"Couchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 996, at which time it is said this remarkable pulpit was put up; and notwithstanding its great age, which appears to be 832 years, it is still in good condition. At the foot of the steps is a large figure, intended to represent a lion couchant, but carved after so grotesque a fashion, as to puzzle the naturalist in his attempts to determine its proper classification. In other respects the ornamental sculpture about the pulpit is neat and appropriate, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... floor. In the aisle stands another altar-tomb, which has the sides panelled and adorned with shields of arms and bears the figure of an earlier Sir Thomas Markenfield, clad in armour of the period between Poitiers and Agincourt, and wearing a very curious collar of park palings with a stag couchant in front, possibly (as has been suggested) a badge of adherence to the party of Lancaster. The figure of Lady Markenfield has, unfortunately, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... octagon of S. Gottardo, or in the string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the church fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the mandorlato of Verona, supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant lions, inserting polished slabs on their facades, and building huge sarcophagi into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and this marble of Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to health—on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal—on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice—on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride. At bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay—the schoolboy whips his taxed top—the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road;—and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent.—flings himself ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... markt: about them round A Lion now he stalkes with fierie glare, Then as a Tiger, who by chance hath spi'd In some Purlieu two gentle Fawnes at play, Strait couches close, then rising changes oft His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground Whence rushing he might surest seise them both Grip't in each paw: when Adam first of men To first of women Eve thus moving speech, Turnd him all eare to heare new utterance flow. 410 Sole partner and sole part ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... chanoine; Sans choix je mets dans mon butin Maistre Claude, maistre Martin, Dame Luce, dame Perrete, &c. J'en prends un dans le temps qu'il pleure A quelque autre, au contraire a l'heure Qui demesurement il rit; Je donne le coup qui le frit. J'en prends un, pendant qu'il se leve; En se couchant l'autre j'enleve. Je prends le malade et le sain L'un aujourd'hui, l'autre le demain. J'en surprends un dedans son lit, L'autre a l'estude quand il lit. J'en surprends un le ventre plein Je mene l'autre par la faim. J'attrape l'un pendant qu'il prie, Et l'autre pendant ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the hospitality tality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains,—great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colors, purple, etc. We thought we had got into fairy-land. But that went off (as it never came again; while we stayed, we had no ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... shrink and contract At the sound of the distant and dim cataract, In the presence of nature's immensities? Say, Have you hung o'er the torrent, bedew'd with its spray, And, leaving the rock-way, contorted and roll'd, Like a huge couchant Typhon, fold heaped over fold, Track'd the summits from which every step that you tread Rolls the loose stones, with thunder below, to the bed Of invisible waters, whose mistical sound Fills with awful suggestions the dizzy profound? And, laboring onwards, at last ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... western shore of lake Champlain in the summer of 1891. Across the water in the State of Vermont I had constantly before my eyes a majestic mountain form which the earlier French pioneers had named "Le Lion Couchant," but which their plainer-minded Yankee successors preferred to call "The Camel's Hump." It really looked like a sleeping lion; the head was especially definite; and when, in the course of some ten years, I found the scheme for a story about a summer hotel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which, though I had seen it several times before, filled my mind with admiration and interest. Viewed from this situation, it certainly, if it resembles any animate object in nature, has something of the appearance of a terrible couchant lion, whose stupendous head menaces Spain. Had I been dreaming, I should almost have concluded it to be the genius of Africa, in the shape of its most puissant monster, who had bounded over the sea from the clime of sand and sun, bent on the destruction of the rival continent, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow |
