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Raven   /rˈeɪvən/   Listen
Raven

noun
1.
Large black bird with a straight bill and long wedge-shaped tail.  Synonym: Corvus corax.



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"Raven" Quotes from Famous Books



... minutes the little figure is surrounded by a crowd of boys and women, who begin to pluck him of his borrowed plumes, while he chatters to them like a magpie, whistles like a song-bird, croaks like a raven, or in his natural character showers a mass of funny nonsense on them, till their laughter makes their sides ache. The little wretch is literally covered with small feathers from head to foot, and even his face is not to be recognized. The women pluck him behind ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... then permission, or I will put myself to death." "If so," exclaimed the affrighted sultan, "there is no refuge or help but from the omnipotent Allah: well has the proverb remarked, that the nestling would not be restrained from the air, when suddenly the raven pounced upon it and bore it away. Heaven guard my son from the consequences of his imprudence." Having said thus, the sultan commanded preparations for the requisites of travel, and ordered a force to accompany the headstrong prince; who, having taken leave ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... wherein the senior branch of my family has been settled for some four hundred years. There are here many thousands of volumes, the majority of considerable age; there are also large collections of pamphlets, manuscripts, and broadsheets—my immediate predecessor, my uncle, John Christopher Raven, was a great collector; but, from what I have seen of his collection up to now, I cannot say that he was a great exponent of the art of order, or a devotee of system, for an entire wing on this house is neither more nor less than a museum, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... disturb my slumber, Let no weed nor worm molest me, Let not Kahgahgee, the raven, Come to haunt me and molest me, Only come yourself to watch me, Till I wake, and start, and quicken, Till I leap into ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... black. Oh! how dreadful it is to be black! Why was I born black? It would have been better had I not been born at all. Only yesterday, my mother was sold to go to, not one of us knows were, and I am left alone, and I have no hope of seeing her again. At this moment a raven alighted on a tree over my head, and I cried, "Oh, Raven! if I had wings like you, I would soon find my mother and be happy again." Before parting she advised me to be a good boy, and she would pray for me, and ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green

... Cabalus modestus), the one of which was confined to Whairikauri and the other to Mangare Island, are extinct. Several fossil or subfossil avian forms, very interesting from the point of view of geographical distribution, have been discovered by Dr H.O. Forbes, namely, a true species of raven (Palaeocorax moriorum), a remarkable rail (Diaphorapteryx), closely related to the extinct Aphanapteryx of Mauritius, and a large coot (Palaeolimnas chathamensis). There have also been discovered the remains of a species of swan belonging to the South ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... "You're worse than Poe's raven. Besides, she couldn't turn over, you idiot, as long as the lumber floated. She'd have to stay ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... to poison him, but the cup burst asunder as soon as he took it into his hands. When the priest Florentius, being wickedly disposed, attempted to perpetrate a like crime by means of an adulterated loaf, a raven carried away the deadly bread from the hand of St. Benedict. Instructed by the devil, the same Florentius drove from his neighbourhood the holy man, by turning into the garden of his monastery seven naked girls; but scarcely had the saint taken to flight, when ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... of any birds besides some of the gallinaceae which are polygamous? Do you know of any birds besides pigeons, and, as it is said, the raven, which pair for ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... FIRST volume of a series of Legends of the tribe of Alaskan Indians known as the Chilkats—of the Klingats As told by Zachook the "Bear" to Kitchakahaech the "Raven" ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne

... represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered a comedy, for, although the plot ends in the discomfiture and imprisonment ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... them in their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated? Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant! Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us? Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering? Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable, Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton, Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it, Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... Her words unleashed his fancy—her heavy brows and lashes, her satiny raven hair, her slow voice that seemed made of silence, her eyes that changed in expression so rapidly that they dizzied one with a sense of space. "Black Dawn!" He stared at her long, which in no ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... purest forms of grace. Without that exact and chiselled harmony of countenance which characterised perhaps the Ionic rather than the Doric race, the features of the royal Spartan were noble and commanding. His complexion was sunburnt, almost to oriental swarthiness, and the raven's plume had no darker gloss than that of his long hair, which (contrary to the Spartan custom), flowing on either side, mingled with the closer curls of the beard. To a scrutinizing gaze, the more dignified and prepossessing ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... aside a little, disclosing a shimmer of purple garment and flashing emeralds. She looked barbaric, her raven brows knit. It might have been Cleopatra commanding the instant death of ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... to a cross where a rotting thing Is slipping down from the nails. And a raven perched on the eyeless skull Opens his beak ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... of yellow silk, looped at the side by an aigrette of diamonds, and confining a beautiful ostrich plume, was folded over her polished brow, from which her long, raven tresses floated in beautiful curls around her superb neck and shoulders. A simarre of crimson silk, studded with jewels, and gathered to her slender waist by a magnificent girdle of fine gold, reached below the hips, where it was met by a flowing robe ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... standards of the successive rulers of Britain, may be found in Sir Winston Churchill's curious work, Divi Britannici, which gives (as your correspondent supposes) the White Horse for Kent, the White Dragon for Wessex, and the Raven for ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various

... told us it is such an interesting place and so different from other parts of India and the rest of the world. It is a land of romance, poetry and strange pictures. Lalla Rookh and other fascinating houris, with large brown eyes, pearly teeth, raven tresses and ruby lips, have lived there; it is the home of the Cashmere bouquet, and the Vale of Cashmere is an enchanted land. Average Americans know mighty little about these strange countries, and it takes ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... was a red man, and his attire was simpler. Like all our southern Indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love of ornament showed forth in the fringe of colored porcupine quills on his leggings and in his raven hair bestuck with feathers. For arms he had an arsenal in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and the scalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving tool, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... the merit of expedition, repaired at once to Dorothy's room. That obdurate beauty was half undressed, and her maid had just finished arranging her hair in two raven braids—thick as a ship's cable, they were. As Mrs. Hanway-Harley entered, Dorothy glanced up with half-wistful eye. Poor child! she was hoping her mother might have softened from that granite attitude of the morning! But no, there was nothing tender in the selfish, austere gaze; at that, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... and prelates. Close behind the throne is the kingly palace, and there, upon a balcony hung with gold brocade, stands the Queen; to the right and left of her the two royal Princesses, both so lovely to look upon in their picturesque Polish garb, their raven tresses surmounted by the Polish cap with ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... open! Some of the zest went out of Martin's actions. His exuberance decreased. It was a relief to him when the boarder's parents returned from their trip and the girl went home. He had her invitation to call at her home in Lancaster. Surely, there Lyman would not sit like the black raven of Poe's poem! Isabel would not forget him even when she was once more in the city! Martin Landis was beginning to think the world a fine old place, after all. He was going to school, had prospects of ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... croak of a raven newly alighted in the tree above us," replied Richard. "The sagacious bird will ever attend the huntsman in the chase, in the hope of obtaining a morsel when ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... years of our absence, I sent home communication after communication to the "Linnean Society,"[12] with the same result as that obtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired at last of hearing nothing about them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 I drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it to the Royal Society.[13] This was my dove, if I had only known it. But owing to the movements of the ship, I heard nothing ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... thin-lipped mouth, that showed the teeth, with black prominent eyes, and legs like a stag's, rather thin but beautifully shaped, and full of fire and spirit, for Maria Nikolaevna; a big, powerful, rather thick-set horse, raven black all over, for Sanin; the third horse was destined for the groom. Maria Nikolaevna leaped adroitly on to her mare, who stamped and wheeled round, lifting her tail, and sinking on to her haunches. But ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... whirlwind's hollow sound, By the thunder's dreadful stound, Yells of spirits underground, I charge thee not to fear us; By the screech-owl's dismal note, By the black night-raven's throat, I charge thee, Hob, to tear thy coat With thorns, if thou ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... called a miracle." It only filled him with a strong desire to be in his beloved woods again. His friend, Basil Hall, had insisted upon his procuring a black suit of clothes. When he put this on to attend his first dinner party, he spoke of himself as "attired like a mournful raven," and probably more than ever wished himself in ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... to the cruel and voluptuous French noble, at once violent and indolent. The new war-cry of Dieu aide was as triumphant as that of Thor Hulfe had been of old, and the Red Cross led to as many victories as the Raven standard. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... midnight hour, Old Night has unfolded her sable pall, Darkness o'er hamlet, darkness o'er hall, Loud screams the raven on Allerley Tower;[A] A glimmering gleam from yon casement high Is all that is seen ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... creature who brought me my coffee. She was a very young girl, but as well formed as a young person of seventeen; yet she had scarcely completed her fourteenth year. The snow of her complexion, her hair as dark as the raven's wing, her black eyes beaming with fire and innocence, her dress composed only of a chemise and a short petticoat which exposed a well-turned leg and the prettiest tiny foot, every detail I gathered in one instant presented to my looks the most original and the most perfect ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the other, promptly; "I've never forgotten how Black Joe looked, blinking his eyes at us when we stood there talking to your aunt. But you're wrong in one thing, Bristles; it isn't just a plain, everyday crow at all. She said it was a raven, one of the wise old kind you read about; and that she brought it across the water. They're more cunning than our crows; and goodness knows I've always found them smart enough, when ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighbourhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favourite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... islanders, the outline being beautifully classical, more especially about the mouth and chin, while the cheeks were colorless, and the skin swarthy. His eye, too, was black as jet, and his cheek was half covered in whiskers of a hue dark as the raven's wing. His face, as a whole, was singularly beautiful—for handsome is a word not strong enough to express all the character that was conveyed by a conformation that might be supposed to have been copied from some antique medal, more especially when illuminated by a smile that, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... not materialize, for Mrs. Cassin, junior, lived a long and honored life. I remember her faintly when she was about eighty years old, with hair parted in the middle and combed down over each ear as "coal black as a raven's wing," ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker

... first day on land was enlivened by the visit of a ponderous young Natchilli, named Joe (or Natchilli Joe, to distinguish him from Esquimau Joe). He promised to accompany us in the spring. He was a fine-looking young man, with a big head, and a shock of raven-black hair, as massive-looking as a lion, and with none of the bloodthirsty look which I had been led to expect in the Natchilli features. He had been living with the Iwillie tribe for about two years, and ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... men than the virtuous and orderly, and most of the young men of Siena followed Sodoma, extolling him as a man of originality. And this Sodoma, being an eccentric, and wishing to please the common herd, always kept at his house parrots, apes, dwarf donkeys, little Elba horses, a talking raven, barbs for running races, and other suchlike creatures; from which he had won such a name among the vulgar, that they spoke of nothing ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... I think he broke my windpipe, for I'm as hoarse as a raven ever since: and I've got one or two of the shot in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... and saw that Her Majesty was dressing her hair. I stood beside her Majesty while the eunuch was dressing it and saw that as old as she was, she still had beautiful long hair which was as soft as velvet and raven black. She parted it in the center and brought it low at the back of her ears, and the back braid was brushed up on the top of her head and made it into a tight knot. When she had finished doing this, she was ready to have the Gu'un Dzan (Manchu headdress) placed on and pinned through the ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling

... honor of the Frontenacs, the supporters in whose family coat-of-arms were two Griffins. Where all is so uncertain in an important matter, a third suggestion may be as near the mark as the first two. As the Norse or Norman sea-kings bore the raven for a standard, perhaps La Salle adopted the raven's master-symbol, in right of a hoped-for sovereignty over the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... pheasant, the heath-cock, the red-legged partridge, the small gray partridge, the pin tailed grouse, the sand-grouse, the francolin, the wild swan, the flamingo, the stork, the bittern, the oyster-catcher, the raven, the hooded crow, and the cuckoo. Besides these, the lakes boast all the usual kinds of water-fowl, as herons, ducks, snipe, teal, etc.; the gardens and groves abound with blackbirds, thrushes, and nightingales; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... striking six the next morning, Dennis and Maisie were in the stable-yard. Tom was there, pumping water into a pail, and Jacko the raven was there, stalking about with gravity, and uttering a deep croak now and then. Jacko was not a nice character, and more feared than liked by most people. He was a thief and a bully, and so cunning that it was impossible to be up to all his tricks. In mischief ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton

... was heard to ring, An aerial voice was heard to call, And thrice the raven flapp'd its wing Around the towers ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... inclination of his glass to the ladies, who were sitting now tired and huddled together on the bench, and over their heads to Elizabeth, who was standing in the background, awake enough for both of them. The light from the fire fell upon his handsome brown face, with the raven black curly hair, and the dark eyes that it was said he had inherited from his recently deceased mother, who was from Brest; and with his flow of animal spirits, that sufficed for the whole party almost, he certainly was as manly and handsome ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... patriotism that animated the best type of young men of that day. Ah! He was a comely soldier, with his round, ruddy face, his fresh complexion, his bright black eyes, and curling hair the color of the raven—his uniform brushed and boots polished to the pink ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... raven's croaking," says Molly, laying her hand upon his lips. "I will not listen to it. Whatever the Fates may be, Love, I know, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... plot is still further mixed by the sudden swishy, swirly entrance of an entire stranger,—a tall, thin female with vivid pink cheeks, a chemical auburn tint to her raven tresses, and long jet danglers in her ears. She's draped in what looks like a black silk umbrella cover with rows of fringe and a train tacked to it, and she wears a red, red rose coquettish over one ear. As she swoops down on us ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... considering his situation; and, although denied the exquisite pleasure and priceless advantages of the sense of hearing, nature had given him ample compensation, by an eye, quick and far-seeing as an eagle's; and a smell, keen and incredible as that of a raven. He could discover objects moving miles away in the far-off prairie, when others could perceive nothing but earth and sky; and the rangers used to declare that he could catch the scent of a Mexican or Indian at as great a distance as a buzzard could distinguish the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... left terror in its train. Not knowing its interpretation, Tania the meaning would obtain Of such a dread hallucination. Tattiana to the index flies And alphabetically tries The words bear, bridge, fir, darkness, bog, Raven, snowstorm, tempest, fog, Et cetera; but nothing showed Her Martin Zadeka in aid, Though the foul vision promise made Of a most mournful episode, And many a day thereafter laid A load of care ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... storeys high, and terminating in gables, erected about 1579. The half-timbered hall of the Drapers' Guild, some old houses in Frankwell, including the inn with the quaint sign—the String of Horses, the ancient hostels—the Lion, famous in the coaching age, the Ship, and the Raven—Bennett's Hall, which was the mint when Shrewsbury played its part in the Civil War, and last, but not least, the house in Wyle Cop, one of the finest in the town, where Henry Earl of Richmond stayed on his way to Bosworth field to win the English Crown. Such ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... after meals. In addition to its use as a dining-room, the Hall also served as a lecture-room, and for the production of stage plays. On these latter occasions it seems to have been specially decorated, for Roger Ascham, writing 1st October 1550, from Antwerp, to his brother Fellow, Edward Raven, tried to picture to him the magnificence of the city by saying that it surpassed all others which he had visited, as much as the Hall at St. John's, when decorated for a play at Christmas, surpassed its appearance ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott

... felt a keen interest in all three. The woman was young—under thirty. She was handsome, with raven black hair and well-cut features. Her face was pale and her eyes gloomy. She carried herself with a slow, lazy grace. The good lines of her tall figure asserted themselves in spite of the cheap, ill-fitting serge suit. Josie always noticed hands and feet, because she declared they were more ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... wait a bit till I get my staff, and I'll make such music as will bring Master Marcus out to ask me if I am killing a pig. There's no room about the place to please them, no miles of acorn and chestnut forest so that they can fill themselves as full as sacks, but they must come into my garden and raven there! Nothing will do for them but my melons and cucumbers! Well, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... hence, dull raven; when I bid thee croak, 'Twill be when frogs sing ditties on an oak; When hopping toads like winged skylarks fly; When limping elves ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... fully gone. Send a raven I will anon; If aught were earth, tree, or stone, Be dry in any place. And if this fowl come not again It is a sign, sooth to say, That dry it is on hill or plain, And God ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... was as mirthful as a grave-yard raven's croak. "Nothing to it, old man. Forget it, and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... the castle to its very basis; but Jenny, once engaged in the bustling tide, found so much to ask and to hear, that she forgot the state of anxious uncertainty in which she had left her young mistress. Having no pigeon to dismiss in pursuit of information when her raven messenger had failed to return with it, Edith was compelled to venture in quest of it out of the ark of her own chamber into the deluge of confusion which overflowed the rest of the Castle. Six voices ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... then those pensive eyes would close, And bid their lids each other seek, Veiling the azure orbs below; While their long lashes' darken'd gloss Seem'd stealing o'er thy brilliant cheek, Like raven's plumage smooth'd ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... the savageness of the red man, the gaiety of the Frenchman, and the shrewdness of the Yankee. He was a large, handsome, and immensely muscular man, with dark complexion, small straight features, quick black eyes, and long raven-coloured beard and hair that hung down to his shoulders. Utterly wicked and unprincipled as he was, his merriment, off-hand and daring, lent him a certain fascination and popularity among us. He was very ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... mythology, in the doctrine of divination, in the fables of Aesop, or even in proverbial expressions, has been ingeniously drawn to his purpose by the poet; who even goes back to cosmogony, and shows that at first the raven-winged Night laid a wind-egg, out of which the lovely Eros, with golden pinions (without doubt a bird), soared aloft, and thereupon gave birth to all things. Two fugitives of the human race fall into the domain of the birds, who resolve to revenge themselves on them ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... from the stone, and, striking her hand upon her brow, cried—'Jonathan Moor! ye cruel man! ye disregarder of the warnings of her whose life is as the shadow of your life! said I not that the hound was howling, and the raven was flapping its wings for a feast?—yet ye would not listen to my voice! And my brother!—where is my brother?—the son of my mother—more headstrong and foolish than yoursel'! Ye daurna answer, and ye needna answer. He ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... We fed the crow and raven, I heard the tempest breaking Of demon Thorgerd's waking; Sent by the fiend in anger, With din and stunning clangor; To crush our ...
— Young Swaigder, or The Force of Runes - and Other Ballads • Anonymous

... sleeping yearned. Him wander-weary, warrior-guest from far, a hall-thane heralded forth, who by custom courtly cared for all needs of a thane as in those old days warrior-wanderers wont to have. So slumbered the stout-heart. Stately the hall rose gabled and gilt where the guest slept on till a raven black the rapture-of-heaven {25b} blithe-heart boded. Bright came flying shine after shadow. The swordsmen hastened, athelings all were eager homeward forth to fare; and far from thence the great-hearted guest would guide his keel. Bade then the hardy-one Hrunting be brought to ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... violent collision with a six-horsed vehicle, while upon their heads descended both a babel of cries from the ladies inside and a storm of curses and abuse from the coachman. "Ah, you damned fool!" he vociferated. "I shouted to you loud enough! Draw out, you old raven, and keep to the right! Are you drunk?" Selifan himself felt conscious that he had been careless, but since a Russian does not care to admit a fault in the presence of strangers, he retorted with dignity: ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... raven, cease your croaking! Silence—take the abominable drugs yourself—poison yourself, you wretch. Give me my trousers, and let me dress myself. Hey, Bilboquet!—bring my hot water, razors, and shaving soap. Hurrah! Phoebus, light the sun and put out ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... flowers, and as often she sees their yellow leaves driven before the strong south wind, and the meadow grow dark and hoar before the breath of autumn. Her father was long since dead, and she was bringing up her brother's children. Her raven hair was streaked with grey, and her step was not so light, nor her laugh so loud, yet still she waited and hoped, long after ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... one day, and sat on the organ enjoying the music; for every one was singing, and I joined in, though I didn't know the air. Opposite me were two great tablets with golden letters on them. I can read a little, thanks to my friend, the learned raven; and so I spelt out some of the words. One was, 'Love thy neighbor;' and as I sat there, looking down on the people, I wondered how they could see those words week after week, and yet pay so little heed to them. Goodness knows, I don't ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... woke up too, for she always rose early, and ran to the window to see what sort of a day she had got for her birthday. Seeing it to be so fine, she threw open the old lattice, at which her pet raven Jack was already tapping to be admitted, and let the sweet air play upon her face and neck, and thought what a wonderful thing it was to be twenty years old. And then, kneeling by the window, she said her prayers after her own fashion, thanking ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... with a light heart and happy mind, satisfied with the reward of her presence when his day's work was done. For a mile or so of the journey he strove to nurse his resentment against this clear-eyed woman whose raven black hair was in such absolute contrast to the flaxen locks of the vanished Kitty, but whose voice had caused the intrusion of these bygone memories into his waking thoughts. But gradually, unconsciously, the long-suppressed recollections of the girl who had charmed ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... young, and of a light and fragile form, but of exquisite proportions. Her eyes were large, full, black, piercing, and at times a little wild. Her hair was luxuriant, and as it was without the powder it was then the fashion to wear, it fell in raven blackness. A few of its locks had fallen on her cheek, giving its chilling whiteness by the contrast a more deadly character. Dr. Sitgreaves supported her from the chaise; and when she gained the floor of the piazza, she turned an expressive ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... and on each wrist she wore a bracelet of beads similar to the neck-lace. A wampum band circled her head. Inside the band were three beautiful feathers from the wing of a wild pigeon. Her hair as black as the raven's back, was so arranged as to make her forehead appear like an equilatiral triangle, the brows being the base. Her eyes, coal black, round, quick and deep set, are indescribable, and a more beautiful set of teeth I never saw in a human head. On her feet she wore light ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith

... halloo at the tavern-door long since has driven the reckless and the poor From misery's only haven Forth on the chilling night. 'All out! All out!' Less sad would fall on bibulous souls, no doubt, The refrain of the Raven. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... ours was complete when Virginie appeared. Nothing could be less artificial than her costume; the simple dress of Bengalese blue cloth, a few cowrie shells round her neck, and a shell comb fastening up the braids of profusion of raven hair. She came floating rather than walking down the mountain path; and her first few words, when Paul rushed forward and knelt to kiss her feet, and the half playful, half fond air with which she repelled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... intervals, offending the ear and depressing the heart. This was the only sound Nature afforded for hours. The neighboring bush, though crammed with the merriest souls that ever made feathers vibrate and dance with song, was like a tomb of black marble; not a sound—only this little raven of a quail tolled her ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... conformity with Miss Bertram's advice, procured a skilful artist, who, on looking at the Dominie attentively, undertook to make for him two suits of clothes, one black, and one raven-gray, and even engaged that they should fit him—as well at least (so the tailor qualified his enterprise), as a man of such an out-of-the-way build could be fitted by merely human needles and shears. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... which causes invisibility is found in Grimm's tale of the raven. See Grimm's Fairy Tales, Columbus Series, p. 30. In a Pampanga tale the possessor of a magic stone becomes invisible when squeezes it. See Bayliss, (Jour. Am. Folk-Lore, Vol. ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... very graceful figure. Complexion dark enough to make her pass for a brunette. Large black eyes and raven hair." ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... wide of, for he was a preacher with a pair of fists when thoroughly aroused. And his devotion to a girl in England whom no one in his regiment had ever seen, and of whom he did not even possess a likeness, was next door to being pitiable. His voice was like a raven's, with something rather less than a raven's sense of melody; he was very prone to sing, and his songs were mournful ones. He was not a social acquisition in any generally accepted sense, although his language was completely free from blasphemy or ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr. Rochester's: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... Freya's beloved, Mother of Ayo, Mother of Ibor. Singing of Wendel men, Ambri and Assi; How to the Winilfolk Went they with war-words,— 'Few are ye, strangers, And many are we: Pay us now toll and fee, Cloth-yarn, and rings, and beeves: Else at the raven's meal Bide the sharp bill's doom.' Clutching the dwarfs work then, Clutching the bullock's shell, Girding gray iron on, Forth fared the Winils all, Fared the Alruna's sons, Ayo and Ibor. Mad at heart stalked they: Loud ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... Day after day went past, and still the beautiful goddess did not come. Little by little the light of youth and beauty faded from the home of the gods, and they themselves became old and haggard. Their strong, young faces were lined with care and furrowed by age, their raven locks passed from gray to white, and their flashing eyes became dim and hollow. Brage, the god of poetry, could make no music while his beautiful wife was gone ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... horrid old Cousin Sophia of Susan's piped up. She was sitting there, knitting and croaking like an old 'raven of bode and woe' as ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the wily witch, With sweet white face and raven hair? Who by her art bewitched his heart And ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... imitation of the actions of the great spirit on the mountains. Whenever his eyes glared and his looks became ferocious the warriors grasped his arms and quieted him. He disappeared behind a white curtain, and a few minutes afterward out sprang another warrior wearing a huge mask, representing a raven's head. The raven is a slave of the spirit and is supposed to ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... muleteer knew no rest or pause. Several times in the journey we stopped at a post-station to change our cattle, but the same brazen throat sufficed for all the threatening and encouragement that kept them at the top of their speed. Before we arrived at our journey's end, however, he was hoarse as a raven, and kept one hand pressed to his jaw to reinforce the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... characteristics than the Common Crow, being, in many of his actions, very like the Raven, especially in his love for carrion. Like the Raven, he has been known to attack game, although his inferior size forces him to call to his assistance the aid of his fellows to cope with larger creatures. Rabbits and hares are frequently the prey of this bird which pounces ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... nails, body and brains, for her inalienable rights over this man. All the while these emotions surged up in her, and ebbed and flowed in again, her intelligence told her the wild absurdity of such supposition. The raven woman was a stranger; and socially, to all appearance, she must always remain so. Yet Marie could not still the passionate unrest of her heart without taking her husband's eyes from the table where two obsequious men ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... head, neck, and face, would prove but a poor substitute for the dainty French bonnet on the Parisian boulevards; but in Castilian atmosphere it is as appropriate and becoming as the florid-colored plumage of birds in the tropics. There is a certain harmony between the dark, smooth skin, the glossy raven hair, the long, dark lashes, the blue veins of the temples, and the national head-dress of the Spanish ladies, which gratifies the artistic eye. Ah! if the mind in those lovely women were but as noble as their faces! Unfortunately, perhaps, their very beauty makes their defects the more conspicuous. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... a certain forlorn dignity and meek sadness, as of "one who once had wings." What is he? and whence? Is he a surface or a substance? is he smooth and warm? is he glossy, like a blackberry? or has he on him "the raven down of darkness," like an unfledged chick of night? and if we smoothed him, would he smile? Does that large eye wink? and is it a hole through to the other side? (whatever that may be;) and is that a small crescent moon of darkness swimming in its disc? or does ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... the neighbourhood of the river and its mountainous cliffs, built their nests; but wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... packed, and Signor Muzzio was preparing to start. Without a word in answer to his servant, Fabio went out on to the terrace, whence the pavilion could be seen. A few pack-horses were grouped before it; a powerful raven horse, saddled for two riders, was led up to the steps, where servants were standing bare-headed, together with armed attendants. The door of the pavilion opened, and supported by the Malay, who ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... our walks and rambles constantly took the direction of the shores of this bay; and though, perhaps, a schoolboy is more readily impressed with other matters than the beauties of nature, I can remember even now the once familiar view from Raven Cliff as if my eyes still ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... head was Satan himself, whose delight it was to appear in person ensnaring or terrifying every one he met. With this object, he assumed various forms. One day he would visit the earth as a black dog, on another day as a raven, on still another day he would be heard in the distance roaring like a bull. He appeared sometimes as a white man in black clothes, and sometimes he became a black man in black clothes, when it was remarked that his voice was ghastly, that he wore no ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... cell; and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold! a shower of snow had fallen in the night, and a hawk had killed a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse had scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted on the bird. And Perceval stood and compared the blackness of the raven and the whiteness of the snow and the redness of the blood to the hair of the lady that best he loved, which was blacker than jet, and to her skin, which was ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... fight, and were they not sworn allies, come any weal or woe! But woman, even at the age of ten, has ever been the cause of trouble between males, and those two had, on her account, a mortal feud. It all came suddenly. There had been certain jealousies and heartaches caused by the raven-locked young vixen with the winning eyes, but there had been no outspoken words of anger between these vassals in her train until there came excuse in other way, for your country lad is modest, and never admits that his ailing has aught ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... is coming—seize the hour! Divide the spoil, the prey devour! Howl o'er the dead and dying, cry All ye that raven earth and sky! With beak and talon rend the prey, Track carnage on her gory way, To chide o'er many a gleamy bone The moon, or with the wind to moan! Benumb'd with cold, by torture wrung, To winter leave the famine-clung, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... Hairy Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Flicker Pine Grosbeak Red-winged Crossbill White-winged Crossbill Redpoll Blue Jay Horned Lark Lapland Longspur English Sparrow Winter Wren Chickadee Northern Shrike Snowflake Moose Bird Raven Crow ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... thing disquieted the Ylfing's offspring, and the woman who had the child brought forth. Sitting on a lofty tree, on prey intent, a raven to a raven said: "I ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... whose bolt was a venomous snake, gave them entrance to a gloomy hall, draped in black, which the "hundred lights" failed to brighten. In the hall a hundred knights of "marble white" lay sleeping by their steeds of "marble black as the raven's back." At the end of the hall, guarded by two huge skeleton forms, the imprisoned lady was seen in tears within a crystal tomb. One skeleton held in his bony fingers a horn, the other a "falchion bright," and the knight was ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... sons of the brave; We have fired our last bullet, have made our last rally, And Caucasus gives us a grave. Here the soft pipe no more shall invite us to slumber —The thunder our lullaby sings; Our eyes not the maiden's dark tresses shall cumber, Them the raven shall shade with his wings! Forget, O my children, your father's stern duty— No more shall he bring ye ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... and looked at me with laughing eyes, I saw how dark those eyes were, and how raven black her wandering ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... hand? Oh Lilly, Lilly, idle Lilly, here are you soundly sleeping, and there is your parrot conceitedly thinking he can do the work of his lazy little mistress, and in another minute it will be all destroyed. Wake up, little sleeper, wake up, and collect those long curls floating like a raven curtain about you. Think what Madame will say if she catches but a glimpse of you. A little apart from all stands one tall figure, taller than all the rest, her dark hair folded back from her forehead, her dark ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... grave by Autumn's sober light, A grave of full dimensions; 'twas for one Whose hair had changed its raven hue to white, Whose course had finished with the setting sun; I wondered, as I toiled with pick and spade, Where, and by whom, would my ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... Mr. Poe's crow! Or was it a raven? What's the difference, anyhow? Now don't tell me they're both anthropeds or pods, or whatever it is, because I'm onto you as a disseminator of knowledge! I never got even with you yet for calling me ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... and whether it was possible for her to "do anything" to repair any wrongs that might have arisen out of that organization, and you will understand why there is a little flush in his cheek and why his sentences are a trifle disconnected and tentative and why his eye wanders now to the soft raven tresses about Lady Harman's ear, now to the sweet movement of her speaking lips and now to the gracious droop of her pose as she sits forward, elbow upon crossed knee and chin on glove, and jabs her parasol at the ground in her unaccustomed efforts to explain ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... confectioner, eating ices and making love to that very interesting much-courted young lady. True to his time, there was Waffles, eating and eyeing the cherry-coloured ribbons, floating in graceful curls along with her raven-coloured ringlets, down Miss Lollypop's nice fresh ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... she hesitated, and I seized the opportunity to examine her more attentively. Hair as black as the raven's wing, large blue eyes, a face perfectly oval, a mouth of the smallest and the most expressive mold, lips the reddest and most faultless it is possible to imagine, composed the details of the lovely whole, which at the first glimpse had dazzled and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... said of beasts, Quis psittaco docuit suum ?a??e? Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree, where she spied water, that the water might rise so as she might come to it? Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea or air, and to find the way from a field in a flower a great way off to her hive? Who taught the ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... although boasting only one loose white garment, walk with the air and grace of queens, or as though pure Inca blood ran in their veins. Their only adornment is a necklace of red corals and a few inches of red or blue ribbon entwined in their long raven-black hair, which hangs down to the waist in two plaits. Their houses are palm-walled, with a roof of palm-leaves, through which the rain pours and the sun shines. Their chairs are logs of wood, and their beds are string hammocks. Their wants are few, as there ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... tryst, of love again Where meet the river banks and glen. The moonlight vaults beyond the trees To gain the river side, and sees A dusky maiden sitting there, Who twines her lovely raven hair, And frequent lifts her melting eyes To where the flashing ripple flies Across the bosom of that glass Where dancing stars nocturnal pass. A princess of the wildwood she, And graceful as the deer that flee Till stricken by the light-winged shaft So deadly from the hunter's ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of the patched and ragged over-all, which made the only garment of the men he had hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterised by all the trappings of the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls of which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the savages around, was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung down to his shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk kerchief of gay ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... she addressed herself at the Winchester station treated her with civility and good-nature. The pale beauty of her pensive face won her friends wherever she went. It is very hard upon pug-nosed merit and red-haired virtue, that a Grecian profile, or raven tresses, should be such an excellent letter of introduction; but, unhappily, human nature is weak; and while beauty appeals straight to the eye of the frivolous, merit requires to be ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... river Derwent, the Norwegian army was drawn up in a great circle, with the sunbeams glinting upon helmets and spear-points. High overhead floated the royal standard, a raven with outstretched wings, called by the Norwegians ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae

... that beauty? where those movements? where That colour? what of her, of her is left, Who, breathing Love's own air, Me of myself bereft! Poor Lyce! spared to raven's length of days; That youth may see, with laughter and disgust, A firebrand, once ablaze, Now smouldering in ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they are now, Then I'll yoke thee to my cart like a pony in the plough." "Here thou needest not dread the raven in the sky; Night and day thou art safe,—our cottage is hard by." WORDSWORTH'S Poems, New-Haven ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... day of June. Yet all other human beings save the gentleman from Pulaski were as nothing, it seemed, to the chairman. The Tallest Delegate, around whose lean form a frock coat hung like a fold of night, and who flung back from a white brow an immense quantity of raven hair, sought to relieve the convention of the sight and sound of the person from Pulaski. The Tallest Delegate was called smartly to order; he rebelled, but when threatened with the sergeant-at-arms subsided amid jeers. The gentleman from Pulaski was indulged to the fullest ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... turned to Alfred: but it was a beautiful back, with great magnificent neck and shoulders, and a skin like satin; she was tall but rounded and symmetrical, had a massive but long and shapely white arm, and perfect hand: and masses of thick black hair sat on her grand white poll like a raven ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Joceline, "how well she scented there was food in the pantry!—they have noses like ravens, these strollers. Look you, Mistress Alice, you shall not see a raven or a carrion-crow in all the blue sky for a mile round you; but let a sheep drop suddenly down on the green-sward, and before the poor creature's dead you shall see a dozen of such guests croaking, as if inviting each other to the banquet.—Just so it is with these sturdy beggars. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholesome fen, Drop on you both: a south-west blow on ye, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... to the raven. Its plumage is black and glossy, its neck feathers like a cock's hackle, and the iris white, the latter peculiarity giving it a singular appearance. Many of these birds remained with us at the Depot after we had been deserted by most ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... Christmas time," said Farquharson, "that the King sent a message over the sea, granting him a pardon for the part he had taken in '45, for you know he was out then. The Sea Raven was about to clear in a week for Glasgow, and a sudden longing seemed to seize him to see once more the dash of the waters through the Braes of Mar and the heather-crowned hills of old Aberdeen; and so, ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... rooms—all her strength and life were dying out of her because of that one unnatural, almost supernatural, act. She passed the days lying on a couch, speaking, when obliged to speak, in a whisper, her eyes sunk, her face white even to the lips, seeming the whiter for the mass of loose raven-black hair in which it was set. There were few doctors, English and native, who were not first and last called into consultation over the case, and still no benefit, no return to life, but ever the slow drifting ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... bonnet under her chin, She tied her raven ringlets in; But, not alone in the silken snare Did she catch her lovely floating hair, For, tying her bonnet under her chin, She tied a ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... is like a wilderness, Where beasts of midnight howl; There the sad raven finds her place, ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... of noon-day is he; Yet seems [7] a form of flesh and blood; Nor piping shepherd shall he be, 25 Nor herd-boy of the wood. [8] A regal vest of fur he wears, In colour like a raven's wing; It fears not [9] rain, nor wind, nor dew; But in the storm 'tis fresh and blue 30 As budding pines in spring; His helmet has a vernal grace, Fresh as the bloom upon ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... conformity with Miss Bertram's advice, procured a skilful artist, who, on looking at the Dominie attentively, undertook to make for him two suits of clothes, one black and one raven-grey, and even engaged that they should fit him—as well at least (so the tailor qualified his enterprise) as a man of such an out-of-the-way build could be fitted by merely human needles and shears. When this fashioner had accomplished his task, and the dresses were brought ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... you croaking raven," shouted the Broom-Squire. "If you think to mock me, you are wrong. I know well enough what I am about. As for that painting chap, he ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. And Peredur stood, and compared the blackness of the raven, and whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the lady that best he loved, which was blacker ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... and returns to the Bourse. She cries all night, but discovers that tears make her eyes red. She takes a consoler, for the loss of whom another consoles her; thus up to the age of thirty or more. Then, blase and corrupted, with no human sentiment, not even disgust, she meets a fine youth with raven locks, ardent eye and hopeful heart; she recalls her own youth, she remembers what she has suffered, and telling him the story of her life, she teaches him to ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... light vessel through the azure seas; Upon the lofty deck, Dame Sigrid lay, And watch'd the setting of the orb of day: Then, all at once, the smiling sky grew dark, The breakers rav'd, and sinking seem'd the bark; The wild Death-raven, perch'd upon the mast, Scream'd 'mid the tumult, and ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... interval I remember it so well. In the solitude of my own chamber, I bade farewell separately to all those little trifles that surrounded me: God bless the good old clock that hast so oft awakened me. Beautiful raven, whom I taught to speak and to say "Lorand," on whom wilt thou play thy sportive tricks? Poor old doggy, maybe thou wilt not be living when I return? Forsooth old Susie herself will say to me, "I shall never see you again Master Desi." And till now I always thought I was angry with Susie; but ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... to give way; but having a retreating place in Red Lion Court, but could not hold it, being put to flight through Paul's Alley, and pursued by the General's grenadiers, while he marches up and attacks their main body, but are opposed again by a party of men as lay in Black Raven Court; but they are forced also to retire soon in the utmost confusion; and at the same time those brave divisions in Paul's Alley ply their rear with grenadiers, that with precipitation they take to the rout along Bunhill ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... the gods in affright ascend for protection to the heaven of Anu. Six days the storm lasts. On the seventh conies calm. Hasisadra opens a window and sees the mountain of Nizir, sends forth a dove, which returns; then a swallow, which returns; then a raven, which does not return; then, knowing that the flood has passed, sends out the animals, builds an altar, and offers sacrifice, over which the gods gather like flies. Ea remonstrates with Bel, and urges that hereafter, when he is angry with men, instead of sending ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... year and a day before the evening when you restored me to the waters the second time. If you had not done so the first night the otter brought me to you I should have been changed into a hooting owl; if you had not done so the second night, I should have been changed into a croaking raven. But, thanks to you, Enda, I am now a snow-white swan, and for one hour on the first night of every full moon the power of speech is and will be given to me as long as I remain a swan. And a swan I must always remain, unless you are willing to break the spell of enchantment that is over me; and ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... Prince George, my brothers-in-law, my cousins and aunts are trying to make a hero of me. Because I followed the inclinations of my heart and helped to save my children, there's no end of their praise and admiration. Did they take me for a raven? I am disgusted with ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... relief—nothing but the dark ring of mangroves, and here and there an isolated group of large and small, parents and children, breeding and spreading, as if in hideous haste to choke out air and sky. Wailing sadly, sad-colored mangrove-hens ran off across the mud into the dreary dark. The hoarse night-raven, hid among the roots, startled the voyagers with a sudden shout, and then all was again silent as a grave. The loathly alligators, lounging in the slime, lifted their horny eyelids lazily, and leered upon him as he passed with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Cuckoe, nor The boding Raven, nor Chough hore Nor chattring Pie, May on our Bridehouse pearch or sing, Or with them any discord bring, ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]

... you black!" retorted Jarvis. "She has golden locks, you raven. Don't let the outward attributes belie ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... apostleship. Though ragged and dirty, there was about him no touch of vulgarity; for, by nature, his manner was not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared the more so from the broad, untanned frontlet of his brow, tangled over with a disheveled mass of raven curls, throwing a still deeper tinge upon a complexion like that of a shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed his look of picturesque Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by what seemed just one glimmering ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... A raven cried "Croak!" and they all tumbled down, Bumpety, bumpety, bump! The mare broke her knees, and the farmer his crown, Lumpety, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... me his present extraordinary tour. I could not resist the impulse of writing to you from this place. The situation of the old castle corresponds exactly to Shakspeare's description. While we were there to-day, it happened oddly, that a raven perched upon one of the chimney-tops, and croaked. Then I in ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... the green rides; sometimes to Rosy Brook, to cut long whispering reeds which grew there, to make pan-pipes of; sometimes to Moor Mills, where was a piece of old forest land, with short browsed turf and tufted brambly thickets stretching under the oaks, amongst which rumour declared that a raven, last of his race, still lingered; or to the sand-hills, in vain quest of rabbits; and bird-nesting in the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... down the straggling shoreward street, and as we neared the waterside we heard the shouts and laughter of the strangers plainly enough. And over the houses were the mastheads of their three ships. One of them had a forked red flag, whereon was a raven worked in black, so well that it was easy to see what bird it was meant for. It was the raven of the Danish sea kings, but that meant naught to us yet. The terror which went before and the weeping that bided after that flag were ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... moldwarp and the ant, Of the dreamer Merlin, and his prophecies; And of a dragon and a finless fish, A clipwinged griffin, and a moulten raven, A couching lion, and ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... emerging at last on the full-breasted river. The home journey consumed only three hours, and was comparatively uneventful. The wife of the Presidente gathered her family about her and artlessly searched their raven pates for inhabitants which pay no taxes, and most of the young people drooped with weariness. We rounded the bend at five o'clock; and thankful I was to put foot on terra firma once more. I was tired, but glad that ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... the Germanpoet Schiller loved to write by candle-light with a bottle of Rhine-wine upon the table. Nor do I wonder at the worthy schoolmaster Roger Ascham, when he says, in one of his letters from Germany to Mr. John Raven, of John's College; 'Tell Mr. Maden I will drink with him now a carouse of wine; and would to God he had a vessel of Rhenish wine; and perchance, when I come to Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year I will have a little piece ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... face of the Rachel Carter he had known. Despite the fact that she was now an old woman,—he knew that she must be at least forty-six or -seven,—she was still remarkably handsome. She was very tall, deep-chested, and as straight as an arrow. Her smoothly brushed hair was as black as the raven's wing. Time and the toil of long, hard hours had brought deep furrows to her cheeks, like lines chiselled in a face of marble, but they had not broken the magnificent body of the Rachel Carter who used to ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... thumb, his father thought he might begin to make himself useful. So he made him a whip out of a barley straw, and set him to drive the cattle home. But Tom, in trying to climb a furrow's ridge—which to him, of course, was a steep hill—slipped down and lay half stunned, so that a raven, happening to fly over, thought he was a frog, and picked him up intending to eat him. Not relishing the morsel, however, the bird dropped him above the battlements of a big castle that stood close to the sea. Now the castle belonged to one Grumbo, an ill-tempered giant who happened to be taking ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... look for it. But I heard it pat, pat, pat, behind me all the way.' 'And it's behind you now,' says Barney, bursting into a loud laugh. I jumped about six feet. 'There it is,' says Barney, roaring again, and pointing to—Pop Robins's tame raven! The sly old thing looked up at me, nodded its shining black head, croaked 'Apples!' and walked off. It had followed me from the barn, and every time I wheeled quickly round, it hopped just as quickly behind me, and so of ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... her height, her majesty and her grace. He perceived the softness and lightness of her footfalls in the passage of evening shadows across a lake or meadow, the perfection of her features in the form and finish of flower petals and the delicate tints of her beauty in the coloring of flowers; the raven hue and sweeping length of of her tresses in the drowning shades of midnight and the entrancing veil of her lashes in deep mysterious woods; and when, in fancy, he looked beneath that veil into her eyes, as unfathomable ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... ............Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn ............'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell, ............Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; ............There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, ............In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou Goddess fair and free, In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, And by men heart-easing Mirth; ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... shrink; Again the rising stream his bosom laves, And Thirst consumes him 'mid circumfluent waves. —Divine HYGEIA, from the bending sky Descending, listens to his piercing cry; 425 Assumes bright DIGITALIS' dress and air, Her ruby cheek, white neck, and raven hair; Four youths protect her from the circling throng, And like the Nymph the Goddess steps along.— —O'er Him She waves her serpent-wreathed wand, 430 Cheers with her voice, and raises with her hand, Warms with rekindling bloom his ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared him, in a time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking down on the stately temples and wealthy ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... beard. The ancient Greeks thought that to eat the flesh of the wakeful nightingale would prevent a man from sleeping; that to smear the eyes of a blear-sighted person with the gall of an eagle would give him the eagle's vision; and that a raven's eggs would restore the blackness of the raven to silvery hair. Only the person who adopted this last mode of concealing the ravages of time had to be most careful to keep his mouth full of oil all the time he ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... thought if only our Karl would come. Alas! it was a full day too soon; for I felt sure that these burghers would proclaim him at the gates, and that the house of Otho and Casimir, the brood of the Wolf, would, like the shadow of the raven as it flits by in the sunshine, pass away. For by that time there would be no Otho. They would find him low enough, with an axe cleft ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... a jealous, cruel, and unjust Deity. If we have done our best to arrive at the truth, to torment oneself about the result is to doubt the goodness of God, and, in the words of Bacon, "to bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of a dove, in the shape of a raven." "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," and the first duty of religion is to form the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... dreamily, and tore up the fifty-thousand-dollar check he had just written. "Joe, if your boy is such easy game for a pair of old duffers like us, just think what soft picking he must have been for that nimble-footed lady with the raven hair, the pearly teeth and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... slumbering in the sun, and a few piles of fleecy clouds had lain for hours along the northern horizon like fixtures in the atmosphere, placed there purely to embellish the scene. A few aquatic fowls occasionally skimmed along the water, and a single raven was visible, sailing high above the trees, and keeping a watchful eye on the forest beneath him, in order to detect anything having life that the mysterious woods ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... shadow of her cottage home, and eagerly scanning the moors, stood Miriam Heap. An exultant light gleamed in her dark eyes, and her bosom rose and fell as though swept with tumultuous passion. Ever womanly and beautiful, she was never more a queen than now, as the wind tossed the raven tresses of her crown of hair, and wrapped her dress around the well-proportioned limbs until she looked the draped statue of a classic age. There was that, too, within her breast which filled her with lofty and pardonable ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... uncommon length. Her lips were apart, and disclosed small but exquisitely formed teeth. Their hue was not that of ivory, but the more delicate though more transient one of the pearl. One arm supported her head—its hand tangled in the raven tresses—of the other, the snowy ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... slaver—the schooner Panda. She was commanded by Don Pedro Gilbert, a native of Catalonia, in Spain, and son of a grandee; a man thirty-six years of age, and exceeding handsome, having a round face, pearly teeth, round forehead, and full black eyes, with beautiful raven hair, and a great favorite with the ladies. He united great energy, coolness and decision, with superior knowledge in mercantile transactions, and the Guinea trade; having made several voyages after slaves. The mate and owner of the Panda was Don Bernardo ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... in a tender mood he promised the Duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The Duchess, on his death, so much expected the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isteworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the royal bird or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— Perched, and ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the barn-owl has all but disappeared from some districts, and the wood-owl is local. The raven is extinct—quite put out. The birds are said to exist near the sea-coast; but it is certain that any one may walk over inland country for years without seeing one. These, being all more or less birds of prey, could not but be excluded from pheasant-covers. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... had a soul, nor could win one. The joy and revelry on board lasted till long past midnight; she went on laughing and dancing with the thought of death all the time in her heart. The prince caressed his lovely bride and she played with his raven locks, and with their arms entwined they retired to the gorgeous tent. All became hushed and still on board the ship, only the steersman stood at the helm; the little mermaid laid her white arms on the ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... still without his mask, and bareheaded: but every eye glanced away from the helmets and barettes, waving with plumes, and sparkling with jewels, to gaze on Flodoardo's raven locks, as they floated on the air in wild luxuriance. A murmur of admiration rose from every corner of the saloon, but it rose unmarked by those who were the objects of it. Neither Rosabella nor Flodoardo at that moment formed a wish to be ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis

... scene, the verses, and the strange being who was repeating them with so much feeling, to notice the approach of one who now formed the fourth person of our party. This was a slight female figure, beautiful in the extreme, but whom tattered garments, raven hair (which fell in matted elf-locks over her naked shoulders), swarthy complexion, and flashing eyes, proclaimed to be of the wandering tribe of 'gitanos.' From an intuitive sense of natural politeness she stood ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter



Words linked to "Raven" :   Corvus, seize, eat, corvine bird, genus Corvus, prey, feed, forage



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