"Scythe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first brought to this country in spray and seed as a packing for some of the household belongings of Governor Endicott. Thrown out in friendly soil, the seeds took root and there remain in the vicinity of their first American homes. It is a stubborn squatter, yielding only to scythe, plough, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... of clashing kettle-drums, cymbals, and other instruments, that played fast and furiously; while above all a knell in the church tower rang forth at intervals a slow, deep, lugubrious note; and all the time there glided in and out through the ring a grisly being—skull-headed, skeleton-boned, scythe in hand—Death himself; and ever and anon, when the dance was swiftest, would he dart into the midst, pounce on one or other, holding an hour-glass to the face, unheeding rank, sex, or age, and bear his victim ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 made before; Can search ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Breckinridge was sent through a terrific storm of balls and shell, that cut down his gallant boys like grass before the scythe. On, into the Valley of the Shadow they strode; thinned, reeling, broken under that terrible hail—but never blenching. And the crest was won! but the best blood of Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and North Carolina was ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... could not hear her talking, but he could see what was in her mind, and so he went home to fetch his scythe. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... coming. The grim reaper was sharpening his scythe and the watching world was waiting for the outcome in an agony ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... only when we yield that we are conquered. "The daemon shall not choose us, but we shall choose our daemon."[7] It is only when we lose hold of our royal inheritance that Time is seen with his scythe and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... injury of its cutting edge. These sods were then built into a wall like bricks, resting gently against the framework of poles, from which, however, they were separated by a padding of grass, which Harris cut in a sleugh with his scythe, and small willows from the ravine. This mattress of grass and willows prevented any earth shaking through into the house itself. A framework made of a hewn log was inserted in the south wall to leave space for a window, which should be bought when the family finances ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Twice, I remember, he broke a leg, and each time he had to lie six weeks on his back for the bone to knit. Felons on his fingers tormented him; and it was a notable season that he did not have a big, painful boil or a bad cut from a scythe or from an axe. One mishap seemed to ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... good time—remorseless twins they are for striding through their human forests, notching as they go—while the countenance of Son was crossed with a thousand little creases, which the same deceitful Time would take delight in smoothing out and wearing away with the flat part of his scythe, as a preparation of the surface ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a cleaver an' makes fer th' dure, wid us follyin' um, afther providin' oursilves wid what utinsils wuz layin' handy—a scythe here an' an axe there, an' some wan ilse wid a pitchfork. Rad brung up lasht wid a sixteen-pound posht-maul, bein' in no hurry at all ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... his goody took a scythe over her neck, and went out into the hayfield with the mowers and began to mow; but the man was to mind the house, and do the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... she fell from the height of her desires to penury in England. Much of this tale she concealed from Raymond; nor did she confess, that repulse and denial, as to a criminal convicted of the worst of crimes, that of bringing the scythe of foreign despotism to cut away the new springing liberties of her country, would have followed her application to any ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Heights, where General Meagher's Irish Brigade repeatedly charged the Rebel works, until at least two-thirds of his stalwart men strewed the ground, killed and wounded. Brigade after brigade was ordered to take these heights, and though their ranks were mown down like grass before the scythe, in the very mouth of Rebel guns the effort was again and again made. Midway up the Heights was a heavy stone wall, behind which lay the hosts of the enemy, who delivered their fire with scarcely any exposure, sweeping down our columns as they approached. This hillside was completely strewn with ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... May Henry Sylvester Cornwell A Spring Lilt Unknown Summer Longings Denis Florence MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George Arnold Indian Summer Emily Dickinson Prevision Ada Foster Murray A Song of Early Autumn Richard Watson Gilder To Autumn John Keats Ode to Autumn Thomas Hood Ode to the West Wind Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn: a Dirge Percy Bysshe Shelley Autumn ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... for my own enjoyment," and began again to make all the noise he could. At last the father and mother were awakened, and they ran to the room-door and peeped through the chink, and when they saw a wolf in occupation, they ran and fetched weapons—the man an axe, and the wife a scythe. ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... daughter of Eblis, appeared in the shape of a huge, terrible lion, which ran at the Princess as if to devour her. But she sprang back, and plucked out a hair from her head, and then, pronouncing two or three words, she changed the hair into a sharp scythe, and with the scythe she cut the lion into two pieces through the middle. The body of the lion now vanished, and only the head remained. This changed itself into a large scorpion. The Princess changed herself into a serpent and attacked the scorpion, which ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... I could never bear Your tender flesh to hack and tear, Forgetting that poor worms endure As much as I should, to be sure, If any giant should come and jump On to my back, and kill me plump, Or run my heart through with a scythe, And think it ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... horribly than the first; the third, a strong white mare, was so covered with the blood of her fellows and from a wound of her own, that she looked a roan. The driver's spine was crushed, the foot of a gunner was taken off—clean at the ankle as by a scythe. The noise was dreadful; the shriek that the mare gave echoed through the March woods. The other guns of the battery, together with Carpenter's and Waters's, swept round the ruin and over the high open ground toward a stone wall that ran diagonally ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the truth out of your drivelling spy, The maniac whom you set to swing death's scythe. Nay; torture not the torturer—let him lie: What need of racks to teach a ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... both with a considerable number of white threads a-shinin' in 'em, jest enough so's you could tell that old Time hadn't forgot him as he went up and down the earth with his hour-glass under his arm, and his scythe over ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... self-possession, Pani Korytzka grew confused, and I gained one of those tiny victories which are comprised in the proverb, "The scythe hit upon a stone," or in plain English, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... here's a bloody hand to shake, And oh, man, here's good-bye; We'll sweat no more on scythe and rake, My bloody hands ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... for the lane that wanders through the meadows, a mower comes sidling up, and, looking mysteriously around with his hand behind under his coat, 'You med have un for sixpence,' he says, and produces a partridge into whose body the point of the scythe ran as she sat on her nest in the grass, and whose struggles were ended by a blow from the rubber or whetstone flung at her head. He has got the eggs somewhere ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... open by the sudden fire of uncountable machine-guns, the 2/12th Battalion of the Royal Reedshires had gone down like grass before the scythe. Another fifty yards, and they would have reached the uncut wire in front of that ruined building ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... 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 ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured that Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes was due to the dim recollection of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please his sisters were grotesque, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... clock, now like a spectral voice, now hiccoughing on the assembled company, as if he had got drunk for joy; the little haymaker over the dial mowing down imaginary grass, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... hung round 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the master of the horse, to young Beauvau, and to De Thou. "It is only in them that we can place our hope for the future. Such men are indeed very rare now, for the great leveller has swung a long scythe over France." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... soon he felt his earlier manhood coming back as he rode along that pleasant afternoon, past the fields where the newly-mown hay, fresh from a recent shower, sent forth its fragrance upon the summer air, while the song of the mowers mingled with the click of the whetting scythe, made sweet, homelike sounds which he loved to hear. Why did he lean so constantly from the carriage, and why when Victor exclaimed, "The old ruin is there yet," referring to Grassy Spring did he, too, look across ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... apart, looking at the history; rarely does he assume the patient office of that scribe whom we remember to have seen in the frontispiece of our school histories, recording faithfully what the bald headed Time, sitting between his scythe and his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Ceaselessly now rang out the clanging peal of the tocsin. Thought of no danger to come restrained their furious anger. Quick into weapons of war the husbandman's peaceful utensils All were converted; dripped with blood the scythe and the ploughshare. Quarter was shown to none: the enemy fell without mercy. Fury everywhere raged and the cowardly cunning of weakness. Ne'er may I men so carried away by injurious passion See again! the sight of the raging wild beast would be better. Let not man prattle ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... invention or improvement of farm tools and machines. Perhaps some of you know 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 harvester that cuts ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... swig. In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race. With what an easy grace ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... on the withdrawal of the barbarians, had still an empire to rule, and he may be supposed to have commenced some attempts at re-organizing and re-invigorating the governmental system to which the domination of the Scythe must have given a rude shock. But he had not time to effect much. In B.C. 626 he died, after a reign of forty-two years, and was succeeded by his son, Asshur-emid-ilin, whom the Greeks called Saracus. Of this ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... pervading naturalness. The similes and metaphors, however bold and original, are always drawn from the life of the speakers. Meste Ambroi, declining at first to sing, says "Li mirau soun creba!" (The mirrors are broken), referring to the membranes of the locust that make its song. "Like a scythe under the hammer," "Their heads leaning together like two marsh-flowers in bloom, blowing in the merry wind," "His words flowed abundantly like a sudden shower on an aftermath in May," "When your eyes beam upon me, it seems to me I drink a ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... plain. —Chain'd at his root two scion-demons dwell, Breathe the faint hiss, or try the shriller yell; Rise, fluttering in the air on callow wings, And aim at insect-prey their little stings. 255 So Time's strong arms with sweeping scythe erase Art's cumberous works, and empires, from their base; While each young Hour its sickle fine employs, And crops the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... mother, and children, side by side, for a disorder called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants fell like grass beneath its scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held out—women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe—an evil more horrible than ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... firmly, "I would that I could prove my manhood against thine in any trial of strength and endurance. Let it be a match of mowing, in a rich meadow-land, on the longest day in spring, and let us ply the scythe together, fasting, from dawn till eve. Or give me a stout pair of oxen, mighty beasts, equal in strength, and both well filled with fodder, and set me to plough a field of four acres, of rich, deep soil—then ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... still; It seemed as if I visioned it, so sharp you sketched it in; Bellona was the name, I think; a coast town in Brazil, Where nobody did anything but serenade and sin. I saw it all — the jewelled sea, the golden scythe of sand, The stately pillars of the palms, the feathery bamboo, The red-roofed houses and the swart, sun-dominated land, The people ever children, and ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... tried their new scythes as they came home, a little warm with ale perhaps, from the market town. They cut a yard or two of grass as they went through the fields, just to get the swing of the scythe and as a hint to the farmer that it was time to begin. With the first June rose in the hedge the haymaking commenced—the two usually coincide—and then Cicely fluctuated between the haymakers and the mowers, now watching one and ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... seen and known at one and the same moment. This triumphal chariot was an enormous car drawn by buffaloes, black all over and painted with skeletons and white crosses; and upon the highest point of the car stood a colossal figure of Death, scythe in hand, and right round the car were a number of covered tombs; and at all the places where the procession halted for the chanting of dirges, these tombs opened, and from them issued figures draped in black cloth, upon which were painted all the bones ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... system of forage. On one of these occasions the troops, who had grown reckless and scornful of the enemy through long immunity from attack, whilst engaged in collecting supplies were scattered over the flat country, when Pharnabazus fell upon them with two scythe-chariots and about four hundred horse. Seeing him thus advancing, the Hellenes ran together, mustering possibly seven hundred men. The Persian did not hesitate, but placing his chariots in front, supported by himself and the cavalry, he gave the command to charge. The scythe-chariots charged ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... obvious places of interest, I one day hunted for the English cemetery in which Fielding lies buried, and found it at last just at the back of a little open park or garden where children were playing. On going in I found myself alone save for a gardener who was cutting down some rank grass with a scythe. This cemetery is the quietest and most beautiful I ever saw. One might imagine the dead were all friends. They are at anyrate strangers in a far land, an English party with one great man among them. I found his tomb easily, for it is made of massive blocks ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... reeled and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe; When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like a dead arm ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... was not in her race, in her blood as in mine, to love me and my type. She had lived all her life in the middle of Romance, and the very fire and passion of her South must make me dim prose to her. I remember the flicker of Salazar's returning candle, cast in lines like an advancing scythe across the two walls from ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... houses were mown down by the flaming scythe. Walls three to four feet in thickness were blown away like paper. Massive machinery was crumpled up as if it had been clutched in a titanic white-hot metal hand. The town was raked by a hurricane of incandescent dust ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... singing LUBIN comes slowly and heavily along the road. He wears the dress of a farm labourer and carries a scythe over his shoulder. In front of the cottage he pauses, looks round doubtfully, and then sits stiffly and wearily down on ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... summer's hay-harvest was come. Peasants clambered into the green nooks between the rocks to cut down with hook or knife the flowery grass, for there was no space for the sweep of a scythe. The best crop was on the bank of the Braunwasser, by the Debateable Ford, but this was cut and carried on the backs of the serfs, much earlier than the mountain grass, and never without much vigilance against the Schlangenwaldern; but this year the Count ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fierce 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, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... all times, whether it is moving with the scythe on the hill-slopes, or hewing the timber, or steering the raft down the river which is all effervescent with ice; whether it is drinking in the Gasthaus, or making love, or playing some mummer's part, or hating steadily ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... capital, is level with the dust, And the proud halls of the mighty and the calm homes of the just; For the proudest works of man, as certainly, but slower, Pass like the grass at the sharp scythe ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... hide and seek with each other. The tragedy and the comedy follow close on each other's heels. Deep calls not only to deep but to shallow as well, and in the end all notes harmonize. Where the swathe of the scythe is wide men's souls expand in heart qualities. Amidst the wreckage of a battlefield he picks up all kinds of things, every faculty picks up something and they become contributions to soul force. The greater the gloom the more the soldier searches for ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... longtemps dans son me offense. Dans ses nombreux tats il fallut donc chercher Quelque nouvel objet qui l'en pt dtacher. De l'Inde a l'Hellespont ses esclaves coururent; Les filles de l'gypte Suse comparurent; 40 Celles mme du Parthe et du Scythe indompt Y brigurent le sceptre offert la beaut. On m'elevait alors, solitaire et cache, Sous les yeux vigilants du sage Mardoche. Tu sais combien je dois ses heureux secours. 45 La mort m'avait ravi les auteurs de mes jours; ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... them. He had seen his picture. It was Father Time. And he could have laughed to himself because Father Time was a much more pleasing person than he had been in his picture. It is true that he carried a scythe, just as he had been pictured as doing. There was a sand-glass too. It was in two parts, connected by a narrow stem through which the sand was running from one ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... old person of Blythe, Who cut up his meat with a scythe; When they said, "Well! I never!" he cried, "Scythes for ever!" That lively old ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... its withered path distinct on the green hill-side, as if the mountain had been branded with red-hot iron. They generally keep to the same paths; but when the snow accumulates, and sends one down the wrong way, it has been known to cut down a pine forest, as a scythe mows grass. The tale of its work is well told by the seared and branded marks on ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... 'The scythe-chariot, O my friend Loeg!' said Cuchulainn; 'can you yoke it? and is its equipment here? If you can yoke it, and if you have its equipment, yoke it; and if you have not its equipment, do ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... genuine Democrat of 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 poor—for good ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... bein' a candydate, an' 'twud be no easy job if th' game iv photygraphs was th' on'y wan th' candydates had to play. Willum Jennings Bryan is photygraphed smilin' back at his smilin' corn fields, in a pair iv blue overalls with a scythe in his hand borrid fr'm th' company that's playin' 'Th' Ol' Homestead,' at th' Lincoln Gran' Opry House. Th' nex' day Mack is seen mendin' a rustic chair with a monkey wrinch, Bryan has a pitcher took in th' act iv puttin' on a shirt marked with th' ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... the time we were in the Island, cut under every possible disadvantage, and yet cut with marvellous persistency. With this labour, of course, the frost mounds interfere, being most disastrous to the scythe, and yet the natives never leave a single blade of grass, cutting round and round, and between these curious little hillocks. On the hay crop so very much depends, for when that fails, ponies die, sheep and cattle ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... first meeting his last thought at night and the first of the morning had been of her? Were he to say the thought of her had filled the days with happiness, would she not think him presumptuous? They were widely separated by the circumstances of life,—he of the country, a farmer, swinging the scythe, holding the plow, driving oxen, feeding pigs; she, on the contrary, was a star in cultured society, entertaining high-born ladies and gentlemen, lords, earls, and governors; chance, only, had made them acquainted. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... of an aquatic ancestry, oceanic in his sort; even his walk reminded one of a ground swell. And yet he was defective as a candidate. The House members liked him well, despite those verbal acridities which shaved the surface of debate as lawns are shaven by a scythe; but with the last word there existed no recognized House or party reason, whether of the past, the present or the future, why he should be made Speaker. In the lay of House topography he was on the wrong side of the river from the Speakership, and to land him within stretch of the gavel required ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... CHRONOS, with a scythe in his hand, and a globe on his back; which he sets down at ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... when I was a kid," he said in a weak voice; "I stepped on a scythe. I couldn't walk ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... think it would be a charity. Put it to her as an opportunity. She'd drop anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's something like a mowing machine: a grand good thing, but needs a scythe to follow round and pick out the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... nearly annihilated. One of his officers recounted that, as they were charging over the grassy plain, he threw himself down before a murderous discharge of grape and canister, which mowed the grass and men all around him as though a scythe had been swung ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... shall live, and each fair name, Recorded in the book of Fame, Founded on Honour's basis, fast As the round earth to ages last. Some virtues vanish with our breath; Virtue like this lives after death. Old Time himself, his scythe thrown by, Himself lost in eternity, An everlasting crown shall twine To make a Wilkes and Sidney join. 210 But should some slave-got villain dare Chains for his country to prepare, And, by his birth to slavery broke, Make her, too, feel the galling yoke, May he be ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... prophet swallowed, a bitter taste remaining when the sweetness is gone. But if we set our hearts on God, we set our hearts on that which knows no variableness, neither the shadow of turning. There are no inadequate responses, no changes that we need fear. On that love the scythe of death, which mows down all other products of the human heart, hath no power; and its stem stands untouched by the keen edge that levels all the rest of the herbage. Love God, and thou lovest eternity; and therefore the joy of the love is eternal as its object. So he who loves God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is its mountains. Those same Carpathian Mountains, which form the natural boundary between the land of the Magyars and the Russian plains, take a sudden turn westward at the Rumanian frontier, then sweep around in a great semicircle, forming a shape resembling a scythe, the handle of which reaches up into Poland, the blade curling around within the Balkan Peninsula. Behind the handle, and above the upper part of the blade, stretch the broad plains of Hungary, through which ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... flowers, her face is tanned by labour. The bleating and affrighted sheep are plunged, unwillingly, into the pool, and now by the sturdy hand stripped of their fleecy coats. The bottle quickly passes, the simple tale goes round, the ballad purchased at the fair is sung; the mower whets his scythe, and the grass and the wild-flowers fall before it; the waggon, heavily laden, removes the odoriferous hay; and the neat-mown fields display a brighter green. The cuckoo, with his never-varying note is heard; but let us, when the ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the cottony puff was just short of the clump of trees where the Russians had concealed their battery. I picked up the spot through the glass and— one might have known !—there was One of those eternal peasants calmly swinging his scythe about fifty yards short of the spot where the shrapnel had exploded. I could see him straighten up, glance at it, then go on with ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... 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 men. Where an ordinary ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... 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 Pungee, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... death hovered over the land, and dominated that rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze, seeking some favorable sign ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... confreres and their belongings. It had all culminated in a visit of royalty to their place in Suffolk, from which she had emerged radiantly and delicately aggressive, and sweeping a wider circle with her social scythe. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at work in the field, a long distance from the house. He was cutting grain with a scythe and told me he would just about get that piece done if I would bring him his supper. I had never been over on this knoll which was on the other side of a small hill from the house. I got his supper ready, taking all the dishes and food ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... 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 ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... along the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... fingers before a slight dapper man in a shiny brown coat, double-breasted and closely buttoned, even on this broiling day—while the strident "weesp-weesp" of brother Tom down in the meadow, sharpening his scythe with a newly fill "strake," made a keen top-note to the mood ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... contingents also came in from the numerous other provinces that yet obeyed the Great King. Altogether, the horse are said to have been forty thousand, the scythe-bearing chariots two hundred, and the armed elephants fifteen in number. The amount of the infantry is uncertain; but the knowledge which both ancient and modern times supply of the usual character of oriental armies, and of their populations of camp-followers, may warrant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... glaring, it could suffice for a shade; it would serve as a speaking-trumpet to a herald; it could sound a signal of battle in the field; it would do for a wedge in wood-cutting, a spade for digging, a scythe for mowing, an anchor in sailing,'—till Painphagus cries out, 'Lucky dog that I am! and I never knew before what a useful piece of furniture I carried about with me.'" My father paused and strove to whistle; but that effort of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to guide the fatal scythe The fleshless Reaper wields; The harvest moon looks calmly ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... what a great incentive it would afford to the citizen to obey every call of duty! At the first summons of the note of war you would find him leaving his plow in the half-finished furrow, taking his only horse and converting him into a war-steed: his scythe and sickle would be thrown aside, and with a heart full of valor and patriotism he would rush with alacrity to the standard of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer the sound came, till it seemed that all the legions of darkness were unloosed in the forest, and were mowing down the great pines as the mower mows the grass with his scythe. Then an awful, sweeping crash thundered directly at our backs, and turning round, as if to face a foe, my horse, who had borne the roar and the blinding flash till then unmoved, paralyzed with dread, and panting for breath, sunk to the ground; while close at my side the Colonel, standing ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... intelligence; Ezekiel was lower in the scale than the others; was intemperate, and after losing his farm became a day-laborer. He would carry a gin-bottle into the fields, and would mow the stones as readily as he would the grass—and I had to turn the grindstone to sharpen his scythe. Uncle Edmund was a farmer and a pettifogger. Uncle William died comparatively young; he had nurseries near Rochester. Uncle Thomas was a farmer, slow and canny, with a quiet, dry humor. Aunt Hannah married Robert Avery, who drank a ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... an Empire pattern, a statue of Time in black bronze, running with his scythe in rest, served as a watch stand for a small watch with a monogram in diamonds upon blue enamel, surrounded with pearls. The floor was covered with a bright carpet with black and green stripes. The curtains at the bed and the window were of old-fashioned ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... spat flame and lead. A scythe of death swept above the ground where stood Schwandorf and his riflemen. The Peruvian half-breeds collapsed and lay still. But Schwandorf, shocked into activity by the impact of that first word, dodged death by an infinitesimal fraction of a second. Hurling himself backward, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... is 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 those ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... wooden rakes arranging it in swathes ready for the great four-horse waggon, or collecting it in cocks for the night; while some way off the mowers are still at work, and we hear from time to time the pleasant sound of the whetting of the scythe. All are working with a will lest rain should come and their labour be thrown away. This too often happens. But though we often complain of our English climate, it is yet, take it all in all, one of the best in the world, being comparatively free from extremes either of heat or cold, drought or ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... anything for a long time; he was happily dreaming, let us hope, of carbon bisulphate, when the roar, "How's that?" woke him up. He had to give the man "not out"; there was nothing else to do. Twenty minutes later, with a scandalous scythe-stroke, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... took most pleasure in was the barley, which I looked upon as my legitimate harvest; the other crops seeming to be more like gardening than real harvest work. I cut every handful with a reaping hook, which took a long time; but as I had not a scythe this was my only way of cutting it down. True, the Channel Islands mode of harvesting the barley is to pull it up by the roots, a handful at a time, knocking the soil off the roots upon the toe of the boot; but this seemed to me such ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... of heaven; or Coelus by earth, called Terra, or Thea; he was represented as an inexorable divinity—naturally artful, who devoured his own children— who revenged the anger of his mother upon his father; for which purpose she armed him with a scythe, formed of metals drawn from her own bowels, with which he struck Coelus, in the act of uniting himself to Thea, and so mutilated him, that he was ever after incapacitated to increase the number of his children: he ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... and cuts like wire," he said, stopping to wipe his scythe and give it a touch with the stone, making the blade ring and send forth what always sounded to be pleasant ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... Faggiuola of Arezzo, in a figure which is holding its nose with one hand in order not to feel the stench of the dead and corrupted Kings. In the middle of this scene is Death, who, flying through the air and draped in black, is showing that she has cut off with her scythe the lives of many, who are lying on the ground, of all sorts and conditions, poor and rich, halt and whole, young and old, male and female, and in short a good number of every age and sex. And because he knew that the people ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... comfort it calls up! The breakfast-room furniture fit to outlast the Pyramids, the maroon leather of deep armchairs, the marble clock ticking to half-past nine beneath the bronze figure with the scythe and hourglass, the boots set to warm upon the hearthrug, the crisp bacon sizzling gently beneath its silver cover, the pleasant wife murmuring gently behind the silver urn, the paper set beside the master's plate. Isaiah knew ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... mesa. It was daylight now, of a clear, brilliant morning. He was riding across a level prairie, which was a grey desert most of the year, but which the rainy season of late summer had now touched with rich colours. The grass in many of the hollows was almost high enough to cut with a scythe, and its green expanse was patched with purple-flowered weeds. Meadow larks bugled from the grass; flocks of wild doves rose on whistling wings from the weed patches; a great grey jack-rabbit with jet-tipped ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... like the schorr with us, miry and muddy at the bottom, and which produces a species of hard salt grass or reed grass. Such a place they call valey and mow it for hay, which cattle would rather eat than fresh hay or grass. It is so hard that they cannot mow it with a common scythe, like ours, but must have the English scythe for the purpose. Their adjoining corn lands are dry and barren for the most part. Some of them are now entirely covered with clover in blossom, which diffused a sweet odor in the air for a great distance, and which ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... 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 ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... frequenting the water. 2. Vo'cal, having a voice. 3. I-den'ti-fied, united. Cu-pid'i-ty, eager desire to possess something. 4. Tus'sock, a tuft of grass or twigs. 5. Cra'dler, one who uses a cradle, which is an instrument attached to a scythe in cutting grain. 6. U-surp'ing, seizing and holding in possession by force. 7. Af-fect', to ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... help to make Mr. Arnold aware, when he mows down the Puritan party with some trenchant epithet, how wide the sweep of his scythe is, and the same thing will be still more distinctively brought before him by a perusal (if he has not already perused it) of the chapter on the subject in Mr. Sandford's "Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion." It can hardly be necessary to remind him, or any one else, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... and enlisted some hundreds of confederates, perhaps more than a thousand, before September 1, the date fixed for its maturity. Many of these were doubtless residents of Richmond, and some it was said lived as far away as Norfolk. The few muskets procured were supplemented by cutlasses made from scythe blades and by plantation implements of other sorts; but the plan of onslaught contemplated a speedy increase of this armament. From a rendezvous six miles from Richmond eleven hundred men in three columns ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... And yet he knew that worst of heart-suffering: the loss of a beloved child. Alas! In that radiant family, whose mirth, fresh faces and luxuriant health seemed to defy death, the implacable foe had already twice swept his scythe. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... in that long-distant summer time— The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt And hound, and morn on those delightful hills In Ader-baijan. And he saw that youth, Of age and looks to be his own dear son,[195-22] Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand, Like some rich hyacinth which by the scythe Of an unskillful gardener has been cut, Mowing the garden grassplots near its bed, And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, On the mown, dying grass—so Sohrab lay, Lovely in death, upon the common sand. And Rustum gazed on him with grief, and said:— ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... which filled the clearing. The greater portion were peasants, although the dress and bearing of several proclaimed that they belonged to a superior class. Some of the peasants were armed with guns, but these were quite in the minority, the greater portion carrying scythe blades fastened to long handles. These, although clumsy to look at, were terrible weapons in a close onslaught, and the Russian soldiers could seldom be kept firm by their officers when, in spite of their fire, the Polish peasantry rushed among them. The Poles were in high spirits. Their own ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... general's servant, sat asleep in the corner, and two aides slumbered on the floor, tired out, I fancy. I walked to and fro over the creaking boards, and watched the Dutch clock. As it struck eleven the figure of Time, seated below the dial, swung a scythe and turned a tiny hour-glass. A bell rang; an orderly came in and woke up an aide: "Despatch for West Point, sir, in haste." The young fellow groaned, stuck the paper in his belt, and went out for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. 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 leveled ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... said the boy, turning to see that the old boatswain had come to work with a scythe over his shoulder. "What looks lovely ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... something: How the two young Sons of the Burggraf once riding out with their Tutor, a big hound of theirs in one of the streets of Nurnberg accidentally tore a child; and there arose wild mother's-wail; and "all the Scythe-smiths turned out," fire-breathing, deaf to a poor Tutor's pleadings and explainings; and how the Tutor, who had ridden forth in calm humor with two Princes, came galloping home with only one,—the Smiths having driven another into boggy ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... who called at least once during a lifetime, usually toward the close. Patron of insurance companies. Nothing is known of his childhood. Historians claim he never had any. Possessed an ugly face; wore a sheet over his head, and always carried a scythe in his hands. Never brought happiness, although his visits frequently gave money to some one. Never could be bribed to pass a house he wished to enter. Many doctors and scientists have endeavored to kill ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... are not so boon As hearty cider;—that strong son of wood In fullest tides refines and purges blood; Becomes a known Bethesda, whence arise Full certain cures for spit tall maladies: Death slowly can the citadel invade; A draught of this bedulls his scythe, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and gracious deliverance for me. He could do me no hurt; the scythe had sheared his talons, and all without occasioning my conscience the least uneasiness whatever: whereas, but for this interposition, I did truly and solemnly believe that it must have come to my having had to slay him that I might preserve ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... their pouched throats and scythe-like bills, stood in melancholy attitudes, and beside them were the white and scarlet ibis, and the purple gallinule. Roseate spoonbills waded through the shallows, striking their odd-shaped beaks at the crabs and cray-fish; and upon projecting limbs ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... might be identified after the slaughter was over. This done they advanced in long and wavering lines of blue against the enemy's bristling breastworks and rifle pits, and were mowed down like ripe grain before the scythe. In almost as short a time as it takes to recount the useless sacrifice, over twelve thousand Union soldiers were killed and wounded, without shaking the enemy's position or inflicting serious ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... the quantity of grass, renders the annual fires less destructive to the growth of wood. The prairie (i. e., land destitute of wood) is covered with grass, much of which is of suitable length for the scythe." ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... which towered above this protection were in a trice shorn of their tops, as though a gigantic scythe had swept across them. The storm was now at its height. The lightning filled the defile, and the thunderclaps had become one continued peal. The ground, struck by the concussion, trembled as though the whole Ural chain ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... for a further suggestion. When the door had closed behind him, Mrs. Blandford went to the mantel-shelf, where a grimly allegorical clock cut down the hours and minutes of men with a scythe, and consulted it with a slight knitting of her pretty eyebrows. Then she fell into a vague abstraction, standing before the open book on the centre-table. Then she closed it with a snap, and methodically putting it exactly in ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... la Revolution a gruesome engine they called the guillotine was levelling all things, and fast establishing the reign of absolute equality. But with all the swift mowing of its bloody scythe, not half so fast did it level men as Mademoiselle de Bellecour's ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... will make this evening, vain creature! Think no more of her, Pascal; leave her, it is for your good;—hear me! she would hold a poor blacksmith in contempt, whose father is old, infirm, and poor,—for we are poor, indeed; alas! you know it well. We have parted with all; we have only a scythe left. It has been a dark time with us since you fell sick; now that you are well, go, dearest, and work. What do I say? we can suffer still; rest yourself, if you please, but, for the love of God, go not forth ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... was a boy squatting in the road near the sidewalk, his back against a post; he was dressed in blue blouse and trousers, tan shoes, and a russet cap. Near him lay a little bag and a scythe, without a handle, wrapped in hay carefully bound with string. The boy was broad shouldered and fairhaired with a sun-burned and tanned face; his eyes were large and blue and gazed at Tchelkache confidingly ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... head of the Persian army, was one of the first to die; and when the Persians saw their companions falling around them like ripe grain under the mower's scythe, they were seized with terror, rushed toward the sea, and embarked in ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... 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
... is an art also in the sharpening of a scythe and it is worth describing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why you will see men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet it. Then also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... little ruby ocean that can drown all mortal sighs! Call buried hope to put life's garland on, and limping woes to trip like Nereids on a moonlit shore! For thee, frail sickness casts her pallid chrysalis and blooms a rosy angel! For thee, Death breaks his scythe and owns Life conqueror! (Drinks) Were this Antonius' cup.... Ha! Are you there, my devil? Another kiss, sweetheart! (Throws his arm about Mrs. Delormis. Helen cries out. Poe turns ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... British. They were almost close enough for the final charge, when suddenly at the word "Fire!"—up sprang 1500 Americans and poured a storm of bullets into the advancing enemy. Down went the British platoons as before the scythe of death. Whole companies were swept away. The survivors could not stand before the deadly hail, and back they fell to the shore. Some shots had been fired at the British from houses in Charlestown, and General Gage gave orders to fire that place. The British advanced again, the flames from the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... straight ball, shoulder high, level as a stretched string, and fast. He had a jump ball, which he evidently worked by putting on a little more steam, and it was the speediest thing I ever saw in the way of a shoot. He had a wide-sweeping outcurve, wide as the blade of a mowing scythe. And he had a drop—an unhittable drop. He did not use it often, for it made his catcher dig too hard into the dirt. But whenever he did I glowed all over. Once or twice he used an underhand motion and sent in a ball that fairly swooped up. It could not have been hit with ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... come to your fields and meadows to watch the reaper with his sickle and the cattle driver with lifted lasso. For if a man cannot find the noblest motives for his art in such simple daily things as a woman drawing water from the well or a man leaning with his scythe, he will not find them anywhere at all. Gods and goddesses the Greek carved because he loved them; saint and king the Goth because he believed in them. But you, you do not care much for Greek gods and goddesses, and you are perfectly and entirely right; and you do not think ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde |
