"Poised" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... darting from peak to peak in a swift and dazzling flight as he talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her cheek, her neck, straining her so close to him that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it poised above the memory of an old book of Renan's, "The Abbess Juarre," in which the eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily attempted to demonstrate that if the world unmistakably announced its finish within ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... to Warden, as it was apparent to Jordan—who poised his pencil over the pad of papers and did not move a muscle—that Lawler's wrath was struggling mightily within him. It was also apparent that Lawler's was a cold wrath, held in check by a sanity that forbade surrender to it—a sanity that ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... it in silent admiration. On the central stalk stood poised the figure of a girl so exquisitely formed and colored and so lovely in the expression of her delicate features that Dorothy thought she had never seen so sweet and adorable a creature in all her life. The maiden's gown was soft as satin and fell about her in ample folds, ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... watching for his chance to thrust the steel bar in just where it would inflict the most damage. Then raising the bar quickly, he poised for the blow. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... true, The submarine commander and his followers had succeeded in eluding the crew of the Ventura and dashed to the rail. There they poised themselves a brief moment, and then flung themselves headlong into the sea. Directly, dripping, they appeared on the deck of the submarine and dashed ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... poised his sword as if about to fling it at him, then moved by a sudden impulse he rushed forward, with a cry of vengeance, and began attacking Mole furiously with ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... a hated and persecuted race; without opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. Scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the House of Commons, he simply says, "The time will come when you will hear me." The time did come, and the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of accounts, written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a High Dutch commentator, or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his eyes for a moment, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... convict poised his weapon for deadly work. On the instant the rumble of wheels met the ears ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... wore on, the gray of the sky paled to a dead man's hue and the wind lessened, but the waves were still mountain high. One moment we poised, like the gulls that now screamed about us, upon some giddy summit, the sky alone above and around us; the next we sank into dark green and glassy caverns. Suddenly the wind fell away, veered, and rose again like ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... great number of people going in the other direction. Women were bearing loads of yams. Chiefs' sons minced along, their spears poised in their left hands at just the proper angle, their bangles jingling, their right hands carried raised in a most affected manner. Their social ease was remarkable, especially in contrast with the awkwardness of the lower poverty-stricken or menial castes. The latter ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... sun stands fast, And the sea burns bright, And the flight of them past Is no more than the flight Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... she felt his weight she uttered a scream of rage, and raised herself upright upon her hind legs, standing so admirably poised that Manuel was only able to retain his seat by clinging with both arms around her neck. Unable to rid herself of her burden in this manner, she planted her fore feet firmly on the earth, and elevated her hind ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... swayed and deflected from their paths by the gravitational attraction of adjacent members of the same system. Perplexing though the arrangement of such a scheme may be to our conception, yet, each orb has been weighed, poised, and adjusted by Infinite Wisdom, to perform its intricate motions in synchronous harmony with other members of the system—all moving in unison like the parts of a complicated piece of mechanism, and maintained in stable equilibrium ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... out from the rock. And now he saw that she was almost as tall as himself, and that she was as slim as a reed and as beautifully poised as the wild narcissus that sways like music to every call of the wind. She had tucked up her sleeves, baring her round white arms close to the shoulders, and as she looked steadily at him before answering his question she flung ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... instruction, and—unless when it has been taught to look for it during many generations—will expect none. This may be seen in the case of the humming-bird sphinx moth, which, as Mr. Darwin writes, "shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled, and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; AND NO ONE I BELIEVE HAS EVER SEEN this moth learning to perform its difficult task, which ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... one with things, of Nature's essence and core, knit of strong timbers, most like a wood and its inhabitants. There are in him sod and shade, woods and waters manifold, the mould and mist of earth and sky. Self-poised and sagacious as any denizen of the elements, he has the key to every animal's brain, every plant, every shrub; and were an Indian to flower forth, and reveal the secrets hidden in his cranium, it would not be more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... wrapped in night, the scudding bark, (That seemed, self-poised amid the dark, Through upper air to leap,) Beheld, from thy most fearful height, The rapid dolphin's azure light Cleave, like a living meteor bright, The darkness ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Master of Life, he seemed equally disposed to think that they might be rendered quite as useful, in the actual state of things. His countenance lighted with stern pleasure, as he tried the elasticity of the bow, and poised the well-balanced spear. The glance he bestowed on the shield was more cursory and indifferent; but the exultation with which he threw himself on the back of his favoured war-horse was so great, as to break through the forms of Indian reserve. He rode ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fill up an odd corner, and as there generally is an odd corner at every party, and I do not stand at a short notice, I eat more good dinners than most people. I am not a fool, and yet not too clever, so that poised in that happy medium, I hear all, see all, know a great deal of what is going on, and hold my tongue. When people inhabit their town houses, I spend the whole day going from one to the other. I consider a house the only safe part of the metropolis. Were I to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... Whig[804];' I admired the virtues of Lord Russell, and pitied his fall. I should have been a Whig at the Revolution. There have been periods since, in which I should have been, what I now am, a moderate Tory, a supporter, as far as my little influence extends, of a well-poised balance between the crown and people: but should the scale preponderate against the Salus populi, that moment may it be said 'The ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a stuffed M.P. in a glass case at each end of the mantelpiece in my little boudoir. They need not be of the rarest and most expensive kinds. A pretty Labour Member with his mouth open and a rustic background, and a Coalitionist lightly poised on the ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... and style, "Heidi" may none the less lay claim to rank as a world classic. In the first place, both background and characters ring true. The air of the Alps is wafted to us in every page; the house among the pines, the meadows, and the eagle poised above the naked rocks form a picture that no one could willingly forget. And the people, from the kindly towns-folk to the quaint and touching peasant types, are as real as any representation of human nature need be. Every goat even, has its personality. As for the little heroine, ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... woodlands and pastures; the meadow-larks flitting in the sunlight and singing everywhere; fluting, chattering blackbirds, and a strange new black bird with red wings, at which Chad wondered very much, as he watched it balancing itself against the wind and singing as it poised. Everything seemed to sing in that wonderful land. And the seas of bluegrass stretching away on every side, with the shadows of clouds passing in rapid succession over them, like mystic floating islands—and never a mountain in sight. What a strange ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the dance, as if for the first time observing the presence of strangers. As she faced them, shy as a frightened fawn, poised upon one foot as if to fly the next instant, Dorothy was astonished to see tears flowing from her violet eyes and trickling down her lovely rose-hued cheeks. That the dainty maiden should dance and weep at the same time ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... anything else that is wanted can be carried outside so that the children can live in the open, which of course is better than any room. In the playground there is a bank where the children can run up and down, and there are a few planks and a builder's trestle,[16] on which they can be poised for seesaws or slides, and these are ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... on toward the wider reaches of the lake, and the Onondaga never relaxed his watchfulness, for an instant. He was poised in the canoe, every nerve and muscle ready to leap in a second into activity, while his ears were strained for the sounds of paddles or oars. Now he relied, as often before, more upon hearing than sight. Presently a sound ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that the final disappearance of the colony would be the immediate sequel thereof. The sentence was that Smith's brains were to be knocked out with a bludgeon; and he was led into the presence of the chief and the warriors, and ordered to lay his head upon the stone. He did so, and the executioners poised their clubs for the fatal blow; but it never fell. For Smith, during his captivity, had won the affection of the little daughter of Powhatan, a girl of ten, whose name was Pocahontas. She was too young to understand ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the sea, which was now at low tide. In the distance you could see the shrimpers slowly pushing their nets before them, and nearer on the rocks below the bent forms of people gathering cockles; the grey gulls wheeled about overhead and poised themselves on their broad wings, or rode triumphantly on the gentle rippling of the water, and far far away on the edge of everything the shadowy sails of ships glided slowly past like ghosts. To these last Monsieur turned his attention, and having unstrapped his telescope took up a commanding position ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... the stealthy motion of the pursuer, swiftly gained upon him, overtaking him just as he had the sand-bag poised aloft, ready to be brought down upon the ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... ear. She looked up startled. From behind a bend in the road to the right there came at full gallop a party consisting of several men and a lady. Francis was so amazed at their sudden appearance that she still retained her position, the dagger poised ready for the throw. With a cry of horror the lady spurred her horse to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... put on one of the old helmets that were stuck up in his hall; though his head no more filled it than a dry pea its pease cod; yet his eyes sparkled from the bottom of the iron cavern with the brilliancy of carbuncles, and when he poised the ponderous two-handled sword of his ancestors, you would have thought you saw the doughty little David wielding the sword of Goliath, which was unto ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... so that he could not use it, and he called out for some one to spear the Sunlander, who had turned and was running for safety under the protecting fire. The little old hunter poised his spear on the throwing-stick, swept his arm back as he ran, and ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... wings from their shoulders, the feathers of which were of white and gold and vermilion, every feather having an eye in it, not like those in the peacock's feathers, but one full of life and motion, being a female eye, lovely and gracious. And with these wings they poised themselves a little, and so ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... sea-bird with short wings. The great auk or gair-fowl (Alca impennis) was formerly common on all the northern coasts, where they laid their eggs, ingeniously poised, on the bare rocks. They were very good eating, and having been taken in great numbers by the Esquimaux, and by European sailors on whaling voyages, the species is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... true! It's after four," cried Josephine. Constantia sat with her knife poised over ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... hills. Here and there a hawk swooped down from the azure to break the surface and bear off a wriggling fish that gleamed like silver, and at eventide we would see at the brink an elk or doe, with head poised, watching us as we drifted. We passed here and there a lonely cabin, to set my thoughts wandering backwards to my youth, and here and there in the dimples of the hills little clusters of white and brown houses, one day to become marts of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Mr. Longdon's poised glasses faced him. "Even! I don't mind, as the opportunity has come up, telling you frankly—and as from my time of life to your own—all the comfort I take in the sense that in any case of need or trouble ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... that Leigh's face was like a fair picture under her white hat, and she felt her own cheeks flushing as she saw how cool and poised and unhurried her little ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... from human touch, should be there in his arms, with her head on his shoulder, where his kiss could reach her lips, not only unforbidden, but eagerly welcome, was impossible, and yet it was true.. But it was no more impossible and no truer, than that a being so poised, so perfectly self-centred as she, should already be so helplessly dependent upon him for her happiness. In the depths of his soul he invoked awful penalties upon himself if ever he should betray her trust, if ever he should grieve ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... some brown and some white, were kneeling in a long line, their champing jaws moving rhythmically from side to side, and their gracefully poised heads turning to right and left in a mincing, self-conscious fashion. Most of them were beautiful creatures, true Arabian trotters, with the slim limbs and finely turned necks which mark the breed; but among them were a few of the slower, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... already poised in the air, paused in some surprise. A clean-shaven man in dark grey clothes and a bowler hat, a man who had somehow the air of being a little out of his element in this galaxy of pleasure seekers, caught ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... religious compositions are accumulated, he started, and remained motionless with his eyes turned upward. He had passed through that gallery twice already, and yet that was certainly his picture up yonder, so high up that he hesitated about recognising it. It looked, indeed, so little, poised like a swallow at the corner of a frame—the monumental frame of an immense painting five-and-thirty feet long, representing the Deluge, a swarming of yellow figures turning topsy-turvy in water of the hue of wine lees. On the left, moreover, there was a pitiable ashen portrait of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the wide, wide sky, The fair blue fields that before us lie— Each sun with the worlds that round him roll, Each planet, poised on her turning pole; With her isles of green, and her clouds of white, And her waters that lie ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... voyage. Mr. Randolph personally superintended all the initial arrangements. The starter worked liked a charm. There was no wavering. A turn of the handle, and the magnificent machine spread its wings like some great bird poised ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... Ben." The girl, in advance, paused, bareheaded, each uplifted hand holding out a string of her white sunbonnet, which, thus distended, was poised, winglike, behind the rough tangle of auburn hair and against the amber sky. She turned as she spoke, to face her companion, taking a step or two backward as ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Paula again chased him to the half-way platform with a threat to dive. But not many seconds did Graham waste. His next start was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain the thirty-foot platform before she should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands close to chest, legs straight and close together, her body ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... wearied out, the first two dancers retired, and were succeeded by a single man, with a spear poised high above his head. He, as had the others, stepped forward slowly, turning round and round, now advancing, now retiring, now brandishing it furiously, now pretending to hurl his weapon at his enemies. This dance ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the accoutrement-maker's. Here this young fellow, who, though only seventeen years of age, and about sixty-five inches high, with a constitution naturally rickety and much impaired by premature brandy and water, had an undoubted courage and a lion's heart, poised, tried, bent, and balanced a weapon such as he thought would do execution amongst Frenchmen. Shouting "Ha, ha!" and stamping his little feet with tremendous energy, he delivered the point twice or thrice at Captain ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gentleman with his glass of '74 poised in his hand, "I don't know whether I shall go back to Colwyn Bay again this winter—or go abroad. I've no ties, and I'm getting fed up. I haven't ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... this speech. It seemed as if he had inadvertently upset some plan. But the only thing he noticed at the moment was that the pale face of the bride, as she stood limply in front of him, grew a shade paler, and that her great blue eyes filled with tears, which poised a moment on her eyelashes and then trickled down her cheeks. If, as the Intelligence officer was only too ready to surmise, he had upset an elaborate ruse to shield one of Brand's special envoys, then the girl was an accomplished actress; ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... of these; They bloom on earthly trees, Poised on a low-hung stem, And those may gather them Who cannot fly to where The heavenly ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... swells hid the others from him. Once, though, poised for a moment on the round summit of a bank of water, he glimpsed ere he descended into the green valley beyond, a darker spot ahead and so found his direction. He knew better than to tire himself out by desperate strokes. His only hope of getting there and getting ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the cross-roads in a forest. While they clad and bound the body and (to some extent) the mind too stiffly and quaintly for our taste, they had a much stronger sense than we have of the freedom of the soul. For them the soul always hung poised like an eagle in the heavens of liberty. Many of the things that strike a modern as most fantastic came from their keen sense ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... clock strike in the distance, and was turning to leave when that first vision of Juliet swooped back upon him—Juliet in her light linen dress springing up the path towards him. He saw her as she had stood there, leaving the path behind her, poised like a young goddess against the dazzling blue of the spring sky. Her face had been stern at first, but all the sternness had gone into an amazing kindness of compassion when her look had lighted upon him. She had not shrunk from him as shrank so many. And then—and then—he ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... first years of his ministry. Such a specimen of mental, spiritual and physical manhood Nature produces only once in a century. Imagine a man of thirty-five, when manhood has not yet left youth behind, height five feet ten, weight one hundred eighty, a body like that of a Greek god, and a mind poised, sure, serene, with a fund of good nature that could not be overdrawn; a face cleanly shaven; a wealth of blond hair falling to his broad shoulders; eyes of infinite blue—eyes like the eyes of Christ when He gazed upon the penitent thief on the cross, or eyes that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... his automatic from his belt and pointed it, and in that instant the girls saw a black and yellow skinned snake coiled, its head poised with darting ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... trousers of invisible green, presented themselves at the door of the colonel's room, where he and his brother-officer were continuing their game. Raising his hand respectfully to his cap, which he wore poised jauntily over his right ear, and scarcely held on by the strap below his under lip, the corporal ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... about, as if he were searching for his master; and the girl lay back lazily on the grass, laughing, and holding him up poised on her finger, as if he were some enamelled jewel she wished to admire at a little distance. They made a pretty picture under the cave-like shadow of the breadfruit leaves; and it was difficult to understand how ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... our sense of uncertainty is soothed and cushioned by habit, so that we can live comfortably with it. Only now and then, by way of special excitement, it starts up wide awake. We perceive how delicately our fortune is poised and balanced on the pivot of a single incident. We get a peep at the oscillating needle, and, because we have happened to see it tremble, we call our ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the skulls, and picking up one poised it on his hand, slowly turning it around, as though trying to discover what it meant. The one selected had one side partially crushed, and this attracted his attention. He placed the fingers of the other hand in the shattered part, and seemed to realize that some agency must have ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and Hal, having nothing to do but enjoy life, stood waiting for them to come out. They returned in the same procession, only now the man had a sack of something on his shoulder, while the little chap had a smaller load poised in imitation. So Hal grinned again, and when they were opposite him, he ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... she dropped the olive poised between her fingers, and as she did so, he looked across and saw her ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... than that sausage fable which is here set down. O mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! But though the preacher trips, shall not the doctrine be good? Yea, brethren! Here be the rods. Look you, here are the scourges. Choose me a nice, long, swishing, buddy one, light and well-poised in the handle, thick and bushy at the tail. Pick me out a whip-cord thong with some dainty knots in it—and now—we all deserve it—whish, whish, whish! Let us cut into each ...
— English Satires • Various
... written that I knew nothing about women. But every man has in his bones a consciousness of sex. I was shy and perturbed, but horribly fascinated. This slim woman, poised exquisitely like some statue between the pillared lights, with her fair cloud of hair, her long delicate face, and her pale bright eyes, had the glamour of a wild dream. I hated her instinctively, hated her intensely, but I longed to arouse ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... who had afterwards been released on "pass" and re-rounded up as aliens. I returned the greeting hilariously, upon which one of the British prisoners, who was remarkably agile, swarmed the bars, and poised thus above his comrades, was emulating the strange and amusing antics of a monkey at the Zoological Gardens, thereby conveying by his actions that he and his friends were caged after the manner of ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... the ornate style leaves on the mind a mist of beauty, an excess of fascination, a complication of charm, the pure style leaves behind it the simple, defined, measured idea, as it is, and by itself. That which is chaste chastens; there is a poised energy—a state half thrill, and half tranquillity—which pure art gives, which no other can give; a pleasure justified as well as felt; an ennobled satisfaction at what ought to satisfy us, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... followed by a demure young lady, entered the room. She slipped quietly into a chair beside the president's desk and laid her copy-book on the slide of the desk and waited while her employer arranged the words in his mind. Her pencil was delicately poised above the ruled page. While she waited she hit the front of her pompadour a few improving slaps with her unengaged hand and pulled out the slack of her ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... sorrow, and placed him almost in that very spot wherein he stood ten days ago; gay, debonair, light of heart as a boy, untouched by grief or the dread of grief. It was a divine madness. He threw off his clothes, admired his shapely body for a moment as he poised on the bank, and flung himself in headlong with a shout. He felt as he slipped through the water but he did not utter the thought, that if this intoxication did not last he would never leave the pool. It endured and increased. He swam about like a demented fish. On that far shore ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... sheaf of yellow columbines from another; fresh kinnikinick was looped and wreathed about the pictures; and on the dining-table stood, most beautiful and fragile of all, a bowlful of Mariposa lilies, their delicate, lilac-streaked bells poised on stems so slender that the fairy shapes seemed to float in air, supported at their own sweet will. There were roses, too, and fragrant little knots of heliotrope and mignonette. With these Rose was familiar; the wild flowers were all new ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... filled his mind. Above all, what was about to happen between them? What fate had brought him there? To him, Seraphita was the motionless marble, light nevertheless as a vapor, which Minna had seen that day poised above the precipices of the Falberg. Could she thus stand on the edge of all gulfs without danger, without a tremor of the arching eyebrows, or a quiver of the light of the eye? If his love was to be without hope, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... white and spangles, with silver bracelets on her wrists and little anklets hung with bells about her slender ankles. Round and round and round galloped the white horse, the fairy figure on his back now standing, now lying, now on her knees, now poised on one small foot, or, again, dancing to the music on top of the broad saddle, keeping exact time, every movement graceful and light as that of a happy elf. Hoops, wreathed with roses and covered with silver paper, were raised across her path. She bounded through them easily, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... help, won't you? I was out here abalone-hunting, and I guess one of these big rocks must have been poised just right to topple over. Anyhow, in climbing down here I managed to topple it. It didn't fall on me, but it fell against the other rocks so that there isn't room for me to crawl out of here! I can't make the rock budge, now. And the ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... of the figure, inasmuch as it has the finest lines and therewith those slender, diminishing forms which, coming at the base of the human structure, show it to be a thing of life by its unstable equilibrium. A lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... hostess rose to meet him. He was a young man on the right side of thirty, with dark, closely brushed hair that thinned slightly at the temples. He was clean-shaven, and his light-brown eyes lay in a smiling setting of quizzical good-humour. He was of rather more than medium height, with well-poised shoulders; and though a firmness of lips and jaw gave a suggestion of hardness, the engaging youthfulness of his eyes and a hearty smile that crinkled the bridge of his nose left a pleasant impression of frankness, mingled with a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... lark, who has been singing since midnight in the "blank height of the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some wooded peak into the abyss of the valley, and hangs high-poised above the heavenward songster. The air is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown hay, the fragrant breath of kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed wreaths and fresh wet sand. Glorious day, glorious place, "bridal of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of the macadam road, that outlined Oakley Avenue, the one street of distinction that ran through the country and gave tone to little Flosston on its way. She was an attractive figure standing there in her plain serge suit, and soft tam-o'-shanter on her finely poised head, and even at a distance one would be correct in describing Romaine Lindsley as an attractive, fine-looking ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... the spring, and we were in the air, bounding higher—it was like something imagined after death. And the rest was being in heaven, till we began to drop. Then, just for a few seconds, it felt as if my body were falling and leaving my soul poised up there in the sky. I shall never forget—never. And when the time does come to die, I don't believe I shall mind now, for I know it will be like that, with the wonder of it after the shrinking ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... With pen poised, waiting until the figures were brought in, the Comas man expressed his satisfaction. "There were three on the job, so I was told in Adonia when I came through. That's all right, Mern. I expected you to use your own judgment. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... pressed onward, even to the farthest verge of natural life, how few escape the too common lot of wretchedness! The danger that most threatens you, in the fast-approaching future, is that which threatens every young maiden. Your happiness or misery hangs nicely poised, and if you have not a wise discrimination, the scale may take a wrong preponderance. Alas! if ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... say, as was the acrid countenance of Mrs. MacGregor from the fresh-skinned, clear-eyed, clever, handsome face of Marcia Vandervelde. Everything interested Nancy. Her senses were acutely alert. Just to watch Mrs. Vandervelde, so calm, so poised and efficient, gave her a sense of physical well-being. She had never really liked, or deeply admired, or trusted any other woman, and the real depths of her feeling for this one surprised her. Mrs. Vandervelde possessed the supreme gift of putting others at their ease; ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... see her," she replied, and she turned back to her writing. I saw her pen poised as if she were about to begin; but she did not begin—and I felt that she would not. With my mind shadowed with vague dread, I left that mysterious stillness, and ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... perfectly. She walked as if she went to meet the morning, and must salute it worthily. She carried a weight as a goddess might bear the infant Bacchus; and her small head, poised upon that round throat, wore the crown of simplicity, and not of pride. But we only told how strong she was, and how much she could lift. We loved Mary, but sensibility had to shrink from those great proportions ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... two, a puffed command from Hawkins, an ominous sliding about of hidden dishes, and the machine lurched forward, poised a moment on its edge and turned quite gently, so that the ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... proves that no one, even of those whose foundations seem unshakable, is sure of his position, but the exceeding prosperous, equally with the rest, are poised in ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... across the table. His sinewy fingers closed around a glass paperweight. He held this poised steadily. "One more crack out of you, Eric, and I'll slam this against your head. You're a pretty good chief of police—but you're ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... to argue the point. She poised her chin in her hand and looked away over his head, and he could not help seeing, as he had seen before, that her eyes were beautiful. But this had been so long acknowledged between them that she could hardly have been conscious that she was insisting on it afresh. Then by the time he ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... paused the savage stopped also, and more than once he poised his deadly spear, while his glaring eyeballs shone amid the green foliage like those of a tiger. Yet upon each occasion he exhibited signs of hesitation, and finally lowered the weapon, and crouched ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... and place, and seemed the most becoming to her which could have been chosen. She was perfectly natural, and, though shy and reserved among strangers, had a quiet, easy grace of manner, that showed at once deference for them and utter unconsciousness of self. Her head was very fine and admirably poised. She had a symmetrical figure, and her step to the last was as light and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to the General, who walked beside him, "is a specimen of the worst modern Italian sculpture. The figure of Pandora is modelled like a sack of potatoes; the composition is weak and unsatisfactory; and the pediment on which the whole group is poised large enough to support three others of ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the beach, stood poised on one point, or perchance on two points, and arched between. These icebergs were dotted with stones imbedded; great bowls were melted out and filled with water, and little cups made of ice would afford you a drink of ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... Phonny had to twist his head round in a very unusual position, and look out under his arm. It was obvious that in doing this he was in imminent danger of falling, so unstable was the equilibrium in which he was poised upon the rail. ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... at almost incredible speed, the Arrow always at their head, poised for a few moments directly over their heads, and then came down in a dazzling series of spirals, landing almost ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ascended again. Near the confines of this forest, Polly suddenly reined in Noddy and held out a warning hand. Right across their pathway sped a young deer. It paused by the side of a sheltering pine-trunk, with head erect and fore-foot poised gracefully, gazing steadily at the strange creatures who dared ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... this her look was almost natural, and her features were hardly sharpened so as to suggest that her life was burning away. He did not like this, nor various other unobtrusive signs of danger which his practised eye detected. A very small matter might turn the balance which held life and death poised against each other. He surrounded her with precautions, that Nature might have every opportunity of cunningly shifting the weights from the scale of death to the scale of life, as she will often do if not ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... And they are well deserving; I have here A numerous people also, one of whom Might have sufficed to call the Kings of Greece. But such occasion presses now the host As hath not oft occurr'd; the overthrow 205 Complete, or full deliverance of us all, In balance hangs, poised on a razor's edge. But haste, and if thy pity of my toils Be such, since thou art younger, call, thyself, Ajax the swift, and Meges to the guard. 210 Then Diomede a lion's tawny skin Around him wrapp'd, dependent to his heels, And, spear in hand, set forth. The Hero call'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... bent him further and further over until it seemed his back must break. But it was the balustrade which broke. Wogan heard it crack. He had just time to loose his hands and step back, and the railing and the man poised on the rail fell outwards into the courtyard. Wogan stepped forward and peered downwards. The soldier had not broken his neck, for Wogan saw him writhe upon the ground. He bent his head to see the ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... nature; and added with that peculiar gravity of countenance he usually wore on such occasions, that among such learned men he now hoped for a solution to a question which had long perplexed him. The case he thus stated:—"Suppose two pails of water were fixed in two different scales that were equally poised, and which weighed equally alike, and that two live bream, or small fish, were put into either of these pails, he wanted to know the reason why that pail, with such addition, should not weigh more than the other pail which stood against ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... womanly nature, as the calm lake mirrors the sunlit sky or the lowering storm-cloud, the silvery moon or the lightning's flash. The wavy, auburn hair, tinged in the sunlight with red gold, was gathered into a knot near the top of a shapely, well-poised head, while stray curls clustered rebelliously about the broad, fair brow, forming a ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... back with a hand sweeping instinctively to his holster—but he arrested that belligerent gesture with a sudden paralysis of caution because of the look in the eyes of the surprise visitor who stood poised with forward-bending readiness of body, and a revolver levelled in ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... as true as hell," promptly retorted the other; "or, rather, as true as there is one for such wretches as you. Mr. Phillips," he added, turning to the hunter, who stood a little in the background, with his rifle poised on his left arm, with an air of carelessness, but, as a close inspection would have shown, so grasped by his right hand, held down out of sight, as to enable him to bring it to an instant aim,—"Mr. Phillips, were you in the habit of going to Quebec, fall and spring, to dispose ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... regiment would have precluded all alarms as to the island itself, and the remainder have perhaps changed the destiny of Europe. What might not, almost I would say, what must not eight thousand Britons have accomplished at the battle of Marengo, nicely poised as the fortunes of the two armies are now known to have been? Minorca, too, is alone useful or desirable during a war, and on the supposition of a fleet off Toulon. The advantages of Malta are permanent and national. As a second Gibraltar it must tend to secure Gibraltar itself; ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for the uses to which they were destined. For instance, what could have been a more graceful compliment to the Mniszechs than to lodge them during their visits to Paris, which would of course be frequent, in a set of rooms painted with brilliant exotic butterflies, poised lightly on lovely flowers? Apparently foreseeing, as Balzac remarks, that a "Lepidopterian Georges" would at some time inhabit the mansion, Beaujon had actually provided a beautiful bedroom and a little drawing-room decorated in this way.[*] ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of various hues, lit up by the expiring gleams of the setting sum, winding their way along the garden paths, like some monster snake, with scales of many colors; their gait perfect, undulating, and undisturbed by the baskets poised gracefully on their heads; singing some quaint refrain in the usual minor key, or making the air gay with their chatter and laughter; which, if far distant, strikes the ear pleasantly as a ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... the love of man as to give constant and ample expression to these motives, will be neither a reformer without grace nor a scholar without manliness. Give to such a man a flow of animal spirits and a dash of wit, and he should be not unapt to entertain even when poised on the dangerous ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... upon it, called it an Eden of beauty. His work was ended; and had he found rest and sweet peace? Peace! Gentle spirit! Already she had half-folded her wings; but, startled by some uncertain sound, she was poised again, and seemed about to sweep the yielding air with ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... about like a tugged horse; sprang to the other side of the road, hung poised on a wheel, as near as possible capsized. A less violent jerk and it would have gone clean over the woodstack that lay in the road on ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... sudden drenching with the icy waters of Behring Sea had taken his breath away. But he was game and stuck to his oar. Looking at Hank, he saw that the old fighter of the seas had dropped the harpoon-gun and was holding poised ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... they nearly always jab carefully while sitting down. Sometimes, however, the rare occasion serves the rare harpooner, when the whale and canoe appear as if about to meet each other straight head-on. Then, in a flash, the man in the bow is up on his feet, with the harpoon so poised that the rocking water, the mettlesome canoe, and his watchful comrade in the stern, all form part of the concentrated energy with which he brings his every faculty to a single point of instantaneous action. There, for one fateful moment, he stands erect, his whole tense body like the ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... and stood with his pencil poised, when the buzzer sounded harshly; he went at once into the hall; they heard him open the door; and in a few moments he returned, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... Wilson went over to a boulder poised on the glacier. It proved to be a very coarse granite with large crystals of quartz in it. Evidently the rock of which the pillars of the Gateway and other neighbouring ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... babies that toddled beside them or sprawled on the hard ground beneath the trees. From the village of flat-roofed mud houses under the low hill at the back of the tents, other women were crossing the plain toward the well, their terra-cotta water-jars poised easily on their heads, casting long shadows on the sun-baked ground ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Maggie Murphy wait on table in the daytime and sell War Crys at night for a week or more, Mr. Corbett decided he liked her methods. The way she poised a tray of teacups on her head proclaimed her a ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Force of natural Ability, have produc'd Works which were the Delight of their own Times, and have been the Wonder of Posterity." But when he doubts whether learning would have helped or "spoiled" them, it is hard to escape the conclusion that he is still poised on the horns of the typical neoclassical antithesis: that supposed enmity between reason, which was generally thought to create the form of the poem, and the emotions and imagination, which were considered largely responsible for ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... whirling, circling, dipping, and soaring, in the direction of the water. Once or twice, she paused, dropped and, bounding from earth to air, turned her frightened eyes back to her mother's face. But each time, Peachy waved her on. Angela joined Honey-Boy and Peterkin. For a moment she poised in the air; then she sank and began languidly to dig ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... into the atmosphere of Annapolis, standing proudly in her eighteenth-century dignity, watching the rest of the world scramble in a helter-skelter rush for modern trivialities. Its old walls are in pleasing harmony with the colonial mansions poised on little hillocks, from which they look down on you with benevolent condescension and invite you to climb the long flights of steps that lead to their very hearts, grand but hospitable, which you do in a glow of high-pitched ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... in practice at once. The Indians were already impatient for another victim, and the signal being given I started on my race for life at the top of my speed. At first I ran directly for the living lane, where my enemies waited with poised clubs each eager to strike the first blow, but as I neared it I made a sudden break to the right, and gathering all my energies for one mighty effort, I broke through a group of old men and idlers who were watching the sport. Despite their efforts to intercept me I cleared ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... of John Inglesant,"[41] by J. H. Shorthouse, we have a remarkable picture of an unusually gifted youth, who played an important role in the days of Cromwell and King Charles, and who was long poised in soul between the Church of Rome and the English party. He was very susceptible to the fascination of superstition, romance, and day-dreaming, and at eleven absorbed his master's Rosicrucian theories of spiritual existence ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... strip of yellow-barred scales; then there was a pause, and the head turned, in a beautifully symmetrical half-circle, towards the whistler. The whistling ceased; the snake, with half its body out of the cleft, remained poised in air as if ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... In all our climates—in the clear atmosphere, by the dashing waters, amid the grand old forests with their peculiar and many-tinted foliage, by him first made known to art—he has represented our feathered tribes, building their nests and fostering their young, poised on the tip of the spray and hovering over the sedgy margin of the lake, flying in the clouds in quest of prey or from pursuit, in love, enraged, indeed in all the varieties of their motion and repose and modes of life, so perfectly that all other works of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and castles in which the Apennines abound, and of which Canossa, far off and indistinguishable in the haze, was the chief example. It was called 'The Tower of Rugino'. Beyond the deep trench of the Enza, poised as it seemed on its southern bank (but really much further off, in the Secchia valley), stood that strange high rock of Castel-Nuovo, which the peasant had shown me that morning and which was the landmark of this attempt. It seemed made rather by man ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs. Such was he, our martyr chief, Whom late the Nation he had led, With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... tent-flaps. It was midday. To the south, just clearing the bleak Henderson Divide, poised the cold-disked sun. On either hand the sun-dogs blazed. The air was a gossamer of glittering frost. In the foreground, beside the trail, a wolf-dog, bristling with frost, thrust a long ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London |
