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Tropic   /trˈɑpɪk/   Listen
Tropic

noun
1.
Either of two parallels of latitude about 23.5 degrees to the north and south of the equator representing the points farthest north and south at which the sun can shine directly overhead and constituting the boundaries of the Torrid Zone or tropics.



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"Tropic" Quotes from Famous Books



... the child of tropic seas and volcanic lava, and many of the features were new and strange to us. The mountains looked familiar in outline, but the colors of the landscape, the soft lilacs, greens, and browns, and the whole atmosphere of the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... tresses bright, Little Nell; Hide that vision out of her sight— Those dark dark eyes with their tender light— Uplift your pure face, can it be She will bid farewell to heaven and thee, Little Nell? No; your mute lips plead with eloquent power, Her tears fall like a tropic shower; All ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley

... with him in his voyage through that island-sprinkled sea, and use his eyes in taking in the marvels with which it was sown. Familiar as these islands have become to many of us, to him they were all new, beautiful, and strange, a string of tropic pearls or rare emeralds spread out along those shining waters ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... is the oldest portion of the American Continent. It was also, and aside from the visits of the Scandinavians, the first to be discovered by Europeans,—the Cabots having come to land here more than a year before Columbus found the tropic mainland on his third voyage. And to-day it is that part of the continent which has been least explored. No one, to my knowledge, has ever crossed it: perhaps no one could do so. I am not aware that any European has penetrated it deeply. Hinds pushed up some hundred and fifty miles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... sun leaped up the next morning, and the tropic night flashed suddenly into the tropic day, Amyas was pacing the deck, with dishevelled hair and torn clothes, his eyes red with rage and weeping, his heart full—how can I describe it? Picture it to yourselves, picture it to yourselves, you who have ever lost a ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... densely packed quarters of the slave ships may be imagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added it was wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water or food ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and in epidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limit of human experience. The average ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... uplifted their heavy plumes forty feet aloft, on slender stalks, brushing the high glass roof. In the midst of the conservatory a pool slumbered between rocky margins, overgrown with a profusion of reeds, grasses, and water-plants. There floated the giant leaves and blossoms of the tropic water-lily; and on a fragment of rock rising above the surface dozed a small crocodile, not more than four feet long, but looking as old, dried up, and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... for that desolate, tropic-bred little child, Tom got on to his feet and crunched up the loose shingle to the crest of the ridge, full of a lively desire to pacify and console. But here the soft breeze met and caressed him, and the whole plain of the tranquil sea came into view—turquoise ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... CRUZ was now rapidly drawing out of the cold northern winter and into a tropic warmth. Already the raw chill of higher latitudes was giving way to a balmy, spring-like temperature, while the glittering sunshine transformed the sea into a lively, gleaming expanse of sapphire. The nights were perfect, the days divine. The passengers responded as if to a magic draught, and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... equator; at 40 deg. E. Long., it crosses the Red Sea about 16 deg. north of the equator, and at 120 deg. it falls at Borneo, several degrees below it;—and the points of the greatest heat, in this line, are in Abyssinia, nearer the tropic of Cancer than to the equator. On the other hand, the greatest mean cold points, according to the opinions of Humboldt, Sir David Brewster, and others, do not coincide, as would seem natural, with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... thy return, Take precedence; twere well to demonstrate The high esteem which Caesar for thee feels And give his party pride a parting dig. (Enter Quezox and McDuff) Quezox: My Liege, McDuff, who fills a council seat Within the party which has long controlled Affairs politic in these tropic Isles, Would fain resign the office he now holds. Francos, consolingly: Events march on, and as the whirligig Of time revolves, so 'tis with politics. To-day one soars aloft on Vict'ry's wings; Tomorrow Fate those pinions proud may clip. 'Tis here Philosophy a cooling draught Kindly ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... of one pitiful little Banana Republic between them. On one hand the Grass, funneled and constricted to a strip of land absurdly inadequate to support its gargantuan might, on the other the combined resources of man, desperately determined to destroy the bridge before the invader. In tropic heat the work was kept up at superhuman pace. Gangs of native laborers fainting under their loads were blown skyhigh by impatient technicians unwilling to waste the time necessary to revive them. In selfdefense the South American states doubled their contributions. At ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... He had to be alert to keep up with Jack Meredith—to understand his speech; and he rather liked the necessity, which was a change after the tropic indolence ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... them no tropic seas, no slumbrous calms, No rich abundance generously unrolled: In place of Cromwell's proffered flow'rs and palms They chose the ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope

... a sand storm the day before, followed by rain, and all the land was refreshed and sparkling. The pepper trees swung tassels of bloom and the flaming coral of the occotilla glowed like tropic birds poised on wide-reaching wands of green. Meadow larks echoed each other in the tender calls of nesting time, and from the jagged peaks on the east, to far low hills rising out of a golden haze in the west, there was a great quiet and peace brooding over ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... Flowers expanded by Warmth, Electricity, and Light. Drawings with colourless sympathetic Inks; which appear when warmed by the Fire, 457. XI. Sirius. Jupiter and Semele. Northern Constellations. Ice-islands navigated into the Tropic Seas. Rainy Monsoons, 497. XII. Points erected to procure Rain. Elijah on Mount-Carmel, 549. Departure of the Nymphs of Fire like sparks from artificial ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... Amazon; and also that the AEneas-group of Papilios never have tails in the equatorial regions and the Amazons valley, but gradually acquire tails in many cases as they range towards the northern or southern tropic. Even in Europe we have somewhat similar facts; for the species and varieties of butterflies peculiar to the island of Sardinia are generally smaller and more deeply coloured than those of the mainland, and the same has recently been shown to be the case ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the luminous green gloom that filled it, lulled by the swaying motion of the elephant's stride. The soothing silence of the woodland was broken only by the crowing of a jungle cock. The thick, leafy screen overhead excluded the glare of the tropic sunlight; and the heat was tempered to a welcome coolness by the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... small planet has many millions of square miles of surface, and a single human installation on a whole world will not be easy to find by random search. But there were clues to this one. Men hunting for sport would not choose a tropic nor an arctic climate to hunt in. So if they found a mineral deposit, it would have ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... and Arawaks showed a strictly tropical distribution from Hayti to the southern watershed of the Amazon. The Tupis, moving down the Parana-La Plata system, made a short excursion beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, though not beyond the hot belt, then turned equator-ward again along the coast.[195] In North America we find some exceptions to the rule. For instance, though the main area of the Athapascan stock is found in the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... and the trainless and workless dam to the Spillway, over which already some overflow from the lake was escaping to the Caribbean. My friends "Dusty" and H—— had carried their canoe to the Chagres below, and before nine we were off down the river. It was a day that all the world north of the Tropic of Cancer could not equal; just the weather for a perfect "day off." A plain-clothes man, it is true, is not supposed to have days off. Some one might run away with the Administration Building on the edge of the Pacific and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... world, the country called Van Diemen's Land resembling in all respects the south of France. As there are in all countries some parts more pleasant than others, so there seems good reason to believe that within two or three degrees of the tropic of Capricorn, which passes through the midst of New Holland, is the most unwholesome and disagreeable part of this country; the reason of which is very plain, for in those parts it must be excessively hot, much more so than under the line itself, since the days and nights are there always ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... amongst other imaginary characteristics of Taprobane, they make it extend considerably to the south of the line. Now, with respect to Ceylon, this is notoriously false; that island lies entirely in the northern tropic, and does not come within five (hardly more than six) degrees of the equator. Plain it is, therefore, that Taprobane, it construed very strictly, is an ens rationis, made up by fanciful composition from various sources, and much like our own mediaeval conceit of Prester John's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... geographical distribution of the coffee tree shows that it is grown in well-defined tropical limits. The coffee belt of the world lies between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of capricorn. The principal coffee consuming countries are nearly all to be found in the north temperate zone, between the tropic of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... upon the personality of the emperor, who incarnated the administrative bureaucracy which gave effect to the Pax Romana and the Romana lex from the Euphrates to the Atlantic and from Scotland to the Tropic of Cancer. Of all men Marcus Aurelius was the most conscientious and the most sincere, and he understood, as perhaps no other man in like position ever understood, the responsibility which impinged on him, to allow no private prevention ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... there are about two kinds of Americans—those who live west of Syracuse, and those who do not. An imaginary line separates the tropic of candescence, fast trains, naval reviews, broad a's, Broadway, Beacon Street, Independence Square, and Tammany Hall from the cancer of craps, silver dollars, lynchings, alfalfa, toothpicks, detachable cuffs, napkin rings, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... he see his way to hug the shore at home with Perpetua, while the curate braved the 'foam of perilous seas.' Would he ever have the heart to watch her fresh face spoiling in Africa? Could he bear to see it wizened and withered in the Tropic of Capricorn? No! ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... story of adventure in the Eastern seas, where a lad shares the perils of his father, the captain of the merchant ship The Petrel. After touching at Singapore, they are becalmed off one of the tropic isles, where the ship is attacked and, after a desperate fight, set on fire by Malay pirates. They escape in a boat and drift ashore upon a beautiful volcanic island, where, after sundry adventures, they come upon the half-burned remains of the ship, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... hours to occupy, at last understood how the model of the Mirabelle had been so painstakingly arranged inside a bottle. For the time seemed long between glimpses of shore and shore, or until they sailed for a time along some wild and beautiful tropic coast. Then Chris would lean on the side of the ship looking at the mountainous or jungled shore. A scent such as comes from the opened door of a hothouse would drift out to sea to the sailors, who looked yearningly toward the land and the ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... Heretofore he and Constance had known all things in common, and now suddenly he was satiate of her. But Katherine, he had thought, was so young and bright and beautiful; a child that had lived within the cloister and had grown to maidenhood in sweet innocence. 'Twas like finding in some tropic clime, embowered and shaded by thick, waxy leaves, a glorious, ripe pomegranate, which he would grasp and drink from its rich, red pulp, a portion that would cool and 'suage a burning thirst; while Constance, by the side of Katherine, was like a russet apple, into whose heart the worm of worldly ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... display. Here, in an atmosphere artificially heated and moistened to reproduce the steaming jungle, is massed a splendid exhibit of those island trees and flowers that most of us know only through pictures and stories of southern seas. Around the central source of light, which is hidden under tropic vines, stands a circle of royal palms; and planted thickly over the remaining space are jungle trees, vivid enough to our imagination, but many of which have never before been seen in ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... eyes and beasts of any husbandman and that extended, on and on, for leagues and leagues of velvet verdure, to the backbone of the great island, the towering mountain range flung up by some ancient earth-cataclysm, serrated and gullied but not yet erased by the erosive tropic rains. But the grass! He had crawled into it a dozen yards, buried his face in it, smelled it, and broken down in a ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... leaves. We ourselves, and our big three-decked boat were alone in our modernity, if one forgot the line of gay buildings on the shore. Everything else might have been of the time when the world supposed Elephantine to be placed directly on the Tropic of Cancer, and believed in the magic lamp which lit the unfathomable well; the time when quarries of red and yellow clay gave riches to the island, and all Egypt thanked its gods when Elephantine's Nilemeter showed that the Two Lands ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... tropic day, when the last flicker of the far southeast trade was fading out and the seasonal change for the northwest monsoon was coming on, the Kittiwake lifted above the sea-rim the jungle-clad coast ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... remark that, being myself a native of the Mediterranean, I can enter better than you can into the childish delight that our friend Caius Plinius expresses. It is a joy which is not to be found in the nature of the American to sleep in the tropic heats of a July sun. Winter is abhorrent to the nature of every Levanter. To bask upon the shore of the Mediterranean, with the calm lazy sea at your feet and the winds cut off from your back, is the only decent way of hibernating. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... equatorial heat, and to rob the high latitudes of the share which they now have. On moving the axis gradually to positions where it approaches the plane of the orbit, he will note that each stage of the change widens the tropic belt. Bringing the polar axis down to the plane of the orbit, one hemisphere would receive unbroken sunshine, the other remaining in perpetual darkness and cold. In this condition, in place of an equatorial ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... belonging to, and terminating in this present scene of existence, man has serious and interesting business on hand. Whether a man shall shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, at least enjoy himself in the comfortable latitudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle of dreary poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a self-approving mind, or sink beneath ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... lean sallow face; He sat with half-shut eyes, Like an old sailor in a ship Becalmed 'neath tropic skies. Beside him in the dust he had set His staff and shady hat; These, peeping small, Louisa saw Quite clearly where ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... far below and far behind him. The incredible greenness of tropic verdure, of the jungle which rings Rio all about. The many glitterings of sunlight upon glass, and upon the polished domes of sundry public buildings, and the multitudinous shimmerings of the tropic sun upon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... kettle once more, and make a cup of tea before setting out homewards. The lengthening shadows added fresh tenderness and beauty to the peaceful scene, and the sky began to paint itself in its exquisite sunset hues. It has been usual to praise the tints of tropic skies when the day is declining; but never, in any of my wanderings to East and West Indies, have I seen such gorgeous evening colours as those which glorify ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... discovery of Terra Australis Incognita, or Magellanica, be as true as that of Mercurius Britannius, or his of Utopia, or his of Lucinia. And yet in likelihood it may be so, for without all question it being extended from the tropic of Capricorn to the circle Antarctic, and lying as it doth in the temperate zone, cannot choose but yield in time some flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, as America did unto the Spaniards. Shouten and Le Meir have done well in the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... smoke again," muttered the wounded man, apparently oblivious to the other's response. As he spoke he withdrew his hand from that of his brother. At that moment the tropic sun was bathing him in its light and the white walls shone with luster. "No; it's like the desert; the dark hour before the sand-storm." Upon his brow the perspiration gathered, but his lip curled half-scornfully, half-defiantly. "Turn me toward ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood, That crests its head with clouds, beneath the flood Feeds its deep roots, and with the bulging flank Of its wide base controls the fronting bank— (By the slant current's pressure scoop'd away The fronting bank becomes a foam-piled bay) High in the Fork the uncouth Idol ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... with them, and where white-aproned stewardesses took care of the galley and the cleaning of the floating hearthside, sharing the dangers of the ruddy and tranquil sailors exempt from the temptation that contact with women provokes. On Sundays, under the tropic sun or in the ash-colored light of the northern heavens, the boatswain would read the Bible. The men would listen thoughtfully with uncovered heads. The women had dressed themselves in black with lace headdress and ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... "We're used to cold water, remember? Diving off Spindrift would chill a polar bear, even in summer. Suppose these people had done all their diving in tropic waters? This water would seem cold ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... since you drive me to it. How about that lovely, untootered savage that you lures into your foul clutches so's you can make yourself king of Aranuka? Hey? Hey? How about that little tropic wild flower you carelessly plucked an' thrun away? Oh, I'll admit she was a savage, but she was sweet an' human for all that an' she had feelin's. She had a heart to bust an' you busted ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... and opal-coloured—and BARE. There were wreaths of tropic seaweed, there were rich tropic shells of the kind you would not buy in the Kentish Town Road under at least fifteen pence a pair. There were turtles basking lumpily on the water's edge—but no cook, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... COEL. Tropic, colures, the equinoctial, The zodiac, poles, and line ecliptical, The nadir, zenith, and anomalies, The azimuth and ephimerides, Stars, orbs, and planets, with their motions, The oriental regradations, Eccentrics, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... flowers, the story came out, too, between puffs of the pipe, while the fire crackled a cheery accompaniment, sputtering defiance to the wind that whistled outside. Some tale of the southern seas, and the wild tropic islands, of coral reefs and pearl-fisheries, sharks and devil-fish; or else a whaling story, fresh and breezy as the north, full of icebergs, and seal-hunts over the cracking floes, polar bears, and all the wild ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards

... gaunt, wild, hungry, avenging mob which rose against aristocratic oppression; and in like manner, Sojourner, singing this hymn, seemed to impersonate the fervor of Ethiopia, wild, savage, hunted of all nations, but burning after God in her tropic heart, and stretching her scarred hands towards the glory to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... declination, and warms the lower half of the great African continent, the current of heated air ascending from the equatorial belt leaves a comparative vacuum, towards which the less rarefied atmospheric fluid is drawn down from the regions north, of the tropic, bringing with it the cold and dry winds from the Himalayan Alps, and the lofty ranges of Assam. The great change is heralded as before by oppressive calms, lurid skies, vivid lightning, bursts of thunder, and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... taken shape, seems to have existed on all the continental lands except Australia, and to have been in a state of singular prosperity. As is often the case with other vigorous genera of mammals, the species were adapted to a very great variety of climates, and were fitted to endure tropic heat as well ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... deck. We battened down the engine-room hatch, and the sea rose to it and over it and climbed perilously near to the cabin companion-way and skylight. We were all sick with fever, but we turned out in the blazing tropic sun and toiled madly for several hours. We carried our heaviest lines ashore from our mast-heads and heaved with our heaviest purchase until everything crackled including ourselves. We would spell off and lie ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... at the soil and among the crops. The sun was still south of the equator, coming north only about twelve miles per day, so, to save time, we booked on the next steamer for Hongkong to meet spring at Canton, beyond the Tropic of Cancer, six hundred miles farther ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... they were below we could hear them smashing the treasure-chests. While they were busy in the storeroom I hacked away at the scuttle-board, which was thick and of hard wood, well seasoned by continual wetting and drying in the tropic sun. ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... Domesday as Buchent. There was formerly some fine old tapestry and stained glass in the mansion, but these have gone; however, its oak room with sliding panel and secret staircase remains, and the garden has some remarkable tropic growths. A number of prehistoric relics have been discovered on this estate. Close to Bochym is another old manor, Bonython; it is said that the poet Longfellow was descended from one of the Bonythons, who was an early settler in America. We are now in ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... icy circles by the Behring Strait, In moony jungles where the tigers roar, In tropic isles where civil servants wait, And wonder what the deuce they're waiting for, In lonely lighthouses beyond the Nore, In English country houses crammed with Jews, Men still will study, spell, perpend and pore And read ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... was in existence the country round about was under the sea; before that under glaciers; before that under the tropics, and I don't know how many times it has swung on its pendulum between Frigid, Temperate and Tropic Zones. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... launch drew in towards the cliffs I began to get the lie of the place more clearly; and especially of what I call the mainland, which was wonderfully fresh and green in the sunlight and seemed to have some of the tropic luxuriance of more southern islands. About four miles long, I judged it to be, from the high black rock to which it rose at the southward point, to the low dog's-nosed reef which defended it to the north. Trees I could see, palms and that kind, and ripe green grasses on a stretch of real ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... undergrowth, but for most of the space was covered with bright green grass; the whole having the appearance of a well-kept lawn that had been artificially sodded or strewn with seed, which flourished with the luxuriance of every species of vegetation in that tropic country. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... their hand could pour out or restrain the waters of the Nile; [151] and the peace and plenty of Egypt was obtained, even in this world, by the intercession of the patriarch. In exile at Constantinople, Theodosius recommended to his patroness the conversion of the black nations of Nubia, from the tropic of Cancer to the confines of Abyssinia. [152] Her design was suspected and emulated by the more orthodox emperor. The rival missionaries, a Melchite and a Jacobite, embarked at the same time; but the empress, from a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... wind-storms that these colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water among boulders. But to me there is something more impressive in the fall of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems beaten to the finest ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... have not fallen so. We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! 'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!" Then Alabama heard, And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho Shouted a burning word. Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, East, west, and south, and ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... you would see how low man can fall, you must go to the tropic jungle, where geniality of climate, plenty and variety of food, are in themselves a cause of degradation to the soul, as long as the Spirit of Christ is absent from it. Not in the barren desert, but in the rich forest, wanders the true savage, eating and eating ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... the world, I am bold to affirm—nobody, at least, in our bleak little world of New England,—had dreamed of Paradise that day except as the pole suggests the tropic. Nor, with such materials as were at hand, could the most skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of Eve's bower than might be seen in the snow hut of an Esquimaux. But we made a summer of it, in spite of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of muddy water in a channel with crumbling banks trodden by many naked feet. Beyond it was yet another lower wall of earth, yet another maze of palms. Heat and silence brooded here like reptiles on the warm mud of a tropic river in a jungle. Lizards ran in and out of the innumerable holes in the walls, and flies buzzed beneath the ragged leaves of the fig trees and crawled in the hot cracks ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... to steer W.S.W. until he reached the tropic of Capricorn,* and this direction was kept ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge

... all the inhabitants of Africa. All three of the great races were, from days immemorial, represented in Africa; but these were not then, nor are they now, known as "Negroes," but "Africans," subdivided into families and tribes. Those families that were known as true Negroes dwell between the Tropic of Cancer on the north and the equator on the south, and between the Nile (extremely north) and the Atlantic Ocean. These were divided into three classes—viz., true "Negroes," "Negroids," and the "Negrillos." What say we of that other part ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... The Poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more From the Suns Axle; they with labour push'd 670 Oblique the Centric Globe: Som say the Sun Was bid turn Reines from th' Equinoctial Rode Like distant breadth to Taurus with the Seav'n Atlantick Sisters, and the Spartan Twins Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amaine By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales, As deep as Capricorne, to bring in change Of Seasons to each Clime; else had the Spring Perpetual smil'd on Earth with vernant Flours, Equal in Days and Nights, except to those 680 Beyond the Polar Circles; to them Day Had unbenighted ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... of stereographic projection on the plane of the equinoctial; the eye is supposed in one of the poles, so that the tropic, ecliptic, and horizon form the arches of the circles, but the hour-circles are all curves, drawn by means of several altitudes of the sun, for some particular latitude, for every day in the year. The use of this ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... natives of New Guinea. We now pass to the natives of Melanesia, the great archipelago or rather chain of archipelagoes, which stretches round the north-eastern and eastern ends of New Guinea and southward, parallel to the coast of Queensland, till it almost touches the tropic of Capricorn. Thus the islands lie wholly within the tropics and are for the most part characterised by tropical heat and tropical luxuriance of vegetation. Only New Caledonia, the most southerly of the larger islands, differs somewhat from the rest in its comparatively ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... the lonely night. But first he prayed, praying the helmsman's prayer. And this is what I remember of it, rendered into English with a very feeble equivalent of the rhythm that seemed so resonant in those tropic nights ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany

... flooded the other end of the parlor a minute after, and the chess board came into requisition. If Miss Morris found little skill necessary to discomfit her opponent, and wondered thereat, she could not see, as he saw, a dark face, bowed on tropic blooms, flushed with unwonted glad color, lips apart and aquiver, wide eyes lustrous with purple light, shining through the tears that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the direct interposition of kindly Fate, a manager spoke to him.... He gazed out of the corner of his eye. Yes, she was there. He could see her through a half-drawn portiere in one of the trying-on rooms. She was sitting limp on a chair, overcome by the tropic warmth of Sloane Street, with her noble head thrown back, her fine eyes half shut, and her beautiful hands lying slackly ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... noses, which were the only parts of us open to view, the beads of perspiration. It was a marvellous experience. The memory of the crimson comforters has remained with me through life; light as sunset clouds, they accomplished the miracle of importing tropic warmth into the circle of the frozen arctic. I think we must have been undressed and night-gowned before this treatment; at any rate, I have forgotten how we got to bed, but to bed we somehow got, and slept ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... and th' droning twang Of stringed instruments; while there before Mine eyes brown, yielding beauties dance in time To the pulsing music of a saraband! And yet there is a flavor of the sea, [Sipping wine. The long-drawn heaving of the ocean wave, The gentle cradling of a tropic tide; Its native golden sun—I fear you sleep? Or do the travels of the wine so rock Your soul that self is lost in revery? Why, man, dream not too much of placid bliss; Nor wine, nor man, can reach this clear perfection Until they pass the rack of thunder and Of hurricane.—'Tis ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... the glare Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening, 485 Strange night upon some ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the world, for the broad girdle of British dominion had during her reign extended to embrace the globe. India led the way, the rejoicing over the royal jubilee of its empress extending throughout its vast area, from the snowy passes of the Himalayas on the north to the tropic shores of Cape Comorin on the south. Other colonies joined in the festivities, the loyal Canadians vieing with the free-hearted Australians, the semi-bronzed Africanders and the planters of the West Indies, in the celebration of the joyous ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... latitude to come and see theasumenoi ha mae proteron maete heormkesun maete aekaekoeisun— things that eye had not seen nor ear heard of] the specious miracles of nature brought together from arctic and from tropic deserts, putting forth their strength, their speed, or their beauty, and glorifying by their deaths the matchless hand of the Roman king. There was beheld the lion from Bilidulgerid, and the leopard from Hindostan—the rein-deer from polar latitudes—the antelope ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... to custom, we Ducked those that had never passed the Tropic before. The manner of doing it was to reeve a Rope in the Mainyard, to hoist 'em about half-way up to the Yard, and let 'em fall at once into the Water; they being comfortably Trussed by having a Stick 'cross through ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... that seven of their number had died on the passage from Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two more had been lost ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... in the early part of his reign, attempted the reduction of Ethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the invaders, and protected the un-warlike natives of those sequestered regions. [2] The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labor of conquest. The forests and morasses ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... into the darkness, through the streaming deluge of that tropic clime. For the seraphic frenzy had now come upon the mage in good earnest, and all the Thought-reader burned in his ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... still, breathless nights of the tropic seas. Pedro's small strong hands had not grasped the helm for a half-hour before the wind freshened, and then a tremendous gust swept down upon the flagship hurling her right upon the unknown shore. Pedro strove desperately with the fearful odds, but before the half-awakened sailors heard his ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... massive anvils ring,— Clang! clang! a hundred hammers swing, Like the thunder-rattle of a tropic sky, The mighty blows still multiply: Clang! clang! Say, brothers of the dusky brow, What are your ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... Don from his stronghold in the Greater Antilles; and then, hiking across half the world, he marched as a corporal-usher up and down the blazing tropic aisles of the open-air college in which the Filipino was schooled. Now, with his bayonet beaten into a cheese-slicer, he rallies his corporal's guard of cronies in the shade of his well-whittled porch, instead of in the matted jungles of Mindanao. ...
— Options • O. Henry

... eating of the new rice is the occasion of a family festival called Pongol. The new rice is boiled in a new pot on a fire which is kindled at noon on the day when, according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn. The boiling of the pot is watched with great anxiety by the whole family, for as the milk boils, so will the coming year be. If the milk boils rapidly, the year will be prosperous; but it will be the reverse if the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... comes a change. So far as he can see or learn, all the motion, all the seeming dance, is but a rush for death, a panic flight into the moveless silence. The summer wind, the tropic tornado, the softest tide, the fiercest storm, are alike the tumultuous conflict of forces, rushing, and fighting as they rush, into the arms of eternal negation. On and on they hurry—down and down, to a cold stirless solidity, where wind blows not, water ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... since intimated gently to such dog in the manger: 'Dog, will you be so obliging as rise! I am grieved to say, we shall have to do unpleasant things otherwise. Dogs have doors for their hutches: but to pretend barring the Tropic of Cancer,—that is too big a door for any dog. Can nobody but you have business here, then, which is not displeasing to the gods? We bid you rise!' And in this mode there is no doubt the dog, bark and bite as he might, would have ended ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... a little bag his paints and plumes. Sitting in the grass, they decorated themselves until they assumed all hues—some red, and others half white or red across the face, while the ponies came in for streaks and daubs, grotesque as tropic birds. ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington

... distant Tropic strand Where the billows, bright and bland, Go creeping, curling round the palms with sweet, faint undertune; From its fields of purpling flowers Still wet with fragrant showers, The happy South Wind lingering sweeps the royal blooms ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... from Bombay to Calcutta was rough, I felt great relief. The strain since arrival at Bombay had been fearful. Sitting on deck, gently swaying with the ship's motion, watching seabirds, looking at approaching squalls, or tossing in stress of tropic storms, proved a restful quiet for my fevered consciousness. Such change reversed the whole current of thought, driving away the awful past. Neither Lanier would harass me on ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... large establishment for making jellies, comfits, pickles, and all the varieties of tropic preserves. In each of them thirty or more persons are constantly employed, and a capital of some thousands of dollars invested. Several large rooms were occupied by boxes, jars, and canisters, with the apparatus necessary to the process, through which the fruit passes. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... and there vast clouds of dust rose in whirlwinds, and moved like spectres over the plain. The straggling huts encountered at long intervals on the way were all empty—apparently abandoned by their owners! This strange circumstance combined with the heat of a tropic sun, the absence of all signs of water, the profound silence that reigned over these solitary steppes, had created a sense of discouragement in the mind of the young traveller, amounting ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... sea. I said "Time" again, but he paid no attention; so I stole upon him, with the stealth of a wild Indian, and smote him behind. This action was unsportsmanlike, but conclusive. He shot out into the ocean, where probably some not over-particular tropic fish attempted to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Your destiny can be no exception to the common lot; be grateful that your love is overlooked thus early, before it can claim any affinity to passion. An hour's fret, a pang of envy, suffice to express what you feel. Jealousy hot as the sun above the line, rage destructive as the tropic storm, the clime of your ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Venus present the greatest anomaly, if its assigned inclination of axis (75 deg.) can be relied on as correct, which is doubtful. Its tropic zone extends nearly to the pole, and at the same time the winter at the other pole reaches the equator. The short period of this planet causes it to present the south pole to the sun only one hundred and twelve days after it has been scorching the one at the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... the stars came down from the heavens, And the magical tropic moon, To dance a measure together Over the still lagoon; And the whisper of distant forests, The noise of the surf in our ears, Seemed like the song of the ages Sung by the ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson

... and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the Tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed— Hapless sire to hapless son— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain when life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... to the spot sailed the galleon; Where, for a twelvemonth, off and on The hundred and eightieth degree She rose and fell on a tropic sea. But lo! when it came to the ninth of May, All of a sudden becalmed she lay One degree from that fatal spot, Without the power to move a knot; And of course the moment she lost her way, Gone was her ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... of latitude on either side of the equator, which mark the limits N. and S. of the sun's verticality to the earth's surface, the distance being in each case 231/2 deg.; the northern tropic is called the Tropic of Cancer, and the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... in the way which you infer. I need them in business, that is all." And he pointed his finger at the wall. Then I saw what I had not noticed before. The walls were hung with at least five score Of swords and daggers of every size Which nations of militant men could devise. Poisoned spears from tropic seas, That natives, under banana trees, Smear with the juice of some deadly snake. Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make And tip with feathers, orange and green, A quivering death, in harlequin sheen. High up, a fan of glancing ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... after a short prayer, the principal priest uncovered the maro; and Otoo rose up, and wrapped it about him, holding, at the same time, in his hand, a cap or bonnet, composed of the red feathers of the tail of the tropic bird, mixed with other feathers of a dark colour. He stood in the middle space, facing the three priests, who continued their prayers for about ten minutes; when a man, starting from the crowd, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... if he were dining at his own table in Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... and replaced with plain tiles. Here lie buried some of the many British officers who have fallen victims to the deadly atmosphere of this region; and among them rests L.E.L. Her grave is distinguishable by the ten red tiles which cover it. Daily, the tropic sunshine blazes down upon the spot. Daily, at the hour of parade, the peal of military music resounds above her head, and the garrison marches and counter-marches through the area of the fortress, nor shuns to tread ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... coast was long and wearisome. For some days we felt seriously the ill effects of the island life and the tropic heat, and could only endure; until, one morning, we came up on deck, and there were the beautiful serrated hills of Old California. We had rounded Cape St. Lucas, and had a strong, exhilarating breeze from the coast, and ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... jaunty in her recital of the weather's minor hardships. To its rigors she brought a front of resolute gayety. A new stove graced the parlor, a stove with the proud nickeled title of "Frost King"; a title seen to be deserved when Clem had it properly gorged with dry wood. Within its tropic radiations Miss Caroline bloomed and was hale of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... her approach, as the iceberg thaws and dissolves beneath the rays of a tropic sky. He had floated into the old latitudes of love and warmth again, and his cold heart once more began to beat—his hardness to pass away; leaving ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... to be put aside. The tornadoes which sweep the tropic seas seem for a time to reverse the course of Nature. The waters become turbid with the sands of the ocean's bed. The air strikes and smites down with a solid force. The heaviest stones and beams of massy buildings fly like feathers on the blast. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... respected her uncle's preference; besides—the pony! Of these trios Mr. Fountain was the true soul. He had to blow the coals of conversation right and left. It is very good of me not to compare him to the Tropic between two frigid zones. At first he took his nap as usual; for he said to himself: "Now I have started them they can go on." Besides, he had seen pictures in the shop windows of an old fellow dozing and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... came to an anchor under a little island in the latitude of 23 degrees 28 minutes, being just under the northern tropic, and about twenty leagues from the island. Here we lay thirteen days, and began to be very uneasy for my friend William, for they had promised to be back again in four days, which they might very easily have done. However, at the end of thirteen days, we saw three sail coming ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... sofa; and as the song proceeds the hand of the mother steals into that of the father, which holds it closely, while his arm creeps noiselessly around her waist. Their hearts float far away upon that music. His eyes droop as when he was speaking of the tropic islands—as if he were hearing the soft language of those shores. As his wife looks at him she sees on his face, beneath the weariness of its expression, the light which shone there in the days when they sang "Bonnie Doon" together. He draws her closer to him, and his ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... with diligence, Brendan returned to his native Kerry; and from a bay sheltered by the lofty mountain that is now known by his name, he set sail for the Atlantic land; and, directing his course towards the south-west, in order to meet the summer solstice, or what we should call the tropic, after a long and rough voyage, his little bark being well provisioned, he came to summer seas, where he was carried along, without the aid of sail or oar, for many a long day. This, which it is to be presumed was the great gulf-stream, brought his vessel to ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... Tropic-bird, n. The English name is applied because the bird is usually seen in the tropics. The species observed in Australia are—Red-tailed, Phaeton rubricaudus, Bodd.; White-tailed, P. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... only be compared with the sea, the kopjes which accentuate, rather than relieve, its monotony resemble in as marked a degree the isolated islands which rise abruptly from the waters of some tropic archipelago. Sometimes, indeed, the kopjes form a rough series of broken knolls, extending over a space of several miles, as, for instance, the ridges of Magersfontein and Spytfontein, between Kimberley and the Modder; sometimes a group of three or four, disposed ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... the Magellan Clouds, and of the Southern Cross. The Magellan Clouds consist of three small nebulae in the southern part of the heavens,—two bright, like the milky-way, and one dark. These are first seen, just above the horizon, soon after crossing the southern tropic. When off Cape Horn, they are nearly overhead. The cross is composed of four stars in that form, and is said to be the brightest constellation ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... Island with its girdle of creaming surf had never seemed so beautiful as in the early morning of the day Shane and Kayak and Harlan sailed away in search of help. The electricity of adventure, of hope was in the air, and the wind was as soft and balmy as a breath from tropic seas. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... trade-wind always blowing, the state of affairs after daylight was much like that which prevailed in England when King Alfred invented lanterns, while in the latter end of June the days were, of course, as short as they could be on the tropic of Capricorn, so that Patteson got up in the dark at 5-30 ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... scarlet satin with large bows of satin ribbon of the same intense color and adorned with a bird of paradise. I can see it now and can recall the images it suggested to my mind at the time. These were of cardinals and kings, of sealing-wax and wafers, of tropic noons and tangled marshes, of hell and judgment and the conventional Zamiel. It looked fit to be worn by a Mrs. Zamiel, if there be such a person. I looked so long and earnestly that I evidently attracted the notice of the mistress of the shop, for I saw a hand ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... tracts which were read to her. It is indeed a tender and touching tale, based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in Brittany as well as in England. Nor is the unseen and unknown landscape of the tropic isle less happily created by the poet's imagination than the familiar ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... taking a final leave of the poor old Beagle at the same place where I first joined her in 1825. Many events have occurred since my first trip to sea in her: I have seen her under every variety of circumstances, placed in peculiar situations and fearful positions, from nearly the antarctic to the tropic, cooled by the frigid clime of the extreme of South America, or parched by the heats of North Australia; under every vicissitude, from the grave to the gay, I have struggled along with her; and after wandering together for eighteen ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, and which stretches from the rising to the setting sun. Ah! what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands, through which the pinnace moved. And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers—young women how lovely, young men how noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... Loraine and Flanders, Castile and Aragon, Naples and Milan, Mexico and Peru. Lewis might wear the imperial crown, might place a prince of his family on the throne of Poland, might be sole master of Europe from the Scythian deserts to the Atlantic Ocean, and of America from regions north of the Tropic of Cancer to regions south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Such was the prospect which lay before William when first he entered on public life, and which never ceased to haunt him till his latest day. The French monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... its plane. On each side are the two tropics, at the distance of 23 deg. 30 min., and described by the sun when in his greatest declination north and south, or at the summer and winter solstices. That on the north side of the equinoctial is called the tropic of Cancer, because the sun describes it when in that sign of the ecliptic; and that on the south side is, for a similar reason, called the tropic of Capricorn. Again, at the distance of 231/2 degrees from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... by the stages of intermediate life, from man, through spirits, angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim, to God, the glorious destiny of every soul. There is a vine growing in the islands of the tropic seas that thrives best upon the ancient ruins or crumbling walls of some edifice built by man; yet ever as it thrives, the tiny tendrils penetrate between the fibres of the stone, cutting and cutting till the whole fabric disappears, leaving only the verdant mass ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... over the past is memory; to-day is ruled by reason, to-morrow is under the regency of hope. In every age memory has been an unpopular goddess. The poet Byron pictures this divinity as sitting sorrowing midst mouldering ruins and withering leaves. But the orators unveil the future as a tropic realm, magical, mysterious and surpassingly rich. The temple where hope is worshiped is always crowded; her shrines are never without gifts of ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... a stone as a jeweler approaches a casket to unlock the hidden gems. Geikie causes the bit of hard coal to unroll the juicy bud, the thick odorous leaves, the pungent boughs, until the bit of carbon enlarges into the beauty of a tropic forest. That little book of Grant Allen's called "How Plants Grow" exhibits trees and shrubs as eating, drinking and marrying. We see certain date groves in Palestine, and other date groves in the desert a hundred miles away, and the pollen of the one ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... stories of Damon and Musidora,[12] and Celadon and Amelia in "Summer," and of Lavinia and Palemon[13] in "Autumn"; while ever and anon his eye extensive roamed over the phenomena of nature in foreign climes, the arctic night, the tropic summer, etc. Wordsworth asserts that these sentimental passages "are the parts of the work which were probably most efficient in first recommending the author to general notice."[14] They strike us now as insipid enough. But many coming attitudes cast their shadows ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... at the forest's outmost edge. Before him stretches an expanse of plain altogether treeless, but clothed with tall grass, whose culms stirred by the night breeze, and silvered by the moonbeams, sway to and fro, like the soft tremulous wavelets of a tropic sea; myriads of fire-flies prinkling among the spikes, and emitting a gleam, as phosphorescent ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching out its shadowy hands for you.... Loneliness and restlessness.... These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the hot sands seemed breathing.... Loneliness and restlessness—but they gave a man dreams.... And were those dreams to ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... be fought by the Russian heralds of civilization in Turkestan, by the English champion of the higher life in the Eastern world, or by the men who upheld the Stars and Stripes as they freed the people of the tropic islands of the sea from the mediaeval ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various



Words linked to "Tropic" :   hot, parallel, line of latitude, Tropic of Cancer, equatorial, latitude, parallel of latitude, Tropic of Capricorn



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