"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foliage shuts out the brightness of day and gives a somber hue to the scene. A torrent foams down the chasm, and in one place two mighty pillars interpose to prevent all passage. The stream, however, has worn its way through, and the road is hewn in the rock by its side. This cleft is the only entrance to a valley three or four miles long which lies in the very heart of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... the Popish villain!" said Lucy Passmore, aloud. "You lie still there, dear life, and settle your sperrits; you'm so safe as ever was rabbit to burrow. I'll see what happens, if I die for it!" And so saying, she squeezed herself up through a cleft to a higher ledge, from whence she could see what passed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... thought she, "we went nutting together—this very day last year; just such a day as to-day. Purple and gold were the lights on the hills; the leaves were just turning brown; here and there on the sunny slopes the stubble-fields looked tawny; down in a cleft of yon purple slate-rock the beck fell like a silver glancing thread; all just as it is to-day. And he climbed the slender, swaying nut-trees, and bent the branches for me to gather; or made a passage through the hazel copses, from time to time claiming a toll. Who could have ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... do well to descend from the top down a grand cleft in the rocks, very narrow and extremely steep, which is called the Great Kloof. At its bottom, just behind Cape Town, one sees in a stream-bed the granite rock on which the horizontal strata of sandstone that form Table ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... look down upon the broader valley beneath, with its quiet river flowing through the midst, reflecting white villages, forges, long rows of poplars, an occasional bridge, and here and there a long low island; or descending, he would find himself in some narrow ravine, cleft between grey rocky heights overgrown with brushwood and trailing plants, the road leading beside a marshy brook, full of rushes and forget-me-nots, and disappearing amongst the forest trees. All day long Graham ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of a Summer calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of the Golden City's skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the one side a frame-work of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad in refreshing green, and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys—and in front the grand sweep of the ocean; a brilliant, transparent green near the shore, bound and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray dashing against the reef, and further out the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... immediately ensued between two bodies of cavalry; where Robert, who was at the head of the Scots, engaged in single combat with Henry de Bohun, a gentleman of the family of Hereford; and at one stroke cleft his adversary to the chin with a battle-axe, in sight of the two armies. The English horse fled with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... drop of the marsh water, raised against the rays of light, became a living world, with creatures in strange forms, fighting and revelling—a world in a drop of water. And the sharp sword of Knowledge cleft the deep vault, and shone therein, where the basilisk killed, and the animal's body was dissolved in a death-bringing vapour: its claw extended from the fermenting wine-cask; its eyes were air, that burnt when the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... and, falling on one another, we stuck to the cleft, in the wooden walls of the hallway, leading to the yard. We did not have to wait long. . . . . . . . Soon Tanya passed with a quick pace, skipping over the plashes of melted snow and mud. Her face looked troubled. She disappeared behind the cellar door. Then the soldier went there slowly and ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... rode along the front of his army to encourage his men. Suddenly an English knight, Henry de Bohun, galloped across the field and tried to strike him down with a spear. Bruce saw his danger in time and with a quick stroke of his battle-axe cleft the knight's skull. ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... leaf of the wild banana was spread for me, and on it were laid smoking yams and other mealy jungle roots, which fill one, as young turkeys are filled during their rearing; a few fish, fresh caught in the stream and cooked over the fire in the cleft of a split stick, and the meat of some nameless animal—monkey I feared—which had been dried in the sun until it was as hard as a board, eked out the curious meal. I did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently left the doubtful meat alone, and when the cravings of my hunger ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic wreak On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break Thro' his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust and crude, The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude. As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring dame, Which the divine Ilithiae, that rule the painful frame Of human childbirth, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... accident had happened, but seeing not hearing Professor Wiseman's reassuring laugh and noticing him plunge after M. Desplaines, the boys rightly concluded that the aperture was a subterranean entrance to the foot of the falls. And so it proved. A steep flight of steps was cut in a deep cleft of the cliff down to the water's edge. A few minutes after they had begun the descent, the little party stood on the brink of the whirling pool into which the mighty falls roared their thousands of tons of water. Following M. Desplaines, they advanced down the stream to a point where a bend shut ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... miserable day and very few of the passengers appear, but by the afternoon the worst is over, and we can get out into our alcove. We are still labouring heavily in a blue-black sea, and can see a very little way as we are surrounded by mountains of water. Hurrah! There is a cleft over in the east, which means the storm is breaking. Our captain knows the law of cyclones and has judged rightly which way to turn to get out of the track of the storm. We have passed through a corner of it, and though we have ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the coast of Malekula southward. There are immense coral reefs attached to the coast, so that often the line of breakers is one or two miles away from the shore. These reefs are a solid mass of cleft coral stones constantly growing seaward. Their surface is more or less flat, about on a level with the water at low tide, so that it then lies nearly dry, and one can walk on the reefs, jumping over the wide crevices in which the sea ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... was a steep slope where rock ledges broke through the wet turf, and in one place a chasm cleft the hill. He could not see the bottom, for it was filled with mist, but the height of the rock wall hinted at its depth. A transverse ravine ran into the chasm, and he could hear the roar of a waterfall. Then the mist rolled up ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Lauener shook a book from his pocket; it was arrested by a rock about sixty or eighty feet below us. He wished to regain it, but I offered to supply its place, if he thought the descent too dangerous. He said he would make the trial, and parted from me. I thought it useless to remain idle. A cleft was before me, through which I must pass; so pressing my knees and back against its opposite sides, I gradually worked myself to the top. I descended the other face of the rock, and then, through a second ragged fissure, to the summit ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... of birthday cake, when the knife loosens it. The moment any part of this avalanche came up against a cliff, or rolled over into vast ravines, that much of the sliding forest tumbled up against itself, or fell into the gulch to instantly fill up the cleft and cause the remaining ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the day. And now above, and now below they flew, And near the earth the burning chariot drew. 240 The clouds disperse in fumes, the wondering Moon Beholds her brother's steeds beneath her own; The highlands smoke, cleft by the piercing rays, Or, clad with woods, in their own fuel blaze. Next o'er the plains, where ripened harvests grow, The running conflagration spreads below. But these are trivial ills; whole cities burn, And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn. The mountains kindle as the car ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... becomes wilder, and the fury of the torrent is evinced by the masses of debris strewed along its bed. Shortly after passing the picturesque defile called L'Etroit, where the river rushes through a deep cleft in the rocks, the valley opens out again, and we shortly come in sight of the ancient town of Vizille—the most prominent building in which is the chateau of the famous Duc de Lesdiguieres, governor of the province in the reign of Henry ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... top of one of the rocks. He first ordered the men to cut a quantity of seaweed and to tie it up in bundles, and then getting on to one of the rocks he crawled along on hands and knees till he reached the outer edge, when he found a cleft which exactly answered his wishes. Hauling up the bundles of seaweed, he placed them before him, so that he could look out without being seen himself. Without much difficulty he could crawl backwards and forwards to it from the boat. He had gone several times, when at length, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... less than a rabbit, generally inhabits forest districts; and as it is there a nocturnal animal, it spends the chief part of the day in its hiding-place—usually the cleft of a rock or the hollow of a decaying tree—twenty or thirty creatures congregating together. Here their nests are formed of soft leaves, where the young are placed till they are able to accompany their parents on their predatory expeditions. It is a gentle little creature, and when ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... up a "guide-board" of some sort, for his accommodation in following us. We therefore, upon several occasions, carried with us from the woods a few pieces, of three or four feet in length, which we planted at certain points, with a transverse stick through a cleft in the top, thus marking the direction he and his party were ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... With a mighty throw Antar hurled the lance and it found its mark, but the lion bounded forward and Antar stood unarmed. Then with a mighty wrench he jerked a young tree from the ground and with powerful blows beat down the attack of the lion. He gave a mighty swing and cleft the beast's skull and it fell down and died, and Antar departed for the tent of the king. Then the men marvelled, for none dared follow to see the terrible combat nor did people believe until they ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... On the east, the towers and cathedral roofs of Ferrara are seen rising above the woods that cover the plain; and the view is bounded by the Adriatic, which, like a thin line of blue, runs along the horizon. On the south and west is the hill country of the Apennines, among whose serrated peaks and cleft sides is many a lovely dell, rich in waters, and vines, and olive trees. The distant country towards the Mediterranean lay engulphed in a white mist. A violent electrical action was going on in it, which, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... lines on a face grey beneath the great brown hood of his duffle—a face so youthful, yet with the knowledge of the command of men writ plain thereon. The propellers have swirled faithfully and unceasingly; the good ship in consequence has cleft the passive waves. But who knows what hideous lurking peril of mine or torpedo we have not survived, what baleful eye has not glowered at us, itself unseen, and retired again to its foul underworld, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... resembled a cleft in the rocks, and looked out upon the road. Blocks of stone, flung one upon another without regard to order, formed steps from which to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... like Siegfried, the noble child, That song-and-saga wonder, Who, when his fabled sword was forged, His anvil cleft in sunder! ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... sight to the north and to the south. On this road, about half a mile within the southernmost extremity of Bracken Water, two hillocks met, leaving a natural opening between them and a path that went up to where the city stood. The dalesmen called the cleft between the hillocks the city gates; but why the gates and why the city none could rightly say. Folks had always given them these names. The wiser heads shook gravely as they told you that city should be sarnty, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... I know will ever tread where I was treading then, nor I ever be again in that strange wild cleft, so far out of the world; and yet, if years hence I should chance to wander there alone once more, I know the ghost of that romance will rise to meet me as I ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... is of a man cut in two, downwards, by the sweep of a sword—one half of him falls toward the spectator; the other half is elaborately drawn in its section—giving the profile of the divided nose and lips; cleft jaw—breast—and entrails; and this is done with farther pollution and horror of intent in the circumstances, which I do not choose to describe—still less some other of the designs which seek for fantastic extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror of death. But ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... to lay my life in the rocks of thy foundation, and not in moving sands which are tossed from shore to shore. May I cling to the rock that was cleft for me and trust ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... already hard pressed; but they fought like men, led courageously by Peters, the sailing master. As Dolores cleft the sparkling water, speeding out to them like a gorgeous sprite of the waves, men tugged at gun-tackles to swing a piece around to rake their own decks, for Yellow Rufe and his ruffians had swept the forecastle clear of defenders. And Dolores reached the vessel, climbed over the low-listing ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the long grass, and lifting the locks from Sylvia's forehead with a grateful touch, as she sat softly swaying with the swaying of the boat. Slowly they drifted out into the current, slowly Warwick cleft the water with reluctant stroke, and slowly Sylvia's mind woke from its trance of dreamy delight, as with a gesture ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... almost perpendicularly, then descending in the midst of rocks into deep dells; then winding beautifully round the side of a steep hill, the rocks above overhanging them in fearful uncertainty. In every cleft of the hills, wherever there appeared the least soil, were cottages, surrounded with small plantations of millet, yams, and plantains, giving a beautiful variety to the rude scenery. The road continued rising, hill above hill, for ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the man who had been its head she found such a portrait as love alone could have painted. He was described as to the modelling of his features, the light and expression of his eyes; the way his dark hair fell over his "broade browe"—even the cleft of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... had never seen before, but the elderly gentleman had evidently often seen him, was most probably a near relative, to judge by the frigidity and insolence of his nod and general demeanour. This old person had the Army stamp about him, and a very decided chin with a cleft ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... a continuation of the Nepean River, after the junction of the latter with a considerable stream, called the Grose, issues from a remarkable cleft in the Blue Mountains in the vicinity of the beautiful town of Richmond, about forty miles from Sydney. Along the base of these mountains the Hawkesbury flows in a northerly direction, fed by numerous tributary mountain ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... you place me rather in a cleft stick,' said the doctor, looking at the agitated face of the man with his shrewd little eyes. 'I don't like acting in the dark. One should always look before he ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... consecration and absolution, and by means of fire a man may break through a taboo, or permantang. Should a man have a fruit-tree, for instance, which he wishes to protect, he places about it several cleft sticks with stones thrust in the clefts, and the stones are told to guard the tree and afflict with dire diseases any pilferer of the fruit. Now, should a friend of the owner see this sign of permantang and yet wish some of the fruit, let him but build ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... facing towards the Lord. In directness and point, it is a model for earnest revival preaching,—rather, for all preaching to unsaved souls, outside the church, or within it. All of these will be found in some subterfuge, which must be ruthlessly torn down, before it will be abandoned for the cleft Rock. ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no companion but his staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night, and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and steal a kiss from the mountain-maid at parting. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... gives to his mother 'to throw away the worser part of her cleft heart,' Pietro ridicules in ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... a new sense of observation alive in her, Jasmine saw the inherent native drowsiness of the nature, the love of sleep and good living, the healthy primary desires, the striving, adventurous, yet, in one sense, unambitious soul. The very cleft in the chin, like the alluring dimple of a child's cheek, enlarged and hardened, was suggestive of animal beauty, with its parallel suggestion of indolence. Yet, somehow, too ample as he was both in fact and by suggestion to the imagination there was an apparent underlying force, a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the east side of the village, happily remains what nature left it, a stony and desolate valley, without a single object to divert the eye from the scene before it. This is a solid mass of limestone, of perhaps equal height with the Cove, cleft asunder by some great convulsion of nature, and opening its "ponderous and marble jaws" on the right and left. The sensation of horror on approaching it is increased by the projection of either side from its base, so that the two connivant rocks, though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... a thousand throats cleft the air, and with its last notes came the rattle of musketry from the brow of the hill across the little ravine. The bullets sang viciously overhead. They cut the leaves and branches with sharp little crashes, and struck ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... center a fireplace of stones with a fire smouldering. At one side a heap of leaves and small twigs for a bed, a stump for a seat, and lying on top of it a sort of stone axe, made by inserting a sharp stone into the cleft of a sapling and tying it into place with a wild-grape tendril. Pegged out on the ground to cure was a rabbit skin, indifferently scraped. It made our aluminum kettle and canvas tepee look like a marble-vestibuled apartment on ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you that they'll ride, jump and slice the lemon better than any of your troops in Cairo. They're practical people, not dreamers who worry about etiquette and the fine points. Now just you take a good look at their faces. You'll note that they're bronzed, strong, with a cleft in the chin, and a jaw-bone which speaks volumes. In fact, their whole make-up suggests a sort of rude strength, which can face the rough and tumble of life. They get that from their fathers, who, like my dear old dad, were the pioneers of Australia. These men landed poor and had to fight drought, ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... little cut in the bark, just large enough for them to put their fingers in, and with this help he could manage to tear the tree in two, so that the heart should run no risk of damage. The elves did as he told them without a thought; then he quickly drew out the axe, which had been sticking into the cleft, and behold! all their fingers were imprisoned ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... of revolt had lifted its head within me, for through a cleft in the future, I saw myself already as the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, with a jingling bunch of seals ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... them! You filled their glasses; You 'cut in' at their games of bridge; you left Your work to drop in on their dancing classes Before the day was cleft In twain by noontide. When the night waxed late You led your partner forth to demonstrate The newest steps before a cheering throng, And Time and Peace danced by ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of which I speak there flows a great river, and its name is Akes. This formerly watered the lands of these nations which have been mentioned, being divided into five streams and conducted through a separate cleft in the mountains to each separate nation; but from the time that they have come to be under the Persians they have suffered as follows:—the king built up the clefts in the mountains and set gates at each cleft; and so, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... stream, which ran by the end of the rocks, composing a channel by which coasting vessels could run up and discharge their cargoes for the village of Torwich, only part of which was visible at this spot. A natural cleft in the vein opened through the centre of these singular rocks, resembling a lofty gothic arch, and it was my favourite pastime to sit here in the most perfect seclusion, reading "sermons in stones" and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... pull'd up—as I judg'd, about twelve paces' distance from the edge—and after considering for a second, began to move again; only now he worked a little to the right. And soon I saw the intention of this: for just here the cliff's lip was cleft by a fissure—very like that in Scawfell which we were used to call the Lord's Rake, only narrower—that ran back into the field and shelved out gently at the top, so that a man might easily scramble some way down it, tho' how far I could not then ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... to the corner a large lump of rock and earth was breaking away, a cleft was opening, so that presently, it seemed possible at any moment, the mass would fall headlong into the blue deeps below. This impending avalanche was not in my path along the Bisse, it was no sort of danger to me, but in some way its insecurity gave a final touch to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... men together. Peter would never have dreamed of going with the messengers if he had not had his narrowness beaten out of him on the housetop, and Cornelius would never have dreamed of sending to Joppa if he had not seen the angel. The cleft between Jew and Gentile was so wide that God's hand had to be applied on both sides to press the separated parts together. He had plainly done it, and that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... be a sound... as the riving of wood... a sound as of thunder coming up from the ground. A cleft will run like a mouse across the floor. There will be a red light, and then no light at all, and in the darkness Thek ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... heaven's applause support the virtuous wrong'd, And 'midst his state the despot's fears prolong'd. Thou tyrant, yes! the declaration God Himself hath utter'd—"I'm the avenging rod!" Words wing'd with fate and fire! oh, not in vain Ye cleft the air, and swept Gomorrah's plain, When, dark idolatry unmask'd, she stood The mark of heaven—a fiery solitude! And still ye sped—still mark'd the varied page In every time—through each revolving age— Wherever man trampled his fellow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... villainous-looking fellow, with one eye, and nothing on but a ragged pair of trousers fastened round the middle with a greasy leather strap. In his wool, however, were stuck several small distended bladders such as are generally worn by medicine-men and witch-doctors. With his left hand he held a long stick, cleft at one end, and in the cleft was ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... seated here being certain of realization. To the west of the Wishing Chair a solitary pillar rises from the sea, the "Gray Man's Love." Look to the mainland, and the mountain presents a deep, narrow cleft, with perpendicular sides, the "Gray Man's Path." Out in the sea, but unfortunately not often in sight, is the "Gray Man's Isle," at present inhabited only by the Gray Man himself. As the island, however, appears but once in seventeen years, and ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... hands the gallant king Swung round his sword, and to the chin Clove Eyvind down: his faithless mail Against it could no more avail, Than the thin plank against the shock When the ship's side beats on the rock. By his bright sword with golden haft Thro' helm, and head, and hair, was cleft The Danish champion; and amain, With terror smitten, fled ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... sightseeing; and it was late in the autumn of 18— when I reached Lindau. Lake Constance lay before me, a pale, green sheet of water, hemmed in on the south by bold mountain ranges, filling the interim between the Rhine valley and the long undulating ridges of the Canton Thurgau. These heights, cleft at intervals by green smiling valleys and deep ravines, are only the front of table-land stretching away like an inclined plane, and dotted with scattered houses and cloistering villages. The deep green of forest and pasture land ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... hill, beyond the cleft of the river Avon, he could see the smoke and the church towers of the town of Bristol, and beyond it, the slime of the water of the Bristol Channel; and nearer, on one side, the spire of Elmwood Church looked up, and, on the other, the ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as Massa Lubrense, a little town on the steep shore; over against it the giant cliffs of Capri, every cleft and scar and jutting rock discernible through the pellucid air, every minutest ruggedness casting its clear-cut shadow. But the surpassing glory was the prospect at the Cape of Sorrento when they reached it on their walk back. Before ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... in foam and spray Wave after wave Breaks on the rocks.—which, stern and gray, Shoulder the broken tide away,— Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft and cave. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... my window, leaving bed, By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft, On those brave boys (Ah War! thy theft); Some marching feet Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft; Wakeful I mused, while in the street Far footfalls died away ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... precipices ran east and west and was full of the morning sunlight, which lit to the westward the mass of fallen mountain that closed the descending gorge. Below him it seemed there was a precipice equally steep, but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of chimney-cleft dripping with snow-water, down which a desperate man might venture. He found it easier than it seemed, and came at last to another desolate alp, and then after a rock climb of no particular difficulty, to a steep slope of trees. He took his bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... The rock is still shown, bearing the imprints of the hero's fingers, each cleft large enough to ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... blast, And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once. Nor less composure waits upon the roar Of distant floods, or on the softer voice Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length In matted grass that with a livelier green Betrays the secret of their silent course. Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds, But animated nature sweeter still, To soothe and satisfy ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Keel upward, and mast downward, in the heavens, And solid turrets topsy-turvy in air: And here is truth; but an it please thee not, Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me. For truly as thou sayest, a Fairy King And Fairy Queens have built the city, son; They came from out a sacred mountain-cleft Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand, And built it to the music of their harps. And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted, son, For there is nothing in it as it seems Saving the King; though some there be that hold The King a shadow, and the city real: ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... on the right, is one of the most charming places in Surrey. Box Hill (590 feet), which may easily be ascended from the well-placed Burford Bridge Hotel, is on the left. The road, river and rail run through a deep cleft in the North Downs forming the Mole valley and facing the sandstone hills of the Weald. In the shallow depression between the two ranges lies Dorking (23-1/4 m.). The town is pleasant but has nothing of much interest ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... of the Mariposa grove belong to the gigantea species. The sempervirens, however, reaches the diameter of 16 feet, and some of the greatest trees of this species are in the Bohemian Club grove. It lies in a cleft of the mountains; and up one hillside there runs a natural out of door stage ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... looking up saw that they were passing a portion of the coast of Seiland which was more than usually picturesque. Facing them was a great cavernous cleft in the rocks, tinted with a curious violet hue intermingled with bronze,—and in the strong sunlight these colors flashed with the brilliancy of jewels, reflecting themselves in the pale slate-colored sea. By Errington's orders the yacht slackened speed, and glided along ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... broadsword, he swore that no quarter should be given to any captain that defended his ship, at the same time aiming a full stroke at my head. To avoid it I stooped so low that the quarter-deck rail received the blow, and was cut in at least an inch deep, which happily saved my head from being cleft asunder, and the sword breaking at the same time with the force of his blow on the rail, it prevented his cutting ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... dispersed. She went on, saying, "Yes, I see.... But how would that help you?... Your brother has passed his examination?" so sensibly, that he had constantly to keep his brain in check; and all the time she was in fancy looking up through a telescope at white shadow-cleft disks which were other worlds, until she felt herself possessed of two bodies, one walking by the river with Denham, the other concentrated to a silver globe aloft in the fine blue space above the scum of vapors ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... commingling with the distant horizon. At the left, towering a thousand feet above the circumjacent ranges, are the glowering peaks of the Yellowstone, their summits half enveloped in clouds, or glittering with perpetual snow. At our feet, apparently within jumping distance, cleft centrally by its arrowy river, carpeted with verdure, is the magnificent valley of the Gallatin, like a rich emerald in its gorgeous mountain setting. Fascinating as was this scene we gave it but a glance, and turned our horses' heads towards the vast unknown. Descending ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... their temporary camp in good time for the mid-day meal; they therefore decided to have it before proceeding farther. As soon as the meal was over the camp was struck, and the entire party proceeded in the direction of the gully, or cleft, upon their arrival at which preparations were at once made for a possible sojourn of a few days; and while those preparations were being made, Earle and Dick, carrying a pickaxe and shovel, as well as their rifles, started ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... two people coming slowly in at the open door of the church peering at her, had made one quick motion which released the bells, and dashed into the first notes that came to her mind, the old hymn, "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, Let Me Hide Myself in Thee!" But instead of playing it tenderly, grandly, as she usually did, with all the sweetness of the years in which saints and sinners have sung it and found refuge and comfort ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Pringle, peering into the shadows of the cleft. "I can't see you. And how am I going to get to you? There are twenty men with point-blank range. I'm muddy, scratched, bruised, tired and hungry, sleepy and cross—and there's thirty feet in the open between here and you, and it nearly broad daylight. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... in the shade of the towering hillside, the single beam of light shining from an uncurtained window alone faintly revealing her slenderness of figure in its red drapery. No other gleam anywhere cleft the prevailing darkness of the night, and the only perceptible sound was that of horses' hoofs dying away in the distance. The girl was not crying, although one of her hands was held across her eyes, and her bosom rose and fell tumultuously ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... spies A man that's handsome, valiant, wise, If he can kill him, thinks t' inherit 25 His wit, his beauty, and his spirit As if just so much he enjoy'd As in another is destroy'd For when a giant's slain in fight, And mow'd o'erthwart, or cleft down right, 30 It is a heavy case, no doubt; A man should have his brains beat out Because he's tall, and has large bones; As men kill beavers for their stones. But as for our part, we shall tell 35 The naked truth of what befel; And as an equal friend ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... was a tree without either fruit or leaves, and a body without a soul. Should I, said he to himself, by good or ill fortune, chance to encounter some giant, as is common in knight-errantry, and happen to lay him prostrate on the ground, transfixed with my lance, or cleft in two, or, in short, overcome him and have him at my mercy, would it not be proper to have some lady to whom I may send him as a trophy of my valor? Then when he comes into her presence, throwing himself at her feet, he may thus make his humble submission: "Lady, I am the giant ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... Unfathomably deep, mother of woes. Not mountains pil'd on mountains would close up Th' infernal entrance: they would but increase Its native ruggedness. No path leads down To those abhorred deeps. Close by the gate Impendent rocks with fiery whirlwinds cleft For ever fell into the deep abyss, Continuous ruin. —— —— On the hideous brink Of this great tomb, where Death nor sleeps, nor dies, In dreadful silence, with the wretch ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... in the mountain tops has a resemblance to the fortification-looking rocks at McGilligan, but they are neither so lofty nor so abrupt. In one place there was a mighty cleft in the rock, as if some giant had attempted to cut a slice off the front of the rock and had not quite succeeded. I was told by my driver that an old man lived in the cleft behind the rock; it was said also that a ghost haunted it. I wonder if ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... his heels I dared not venture, as long as his tall form passed like a shadow against the white light that the stars let in through the forest cleft, where ran the noisy stream. But presently he turned off, and for a moment I thought to lose him in the utter blackness of the primeval trees. And surely would have had I not seen close to me a vast and smoothly slanting ledge of rock which the stars shining on made silvery, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... places thrown down; the west gable was blown clean away, and the very ground, on the side where the King's chamber had been, was torn as with a hundred ploughshares. Certain trees that grew hard by were cleft and riven as with a thunderbolt, and stones were sticking in their timber like wedges ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin—the first of the dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, and backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of buildings in a cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown habit is this, and these are the sandals, that come and go by hills of finer, sharper, and loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an Umbrian sky. Just such a Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, and from the foot of its final crucifix you can ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... gallant comrades as men ever had—for, ere long, Black Harry had followed the smart foretopman to the silent land, succumbing to the dangerous wound he had received towards the end of the struggle from an Indian tomahawk wielded by a powerful arm, which had almost cleft the poor fellow's skull in twain; and, after so many months of close companionship, the death of the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... noon. The topmost cleft That grudged him footing on the mountain scars He planted and despaired not; till he left His vines soft breathing to the host of stars. He wrought, he tilled; and even as he sang, The creatures of his planting laughed to scorn The ancient threat of deserts where ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... made to certain accidents of embryology during the very early days or weeks of the formative period of the embryo. Common illustrations of such deforming developmental accidents are harelip, cleft palate, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... these excellent trees decked with flowers!" But the faultless Savitri continued to watch her lord in all his moods, and recollecting the words of the celestial sage, she considered her husband as already dead. And with heart cleft in twain, that damsel, replying to her lord, softly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... which irked him sore, in truth. He voided Rudeger, for still he had hope of life. Then the margrave's men rushed at their foes; in knightly wise one saw them follow their lord. In their hands they bare their keen-edged swords, the which cleft there many a helm and lordly shield. The tired warriors dealt the men of Bechelaren many a mighty blow, that cut smooth and deep through the shining mail, ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... Sands I came into that cleft or defile, 'twixt bush-girt, steepy cliffs, called Skeleton Cove, where I had builded me a forge with bellows of goatskin. Here, too, I had set up an anvil (the which had come ashore in a wreck, together with divers other tools) and a bench for my carpentry. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... way, they knew, must soon be smooth and plain When gods could change to gold. Gold, gold can pass the tyrant's sentinel, Can shiver rocks with more resistless blow Than is the thunder's. Argos' prophet fell, He and his house laid low, And all for gain. The man of Macedon Cleft gates of cities, rival kings o'erthrew By force of gifts: their cunning snares have won Rude captains and their crew. As riches grow, care follows: men repine And thirst for more. No lofty crest I raise: Wisdom that thought forbids, Maecenas mine, The knightly order's praise. He ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... water rushed from a cleft in the rocks, and, on the left of the little bench, where Xanthe sat, formed a clear, transparent pool, whose edges were inclosed by exquisitely-polished, white-marble blocks. Every reddish pebble, every smooth bit of snowy quartz, every point ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fearful apparatus, consists of nine distinct and well-marked organs; an interior or upper lip, consisting of a plate deeply cleft and capable of opening enormously; two true jaws or powerful mandibles; and two pairs of jointed organs called (maxillary) palpi, and two lower jaws. The mandibles and jaws move laterally from ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... the axil of a bract; no bractioles interspersed, hence we may expect racemose or spicate partial inflorescences. The perianth is unilateral, 5 cleft, the two smaller segments, which are intermediate, being internal, or belonging to a different series. Within this petaloid perianth is a membranous one, together with a boat-shaped bracteolate body, entire. The stamens are five, evidently opposite to ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... a neck or saddle of drifted snow lying in a gap of the mountain rampart which flanked the last curve of the glacier. Under the cliffs on either hand, like a moat beneath the ramparts, lay a yawning ice-cleft or bergschrund, formed by the drawing away of the steadily moving Barrier ice from the rocks. Across this moat and leading up to the gap in the ramparts, the Gateway provided a solid causeway. To climb this and descend its reverse face gave the easiest access ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the thick black cloud is cleft, And the Moon is at its side: 315 Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning falls with never a jag A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... girl gowned in pale blue. The shoulders, slender and rounded, seemed to emerge from clear water made heaven blue by the reflection of the sky. The hair, so blonde it dazzled, made a radiant frame for the lovely face. The red mouth, half open, the white teeth, the wilful little chin, lightly cleft by an oblong dimple, made this delightful little maiden one of the most dangerous weapons that ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... all law affairs. Canning and Huskisson are at the head of the other party, who may be said to have taken the Cabinet by storm, through sheer dint of talent. I should like to see how these ingredients are working; but by the grace of God, I will take care of putting my finger into the cleft stick. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... follows the game-trail of deer and goat and cougar and bear across the slope to the watering-places where springs gush out from the rocks. One has only to look close enough {29} to see the little cleft footprint of the deer round these springs. To the miners, penetrating the wilds north of the Fraser, the caribou proved a godsend during that lean first winter. The miners spelled it 'cariboo,' and thus gave the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... volume as it drew nearer. At last Lady Tennys uttered an exclamation and pointed toward an opening in the ridge far to the left of the village. A string of natives came winding slowly, solemnly from this cleft—men, women ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... the shelves of a grey cliff, that yet Riseth in Babylonian mass above, In a benched cleft, as in the mouldered chair Of grey-beard Time himself, I sit alone, And gaze with a keen wondering happiness Out o'er the sea. Unto the circling bend That verges Heaven, a vast luminous plain It stretches, changeful as a lover's dream — Into great spaces mapped by ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... these coalesce at their lower portion, forming a rudiment of the true 'body' of the uterus in the Human subject. This part increases at the expense of the lateral 'cornua' in the higher Herbivora and Carnivora; but even in the lower Quadrumana, the uterus is somewhat cleft at its summit."[6] And this process of transverse integration, which is still more striking when observed in its details, is accompanied by parallel though less important changes in the opposite sex. Once more; in the increasing commissural connexion of the cerebral hemispheres, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... pleasantly in Paris, the train bore them swiftly beyond Pontarlier and down the steep gradient of the Gorges de l'Areuse towards Neuchatel. The Val de Travers, through which the railway slips across the wooded Jura into Switzerland, is like a winding corridor cleft deep between savage and precipitous walls. There are dizzy glimpses into the gulf below. With steam shut off and brakes partly on, the train curves sharply, hiding its eyes in many tunnels lest the passengers turn giddy. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the doleful chart; See, where these mountains meet— The clouds are thick around their head, The mists around their feet: Cast anchor here; 'tis deep and safe Within the rocky cleft; The little anchor on the right, The great one on ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... 7.18 went half a mile north-north-west to a cleft hill on the left bank of the river; at 7.35 went three-quarters of a mile north; at 7.52 went half a mile north-east; at 8 went quarter of a mile east-north-east to where we got any quantity of figs from trees like the Moreton Bay fig but ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... She was afflicted with most frightful ailments, her wounds festered, and worms bred in her putrefying flesh. Erysipelas, that terrible malady of the Middle Ages, consumed her. Her right arm was eaten away, a single muscle held it to the body, her brow was cleft in two, one of her eyes became blind, and the other so weak that it ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... upon the sea, it bears two forest trees standing close together, with a wide spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine extending the whole length of the island is full of bushes; and presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high side spreads itself out on the other into a shallow depression abutting on a small strip of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... was carved in the solid land by the force of pre-Adamite glaciers, or whether it is a Titanic cleft formed by the breaking off of Greenland from Grant Land, is a question still undetermined by geologists; but for difficulty and danger there is no place to compare with it ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... I found there, bolt upright On my bench, as if I had never left it? —Never flung out on the common at night, Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, Or the laboratory of the Professor! For the Vision, that was true, I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place; Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... the Indians of Bern call Llamas, the Chilese, Chilihneque, and the Spaniards, Carneros de la tierra, or native sheep. The heads of these animals are small in proportion to their bodies, and are somewhat in shape between the head of a horse and that of a sheep, the upper lips being cleft like that of a hare, through which they can spit to the distance of ten paces against any one who offends them, and if the spittle happens to fall on the face of a person, it causes a red itchy spot. Their necks are long, and concavely bent downwards, like that of a camel, which animal ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... beneath us, is defiling across the river by a bridge of boats, near the junction of the Rhine and the Neckar, where the oval town of Mannheim, standing in the fork between the two rivers, has from here the look of a human head in a cleft stick. Martial music from many bands strikes up as the crossing is effected, and the undulating columns twinkle as ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... squatted there in the same curious attitude as their lord's, as if in attendance upon him in a neighbouring ante-chamber. They were the skeletons of women—so our professional bone-scanner immediately told us—and each of their skulls had been carefully cleft right down the middle by a single blow from a sharp stone hatchet. But they were not the victims intended for the piece de resistance at the funeral banquet. They were clearly the two wives of the deceased chieftain, killed on his tomb by his son and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... cleft A broken pavement may have left, Is like the star that, still and sweet, Shines where the house-tops ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... passing in by this cleft in the rockwork, however, he found awaiting him there the person who had summoned him—the so-called General Von Zoesch. Calabressa was somewhat startled, but he said, "Your humble servant, Excellenza," and removed ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... witnessed, and that would be inferior, from the inevitable defect of its fleeting character. Here the tints, sometimes vivid, sometimes shadowed down, were always equally fair: light blue heights, streaked, perhaps, with scarlet and shaded off to lilac or purple; a cleft of bright orange; a broad peach-coloured expanse, veined in delicate circles and wavy lines of exquisite grace; sometimes yellow and purple stripes; sometimes an isolated steep of every hue flaming in the sun, and then, like a young queen on a ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a slight open wound in his chin, and he rode up to our door and said: "Hardy's hit. A ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... on which we could walk upright the greater part of the way. The climb up the escarpment itself was a stiff one, and had to be negotiated principally on all-fours, but on the way up I discovered that there was an enormous cleft some miles to the right which would probably have afforded an easier ascent. I had not time to explore it on this particular day, but I made a mental note to do so ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... in wizard Merchiston; and my Brown innocent aides in home and husbandry Wonder askance. What ails the boss? they ask. Him, richest of the rich, an endless task Before the earliest birds or servants stir Calls and detains him daylong prisoner? He whose innumerable dollars hewed This cleft in the boar and devil-haunted wood, And bade therein, from sun to seas and skies, His many-windowed, painted palace rise Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill, A wonder in the forest ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... terrifies our 'English' Theatre so much as a Ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody Shirt. A Spectre has very often saved a Play, though he has done nothing but stalked across the Stage, or rose through a Cleft of it, and sunk again without speaking one Word. There may be a proper Season for these several Terrors; and when they only come in as Aids and Assistances to the Poet, they are not only to be excused, but to be applauded. Thus the sounding of the Clock in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the ice, as we'd begun to think were everlasting; and we all gathered towards the bows, and the captain called to th' man at the helm to keep her course, and cocked his head, and began to walk the quarter-deck jaunty again. And we came to a great cleft in th' long weary rock of ice; and the sides o' th' cleft were not jagged, but went straight sharp down into th' foaming waters. But we took but one look at what lay inside, for our captain, with a loud cry to God, bade the helmsman ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... feathery row of beautiful casuarinas, and behind is a tangled jungle, without fine timber; game is plentiful, from the traces we saw on the sand; hogs in great numbers; troops of monkeys, and the print of an animal with cleft hoofs, either a large deer, tapir, or cow. We saw no game save a tribe of monkeys, one of which, a female, I shot, and another quite young, which we managed to capture alive. The captive, though the young of the black monkey, is greyish, with the exception ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... now necessary to clear the way for our departure. I got into the first tub, and managed to get the boat into the cleft in the ship's side, by way of a haven; I then returned, and, with the axe and saw, cut away right and left all that could obstruct our passage. Then we secured some oars, to be ready for ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... of his many idle hours in the dim, close-smelling atmosphere of the place. Tokyo and Rome and Gallipoli came to him. He saw beautiful tiger-women twining fair, false arms about the stalwart but yielding forms of young men with cleft chins. He was only mildly interested. He talked to anyone who would talk to him, though he was naturally a shy man. He talked to the barber, the grocer, the druggist, the streetcar conductor, the milkman, the iceman. But the price of wheat ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... eat durian which, in falling from the tree, has broken, or stuck in a cleft without reaching the ground, nor any kind of fruit that does not fall straight to earth, nor sago from a palm tree which chanced to become entangled by a branch instead of falling directly to the ground, nor the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz |
