart, sallow, southern darkness which spoke his Spanish blood, became displaced by a lighter hue. I know not that I have ever seen in any other human face an equal metamorphosis from a similar cause. He now took me to the carriage: ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... would seethe up through all her troubled deeps, and overhead the spray fell on the tops of either cliff. But oft as she gulped down the salt sea water, within she was all plain to see through her troubled deeps, and the rock around roared horribly and beneath the earth was manifest swart with sand, and pale fear gat hold on my men. Toward her, then, we looked fearing destruction; but Scylla meanwhile caught from out my hollow ship six of my company, the hardiest of their hands and the chief in might. And looking into ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... haste A brawny band of three score Englishmen, Gigantic as they loomed against the sky And risen, it seemed, by miracle from the sea. So small were those five ships below the walls Of that huge floating mountain. Royally Drake, from the swart commander's trembling hands Took the surrendered sword, and bade his men Gather the fallen weapons on an heap, And placed a guard about them, while the moon Silvering the rolling seas for many a mile Glanced on ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... bare, Like netted sunshine fell her lustrous hair; The rosy flush of young pomegranate bells Dawned on her cheeks; and blue as in lone dells Sleep the Forget-me-nots, her eyes. With bent Brows, sullen-creased, swart Adam gazed intent Upon a leopard, crouched low in its place Beneath his feet. Not once in Lilith's face He looked, nor sought her wistful, downcast eyes With shifting shadows dusk, and strange surprise. "O, Love," she said, "no more let us contend! So sweet is life, anger, methinks, should ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... bid'st me be content, wert grim, Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb, Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious. Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks, I would not care—I then would be content; For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown. But thou art fair, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... fane within the soul Of fire-tongued seers descending, Or from the dream-lit temples of the past With feet immortal wending, Illuminate grief's antre swart and vast With half-veiled face that promises the whole To him who holds her fast, What answer could you give? Sight of one face I crave, One only while I live; Woo elsewhere; for ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... Gunnar owned a wood in common at Redslip; they had not shared the wood, but each was wont to hew in it as he needed, and neither said a word to the other about that. Hallgerda's grieve's[19] name was Kol; he had been with her long, and was one of the worst of men. There was a man named Swart; he was Njal's and Bergthora's house-carle; they were very fond of him. Now Bergthora told him that he must go up into Redslip and hew wood; but she said—"I will get men to ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... cartridges and ugly beards, burned and blistered and parched with scorching sun and winds tempered only with alkali dust, ride our Arizona friends,—many of them at least. Old Bucketts with his green goggles; Turner with his melancholy face and placid ways; Raymond, stern and swart; Canker, querulous and "nagging" with his men, but eager for any service; Stafford, who won his troop vice the noble-hearted Tanner whom we lost among the Apaches; Wayne, who is loquacity itself ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... good greenwood when the goblin and sprite ranged free, When the kelpie haunted the shadowed flood, and the dryad dwelt in the tree; But merrier far is the trolley-car as it routs the witch from the wold, And the din of the hammer and the cartridges' clamor as they banish the swart kobold! O, a sovran cure for psychic dizziness Is a breath of the air of the world of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... political parties depend too much upon the kings of the "Street" for the sinews of war in great campaigns, to lift a voice against it. The "Saloon" and the "Street," two colossal curses, cast their swart and portentous shadow over the palaces and hovels of a great nation, yet by virtue of their power, the Church and State, the clergy and the politicians, remain silent or temporize in their presence. The Republic needs to-day, as never before, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... swart disciples knit their brows O'er algebraic signs; They build their byres, they milk ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... and I also owe a great deal to other people—a great deal that I hope to live long enough never to repay. A debt of honour is one of the finest things in the world. The very name recalls a speech out of 'Guy Livingstone.' By the way, I sometimes wish that I had been born swart as he was. I should have pleased Miss Rhoda Broughton, and she is so deliciously prosaic. Is she not the woman who said that she was always inspired to a pun by the sight of a cancer hospital? or am I thinking of Helen Mathers? I can never ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... must thou wake perforce thy Doric quill; 'Tis Fancy's land to which thou sett'st thy feet; Where still, 'tis said, the fairy people meet, 20 Beneath each birken shade, on mead or hill; There, each trim lass, that skims the milky store, To the swart tribes their creamy bowls allots; By night they sip it round the cottage door, While airy minstrels warble jocund notes. 25 There, every herd, by sad experience, knows How, wing'd with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... the billows snort In darkness of the night, Betwixt his lean locks tawny-swart, He glowered on ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... perennial gloom. The mansion itself stood in a walled enclosure, which had, perhaps, from the date of the erection itself, been devoted to shrubs and flowers. Some of the former had grown there almost to the dignity of trees; and two dark little yews stood at each side of the porch, like swart and inauspicious dwarfs, guarding the entrance of an enchanted castle. Not that my domicile in any respect deserved the comparison: it had no reputation as a haunted house; if it ever had any ghosts, nobody remembered them. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... vicomte's preparations to make a match of it between Adeliza and me. About us the woods sighed and whispered, dappled by the moonlight with unstable chequerings of blue and silver. Tightly he clung to my crupper, that swart tireless horseman, Care; but ahead rode Love, anterior to all things and yet eternally young, in quest of the Castle of Content. The horses' hoofs beat against the pebbles as if in chorus to the Devon cradle-song ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... that bid'st me be content, wert grim, Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb, Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious, Patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks, I would not care, I then would be content; For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown. But thou art fair; and at thy birth, dear boy, Nature and fortune join'd to make thee great: Of nature's ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... swart-complexioned fellow, but quick-eyed, in a white satin doublet of one fashion, green velvet hose of another, a fantastical hat with a plume of feathers of several colours, a little short taffeta cloak, a pair of buskins ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... closer to him as they stepped along the wharf. He lowered his voice to a still more confidential tone. His hard blue eyes peered up into the swart, sardonic face of his companion, who was a head taller ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... sulked, but under the look the sheriff turned on him came forward and went out, his whole attitude remaining one of defiance. Antone, his swart face as expressionless as a piece of mahogany, hesitated, glanced at Galloway, shrugged, and did as Rickard had done, going out between his two guards. The men remaining in the barroom were watching their sheriff expectantly. He swung ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... the rear Speed saw three other men—an Indian, tall, swart, and saturnine, who walked with a limp; a picturesque Mexican with a spangled hat and silver spurs, evidently the captor of Lawrence Glass on the evening previous; and an undersized little man with thick-rimmed spectacles ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... sells itself at this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in the ensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested by the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods of extinct and ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... great behind, and twisted toes, and cried hoarsely with their voices; and they came with such immoderate noise and immense horror, that him thought all between heaven and earth resounded with their voices. And they tugged and led him out of the cot, and led him to the swart fen, and threw and sunk him in the muddy waters. After that they brought him into the wild places of the wilderness, among the thick beds of brambles, that all his body was torn. After that they took him and ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... underneath the scourge Of the fierce dog-star, that lays bare the fields, Shifting from brake to brake, the lizard seems A flash of lightning, if he thwart the road, So toward th' entrails of the other two Approaching seem'd, an adder all on fire, As the dark pepper-grain, livid and swart. In that part, whence our life is nourish'd first, One he transpierc'd; then down before him fell Stretch'd out. The pierced spirit look'd on him But spake not; yea stood motionless and yawn'd, As if by sleep or fev'rous fit assail'd. He ey'd the serpent, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... beak through a foeman's side was the end of her being. To meet the shock of collision two heavy cables had been bound horizontally around the hull from stem to stern. The oarsmen,—the thranites of the upper tier, the zygites of the middle, the thalamites of the lower,—one hundred and seventy swart, nervous-eyed men, sat on their benches, and let their hands close tight upon those oars which trailed now in the drifting water, but which soon and eagerly should spring to life. At the belt of every ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a man of thews and goodly frame Made swart in battle. Under Indian suns Our foes had often there been taught to know That weight of arm, resistless when he closed Charging upon them with his sword and eye. But when his father died, he left the East For ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Swart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned, Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks: She laughed a hailing as she scanned Me in the gloom, ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... Hilda. But among all the bright array of ladies at that feast I could not spy her. And perhaps that is not to be wondered at, for long ere we came up all the baggage had been lost. By this time her court dress was being worn by swart women of the flint folk, far on the wild heaths. I dare say they fought ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... shrill scream but emphasized the deep silence which lent itself befittingly to the solemnity of nature. Presently thin suggestions of light, variously tinted, began to thread the inky mass. These grew brighter and more vivid, until at last, in fantastic contortions, they appeared to rend the swart concave asunder, revealing through the jagged clefts a lurid waste of the most intensely glowing fire. The coming and going of these amazing brightnesses, combined with the Egyptian dark between, was completely blinding. So loaded was the still ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sudden outbreak of voices, angry and expostulatory; and saw, under the trees, the savage old Zamiel strike his daughter with his stick two great blows, one of which was across the head. 'Beauty' ran only a short distance away, while the swart old wood-demon stumped lustily after her, cursing ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... a hundred—no, a thousand!—shadowy forms darting down on the village, upon us. They, too, were just as the girl had pictured them: short, swart beings with but the suggestion of a nose, and with pulsing gill-covers under the angles of their jaws. Each one gripped a long, slim white knife in either hand, and their tight-fitting shark-skin armor gleamed darkly as they ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the girl is riding on a man's saddle?" he asked. "Why, I know that saddle; let me look at the other side. Yes, there is a bullet-hole through the flap. That is Swart Dirk's saddle. How did you ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... this declaration we are called on to believe that the event recorded actually happened in the year 1660. Peter Rahm alleges that he and his wife were at their farm one evening late when there came a little man, swart of face and clad in grey, who begged the declarant's wife to come and help his wife then in labour. The declarant, seeing that they had to do with a Troll, prayed over his wife, blessed her, and bade her in God's name go ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... and din, The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, The wrangle and jangle of unrests, Let us take horse, dear heart, take horse and win— As from swart August to the green lap of May— To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In any of her innumerable nests Of that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... see that which I had never yet seen—the home-coming of our famous foraying Duke. I had, indeed, seen Duke Casimir often enough in the castle, or striding across the court-yard to speak to my father, for whom he had ever a remarkable affection. He was a tall, swart, black-a-vised man, with a huge hairy mole on his cheek, and long dog-teeth which showed at the sides of his mouth when he smiled, almost as pleasantly as those of a she-wolf looking out of her den at ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... black &c. adj.; render -black &c. adj. blacken, infuscate[obs3], denigrate; blot, blotch; smutch[obs3]; smirch; darken &c. 421. black, sable, swarthy, somber, dark, inky, ebony, ebon, atramentous[obs3], jetty; coal-black, jet-black; fuliginous[obs3], pitchy, sooty, swart, dusky, dingy, murky, Ethiopic; low-toned, low in tone; of the deepest dye. black as jet &c. n., black as my hat, black as a shoe, black as a tinker's pot, black as November, black as thunder, black as midnight; nocturnal &c. (dark) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... for the only light afforded outside of that was from the grated hatch above. Amid the half obscurity Ralph saw a jumble of swart, brutish faces and wildly gleaming eyes, and heard a babel of guttural sounds suggestive of a savage Bedlam where violence ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... before a man of about forty winters. His face was so swart that I could see only the German in the blue eye, and at once imagined that a stream of Plutonic fire had streamed into his veins from some more Oriental race. I stammered out an apology for my intrusion, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the golden air; About the painted temple peacocks flew, The blue doves cooed from every well, far off The village drums beat for some marriage feast; All things spoke peace and plenty, and the Prince Saw and rejoiced. But, looking deep, he saw The thorns which grow upon this rose of life: How the swart peasant sweated for his wage, Toiling for leave to live; and how he urged The great-eyed oxen through the flaming hours, Goading their velvet flanks: then marked he, too, How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him, And kite ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... blossoms 'twixt page and page, To mark great places with due gratitude; 45 "He said, and on Antinous directed A bitter shaft"—a flower blots out the rest! Again upon your search? My statues, then! —Ah, do not mind that—better that will look When cast in bronze—an Almaign Kaiser, that, 50 Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip. This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized? I thought you would have seen that here you sit As I imagined you—Hippolyta, Naked upon her bright Numidian horse. 55 Recall you this, then? "Carve in bold relief"— So you commanded—"carve, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of the fettered condition from which he had escaped, the name of Ephraim Swart, "a gambler and spree'r" was mentioned as the individual who had wronged him of his liberty ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... nations scant and few, Set far apart among the trackless sands, Unlearn'd, uncultured, wild and swart of hue, Roaming the deserts in divided bands, Where the green pastures call them, and the deer Troop yet within the range of ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... in wrath, Mailed Wrong, swart Servitude and Shame with bitter rue, Nathless a Negro poet's feet must tread the ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... very short coat faced with galloons of gold, and a very broad-brimmed and very high-crowned sombrero, on which the silver braid alone was worth the price of a good horse. Even for a Spanish Mexican his face was dark. Swart it was, the cheeks hollow; a tiny, tight mustache with ends truculently pointed and erect helped out the belligerency of the tight-shut lips. The eyes were black as bitumen, and flashed continually under ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... tall, powerfully built man, this Canaples, with a swart, cruel face that was nevertheless not ill-favoured, and a ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... cause of the pretender, in complicity with Lovel and Margaret of Burgundy. In Ireland, Simnel was cheerfully and with practical unanimity accepted as the king, and a band of German mercenaries, under the command of Martin Swart, was landed in that country to support him; though in London the genuine Warwick was paraded through the streets to show that he was really there alive. Lincoln, who had first escaped to Flanders, joined the pretender; they landed in Lancashire in June. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... A many-throated fountain had run dry Which erst all day a web of rainbows wove Out of the body of the sun its love. And but a furlong's space beyond, there towered In middest of that silent realm deflowered A palace builded of black marble, whence The shadow of a swart magnificence Falling, upon the outer space begot A dream of darkness when the night was not. Which while the Prince beheld, a wonderment Laid hold upon him, that he rose and went Toward the palace-portico apace, Thinking to read ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... them. It did not take long. Two minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing over her and cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck to trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went down. Spitz ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... magnificent bass, full toned as an organ, issuing, likewise as out of a reed, from a swart dwarf scarcely higher than my waist. The word "bath," with the promise of "individual towels," won me over. Something must be done, anyway, to get rid of these importunate runners. Thereupon I acquiesced, "All right, my man. The Queen," and surrendering my bag to his hairy paw I trudged by his guidance. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... misshapen animal, bearing some resemblance to a cat, but as big as a tiger. Its skin was black and shaggy; its eyes glowed like those of the hyaena; and its cry was like that of the same treacherous beast. Among the gloomy colonnades other swart and bestial shapes could be indistinctly seen ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... proved too great, even in face of these memories, and a tall, powerful Spaniard, heavily earringed, handsome, with a swart, brutal beauty, delivered a scorching oath to the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... little need for the swart gipsies to explain, as they stood knee-deep in the snow round the bailiff of the Abbey Farm, what it was that had sent them. The unbroken whiteness of the uplands told that, and, even as they spoke, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... unclean Within that corporal tenement installed Look'd from its windows, but with temper'd fire Beam'd mildly on the unresisting. Thin His beard and hoary; his flat nostrils crown'd A cicatrised, swart visage,—but withal That questionable shape such glory wore ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... lean swart men enough alike to be brothers; I learned after a while that they actually were brothers, Hjalmar, Garin and Vardo. All three were well over six feet, and Hjalmar stood head and shoulders over his brothers, whom I never learned to tell apart. The fourth man, a redhead, was dressed rather better ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... a few moments, from the firing of the first shot, until things took this turn. Swart boy was hardly clear of the bushes before the elephant emerged also; and as the former struck out for the mokhala trees, he was scarce six steps ahead ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... that when London is clean passed away and the defeated fields come back again, like an exiled people returning after a war, they may find some beautiful thing to remind them of it all; because we have loved a little that swart old city. ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... displayed the marvel. Then they started back appalled! The interior appearance of that window afforded, perhaps, as vivid and complaining contrast to its exterior as had ever been presented since views had rivalry. The thongs about the neck of the swart Bigbeam had become undone, and her normal front filled all the window's broad interior. That front, to put it mildly, though picturesque, was not attractive. It afforded an area of greasy and dirty brown cuticle and of moose skin, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... far-piercing spears, keen blades, Struggling, and blood, and shrieks—all dimly fades 10 Into some backward corner of the brain; Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet. Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat! Swart planet in the universe of deeds! Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds Along the pebbled shore of memory! Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride, 20 And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... cannon.... A war party of French and Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantic around a keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals beneath ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Orlando, Oliviero, Brandimart, And he, in air so daring heretofore, Do fierce and furious battle on that part, Which lies the furthest inland from the shore: Each leads a portion of those Aethiops swart, Ordered in equal bands beneath the four, Who at the walls, the gateways, or elsewhere, All give of prowess shining proofs ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... might be who had become in one moment more dear, more great to him, than all things else in heaven or earth. That fair-haired, rounded Italian? That fierce, luscious, aquiline-faced Jewess? That delicate, swart, sidelong-eyed Copt? No. She was Athenian, like himself. That tall, lazy Greek girl, then, from beneath whose sleepy lids flashed, once an hour, sudden lightnings, revealing depths of thought and feeling uncultivated, perhaps even unsuspected, by their possessor. Her? Or that, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side. One thing ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the royal harem, looking down upon the assembled flower of Moorish chivalry. Louder and louder clashed the cymbals, wilder and wilder grew the strain, till the blood of the desert race could no longer resist the martial delirium, and the swart nobles leaped to their feet; a thousand scimitars were bared, and the cry, "Allah il Allah!" shook the hall and awoke me, to find it broad daylight, and the room tingling with the electric music of the ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... As the swart Hillman crossed the springy floor and rapped gently upon a closed door, the Major saw that every black eye focussed upon it with eager expectancy. For a moment the room was palpitant with suspense. He looked to Terry for explanation, but turned back at the grinding crunch ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... When, in 1556, in Christ Church Hall, Palamon and Arcite was finished, outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared "that Palamon must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a right martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet like a Venus clad in armour." To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the boy of fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress of a princess, her compliment was still higher. It was a present of eight guineas,—for the penurious sovereign, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... blacks gazed hard at the speaker, the man who had been dragged into the first cutter through Mark, bending forward a little, with his soft opal eyeballs gleaming and a wonderful intense look in his swart face. There was a twitching about the temples, and his lower lip trembled a little, while one hand was raised; but as Bob Howlett finished, he uttered a low sigh, muttered a few words to his companion, and drew himself up, folding his ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... I the shades see hurrying up to kiss Each with his mate from every part, nor stay, Contenting them with momentary bliss. So one with other, all their swart array Along, do ants encounter snout with snout, So haply probe their fortune and their way." ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... had he lighted his pipe than De Leviston rose, shoving back his chair noisily. A cold, sneering contempt marked his swart face. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... thee a "gipsy," gracious Africa, and "lean" and "sunburnt," 'tis only I that call thee "honey-pale." Yea, and the violet is swart, and swart the lettered hyacinth, but yet these flowers are chosen the first in garlands. . . . Ah, gracious Africa, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice is drowsy sweet, and thy ways, I cannot tell ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... tanned face, garlanded with mirth, It hath the kingliest smile on earth— The swart brow, diamonded with sweat, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... unco black And unco blate," she said; "And they wear their mantles swart and side, No the ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... Irregulars were more dreadful to the view than any set of ruffians on which I ever set eyes. I would to heaven that the Czar of Muscovy had passed through Cabool and Lahore, and that I with my old Ahmednuggars stood on a fair field to meet him! Bless you, bless you, my swart companions in victory! through the mist of twenty years I hear the booming of your war-cry, and mark the glitter of your scimitars as ye rage in the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now a troglodyte; as in a dungeon deep He who so worshipped stars and you must write and eat and sleep; Like some swart djinnee of the mine your sunshine-loving slave Builds airy castles, meet for two, 'neath candles in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various |
