"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fading in the sun when Anton shook the hand of the neighbor who had accompanied him as far as the nearest station to the capital, and then walked off merrily along the high road. The day was bright, the mower was heard whetting his scythe in the meadows close by, and the indefatigable lark sang high overhead. On all sides rose church-towers, central points of villages buried in woods, near many of which might be seen a ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the nicest boy that I have ever seen. I can't get any of your fool's feathers. Oh, if you were only here, how you would admire these fine Italian soldiers! How often I think of you! Would God that you and Kuntz Kamerer could see them! They have scythe-shaped lances with 218 points; if they only touch a man with them he dies, for they are all poisoned. Heigho! but I can do it well, I'll be an Italian soldier. The Venetians are collecting many men; so is the Pope and the ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... his day's work in the fields began at five o'clock in the morning, and in the harvesting season even earlier. But in the harvest field, he found himself unable to keep up with grown men in the hard work of swinging the scythe, and so devised a harvesting-cradle, which made the work so much easier that he was able to do his share. At the age of twenty-two he invented a plough, which threw alternate furrows on either side, and two years later, a self-sharpening plough, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... inspiration flamed up within him as he lay on the hard bed in his little room, with the summer scents floating in and the out-of-doors sounds,—a woman's voice calling a child afar off, the lowing of cattle, the rhythmic whetting of a scythe-blade, the echoing strokes of an axe, the mellow fluting of a robin,—all coming to him a little muted, as if he were ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... towards the cabin. The mother had put away her spinning-wheel, and the smoke was curling up from out the wide-mouthed chimney, in preparation of her supper. The farmer and his sons had left the field and gone to a little blacksmith shop a few rods down the hill, where he had mended a broken buck-scythe. The two girls had joined them there; and now they all came trooping together to the house. The boys and their father were washing their hands and faces from the sweat of the forge and the burnt logs. The mother was busy with her cooking. The girls had put away the bucket of sand and gone ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... gained. They rejoiced in the complete defeat of an enemy who had come so near to defeating all their plans. But the cost appalled them. They had both faced the play of machine guns. They had seen their men fall to the scythe-like mowing of a cruel weapon of which its victims had no understanding. Then, when the machine guns had been silenced, they had witnessed the rage with which these hard-living jacks had meted out their ideas of just punishment upon ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... our social birds, one of those species that follow in the footsteps of man, and multiply with the progress of agriculture. He is not a frequenter of the woods; he seems to have no taste for solitude. He loves the orchard and the mowing-field, and many are the nests which are exposed by the scythe of the haymaker, if the mowing be done early in the season. Previously to the settlement of America, these birds must have been comparatively rare in the New England States, and were probably confined to the open prairies and savannas in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the first intimation of an advance these leaped forward in eager rivalry of their white comrades. Across the plain they charged, and then up the steep hill-side, while the Spanish fire doubled in fury, and the tall grass in front of them was cut as though by the scythe of a mower. Spectators in the rear gazed appalled at the thin line of troopers thus rushing to ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... field, The overflowing field,— Over the glimmering field, And bleeding furrows with their sodden yield Of sheaves that still did writhe, After the scythe; The teeming field and darkly overstrewn With all the garnered fulness of that noon— Two looked upon each other. One was a Woman men called their mother; And one, ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... Apostle of Beauty lives in this very old-fashioned spot. Big boulders are to be seen here and there where Nature left them, tangles of vines running over old stumps, part of the meadow cut close with a scythe, and part growing up as if the owner knew the price of hay. Then there are flowerbeds, where grow clusters of poppies and hollyhocks (purple, and scarlet, and white), prosaic gooseberry-bushes, plain Yankee pieplant ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Macmonie's Fountain at the other, its Goddess of Liberty seated aloft in her chair on the deck of her bark, erect and beautiful, with her eight maiden gondoliers plying the oars at the sides, while old Father Time steered the vessel, his scythe fastened to the tiller, Fame as a trumpet-herald stood on the prow with her trumpet in her hand, while in the gushing waters below sported the tritons with their plunging horses, the terraced fountain still lower with its clouds of spray showing all the colors of the ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... the state in which Louis of Bourbon enters the fight for Christ and his country." Immediately sounding the charge, like a whirlwind his little band plunged into the midst of their foes. For a moment the shock was irresistible, and the assailed fell like grass before the scythe of the mower. Soon, however, the undaunted band was entirely surrounded by their powerful adversaries. The Prince of Conde, with but about two hundred and fifty men, with indomitable determination sustained himself against the serried ranks of five thousand men closing up around him on every ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... news is it likely an old man like me should bring? You ask me so eager-like that I misdoubt me but it's some colleen that's caught your eye!" Patrick's eyes twinkled merrily as he made his little joke. Dermot's face saddened, and he turned to his scythe once more. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Mower stamp'd his heel, and struck His hurtful scythe against the harmless ground, Saying, "Ye foolish imps, when am I stuck With gaudy buds, or like a wooer crown'd With flow'ry chaplets, save when they are found Withered?—Whenever have I pluck'd a rose, Except to scatter its vain leaves around? For so all gloss of beauty I oppose, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... big silent, shambling boy had managed to tear from his acres money enough to clear the place of its debt—the biggest thing by far in his heritage. Eight hundred dollars was a large sum in Boltonwood—and Denny's acres were mostly rocks. Old Denny would have sold the last scythe and fork in the dilapidated barn to fill the stone jug, save for the fact that fork and scythe had themselves been too ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... these times is Death. He does not admit of any class distinctions. He mows down a proletarian and a Marshall Field with the same scythe. How imperfectly the world is arranged. It should be possible to shift the bearing of children and the dying from the rich to the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... ripe like grain, When the scythe is stoned again, When the lawn is shaven clear, Then my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... They who built their pyramids, not with carved traceries, nor lacy spires, but with solid blocks of granite fifty feet square! How they must have laughed in the depths of those sepulchres as they watched Time dull its scythe and pashas wear out their nails in vain against them. Let us build pyramids, my dear Sir John. They are not difficult as architecture, nor beautiful as art, but they are solid; and that enables a general to say four thousand years later: ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Patent, bush or hammer steel Facing and welding steel Pick steel Fork steel Pivot steel Gin saw steel Plane bit steel Granite wedge steel Quarry steel Gun barrel steel Razor steel Hack saw steel Roll turning steel High-speed tool steel Saw steel Hot-rolled sheet steel Scythe steel Lathe spindle steel Shear knife steel Lawn mower knife steel Silico-manganese steel Machine knife steel Spindle steel Magnet steel Spring steel Mining drill steel Tool holder steel Nail die shapes Vanadium tool steel Nickel-chrome steel Vanadium-chrome steel Paper knife ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... of Ashur at work in the field, And one to the other his passion revealed— As the white barley bowed to the stroke of his scythe, He burst out in ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... in the grave, and the widow had returned to her desolate cottage, that she experienced the full weight of her heavy burden. Even when death comes slowly, when sickness, pain, and long suspense have made the issue certain, it is hard for the bereaved to realize the dread event; but when the scythe of the destroyer has passed so quickly over, when the home is made so speedily desolate, and the place vacant, is it wonderful that to the stricken mourner all seems dark, discerning no light behind the overshadowing cloud? But none, dear reader, are ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... originality and aplomb, but at the moment it appealed to us. Fortunately, we had worked round to a very short distance away from the spot where we had originally gone wrong; with the result that, aided by the gentleman of the scythe, we recovered the road, and reached Todtmoos four hours later than we had calculated to reach it, with an appetite that took forty-five minutes' steady ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... upon The Child. Forced Labor, Premature Labor, hard, grinding, destructive Labor such as wastes the tissues of strong men; and The Child went down before it like grass before the scythe, for Childhood is meant for Growth and not for Waste and Toil. The Mind of The Child was dulled, the Body of The Child was stunted and crippled and broken: accidents fell upon him, with the Special Diseases of Labor ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... how tiresome was the old up-and-down churn dasher that has now generally given place to the "quick-coming" churns. The toothed, horse-drawn cultivator has nearly displaced "the man with the hoe," while the scythe, slow and back-breaking, is everywhere getting out of the way of the mowing-machine and the horserake. The old heavy, sweat-drawing grain-cradle is slinking into the backwoods, and in its place we have the horse-drawn or steam-drawn ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... extirpated; but these hardy plants survive the tempest, and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil. The splendid days of Augustus and Trajan were eclipsed by a cloud of ignorance; and the Barbarians subverted the laws and palaces of Rome. But the scythe, the invention or emblem of Saturn, [1301] still continued annually to mow the harvests of Italy; and the human feasts of the Laestrigons [1401] have never been renewed on ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... inhumanity. An experience is not human in the proper artistic sense (with which alone we are concerned) merely because it has befallen a man or a woman. There was an Irishman, the other day, who through mere inadvertence cut off his own head with a scythe. But the story is rather inhuman than not. Still less right have we to call everything human which can be supposed by the most liberal stretch of the imagination to have happened to a man or a woman. A story is only human in so far as it is governed by ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on a mountain's highest ridge, Where oft the stormy winter gale Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds 25 It sweeps from vale to vale; Not five yards from the mountain path, This Thorn you on your left espy; And to the left, three yards beyond, You see a little muddy pond 30 Of water—never dry Though but of compass small, and bare To thirsty ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... begin before the heavy bell of the great cathedral; some, tardily begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes behind it; all are in sufficiently near accord, to leave a resonance in the air, as if the winged father who devours his children, had made a sounding sweep with his gigantic scythe in flying ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... a hoe! A pickaxe or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail, or what ye will— And here's a ready hand To ply the needful tool, And skill'd enough, by lessons rough, In Labour's ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sank ankle-deep in the reddish-yellow soil; they panted, wet with perspiration as they ran. Jack still clutched Rickerl's sabre, and the tall corn, brushing the blade, fell under the edge, keen as a scythe. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... was similarly declared to be part of the fabric of the Constitution, to be upheld at the point of the bayonet. Scythe in hand, the Irish peasant proclaimed that it must go. It went. Still more fundamental was the existence of the Protestant Established Church. To touch it was to lay hands on the Ark. Orange orators threatened civil war; two hundred thousand Ulstermen ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... apace, the latter end of December, which was my second harvest, I reaped it with a scythe, made of one of my broad swords. I had no fatigue in cutting down my my first crop it was so slender. The ears I carried home in a basket, rubbing it with my hands, instead of threshing it: and when the harvest was over, found my half peck of seed produced near ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... word scythesman, for a short poem, is insufferably rough; and furthermore requires the inhalation of a good breath, before it can be pronounced; besides which, as the second objection, by connecting sheaves with scythesman, it shows that the scythe is cutting wheat, whereas, wheat is cut with a hook or sickle. If my agricultural knowledge be correct, barley and oats are cut with a scythe, but these grains are not put into sheaves. Had you not better substitute ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... away, passing away," seemed continually issuing from each meeting cone. I have no doubt the contemplation of this ancient, solemn instrument, which old Father Time is always represented as grasping in one unclenching hand, while he brandishes in the other the merciless scythe, had a lasting influence on ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and glared at it; at the relentless silver hands; at the fierce, and, as it seemed to me, living face of the Time on its top, who stooped and swung his scythe at me. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the preliminary spin, And poured on water (tears it might have been); And when it almost gayly jumped and flowed, A Father-Time-like man got on and rode, Armed with a scythe and spectacles that glowed. He turned on will-power to increase the load And slow me down—and I abruptly slowed, Like coming to a sudden railroad station. I changed from hand ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... zig-zag old rack with its ivies and moss, Just fifty-odd panels or so; A wheat-field, a scythe and a boy his own boss; He had ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... encounter the straight home-thrust of the finely-tempered blade, 19 inches in length, with which the Roman soldiers were armed. They wavered, and then the end came quickly. The whole line of the auxiliaries charged uphill and carried everything before them, and although the war chariots, armed with scythe-blades, were brought into action, they did more harm than good. The ground was rough, and unsuitable for the effective use of these murderous weapons of warfare. Their own men, now in hopeless confusion, were the chief sufferers from them. And although the Caledonian reserve succeeded in getting ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the Natives in Divine things, conducted the worship, and taught them much by his good example. His influence was increasing, when one morning a Sacred Man threw at him the kawas or killing-stone, a deadly weapon like a scythe stone in shape and thickness, usually round but sometimes angular, and from eighteen to twenty inches long. They throw it from a great distance and with fatal precision. The Teacher, with great agility, warded his head and received the deep cut from it in his left hand, reserving his right ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... be capable of growth and reformation. For the unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account, nor the pleasure of feeling himself each day a better man than he was the day before; he is like an ill mower, that mows on still and never whets his scythe. Knowledge crowns man's nature with power. It even gives fortune to particular persons; and it is hard to say whether arms or learning have advanced greater numbers. As for the pleasure and delight thereof, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty's brow; Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... beneath the tempest. The rain was descending in sheets, not in drops: and a peculiar lurid, bronze-like hue pervaded the whole face of nature. And now the magnificent trees were overthrown faster and faster, offering no more resistance than reeds before the mower's scythe. Numerous as they were, they were all, individually, well-known friends. Each, as it fell, gave one enormous plash on the surface, then a plunge, the root upwards above water for a moment; again all was submerged—and then up rose the stem disbranched and peeled; after which, they either ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... four shrapnels whizzed into the middle of his sentence. The screaming seemed to have grown louder, more piercing. The captain felt as though a monstrous, glittering scythe were flashing in a steep curve directly down on his skull. But this time he did not dare to move an eyelash. His limbs contracted and grew taut, as in the dentist's chair when the forceps grip the tooth. At the same time, he examined ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... moment. She glanced at her husband to find out whether he knew Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at Vronsky with displeasure, vaguely recalling who this was. Vronsky's composure and self-confidence here struck, like a scythe against a stone, upon the cold self-confidence of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... on which scythe of mower has never cut sward, nor haymaker set foot; meadows loaded with such luxuriance of vegetation—lush, tall grass—that tons of hay might be garnered off a single acre; meadows of such extent, that in speaking of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and that along that pale-blue, moonlit, unknown sword lurked a sure death for Rodriguez. He moved from his place of vantage and was soon lost in large shadows; while the rapiers played and blade rippled on blade with a sound as though Death were gently sharpening his scythe in the dark. And now Rodriguez was giving ground, now his antagonist pressed him; thrusts that he believed invincible had failed; now he parried wearily and had at once to parry again; the unknown pressed on, was upon him, was scattering his weakening ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... and blue of the Union, mixed with the stars and bars of the rebellion; but, worse than all, the ranks of gray were sweeping in overwhelming masses quite behind the lines of blue, cutting them down as a scythe when near the end of the furrow. To the eastward Sherman still clung desperately to the crests he had won, but Jack saw with agony that, slipping between him and the river, a great wedge of gray was hurrying forward. His last despairing glance caught a body ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... in earnest: the maids were out, spreading in the wake of the machine, and Grindhusen was set to work with a scythe in the corners and awkward parts where the machine could not go. And I got out my stone-grey paint and set about ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... criticised, and often condemned, were really the chief factors in the making of a new and greater democracy: that the cog, the drill, the grate-bar, and the flying shuttle would ere long supplant the hoe and the scythe; and that when the full flood of this new era was reached their old-time standards of family pride, reckless hospitality, and even their old-fashioned courtesy would well-nigh be swept into space. The storm raised ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mightiest moral agent of the earth; the true vicegerent of the spirit from above, by which alone the soul is truly taught to plume her wings and shape her course for Heaven. And in this country, where operative power is certain wealth, he who can neither wield axe or scythe may be looked on with a slight shade of contempt: but this only arises from constant association with the people; for were the schoolmaster more his own master, and less under their surveillance by having a dwelling of his own, his situation otherwise ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... they came together again; whether they should abide on the Glittering Plain, or go back again to Cleveland by the Sea and dwell in the House of the Kindred; and for his part he yearned to behold the roof of his fathers and to tread the meadow which his scythe had swept, and the acres where his hook had smitten the wheat. But he said to himself, "I will wait till I hear her ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... rains, or the melting snows send it in a freshet over the rocks where, when I was a boy, it was cascading always. That beautiful meadow, too, is gone, and the streets of a modern village, with blocks of houses, and stores, and shops, occupy the place where I swung my first scythe. The old log-house vanished years and years ago. A steamboat ploughs its way through that beautiful lake, and the things of my boyhood are but visions of memory, called up from the long, long past. Not one landmark of the olden ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... physical wrecks still showing a manly nobility in spite of the most horrible outrages. These organisms, struggling so tenaciously to regain their hold on life, bringing their reviving energies out into the sunlight, represented but the most minute part of the number mowed down by the scythe of Death. Back of them were thousands and thousands of comrades groaning on hospital beds from which they would probably never rise. Thousands and thousands were hidden forever in the bosom of the Earth moistened by ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... when the sickle must be put into the barley, soon to be followed by the scythe in the oats. And now came the joy of labour. Everything else was abandoned for the harvest field. Books were thrown utterly aside; for, even when there was no fear of a change of weather to urge to labour prolonged ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... cause is the same which, in long ages gone, Roused up your great sires, so gallantly known, When, braving the tyrant, the sceptre and throne, They rushed to the conflict, despising the odds; Armed with bow, spear, and scythe, and with sling and with stone, For their homes and ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... of us. We have not seen him, but the circumstantial evidence is conclusive. Nobody else in the world could have swept this portion of the Wilderness with shell and shrapnel in such a manner. Why, he has mowed down the bushes in long swathes as the scythe takes the grass and he has cut down our men with them. How does the ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... she knows everything, contains an abundance of important features of which we do not as yet know anything. With the same scientific exactitude the laboratory must investigate the milking, or the making of butter, the feeding of the cattle and the picking of the fruit, the use of the scythe and the axe, the pruning and the husking. The mere fact that every one, even with the least skill, is able to carry out such movements with some result, does not in the least guarantee that any one carries them out to-day with the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the chivalry of France, splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before them ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... by a cloth. More in the abstract, they were snatching at a snapdragon bowl. It struck him, that the gamblers had thronged on an invitation to drink the round of seed-time and harvest in a gulp. Again they were desperate gleaners, hopping, skipping, bleeding, amid a whizz of scythe-blades, for small wisps of booty. Nor was it long before the presidency of an ancient hoary Goat-Satan might be perceived, with skew-eyes and pucker-mouth, nursing a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... When Death's sharp scythe has mowed the hero down, The muse again awakes him to renown; She tells proud Fate that all her darts are vain, And bids the hero live and strut about again: Nor is she only able to restore, But she can make what ne'er was ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... and bewilderment of every boy; the small-pox rumor became prevalent betimes, and the subtle aroma of the asafetida-bag permeated the graded schools "from turret to foundation-stone"; the still recurring expose of the poor-house management; the farm-hand, with the scythe across his shoulder, struck dead by lightning; the long-drawn quarrel between the rival editors culminating in one of them assaulting the other with a "sidestick," and the other kicking the one down-stairs and thenceward ad libitum; the tramp, suppositiously stealing a ride, found dead ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I know—certainly, they had fallen like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy—but, be that as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known the man to whose innate kindliness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from the earth, the hillsides began to parch, the grass in the vales to wither, and the stream of Corrie was diminished between its banks to the size of an ordinary rill. The shepherds drove their flocks to moorlands, and marsh and tarn had their reeds invaded by the scythe to supply the cattle with food. The sheep of his sister were Elphin's constant care; he drove them to the moistest pastures during the day, and he often watched them at midnight, when flocks, tempted by the sweet dewy grass, are known to browse eagerly, that he might guard them from ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... health was on my cheek, and hope and love O'er all the future wove one iris bright. Ah, little prophets, do you then predict A rainy morrow? By yon crimson west I doubt your warnings; so in truth it seems Does yonder farmer who, with shouldered scythe From meadows fragrant with the new-mown hay, Goes whistling homeward, glad to seek repose Until another sun shall call him forth, To gather into barns the winter's store Of food provided for the gentle king That faintly lowing from the pastures come Scented with ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... of shooting the Christmas turkey is one of the few sports that the settlers of a new country seldom or never neglect to observe. It was connected with the daily practices of a people who often laid aside the axe or the scythe to seize the rifle, as the deer glided through the forests they were felling, or the bear entered their rough meadows to scent the air of a clearing, and to scan, with a look of sagacity, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that which drowns all care, stout beer; Which freely drink to your lord's health, Then to the plough, the commonwealth, Next to your flails, your fans, your fats, Then to the maids with wheaten hats: To the rough sickle, and crook'd scythe, Drink, frolic boys, till all be blithe. Feed, and grow fat; and as ye eat Be mindful that the lab'ring neat, As you, may have their fill of meat. And know, besides, ye must revoke The patient ox unto the yoke, And all go back unto the plough And ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... tramped around the stalls but couldn't find her. So Mitch went back to the house for a lantern and we looked all through the barn and finally all around the barn. And pretty soon he saw her lyin' by the barn. She was dead—all over blood. Somebody had run a great knife like a scythe or a corn-cutter through her. And I never see a boy cry like Mitch did. He ran back and told Zueline and she and all the children came out and most of us cried. Then Mr. Miller came out, and Mrs. Miller, and Mr. Miller said ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... the tasselled cap and the patent-leathers had strolled leisurely in the opposite direction to that the earl had taken, and in a little while—still followed by the valet, who bore his painting tools—had climbed into a field knee-deep in grass which was ready for the scythe. At the bottom of this meadow ran a little purling stream, with a slant willow growing over it. In obedience to the young gentleman's instructions, the valet set down his burden here, and having received orders to return ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... cocked hats, no declarations and resolutions of parliament, no blare of party conventions, no lies graven on marble, nor statues of bronze, can change the truth, that the True Makers of Canada were those who, in obscurity and poverty, made it with ax and spade, with plow and scythe, with sweat of face ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... nor Beau Sejour, nor Port Royal, Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of tomorrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:— "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields, Safer within these peaceful dikes, besieged by the ocean, Than our fathers ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... light,' leaving us at the mercy of assiduous editors to expound that 'Phingari' is the Greek [Greek: phengarion], and stands here for the moon. And if he could have spared us such Orientalisms as 'Al Sirat's arch,' or 'avenging Monkir's scythe,' we should have mixed up less desultory reading with the enjoyment of fine passages. He gives us too much of his local colouring, he checks the rush of his verse by superfluous metaphors, he has weak ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, or reap-hook I feared no competitor, and thus I set absolute want at defiance; and as I never cared further for my labours than while I was in actual exercise, I spent the evenings in the way after ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... by the mower and follow the scythe sweeping down thousands of the broad-flowered daisies, the knotted knapweeds, the blue scabious, the yellow rattles, sweeping so close and true that nothing escaped; and, yet although I had seen so many hundreds of each, although I had lifted armfuls day after day, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... a strange old superstition that even Death must listen to the voice of Time in gold; that, when the scanty numbered moments of the sick are fleeting, a gold watch laid in the wasted palm, and pointing the earthly hours, compels the scythe of Death to pause, the timeless power to bow before the two great gods of the ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... all visionaries: a monster whose nature could only be explained by mad pride, and who craved for the most awful immortality, dreaming that the coming dawn would rise from the arms of the guillotine. Only one thing could surpass him: the scythe of death which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that falls And intercepts her lord betwixt the walls: The whole division that to Mars pertains, All trades of death that deal in steel for gains, Were there: the butcher, armourer, and smith, Whose forges sharpen'd falchions, or the scythe. The scarlet conquest on a tower was placed, 600 With shouts, and soldiers' acclamations graced: A pointed sword hung threatening o'er his head, Sustain'd but by a slender twine of thread. There saw I Mars his ides, the Capitol, The seer in vain foretelling ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... answered, promptly, "I am not Time himself. And why should you think so? Have I a scythe? Have I an hour-glass? Have I a forelock? Do I look ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... was a low rumbling like heavy tumbrils on the floor of heaven. All about, the wind sounded hollow like a mighty scythe on corn. The air was oppressed with a leaden blackness—no glimmer of light on any hand; and as they began the ascent of the Pass they reached out blind hands to feel ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... flippers, the harpooner at the same time darting an iron straight down. There was a whirl in the waters, and quick as thought the vast flukes of the whale rose in the air, recurving with a sidelong sweep as of some gigantic scythe. The blow shore off the bow of the attacking boat as if it ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the plain in twilight that was lit by the red flashes from the guns. The clouds of smoke were red-bosomed; the red bars stayed in the west. The guns never ceased their thundering, the musketry to roll. Death swung a wide scythe in the twilight of that first day of July. Anderson and Armistead, Barksdale, Semmes and Kershaw, Wright and Toombs and Mahone, rushed along the slope of Malvern Hill, as Ripley and Garland and Gordon ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... many of us the inventor is the true hero for he multiplies the working value of life. He performs an old task with new economy, as when he devises a mowing-machine to oust the scythe; or he creates a service wholly new, as when he bids a landscape depict itself on a photographic plate. He, and his twin brother, the discoverer, have eyes to read a lesson that Nature has held for ages under the undiscerning gaze of other ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... many-colored boundary-stakes with the coats-of-arms of the two sovereign princes whose dominions came together here. In rustic vehicles of all kinds the peasants used to drive past, and men, women, and children kept passing to and fro with hoe, scythe, and sickle. The gardes-champetres of the two dominions also used to pass by often, the barrels of their muskets shining as they approached and gleaming long after they had passed. Amrei was almost always accosted by the garde-champetre of Endringen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... invaded by labor-saving appliances so numerous and so deft as to make each of these domestic departments a sort of factory in itself. The spinning-wheel has been abandoned for the sewing and the knitting machine, and the hand-plough for the steam-plough, and the scythe for the mowing-machine, and the rude kitchen knife and spoon for an endless variety of contrivances, from the apple-parer, the egg-beater, and the bean-shelters, to ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... I should much prefer not moving, if I were not compelled to do so. You know my mode of living here, and it is far worse in this cold stormy weather. My continued solitude only still further enfeebles me, and really my weakness often amounts to a swoon. Oh! do not further grieve me, for the scythe of Death will grant ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... with dark, dead earths. "O Man, O the dreams of Man!" something within him unceasingly cried. He stood on the granite margin, turning toward the Coliseum, whose mountain ridges of wall stood high in the moonlight, with the deep gaps which had been hewn in them by the scythe of Time. Sharply stood the rent and ragged arches of Nero's golden house close by, like murderous cutlasses. The Palatine Hill lay full of green gardens, and, in crumbling temple-roofs, the blooming death-garland of ivy was gnawing, and living ranunculi still glowed around sunken capitals. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in the Theban mythology into a single hymn, that we should sow with the hand and not with the sack. Corinna's monition to the singer is proper to the interpreter of historical truth: he should cull with the hand, and not sweep in with the scythe. It is doubtless mere pedantry to abstain from the widest conception of the sum of a great movement. A clear, definite, and stable idea of the meaning in the history of human progress of such vast groups of events as the Reformation ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... a sharp steel knife three or four inches long, just like a little scythe-blade, fastened over the natural spur before the fight commences. A leather sheath covers the weapon while the cocks are being put into the ring, and held with their beaks almost touching till they are furious. Then they are drawn back to opposite sides of the ring, the sheaths are ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... onrush of those fierce and determined men, who were, moreover, in overwhelming numbers; they had time only to pour in a couple of hasty, ill-directed volleys, and then the Cubans—armed, some with rifles, and others with swords, cane- knives, machetes, scythe blades, pikes, hatchets, ay, and even crowbars and smiths' hammers—swept down upon and overwhelmed them. For the space of perhaps three minutes there was a hideous melee, a confused mass of men struggling, yelling, shrieking; a popping of pistol shots, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... death; where the ghastly apprehensions of the former,—and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting-fork is not to be despised,—so finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod,—taking it in like honey and butter,—with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the stroke of such ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... fell at his feet as if she had been cut down by a scythe. The unexpected suddenness of her movement ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... With wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching forth their ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... field, declaring that the giant would not be able to find him. The giant Skrymsli, however, possessed wisdom far beyond what Odin imagined, and, failing to find the child at home, he strode off immediately to the field with his scythe, and mowing the wheat he selected the particular ear where the boy was hidden. Counting over the grains of wheat he was about to lay his hand upon the right one when Odin, hearing the child's cry of distress, snatched the kernel out of the giant's hand, and restored the boy to his parents, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... raising their fallen king, carried him off on board another of his ships, while Olaf Triggvison went aft along the crowded decks, and men fell beneath his blows, as the ripe grain falls before the mower's scythe. It happened to the Swedes, as to the Danes, that notwithstanding their superior numbers they found that they were ill matched in skill and prowess with the Norsemen. Their picked champions were speedily killed ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... distance, shining in the morning sun: over meadow and hillside and Indian-named river the summer light fell in all its beauty. Dewdrops glittered on waving grain and mown grass; labourers in their shirt-sleeves made another gleaming line of scythe blades, or followed the teams of red and brindled oxen that bowed their heads to the heavy yoke. Through all this, past all this, the Pequot train flew on towards Pattaquasset; sending whole lines of white smoke to scour the country, despatching the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... word used here, covinarius, signifies the driver of a covinus, or chariot, the axle of which was bent into the form of a scythe. The British manner of fighting from chariots is particularly described by Caesar, who gives them the name of esseda:—"The following is the manner of fighting from essedae: They first drive round with them to all parts ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the four horses strained desperately at their traces. These contests had the quality of a wrestling match but the men always won. My own job was to rake and burn the brush which my father mowed with a heavy scythe.—Later we dug postholes and built fences but each day was spent ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... expresses the sense of mankind, in all ages,—that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape of Kinde or nature, grows over us like grass. We paint Time with a scythe; Love and Fortune, blind; and Destiny, deaf. We have too little power of resistance against this ferocity which champs us up. What front can we make against these unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? What can I do against the influence of Race, in my ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... speak to them: and to-night I'll force The wine peep through their scars.—Come on, my queen; There's sap in't yet. The next time I do fight I'll make death love me; for I will contend Even with his pestilent scythe. ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... were, it must be acknowledged, sufferers; for it is a well-known fact, that during the three months the college was suspended in the air, and therefore incapable of attending their patients, no deaths happened, except a few who fell before the scythe of Father Time, and some melancholy objects who, perhaps to avoid some trifling inconvenience here, laid the hands of violence upon themselves, and plunged into misery infinitely greater than that which they hoped by such a rash step to avoid, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... terrified, if inarticulate, call for help. If there was one thing Split did respect, it was that Reaper whose name she could never hear without a quick indrawn breath. Yet—in her heart—she knew that, though others might fall at the touch of that fearful scythe, she, Split Madigan, as fleet of limb as a coyote and as sound of heart as a young pine-cone, could never, never die; that the world could never be when her quick red blood should be quiet and her mountain-bred lungs should ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... and Illinese, No more beneath his stalwort blow shall writhe: Peace spreads her reign wide o'er his inland seas— He swings the scythe. ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... full and ample Chronicle than from contemplating such representative, works of art. Moreover, the Florentine masters took heed to paint, under the shade of orange groves, on the flower-starred turf, fair ladies and gallant knights, with Death lying in wait for them with his scythe, while they were discoursing of love to the sound of lutes and viols. Nothing was better fitted to convert carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness of God on the lips of women. To rebuke the covetous, the painter would show to the life the Devils pouring molten gold down the throat ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... with its Gothic windows, lends a touch of distinction. The garden with one towering sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August 1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The family was a large one; there were eight ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Peendahgun, n. a pocket or pouch Peendig, n. inside Paquahkoostegowng, block-headed Pequahquod, n. a ball or knot Poodahwain, make fire Poodahjegun, n. a musical or blowing instrument Pookedaemin, n. a mandrake Pahmetahgun, n. a servant Pahbegwah, adj. rough Pahquahskezhegun, n. a scythe Papahmebahegood, n. a rider, a name for a dragoon Pamahdezid, the living Pahsquagin, n. leather Pahbahgewahyaun, n. a shirt, calico Pengwahshahgid, adj. naked Pezindun, v. to hear, to listen Pinggweh, n. ashes ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... parents. But this poor fellow really loved that boy of his. 'Nothing cam comfort me for my loss,' he said one day when I came across him out in the fields. He had forgotten all about his work, and was standing there motionless, leaning on his scythe; he had picked up his hone, it lay in his hand, and he had forgotten to use it. He has never spoken since of his grief to me, but he has grown sad and silent. Just now it is one of his ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid, Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... and abounding river! Making thy waves a blessing as they flow Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever Could man but leave thy bright creation so, Nor its fair promise from the surface mow[il] With the sharp scythe of conflict, then to see Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know[302] Earth paved like Heaven—and to seem such to me,[im] Even now what wants thy stream?—that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... bit. But, Lord love ye, miss, I ain't afraid of dyin', not a bit, only I don't want to die if I can help it. My time must be nigh at hand now, for I be aud, and a hundred years is too much for any man to expect. And I'm so nigh it that the Aud Man is already whettin' his scythe. Ye see, I can't get out o' the habit of caffin' about it all at once. The chafts will wag as they be used to. Some day soon the Angel of Death will sound his trumpet for me. But don't ye dooal an' greet, my deary!"—for he saw that I was crying—"if he should ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... spring trap, as the wheels jolt in the hard ruts, and the springs are shaken in the deep furrows, the vehicle going up and down like a boat upon the waves. Why there should be such furrows in a meadow is a question that naturally arises in the mind. Whether it be mown with the scythe or the mowing-machine, it is of advantage to have the surface of the field as nearly as possible level; and it is therefore most probable that these deep furrows had their origin at a period when a different state of things ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... mercy of their quarrel. It happened very ill to Artybius, general of the Persian army, fighting, man to man, with Onesilus, king of Salamis, to be mounted upon a horse trained after this manner, it being the occasion of his death, the squire of Onesilus cleaving the horse down with a scythe betwixt the shoulders as it was reared up upon his master. And what the Italians report, that in the battle of Fornova, the horse of Charles VIII., with kicks and plunges, disengaged his master from the enemy that pressed upon him, without which he had been slain, sounds ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the asking it seemed that men MIGHT work, But prejudice was rampant in every shop and field; And, "What if you ARE trying, MY scythe you may not wield!" Men told the thief, who answered—"Indeed, I will not shirk!" And carpenters and builders turned from him with a smirk, And farmers hurried by him to house the harvest's yield. And so he took his dagger, all rusted, and his shield, And sought again the highway ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes under his one arm. The parson was walking in silence under the noontide sun, his straw hat tipped back from his forehead and his eyes on the ground. He was busy with ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... gave the sign of dismissal. The people began to disperse slowly and somewhat reluctantly, every member of the crowd being curious to obtain a nearer view of the young orator who not only spoke his thoughts fearlessly, but whose pen was as a scythe mowing down a harvest of shams and hypocrisies, and whose frank utterance from the heart was so honest as to be absolutely convincing to the public. But he, after giving a few further instructions to the men who were beginning to close in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... picture that appeals. Ghastly is his portrait of a wretched young woman ravaged by absinthe. Her lips are blistered by the wormwood, and in her fevered glance there is despair. Another delineation of disease, a grinning, skull-like head with a scythe back of it, is a tribute to the artist's power of rendering the repulsive. His Messalina, Lassatta, La Femme au Cochon, and La Femme au Pantin should be studied. He has painted scissors grinders, flower girls, "old guards," incantations, fishing parties, the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... said, is so afraid of the water-spirits that he will not bathe without a cross round his neck, nor ford a stream on horseback without signing a cross on the water with a scythe or knife. In some parts these water-spirits are supposed to be the transformed souls of Pharaoh and his host, when they were drowned, and the number is always being increased by the souls of ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... of the spring floods are overflowed by the river and abundantly manured with its mud. In this way there is formed here a fertile tract of meadow covered partly with a grassy turf untouched by the scythe, partly with a very peculiar bush vegetation, rising to a height of eight metres, among which there are to be found a number of families of plants well known by us in Sweden, as Impatiens, Urtica, Sonchus, Heracleum, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... of letters is an unfailing help to pass the time. A word will sometimes keep a player puzzling for hours, which is, of course, too long. "Pomegranate," "Orchestra," and "Scythe" are good examples of ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... bloody hand to shake, And oh, man, here's good-bye; We'll sweat no more on scythe and rake, My ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... lay looking at the sunlit blind, in the stillness of early morning he heard a sound always delightful, always soothing, that of scythe and whetstone; then the long steady sweep of the blade through garden grass. Morton, old stick-in-the-mud, would not let his gardener use a mowing machine, the scythe was good enough for him; and Harvey, recalled ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Karlych," said a lean old man with a pointed nose. "You ask, Who let the horse feed in the field? But who did it? Day in and day out—and every day is as long as a year—I worked with the scythe, and as I fell asleep the horse went among the oats. And now you are ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... never been republished. In addition to Roads and Dancing Children, referred to by you, there is An Autumn Effect in the Portfolio, and a paper on Fontainebleau—Forest Notes is the name of it—in Cornhill. I have no objection to any of these being edited, say with a scythe, and reproduced. But I heartily abominate and reject the idea of reprinting The Pentland Rising. For God's sake ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wake me up and make me sit down to supper. I would be overcome with drowsiness and in a stupor saw lights, faces, plates, and heard voices without understanding what they were saying. And I used to get up early in the morning and take my scythe, or go to the school and ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... swords and cheering them on, while the twenty-four guns the Emperor had sent to support the movement thundered behind. The old wall against which I leaned shook to its foundations. In the street the balls mowed down the enemy like grass before the scythe. It was their turn ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... spirit of the glass and scythe! What power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity! On, still on, He presses and forever. The proud bird, The Condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northing hurricane, And bath its plumage in the ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... a 'cradle,' in American farming, signifies a machine for cutting down corn wholesale. It is a scythe, longer and wider than that used in mowing hay, combined with an apparatus of 'standard,' 'snaith,' and 'fingers,' by means of which a single workman may level two acres and a half of wheat ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... I a child the other day, my good fellow, when I saved your squadron from being cut to pieces like grass with a scythe? As for nobility? Pouf! Not much of that in me. I love France—yes. A soldier always loves his country. She is so brave, too, and so fair, and so gay. Not like your Albion—if it is yours—who is a great ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... loved and youthful bridegroom, Handsomest of all the people, Forge thou now a scythe of sharpness, Fix the best of handles on it, Carve it, sitting in the doorway, Hammer it upon a tree-stump. 50 When there comes the time of sunshine, Take thy young wife to the meadow, Look thou where the grass is rustling, And the harder grass is crackling, And the reeds are gently murmuring, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many serious reflections. Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy stages through the old-fashioned school-books. The interesting Readers ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... sweet dominion Our life were hell, and pleasure painfulness. The sting of envy and the dart of love, Avarice' talons, and the fire of hate, Would poison, wound, distract, and soon consume The heart, the liver, life, and mind of man. The sturdy mower, that with brawny arms Wieldeth the crooked scythe, in many a swath Cutting the flowery pride on velvet plain, Lies down at night, and in the weird[316] folds Of his wife's arms forgets his labour past. The painful mariner and careful smith, The toiling ploughman, all artificers, Most humbly yield to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... bloodiest fight began that ever men beheld, for the Scottish brigades, giving fire three ranks at a time over one another's heads, poured in their shot so thick, that the enemy were cut down like grass before a scythe; and following into the thickest of their foot with the clubs of their muskets made a most dreadful slaughter, and yet was there no flying. Tilly's men might be killed and knocked down, but no man turned his back, nor would give an inch ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... be—the magic of that name Defies the scythe of time, the torch of flame;[bp] On the same spot still consecrates the scene, And bids the Drama be where she hath been: This fabric's birth attests the potent spell—— Indulge our honest ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... as he was at the high desk. Seemed like he was born to be an assistant auditor. He was holding the job when I first came to the Corrugated as sub office boy; he still has it, and I can think of only one party that could pry him loose from it—the old boy with the long scythe. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... would reel and roll like a ship in a storm, coasting past abysses in which fragments of the mountain were falling, tearing up trees by the roots, and leveling, as if with the keen edge of an immense scythe, every ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... had so much impressed Elsie, in which William Dalzell was made more fascinating and more faithless, and Jane much more attached to him than in reality—which this correspondent said was good, though the subject was hackneyed, but on all the others the sweeping scythe of censure fell unsparingly. "Her poems," he said, "were very tolerable, and not to be endured;" mediocrity was insufferable in poetry. The tone of them was unhealthy, and would feed the sentimentalism ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... of these insects, you may not be aware, are made in the ground. These nests are frequently found in meadows, about the time the grass is mowed; and it not unfrequently happens that the mower disturbs one of these nests with his scythe, in which case, the first information the poor man obtains of the existence of the nest is from a score or two of the bumble-bees themselves—(we'll call them bumble-bees, for the sake of peace, though I must confess I feel a great partiality for ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... Piper Tom climbed the hill, followed by his faithful dog. On his shoulder he bore a scythe and under the other arm was a spade. He entered Miss Evelina's gate without ceremony and made a wry face as he looked about him. He scarcely knew ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... promised to be there by four o'clock in the morning, and to start from home as the clock struck three. As it would take an hour to walk three miles and a half with the scythes on their backs, it was agreed that they should carry my scythe, and that I should bring the bottles ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... fastidious in its choice of position—by the river-side or on the mountain-top it seems equally at home, though it somewhat varies according to its situation, but its most chosen habitat seems to be a well-kept lawn. There it luxuriates, and defies the scythe and the mowing machine. It has been asserted that it disappears when the ground is fed by sheep, and again appears when the sheep are removed, but this requires confirmation. Yet it does not lend itself readily to gardening purposes. It ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... our native ferns with sufficient respect. Homage is paid in literature to the palm, and it is an emblem of honour, but our New England ferns, many of them equally majestic, are tossed into heaps for hay and mown down by the ruthless scythe of the farmer every autumn when he shows his greatest agricultural energy by stripping the waysides of their beauty prior to the coming of the roadmender with his awful "turn-piking" process. If, by the way, the automobilists succeed in stopping this piking practice, we will print a nice little ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Ver, Solstitium, Sol, Orion, Harvest and Bacchus. Each enters in appropriate guise, with a train of attendants singing or dancing. Thus we have such stage-directions as, 'Enter Ver, with his train, overlaid with suits of green moss, representing short grass, singing': 'Enter Harvest, with a scythe on his neck, and all his reapers with sickles, and a great black bowl with a posset in it, borne before him: they come in singing': 'Enter Bacchus, riding upon an ass trapped in ivy, himself dressed in vine leaves, and a garland of grapes on his head; his companions having all jacks in ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... in time of corn-harvest 2d., the first week in August, and 3d. till the end of the month; and they are likewise neither to ask meat nor any other perquisite or indulgence. The law likewise requires that they shall repair to the next town or village, carrying their scythe or sickle openly in their hands, and shall there be hired in some public place.... The second chapter directs that no man in harvest—before settled to be in the month of August—shall leave the village ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... believe me, there's little good to be expected from him. I never knew the old gentleman with the scythe and hour-glass bring any thing but grey hair, thin cheeks, and loss of teeth: You ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Sculptor skulptisto. Sculpture (art) skulptarto. Sculpture (statuary) skulptajxo. Sculpture (to carve) skulpti. Scum sxauxmo. Scurf favo. Scurrilous maldeca, maldelikata. Scurvy skorbuto. Scuttle, coal karbujo—eto. Scythe falcxilo. Sea maro. Seafaring mara. Sea-gull mevo. Sea-horse (walrus) rosmaro. Seal sigeli. Seal sigelo—ilo. Seal (animal) foko. Sealing-wax sigelvakso. Seam kunkudro. Seaman maristo, marano. Seamanship marveturarto. Seamstress kudristino. Sear kauxterizi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... crash, and all the black front of it went fiery red and yellow, and at the first discharge of this inferno, the figure with the flourished sabre in his right hand fell prone. The double line of the invaders shook and wavered from right to left, and men dropped amongst them as if the scythe of Death were literally sweeping there. The lines advanced, wavered, paused, turned, turned again, advanced again with mad cheering, scarce heard amid the rattle of musketry and the roaring of the ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... it a fearful 'way of death.' The heroes of Wagner and Olustee did not shrink from the trial, but actually charged in single file. The first to step upon the fatal path, went down like grass before the scythe, but over their prostrate bodies came their comrades, until the enemy, panic-stricken by such determined daring, abandoned their position ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson |
