"Vulture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he longed, and the wind three days About him whirled the shroud. Then did a shrill dawn bring the sun— And a gaunt vulture-crowd. A few bleak bones on the Desert still Lie for the Judgment Day to thrill Again into life—if Allah will: Let ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... ragged cap which the beggar extended, while he held his crutches by pressing his arms close to his body. As the piece dropped into its ragged receptacle, he shook it up from the greasy folds, and tipped his left eye down to look upon it, not unlike a vulture glancing down at its prey. After eyeing it a moment, he held the cap toward Arthur, as if ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... man in ways. But you must remember his business was a vulture's business, and something of it was in his soul. It came out in good wrecking weather. On a night when the bar had caught a fine piece of profit, I give you my word you could almost see Rolldown's neck growing longer and nakeder with suspense. He would have made more of his salvaging ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... soaring over the abyss, more than half a mile from its edge, convinced him a strong upward current existed to-day, as on the day when they had made their short flight over the void. The bird soared and circled and finally shot away to northward, without a wing-flap, almost in the manner of a vulture. Stern knew an eagle could not imitate the feat without some aid in the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... cavity of Phoxinus laevis, with the proboscis retracted and the whole still enclosed in a capsule. B, A section through the same; a, the invaginated proboscis; b, proboscis sheath; c, beginning of the neck; d, lemniscus. Highly magnified (both from Hamann). king vulture, Sarcorhampus papa, and G. taeniodes in Dicholopus cristatus, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... peace of night, there dwell Spirits of Evil, the never-resting, vagrant, home-destroying guests, who enter unbidden into the human soul! Hark, the rustling of their raven-hued plumage! They take wing, they fly aloft; 't is the shriek of the vulture, swooping down ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... ancient history and mythology, or from those great and strange things in Nature which repel intimacy—the sun, the moon, the sea, planets in opposition, a shooting star, an evening mist, a will-o'-the-wisp, a vulture descending from the Himalayas, the ice-floes on the North-East passage, the sea-beast leviathan, Xerxes' Hellespontic bridge, the gryphon pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides in Oeta, the rape ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... that honourable gentleman for his laugh. The pulse of the national heart does not beat as high as once it did. I know the temper of this House is not as spirited and brave as it was, nor am I surprised, when the vulture rules where once the eagle reigned." From the days of Horace downwards it has been permitted to actors and orators to pass rapidly from the comic to the tumid strain.[72] But in this case the language was so bombastic and so utterly out of proportion to ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... at least as much power in proportion to its weight as a bird is able to develop. He asserts that a heavy bird, with relatively small wings—such as a goose—carries about 150 lb. to the horse power, while the albatross or the vulture, possessed of proportionately greater winged surface, can carry about ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Phoenicia is restricted so far as land-animals are concerned, it is extensive and varied in respect of birds. The list of known birds includes two sorts of eagle (Circaetos gallicus and Aquila naevioides), the osprey, the vulture, the falcon, the kite, the honey-buzzard, the marsh-harrier, the sparrow-hawk, owls of two kinds (Ketupa ceylonensis and Athene meridionalis), the grey shrike (Lanius excubitor), the common cormorant, the pigmy cormorant (Graeculus pygmaeus), numerous ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... while the Vulture of sedition, Feedes in the bosome of such great Commanders, Sleeping neglection doth betray to losse: The Conquest of our scarse-cold Conqueror, That euer-liuing man of Memorie, Henrie the fift: Whiles they each other crosse, Liues, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... An oath have I to Allah sworn shall never be forsworn; * Nay, for I'll do what Faith and Creed command me to decree. An thou dare cross me in whate'er to thee I now indite * I of thy flesh assuredly will make the vulture free. Divorce Su'ad, equip her well, and in the hottest haste * With Al-Kumayt and Ziban's son, hight ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Ned, grinning. "Now I'll confess. That's why I roused you up. There's coffee hot, and damper, and a split-up and frizzled bird. I don't know what it is. Sort of vulture crow, perhaps." ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... contemplate, with a rival at his Julia's ear all the time. Suppose she should have been faithful all these months, but in this last week should he worn out and give herself to another: such things had been known. He went to Lincoln's Inn with this irritating fear tearing him like a vulture. Mr. Compton received him cheerfully, and told him he had begun operations in Hardie versus Hardie: had written to Thomas Hardie two days ago, and inquired his London solicitor, and whether that gentleman would accept service of the writ in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... safe shore, with anchor and with line; So, by Jove's dread decree, the God of fire Confines me here the victim of Jove's ire. With baneful art his dire machine he shapes; From such a God what mortal e'er escapes? When each third day shall triumph o'er the night, Then doth the vulture, with his talons light, Seize on my entrails; which, in rav'nous guise, He preys on! then with wing extended flies Aloft, and brushes with his plumes the gore: But when dire Jove my liver doth restore, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... invited by the king of Magadha, Bimbisara, to his capital, Ragagriha. Many of his lectures are represented as having been delivered at the monastery of Kalantaka, with which the king or some rich merchant had presented him; others on the Vulture Peak, one of the five hills ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet with a white robe; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud which I had seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become plumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of a vulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver's shuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left hand, arrows, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... double armour of the arrau, as if the adhering parts of the muscles had been cut by a surgical instrument. The jaguar pursues the turtle into the water when it is not very deep. It even digs up the eggs; and together with the crocodile, the heron, and the galinazo vulture, is the most cruel enemy of the little turtles recently hatched. The island of Pararuma had been so much infested with crocodiles the preceding year, during the egg-harvest, that the Indians in one night caught eighteen, of twelve or fifteen ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... readers may have seen in India a crowd of crows picking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of what often happens in ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... guilt. They were obliged to confess, and insisted upon it that Seriff Sahib had sent them, &c. Many urged me to put these Dyaks to death; but the reluctance we all have to shedding blood withheld me, and I had no desire to strike at a wren when a foul vulture was at hand. I dismissed the emissaries scot-free, and then both Muda Hassim and myself indited letters to Seriff Sahib, that of Muda Hassim being severe but dignified. Before they were dispatched, an ambassador arrived from Singe with letters ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... stimulating imagination, forbade repose. Ever, in the midst of all his busy, useful, aspiring life he was conscious, deep in his heart, of a gnawing anguish, whose name was Claudia Merlin. To-night this deep-seated anguish tortured him like the vulture of Prometheus. One vivid picture was always before his mind's eye—the sofa, with the beautiful figure of Claudia reclining upon it, and the stately form of the viscount, leaning with deferential admiration over her. The viscount's ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcasses with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... which he was not admitted. His eye, however, was less idle than his lips; it was not a bright eye: on the contrary, it was dull, and, to the unobservant, lifeless, of a pale blue, with a dim film over it—the eye of a vulture; but it had in it a calm, heavy, stealthy watchfulness, which inspired Morton with great distrust and aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke French like a native, but all his habits, his gestures, his tricks ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a little more weary, a little quieter, otherwise there was hardly any change perceptible in her; but those who observed more attentively could hear a rustle in the air, as though a vulture were hovering over the Howdahs and drawing its circles ever closer and closer, and preparing to pounce down ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... satisfy yourself of the flourishing condition of the company." He handed him a prospectus. "This will show you our capital, and our disbursements last year, and the balance of profit declared. And this gives the balance sheet of the 'Vulture' and the 'Falcon,' which have assigned their business to us, and are ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... attention keep, And, silent, seem compassionate to weep; Even Tantalus his flood unthirsty views, Nor flies the stream, nor he the stream pursues: Ixion's wondrous wheel its whirl suspends, And the voracious vulture, charmed, attends; No more the Bel'i-des their toil bemoan, And Sisyphus, reclined, sits listening on the stone. —Trans. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... was represented bound down to a rock, with fetters of iron, while Hercules, armed with a bow and arrow, was seen approaching. The vulture, supporting himself by fixing his talons in the thigh of Prometheus, was tearing open the stomach of his victim, and apparently searching with his beak for the liver, which it was his destiny daily to devour, and which the painter had shown through the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... struggling in the arms of the giant Mongolian. He could see the great drawbridge swinging down to the white road in the moonlight or the blistering heat of noonday. And on the hill, like a greedy, white vulture, he could see that solemn palace with minarets stretching like claws to the sky, crouching upon the red slime vomited forth by ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... sixty, and yet her husband said she was just thirty-seven. Their water is strong with alkali, and this and the prairie wind (combined with a something deep down in her own make-up) have made her like a vulture, lean and scrawny and dry. I stared at that hard line of jaw and cheekbone and wondered how long ago the soft curves were there, and if those overworked hands had ever been pretty, and if that ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... are a cheat, a vulture in the guise of woman!" cried Mrs. Whitney. "Ellen, tell her what ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... of the most law-loving,—the most free! My dear, dear England! sweet and green as now The flower-illumined garden of the sea, And Nature least impair'd by axe and plough! A laughing land!—Thou seest not in the north How the black Dane and vulture Norseman wait The sign of coming forth, The foul Landeyda flap its raven plume, And all the realms once more eclipsed ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... paste, and employed chiefly as a preventive against ague in the months between the dry and wet seasons, when the disease prevails. When a dose is required, a small quantity of the paste is dried and pulverised on a flat shell, and the powder, then drawn up into both nostrils at once through two vulture quills secured together by cotton thread. The use of Parica was found by the early travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupis who formerly lived on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the Mauhes and Muras. This community of habits is one of those facts which ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone. I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funereal song! She tells of time misspent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone forever by; Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed, Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die; For what, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... stirrups. His countenance, noble and defiant, presented a strange contrast to the aspect of vulgar ferocity that characterised the features of the man thus addressed. The insult was point blank, and would have aroused the veriest poltroon; but Arroyo possessed only the courage of the vulture. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... submission, and been complaint rather than adoration. Now, the same conviction has different companions in Job's mind, and so has different effects, and is really different in itself. The Titan on his rock, with the vulture tearing at his liver, sullenly recognised Jove's power, but was a rebel still. Such had been Job's earlier attitude, but now that thought comes to him along with submission, and so is blessed. Its recurrence here, as in a very real sense a new conviction, teaches us how old beliefs may flash out ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... even a word of two syllables. A bowl or basin represents the sound of neb, a hatchet that of neter, a guitar that of nefer, a crescent that of aah, and so on. Secondly, it is clear that artistic power is considerable. The animal forms used in the hieroglyphics—the bee, the vulture, the uraeus, the hawk, the chicken, the eagle—are well drawn. In the human forms there is less merit, but still they are fairly well proportioned and have spirit. No rudeness or want of finish attaches either ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... the sweet fever in her veins with chill. The lake she skirted, on whose mailed breast Rode like a shield the moon from out the west, She neared her lodge, but there her quick eye caught The voice of Gray Cloud, and her steps were stayed, For over her of late an icy fear Brooded with vulture wings when ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... royal Osiris is one of you, for his diadem is a vulture; his face is a sparrow-hawk, his head is Ra; his eyes are the Rehti, the two sisters; his nose is Horus of the empyrean; his mouth is the King of the Ament; his lungs are Nun; his two hands are the god Secheni;(650) his fingers are the gods who seize him; ...
— Egyptian Literature
... provided. I'll come prepar'd. I'll set upon you accoutred. I'll come furnish'd with a sharp Stomach; do you take Care that you have enough to satisfy a Vulture. I'll prepare my Belly and whet my Teeth; do you look to it, to get enough to satisfy ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... shall not grieve, like their mistress, when their brief barking period is over; that I care just so much and no more for them than for any other living creature, not excepting the fer-de-lance, "quoiled in the path like rope in a ship," or the broad-winged vulture "scaling the heavens by invisible stairs." None are out of place where Nature placed them, nor unbeautiful; none are unlovable, since their various qualities—the rage of the one and the gentleness of the other—are but harmonious lights ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Sun Heart Lion Swan Carbuncle Gabriel Gabriel Moon Left foot Cat Owl Crystal Camael Zamael Mars Right hand Wolf Vulture Diamond Michael Raphael Mercury Left hand Ape Stork Agate Zadikel Sachiel Jupiter Head Hart Eagle Sapphire (Lapis lazuli) Haniel Anael Venus Generative Goat Dove Emerald organs Zaphhiel Cassiel Saturn Right ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... a thin wail. The vulture pauses, and is stationary on the white and desert skies. She strives with her last strength to free herself from the thrall of the great lianas, and she falls into fresh meshes.... The claws are heard amid the ruins, there is a hirsute ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... fire, but in the morning the two coloured men were found frozen to death. Cook attributed their death to overindulgence in spirits, the supply for the party being left in their charge. Not intending to remain away the night, supplies ran short, so a vulture was shot and carefully divided amongst them, each man cooking his own, which amounted to about three mouthfuls. At length the weather cleared up and a start back was made, and after three hours they struck the beach, only to find they had never been any great distance away but had ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... dominion, while in part of its blue expanse lies the pretty Greek town, with its balconied houses and masses of foliage rising in terraces one above the other. Above it towers a ruined castle, whence the Genoese, in their days of supremacy, scanned with vulture-gaze the sweep of sea, prepared to pounce upon any hapless vessel wind-driven into these waters. It was Sunday when our travellers arrived, and the whole population were holiday making on the green ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... that musky odour which in the torrid zone, is common to animals of very different classes, namely: to the jaguar, the small species of tiger cat, the cabiai or thick-nosed tapir,* (* Cavia capybara, Linn.; chiguire.) the galinazo vulture,* (* Vultur aura, Linn., Zamuro, or Galinazo: the Brazilian vulture of Buffon. I cannot reconcile myself to the adoption of names, which designate, as belonging to a single country, animals common to a whole continent.) the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The gaseous ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... about the famous Mr. Dancer who had warmed his dinner by sitting on it and died naked in a sack, and yet had gold and bank-notes hidden in the crevices of the walls and in cracked jugs and tea-pots; of an old apple woman in whose house a fortune was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper; of "Vulture Hopkins" and "Blewbury Jones" and many others whose riches after their death were found hidden in strange places. While Wegg read, Mr. Boffin would pretend to get tremendously excited about his dust mounds, so that Wegg grew surer and ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... you an example. If you wish to guide a young man on the path of true culture, beware of interrupting his naive, confident, and, as it were, immediate and personal relationship with nature. The woods, the rocks, the winds, the vulture, the flowers, the butterfly, the meads, the mountain slopes, must all speak to him in their own language; in them he must, as it were, come to know himself again in countless reflections and images, in a ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Austria was steadily arming; Francis received the quieting assurance that his share in the partition was to be undisturbed. In the general and proper sorrow which has been felt for the extinction of Polish nationality by three vulture neighbors, the terrible indictment of general worthlessness which was justly brought against her organization and administration is at most times and by most people utterly forgotten. A people has exactly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... III is for monkey faces, vulture heads, lizards, turtles, etc. This composition dries very slowly and must be touched up now and then while drying, to preserve the details without warping. When dry it is like stone and holds the skin firmly. ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... burnous, his large head sunk upon his chest, slumbered like a potentate relieved from cares of State. Till Arba was reached his duty was accomplished. Ali, perched behind him on the camel, stared into the dimness with eyes steady and remote as those of a vulture of the desert. The houses of Beni-Mora faded in the mist of the sand, the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross, the tower of the hotel, the shuddering trees of Count Anteoni's garden. Along the white ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... given them for all-wise purposes. The hyena and the vulture are the scavengers of the tropical regions. The hyena devours what the vulture leaves, which is the skin and bones of a dead carcass. Its power of jaw is so great, that it breaks the largest bone ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... window of a shop near the Tuileries, he looked down on the strange events which dealt the coup de grace to the dying monarchy. Again the chieftain within him sided against the vulture rabble and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buonaparte to his brother Joseph) "had mounted his horse, the victory would have been his—so I judge from the spirit which prevailed in the morning." When all was over, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... stone. Somebody sure had welshed! He had once been in a side show at Coney Island where the room simulated the motion of an ocean steamer. The courtroom began to do the same—slanting this way and that and spinning obliquely round and round. Through the swirl of its gyrations he could see old Tutt's vulture eyes, growing bigger, fiercer, more sinister every instant. It was all up with him! It was an execution, and the crowd down below were thirsting for his blood, waiting ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... glory stand against the blue! O cold and buoyant air, whose crystal fills Heaven's amethystine gaol! O speeding streams That foam and thunder from the cliffs below! O slippery brinks and solitudes of snow And granite bleakness, where the vulture screams! O stormy pines, that wrestle with the breath Of every tempest, sharp and icy horns And hoary glaciers, sparkling in the morns, And broad dim wonders of the world beneath! I summon ye, and mid the glare that fills The noisy ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... caught in nets of gold, And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm, And little men climbed her high seats and sold Her honour to the vulture and the worm. ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... wall of the room the Richlings had occupied, a spectacle of agitated dejection. Here and there about the apartment, either motionless in chairs, or moving noiselessly about, and pulling and pushing softly this piece of furniture and that, were numerous vulture-like persons of either sex, waiting the up-coming of the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... and blue. Canyon wrens and vireos sang as they nested. The air was clear, cool, and salty from the near-by sea. Myriad leaf shadows danced on the black roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed the wavering image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea swallow. Linda studied the canyon with intent eyes, but bruised flesh pleaded, so reluctantly she arose, shouldered her belongings, and slowly followed the road out to the car line that passed through ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Crow (Black Vulture), Catbird, Cedar-bird, Cedar, red, Chat, yellow-breasted, Cherokee Rose, Cherry, wild, Chewink (Towhee):— red-eyed, white—eyed, Chickadee, Carolina, Chimney Swift, Chuck-will's-widow, Clematis Baldwinii, Clover, buffalo, Cloudberry, Coot (Fulica americana), Coquina Clam, Coreopsis, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... menace, realms were chilled with fear, And armies mustered at the sign, as when Clouds rise on clouds before the rainy East— Gray captains leading bands of veteran men And fiery youths to be the vulture's feast. Not thus were waged the mighty wars that gave The victory to her who fills this grave: Alone her task was wrought, Alone the battle fought; Through that long strife her constant hope was staid On God alone, nor looked ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... into the secrets of the universe. Wonderful humility blended with his intellectual greatness. To other men he seemed a spirit of higher rank, having almost superhuman faculties of mental vision, wont to soar into regions which the vulture's eye hath never seen; to himself he was but a boy playing with the shells on the seashore, while the ocean lay undiscovered before him. Others were taken up with what Newton accomplished, Newton was taken up with what remained to be done. So it is ever with the highest genius; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... should never behold Oswald again; that he would go away without bidding her adieu. She expected every instant to receive the news of his departure, and this fear so increased the agony of her feelings that she felt herself all of a sudden seized by passion, that vulture beneath whose talons happiness and independence sink. Unable to endure the house that Lord Nelville no longer visited, she frequently wandered in the gardens of Rome, hoping to meet with him. The ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... permanently upon her cheek. Her eyes, those glorious orbs, filled with unquenchable love, grew supernaturally large and brilliant with the flames that fed upon her vital forces. Amelie sickened and sank rapidly. The vulture of quick consumption had fastened upon her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... you are the same foolish woman you ever were," answered the older queen. Just then, a strange sound echoed far off among the hills above, strange and far as the scream of a distant vulture sailing its mate to the carrion feast—an unearthly cry that rang high in the air from side to side of the valley, and struck the dark crags and doubled in the echo, and died away in short, faint pulsations of sound upon the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... while Sir Beverley's eyes returned to the wide oak staircase, watching it ceaselessly, with vulture-like intentness. Then after the passage of minutes, there came the sound of feet that literally scampered along the corridor above, and in a moment, with meteor-like suddenness, Piers ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... was watching for. The door of the lord chamberlain's room opened, and, pale with hideous terror, His Lordship peeped out. Seeing no one, he advanced to step into the corridor, and tumbled over the doctor. Curdie ran up, and held out his hand. He received in it the claw of a bird of prey—vulture or eagle, he could not ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... was evident, we all agreed, that Calypso had been right. It had been Tobias and none other whose evil eye had sent her so breathless back to me, waiting in the shadow of the woods; and it was the same evil eye that had fallen vulture-like on her golden doubloon exposed ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... an unsatiated desire is, tearing your heart with its sharp claws and piercing beak for want of other prey! The punishment of Prometheus pales beside it, for the arrows of Hercules cannot reach this unseen vulture! This is my first unsuccessful love; the first falcon that has returned to me without bringing the dove in his talons; I am devoured by an inexpressible rage; I pace my room like a wild beast, uttering inarticulate ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... the glittering crowd is duly arranged, a door opens at the back of the balcony, and the King of the Two Lands, Lord of the Vulture and the Snake, steps forth with his Queen and family. In earlier times, whenever the King appeared, the assembled nobles were expected to fall on their faces and kiss the ground before him. Fashion ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... rocks which are strewn about become so hot that one can scarcely bear to touch them, and the sand scorches the feet. It was already too hot to walk, so we rode on donkeys, some way up the valley—where a vulture floating far in the blue overhead was the only other visitor—till we came to an enormous boulder polished by centuries of action of sun and sand. Here Ali halted, saying that the tomb was under the stone. Accordingly, we dismounted, and, leaving the donkeys in charge of a fellah boy, went ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... fell. His soul was filled with forebodings of evil. Misfortune, he thought, is a vulture, which loves the desert. He did not turn, but went onward with the king's letter. He trod upon thorns. He walked among serpents and scorpions. He thirsted and hungered. He saw caravans drag their dark length through the sands. He did not join ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... Pandu's child? Or Radha's shon, the ten-necked ogre wild? Or Indradatta? or again, is he Shon of brave Rama and of fair Kunti? Or Dharmaputra? Ashvatthaman bold? Perhaps Jatayu's shelf, that vulture old? 47 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... moaning of the basses before the soprano set in was overwhelming: it was like the vulture which, resting with easy wing on the dark morning cloud, spies around for booty. So was the song meant to be. The trombone solo was a shout of victory: it imparted new life ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won, and how often red—never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture eyes and the darned great-coat, who had lost his last sou, and still looked on desperately, after he could play no longer—never spoke. Even the voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and thickened in ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... denote Hephaestos (Ptah,) they delineate a scarabaeus and a vulture, and to denote Athena (Neith,) a vulture ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... the vulture of sedition Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders, Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss The conquest of our scarce-cold conqueror, That ever-living man of ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... enemy, not silently, But with insulting and defiant warning; Come, banquet, if thou wilt; I offer thee My cheek, my arm. Tease me not, hovering high With that continuous hum; I fain would rest. Come, do thy worst at once. Bite, scoundrel, bite! Thou insect vulture, seize thy helpless prey! No ceremony! (I'd have none with thee, Could I but find thee.) Fainter now and farther The tiny war-whoop; now I hear it not. A cowardly assassin he; he waits, Full well aware that I am on the alert, With murderous intent. ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... way beyond the last green wall of the garden on to a sort of towing path looking on the river and a wooden island opposite. There, indeed, he saw a lean, dark figure with a stoop almost like that of a vulture, a posture well known in the law courts as that of Sir John Harker, the Attorney-General. His face was lined with headwork, for alone among the three idlers in the garden he was a man who had made his own way; and round his bald brow and hollow temples clung dull red hair, quite ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... have had an iron constitution. The wings of his spirit flapped with such violence against its skeleton bars, the vulture-beak of remorse dipping all the time into the quivering, bleeding heart, it is astonishing how long it resisted even after flesh and blood seemed wasted away. Day after day he lingered; but as his soul gradually unsheathed itself, clearer views of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... they fed upon his hide, And Juan, who had still refused, because The creature was his father's dog that died, Now feeling all the vulture in his jaws, With some remorse received (though first denied) As a great favour one of the fore-paws,[124] Which he divided with Pedrillo, who Devoured it, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows hovering about a cypress-tree. He looked up and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the rock, that modern Prometheus, Captain Lysander Sprowl, like his mythical prototype, felt the vulture's beak in his vitals. Chagrin devoured his liver. An overflow of southern bile was the result, and he turned yellow to the whites ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... hopeless and justice denied, And war's bloody vulture should flap its black pinions, Then gladly "to arms," while we hurl, in our pride, Defiance to tyrants and death to their minions! With our front in the field, swearing never to yield, Or return, like the Spartan, in death on our shield! And the Cross ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the moth, closely resembles that peculiar instinct by which the vulture and other birds that prey upon carrion, are able to single out a diseased animal from the herd, which they follow with their dismal croakings, hovering over its head, or sitting in ill-omened flocks, on the surrounding trees, watching it as its life ebbs away, and stretching out their filthy and ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the person to whom the maturing of Arnold's treason, and the arrangements for its execution should be entrusted. A correspondence was carried on between them under a mercantile disguise, in the feigned names of Gustavus and Anderson; and, at length, to facilitate their communications, the Vulture sloop of war moved up the North River, and took a station convenient for the purpose, but not so near as ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... at Naples—Giuseppe Ribera, nicknamed Lo Spagnoletto—carried on Caravaggio's tradition. Spagnoletto surpassed his master in the brutally realistic expression of physical anguish. His Prometheus writhing under the beak of the vulture, his disembowelled martyrs and skinless S. Bartholomews, are among the most nauseous products of a masculine nature blessed with robust health. Were they delirious or hysterical, they would be less disgusting. But no; they are merely vigorous and faithful representations ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... where the Rio flows; I shot him when the moon arose; And where he lies the vulture knows Along the ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... the new Countess of Denbigh. How could a woman be ambitious of resembling Prometheus, to be pawed and clawed and gnawed by a vulture?(498) I beg your earldom's pardon; but I could not conceive that a coronet was so ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... like woodmongers Piling a stack of billets from the earth, Raising each other into steeples heights; Let him convey this on the turning props Of Protean law, and (his owne counsell keeping) 35 Keepe all upright—let me but hawlk at him, Ile play the vulture, and so thump his liver That (like a huge unlading Argosea) He shall confesse all, and you then may hang him. Shew me a clergie man that is in voice 40 A lark of heaven, in heart a mowle of earth; That hath good living, and a wicked life; ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... young man, whose name was Owen, "let them that have been oppressed and harassed by this Vulture, state their grievances, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... no vulture, or jackal, or hyena, sahiba!" he smiled. "I do not eat carrion!" He seemed to think that that was a very good retort, for he showed his wonderful white teeth until his handsome face was the epitome of self-satisfied amusement. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... eljxeti, nuligi. volcano : vulkano. volley : salvo. volume : volumo; volumeno, amplekso. voluntary : memvola, propravola. voluptuous : volupta. vote : vocxdoni. vow : solene promesi, dedicxi. vowel : vokalo. vulgar : vulgara. vulture : vulturo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... man's apathy and tranquillity vanished, and the voracity with which he devoured the unaccustomed dainty showed that though he might have no demon thoughts to rack his brain, the vulture in his stomach ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... afternoon old Mr. Leverett and Bob took the railway to Gloucester, and went at once to the celebrated lawyer, Mr. Sharpe Vulture, of Billocost Row. Mr. Vulture, who was just going home to dinner, and was both hungry and savage, heard their story with great impatience, told them to come again the next morning, and bade them good day. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... or purple grackle (Quiscalus quiscula). Bluebird (Sialia sialis). Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus). Bunting, black-throated or dickcissel (Spiza americana). Bunting, snow (Passerina nivalis). Buzzard, turkey, or turkey vulture ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... tiresome stories. I know what they are, because I had to listen to them when we were engaged—I'm sure he is telling the same ones still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she hasn't the least moral sense. She is always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I'm sure she never ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... those of the wolf, hair Short and Smooth except on the tail where it is as long as that of the Cur dog and streight. the nativs do not eate them, or make any further use of them than in hunting the Elk as has been before observed. Shannon an Labiesh brought in to us to day a Buzzard or Vulture of the Columbia which they had wounded and taken alive. I believe this to be the largest Bird of North America. it was not in good order and yet it wayed 25 lbs had it have been so it might very ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... come and beg me to protect her." Germany hates us with all her own hatred, added to that of England. She hopes for our defeat, but if we should win, she would come hypocritically to claim from us her vulture share of the spoil for ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... subjects; often the very same men in the lobbies—taking dry smokes from unlit cigars; all these elements were there in duplicate, if somewhat smaller and more concentrated. No point in Montgomery was remote enough—no assemblage dignified enough—to escape the swoop of the lobby vulture. His beak was as sharp and his unclean talons as strong as those of the traditional bird, which had blinked and battened so long on the eaves of the Washington edifice. When "the old concern" had been dismembered, limbs had ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the vulture, is only the slave of passion and of love; your true Sisyphus (like Lord Salisbury in Punch) is only the politician, striving always, never attaining; the stone rolls down again from the hill-crest, and ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the clouds; he is not swift of foot, and yet he can out-speed the fleetest hound or horse; he has but feeble weapons in his organization, and yet he can slay or master all the great beasts; his eye is not so sharp as that of the eagle or the vulture, and yet he can see into the farthest depths of siderial space; he has only very feeble occult powers of communication with his fellows, and yet he can talk around the world and send his voice across mountains and deserts; his hands are weak things beside a lion's paw ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... various flying theories that the house fly, as an example has been disregarded. We are prone to overlook the small insect, but it is, nevertheless, a sample which is just as potent to show the efficiency of wing surface as the condor or the vulture. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... was calculated to unnerve the stoutest novice. The Efreet began by transforming himself from a lion to a scorpion, upon which the Princess became a serpent; then he changed to an eagle, and she to a vulture; he to a black cat, and she to a cock; he to a fish, and she to ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... before the Exodus had already robbed him of his lands were themselves pursued to their northern retreats. The south proved to them a land of decay and destruction; Gog and his host were given, "on the mountains of Israel," to the vulture and the beast ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... goose. As I saw them perched on the branches, tearing away at huge masses of flesh, I must say that, notwithstanding their regal titles, they had a very repulsive appearance. Chumbo told me how, in despair of getting any supper, he had rushed in and attacked the vulture with which I had found him struggling. Happily, he had come off ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... to keep the hut supplied with meat, but the white man carries his meat with him. When he kills he leaves the meat and takes only the horns or the skin of the thing he has slain. Muata is not a child. When he sees a single vulture in the sky, he knows there are others coming behind. A white man comes out of the beyond into the black man's country. He is soft-spoken; he is a hunter only. Mawoh! and behind him comes ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... night from a hasty journey to Ireland, whither I betook myself on Thursday night, being attracted vulture-wise by the scent of a quantity of carboniferous corpses. The journey was as well worth the trouble as any I ever undertook, seeing that in a morning's work I turned out ten genera of vertebrate animals of which five are certainly new; and of these four are Labyrinthodonts, amphibia ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... well-known "dove-and-vulture" effigy which he called in heraldry "The quarry" and claimed as his rightful crest. Very significantly, indeed, did it strike me now, though I had jested on the subject so merrily of old with Evelyn and ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the disappointments of the present and all the anxieties of the future laid siege to my heart like a whirlwind of phantoms. I took account of my faults, and they ranged themselves in battle against me. The vulture of regret gnawed at my heart, and the sense of the irreparable choked me like the iron collar of the pillory. It seemed to me that I had failed in the task of life, and that now life was failing me. Ah! how terrible spring is to the lonely! All the needs which had been lulled to sleep start ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with the idea of a middle sized and rather athletic man, with a fair and florid complexion: the creature I now saw, was totally the reverse of this idea. His cheeks were yellow and drawn in; his hand which was raised, in the act of holding aside the curtains, was like the talons of a famished vulture, so thin, so long, so withered in ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what a life is that of an artist! While yet a child, he is agitated by heavy incomprehensible thoughts: to him the sphynx, Genius, hath already proposed its enigmas; in his bosom the Promethean vulture is already perched, and groweth with his growth. His comrades are playing and making merry; they are preparing for their riper years recollections of childhood's days of paradise—childhood, that never can be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... a roast joint was upon the table, and Schalken immediately proceeded to cut some, but he was anticipated; for no sooner had she become aware of its presence than she darted at it with the rapacity of a vulture, and, seizing it in her hands she tore off the flesh with her teeth and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of a keeper in the zoological gardens. He dreams that there was presented to the Zoo first a marmot, then an emu, then a vulture, then a she-goat, then another emu; the presentations are made without end and the Zoo is crowded out—the keeper wakes up in horror ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... turn"—"He says he is all right"—"I always thought"—"Never mind...." Donkin, crouching all in a heap against the bowsprit, hunched his shoulderblades as high as his ears, and hanging a peaked nose, resembled a sick vulture with ruffled plumes. Belfast, straddling his legs, had a face red with yelling, and with arms thrown up, figured a Maltese cross. The two Scandinavians, in a corner, had the dumbfounded and distracted aspect of men gazing at ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... is by no means confined to Europe and Asia. The Arawaks, one of the aboriginal tribes of Guiana, relate that a beautiful royal vulture was once captured by a hunter. She was the daughter of Anuanima, sovereign of a race whose country is above the sky, and who lay aside there the appearance of birds for that of humanity. Smitten with love for the hunter, the captive divested herself of her feathers and exhibited ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... what his crime? Or what ill planet crossed his prime? Heart too soft and will too weak To front the fate that crouches near,— Dove beneath the vulture's beak;— Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? Dragged from his mother's arms and breast, Displaced, disfurnished here, His wistful toil to do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer. Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by side, Building ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... scavengers of Brazil, the Urubu, of which two varieties were to be found—the Urubu commun (Cathartes atratus) and the Urubu rei (Cathartes Papa)—a cross between a vulture and a crow, were fairly plentiful now that game was more abundant in the country. They often pierced our ears with their unmusical shrieks. The urubu belonged to the vulture family and was found in all tropical South America. It had black plumage, ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... remained all night amid the wreck, the ruin, and the dead, but not till the following dawn did they learn the magnitude of the disaster that had overtaken our arms. Then they saw, and in silence marched from that fatal field, heading for Rorke's Drift, and leaving its mutilated dead to the vulture and the jackal. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... dashed Swoop of the Vulture business," he grumbled, as he paced before his tent, ever and anon pausing to sweep the city below him with his glasses. "I should like to find the fellow who started the idea! Making me look a fool! Still, it's just as bad for the others, ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... the dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered a comedy, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... in chorus): The vulture her carrion swallows, Returns to his vomit the dog. In the slough of uncleanliness wallows The he-goat, and revels the hog. Men are wise with their schools and their teachers, Men are just with their creeds and their ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... to you an argument," continued the baronet, "which unswervingly follows my present conception. Long experience of this wicked world—by which I mean that particular kind of vulture-like humanity which preys upon better men than itself—enables me to assume that you are without question a blackmailer, a bad blackmailer, and a blackmailer of ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... lion looked up at these invaders, uttered a reproachful growl, and went at them, patting them right and left, and knocking them over. He never touched a vulture, nor indeed did he kill an animal. He was a lion, and only killed to eat; yet he soon cleared the place, because he knocked over a few hyenas and jackals, and the rest, being active, tumbled over the vultures before they could spread their heavy wings. After this warning, they made a respectful ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... lately had arisen the shout of the impetuous, but intrepid whites, and the whoop and yell of the savages, as they closed in deadly conflict; not a sound was to be heard but the hoarse cry of the vulture, flapping her wings and mounting into the air, alarmed at the intrusion of man. Those countenances, which had so lately beamed with daring and defiance, were unmeaning and inexpressive; and what with the effect produced on the dead bodies, by the excessive heat and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... an unmolested passage through their territory. If they refused, we would force them to grant it, as we did the Masai. 'Look here'—I took a repeating-rifle in my hand—'this thing hits at any distance;' and I gave it to one of our best marksmen and pointed to a vulture which sat upon a tree a little more than three hundred yards off. The shot was heard, and the vulture fell down mortally wounded. The Wa-Kikuyu showed signs of being about to run away, although they had occasionally heard the reports of guns in their conflicts ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... under the name of John Anderson, finally met him, one night, at the foot of a mountain about six miles below Stony Point, called the Long Clove. Arnold, with infinite cunning, had devised this meeting, and had tempted the adventurous spirit of Andre, who left a British man-of-war called the Vulture in order to hold converse with his fellow-conspirator. But before the unfortunate Andre could return to his ship (having completed his midnight confab and received from Arnold the most damning documentary evidence of treachery) the Vulture was fired upon from Teller's Point by a party of Americans, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... him to build a house, and Chap. 132 gave him power to return to the earth and see it. Chap. 153 provided for his escape from the fiend who went about to take souls in a net. Chaps. 155-160, 166, and 167 formed the spells that were engraved on amulets, i.e. the Tet (male), the Tet (female), the Vulture, the Collar, the Sceptre, the Pillow, the Pectoral, &c., and gave to the deceased the power of Osiris and Isis and other gods, and restored to him his heart, and lifted up his head. Chap. 162 kept heat ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned up to the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking at his heel, descended the stairs,—his cheeks swollen and purple with intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture's. There was a still pause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot. (Or Hanriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the characters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling of their ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... anxiety towards the promising stillness of that prostrate body. Then, sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nostromo's eyes fell on waking was this patient watcher for the signs of death and corruption. When the man got up the vulture hopped away in great, side-long, fluttering jumps. He lingered for a while, morose and reluctant, before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister droop of beak ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Sometimes the horizon was opal, sometimes it throbbed with azure fire, or blazed ruby red, as the torch of sunset swept west and east before the emerald darkness fell. When our Enchantress landed, great flocks of kites, like in form and wing to the sacred vulture of Egypt, flew to welcome us with swoopings of wide purple wings. Their shadows on the water were like passing spirits; and at night when the Nubian boatmen danced, their feet thudding on the lower deck to the cry of the darabukah, the Nile whispered of the past, with a tinkling whisper, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... give a double portion to his companions. He perceived this, and therefore left off hiding himself; but he no sooner fixed his eyes on any nicety, than he appeared ready to devour it at once; and pursued the hand of those that held it, as a vulture does its prey. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... diviner creed Is living in the life they lead. The passing of their beautiful feet Blesses the pavement of the street, And all their looks and words repeat Old Fuller's saying wise and sweet, Not as a vulture, but a dove, The ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... vulture] the wit of smelling is best. And therefore by smelling he savoureth carrions that be far from him, that is beyond the sea, and ayenward. Therefore the vulture followeth the host that he may feed himself with carrions ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the distance, moving insensibly down the long, glaring corridor, a sinister figure, suggesting in the silence of his oncoming the motionless flight of a vulture. Well within my field of sight he overtook them and, with a lack of preliminary greeting that suggested supreme intimacy, walked beside them. I stood for some moments—for some minutes, and then hastened ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... and the buzzards draw the eye fondly. The National Capital is a great place for buzzards, and I make the remark in no double or allegorical sense either, for the buzzards I mean are black and harmless as doves, though perhaps hardly dovelike in their tastes. My vulture is also a bird of leisure, and sails through the ether on long flexible pinions, as if that was the one delight of his life. Some birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests that easy, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Holy, where the Accursed dwell, O Thracian, went thy silver song! Grim Minos, with unconscious tears, Melts into mercy as he hears— The serpents in Megara's hair, Kiss, as they wreathe enamour'd there; All harmless rests the madding thong;— From the torn breast the Vulture mute Flies, scared before the charmed lute— Lull'd into sighing from their roar The dark waves woo the listening shore— Listening the Thracian's silver song!— Love was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... dominated by his old antagonist, Lady Frensham, unsubdued, unaltered, rampant over them all, arrogant, impudent, insulting. She was in mourning, she had the most splendid black furs Mr. Britling had ever seen; her large triumphant profile came out of them like the head of a vulture out of its ruff; her elder brother was a wounded prisoner in Germany, her second was dead; it would seem that hers were the only sacrifices the war had yet extorted from any one. She spoke as though it gave her the sole right to criticise the war or ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Prince's freend?' for she too, though with other feelings, had adopted the general opinion respecting Waverley. 'I daur ye to touch him,' spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with claws which a vulture might have envied. 'I'll set my ten commandments in the face o' the first loon that lays ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... glittering sharp and bright above the clouds. And they knew that they were come to Caucasus, at the end of all the earth; Caucasus the highest of all mountains, the father of the rivers of the East. On his peak lies chained the Titan, while a vulture tears his heart; and at his feet are piled dark forests round the magic ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... beneath the blows of barbaric invaders, the terrible omen was more and more talked and thought of; and in Attila's time, men watched for the momentary extinction of the Roman State with the last beat of the last vulture's wing. Moreover, among the numerous legends connected with the foundation of the city, and the fratricidal death of Remus, there was one most terrible one, which told that Romulus did not put his brother to death in accident or in hasty quarrel, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... one kind of bird very remarkable for its astonishing smallness, not being larger than a grasshopper or large beetle, which however has several very long feathers in its tail. Along the coast there is a species of very large vulture, the wings of which, when extended, measure fifteen or sixteen palms from tip to tip. These birds often make prey of large seals, which they attack when out of the water: On these occasions, some of the birds attack the animal behind; others tear out his eyes; and the rest of the flock tear him on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... down the broad quiet waters of the O'Rembo Vongo. I notice great quantities of birds about here—great hornbills, vividly coloured kingfishers, and for the first time the great vulture I have often heard of, and the skin of which I will take home before I mention even its approximate spread of wing. There are also noble white cranes, and flocks of small black and white birds, new to me, with heavy ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of a tree; with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... no tail, and down rather than feathers. The body, according to Bontius, is as big as that of the African ostrich, but the legs are very short. It has a large head, great black eyes, long bluish-white bill, ending in a beak like that of a vulture, yellow legs, thick and short, four toes on each foot solid, long, and armed with sharp black claws. The flesh particularly on the breast, is fat and esculent. Now, all this corresponds with More's account, except ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... thought of him at times. He used to sit at home and feel glad that for his part he'd kept out of it. Then he would stir up the fire in his grate and comfortably get into bed, and forget about Prometheus, facing the winds and the vulture. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... there is no question, and he attacked Walpole in one of the second series of his "Fables" (which appeared posthumously in 1738), entitled "The Vulture, the Sparrow, and ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... had been a false light. She had never known his soul, for what she thought she knew had been very noble and splendid, and the reality was bad. It was as if she had begun to open the door of her heart, to let in a white dove, and peeping out had seen instead a vulture. She slammed the door shut; and the sweet new thing that had stirred in the depths of her nature fell back asleep ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the Arabic Altair, but in the Persian tables the Flying Vulture. This is one of the old constellations, situated near Delphinus in the northern hemisphere. According to Grecian fable, Aquila represented Ganymede or Hebe, who was transported to heaven ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... bottom. Now, I reasoned that no quadruped could do this. The holes were too small even for a jackal to get his slender snout into. The work must have been done by the beak of a bird; and what sort of bird. Why, a vulture, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Shaka was at the assembly on Vulture's Peak, there came the heavenly king, who offered the Buddha a golden-colored flower and asked him to preach the law. The Blessed One simply took the flower and held it in his hand, but said no word. No one in the whole ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... through the webbed window the lapidary's fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... their hue of the rocks that menaced them. The sun appeared afraid to shine, the birds ceased to sing, and the flowers to bloom; but the eagle fixed his nest high amongst the rocks, and the vulture hovered over this abode of desolation. The farm houses, in which only poverty resided, were formed of logs scarcely keeping off the cold and drifting snow: out of them the inhabitants seldom peeped, and the sports or prattling of children ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... himself every time he thought of you men, who would be ready to hand him all of your money as soon as it came to you? Is the gambler, who grows fat on the toil of others, but never toils himself, any better than the vulture that feeds upon the animals killed by others? Isn't the gambler a parasite, pure and simple? On whose lifeblood does the gambler feed, unless ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... suddenly sick. What Simmy hinted at was the vulture work among the dead and the wounded too enfeebled to protect themselves from being plundered. He saw Kirby's lips set ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... sold his shell and remained naked and defenseless. A vulture happened to see him, and being hungry, broke the tortoise's back with a blow of his beak and devoured it. The moral is, that M. Fouquet should take very good ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the bush on the Peruvian shore rose a vulture. It flapped sullenly away as if disappointed. The bushmen, quick to note anything that might be a sign, paid no attention to the bird's flight, but marked with unerring eye the spot whence ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... it is something rare, and I'll have to be making some or he'll never be satisfied, that is if you don't mind—!" and before Mrs. Carter realized what was happening Mary had marshalled the Harricutt vulture down the street, and was questioning eagerly about measures of sugar and plums and ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill |
