"Blight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ones occupying most attention, the workers in the Department of Agriculture have not been unmindful of other native nut-bearing plants, such as the native black walnuts, the hickories and the chestnut up to the time of the very destructive attack of blight. The chestnut, however, has not passed out of our sphere of activity, because at the present time, (and I think you will see tomorrow at the Bell Station, some interesting possibilities in the future of chestnut culture in this country), the Chinese forms, which are much more resistant ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... features of those who live in northern cold, and their glances were as chill as the weather. But that was better than if they had taken too much interest in a strange face in a familiar uniform; and it would have needed more than a freezing stare to blight the spring in my heart, for I was going ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... beforehand as many worn-out brooms as they can lay their hands on. These, after dipping in tar, they light—running with them from one bonfire to another—and when burnt out they are placed in the fields as charms against blight.[13] The large ragwort—known in Ireland as the "fairies' horse"—has long been sought for by witches when taking their midnight journeys. Burns, in his "Address to the Deil," makes his witches "skim the muirs and dizzy crags" ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... brother's fate? How many lies he should have to tell, or how much equivocation he must use in order to keep the truth from her? Yet would there be any mercy in telling that horrible story, the knowledge of which must cast a blight upon her youth, and blot out every hope she had even secretly cherished? He knew by his own experience how possible it was to hope against hope, and to hope unconsciously; and he could not bear that her heart should be crushed as his had been by the knowledge of the truth. "Better ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Dicko Smith, in gaudy putties girt, With sand-blight in his optics, and much leaner than he started, Round the 'Oly Land cavorting in three- quarters of a shirt, And imposin' on the natives ez ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... 1848, while the settlers and their families were contentedly at work developing the resources of the country, the astounding cry, "Gold discovered!" came through the valley like a blight, stopping ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... like a blight to the city, and the grass grew in the streets, Girard gave bountifully to relieve the distress of the people. But a panic of fear was upon them. They forgot how to live and began to pray. Preachers proclaimed that the Day of Judgment ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... known as a form of Typhoid, the disease spreads a sort of blight over the nervous centres, and from the first greatly lowers their power. The patient is too weak to bear the powerful cooling recommended in Fever; there is also a tendency to prolonged and "low" fever. First of all, in such a case, the feet and legs must be fomented. Watch against ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... I myself mislead By blind desire wherewith my heart is torn, E'en while I speak away the moments speed, To me and pity which alike were sworn. What shade so cruel as to blight the seed Whence the wish'd fruitage should so soon be born? What beast within my fold has leap'd to feed? What wall is built between the hand and corn? Alas! I know not, but, if right I guess, Love to such joyful hope has only led To plunge my weary ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... to the deep-sea fishing and would never return: his bright young life had been swallowed up in the insatiable ocean, and she was left lamenting in her indigence. There, it was a father who had been engulfed in the roost; or again, the illness of a mother had cast a blight for years upon this other household. Sometimes I have seen two old people, all their sons dead, living a kind of stupefied half-life, automatically moving about, poor and wretchedly clad, unable to understand anything except the welcome heat of the sun ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... speaking of, to break? Ours was everything a relation could be, filled to the brim with the wine of consciousness; and if it was to have no meaning, no better meaning than that such a creature as you could breathe upon it, at your hour, for blight, why was I myself dealt with all for deception? why condemned after a couple of short years to find the golden flame—oh, the golden flame!—a mere handful of black ashes?" Our young woman so yielded, at moments, to what was insidious in these foredoomed ingenuities of her pity, that ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... blight our vines Nor Sirius blaze above us. But you and I shall drink our wines And sing to the loved that ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... medical investigation has proven it repeatedly to be false, yet many believe it. The consummation of marriage involves the mightiest issues of life and is the most holy and sacred right recognized by man, and it is the Balm of Gilead for many ills. Masturbation or prostitution soon blight the brightest prospects a young man may have. Manhood is morality and ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... stole over his face of which I had not thought it capable. 'That is so to an extent of which you do not dream. No man likes to have his hand forced, especially by one whom he regards—may I say it?—as a possible rival. But I will tell you this much. If the blight which has fallen on my life is likely to continue, I would not wish,— God forbid that I should wish to join her fate with mine,—not for all that the world ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... wish, my scheme would go to nothing. To prevent this I determined to take my measures with such thought and fore-thought, such cautions and precautions, that all the malignant planets in the hemisphere should be unable to blight my designs .... Heaven and Earth! must I remember? my damned star wheeled about to the zenith, by whose baleful rays Fortune took the alarm.[15a] ... In short, Pharaoh at the Red Sea, Darius at Arbela, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to be the only object for which these wretches were invented and lived, and they also seemed to be quite ready and willing to die, rather than desist a moment from their occupation. Everybody had an attack of the blight, as ophthalmia is called in Australia, which with the flies were enough to set any one deranged. Every little sore or wound on the hands or face was covered by them in swarms; they scorned to use their wings, they preferred ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... unhallowed souls," answered the dark man impressively, "who return to blight the living with the spectacle of our ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into the mountain to graze. For a hundred or two hundred feet in width, it was eaten completely clean, for sheep have a way of tearing up even the roots of the grass so that nothing green lives behind them. They carry blight ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to think about, but I did it. I was found out. I was accused and arrested. I was tried and found guilty. Lord, Lord, I shall never forget that day! My mother and father were in the courtroom. She fainted dead away, and an eternal blight ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... used. The compass {22} itself is so placed that you can see it well while either sitting or standing up, or when lying at full length on the deck, with the back against a pillow propped by the mizen mast, the blight sun or moon overhead, and a turn or two of the mainsheet cast about your body to keep the sleepy steersman from rolling over into the water, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... relate How a strange sea-monster stole their bait; How their nets were tangled in loops and knots, And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots. Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops, And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops. A blight played havoc with Beverly beans,— It was all the work of those hateful queans! A dreadful panic began at "Pride's," Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides, And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms 'Mid the peaceful dwellers at ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... neither chains nor dungeons could bind it down or confine it. You might load the witch with irons, you might bury her in the lowest cell of a feudal prison, and still it was believed that she could send forth her imps or her spectre to ravage the fields, and blight the meadows, and throw the elements into confusion, and torture the bodies, and craze the minds, of any who might be the objects ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Trade was coming rapidly to the front, and the Anti-corn Law League, which was founded in Manchester in 1838, was already beginning to prove itself a power in the land. As far back as 1826, Hume had taken up his parable in Parliament against the Corn Laws as a blight on the trade of the country; and two years after the Reform Bill was passed he had returned to the attack, only to find, however, that the nation was still wedded to Protection. Afterwards, year after year, Mr. Villiers drew attention to the subject, and moved for ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Tugela. Crossing this far from the British base of power, his force could raid the Greytown district and raise recruits among the Dutch farmers, laying waste one of the few spots in South Africa which had been untouched by the blight of war. All this lay before him, and in his path nothing save only two small British posts which might be either disregarded or gathered up as he passed. In an evil moment for himself, tempted by the thought of the supplies which they might contain, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... powers, this favour'd spot to prove A dwelling fit for innocence and joy, Or temple worthy of the god of love. All objects round to mirth and joy invite, Nor aught appears among that could the pleasure blight. ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... in an outhouse pointed out to him by his friend the gardener, and thence to dress for a dinner that he looked forward to with dread, and Philip to make his way home. As he passed up through the little flower-garden at the Abbey House, he came across his daughter, picking the blight from ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... The 'apple-blight' of the Calvados must obviously have extended into the neighbouring department of the Eure, or at least into the great and busy arrondissement of Bernay, which gave the Monarchist candidate in September 1889 the tremendous majority of 5,550 votes in a total ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of battle, a surge High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears That shake on us their shadow, till men's heads 490 Bend, and their hearts even with its forward wind Wither, so blasts all seed in them of hope Its breath and blight of presage; yea, even now The winter of this wind out of the deeps Makes cold our trust in comfort of the Gods And blind our eye toward outlook; yet not here, Here never shall the Thracian plant on high For ours his father's symbol, nor with wreaths A strange folk ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... last he had given himself up to a dull hope that the little girl who had become so dear was really his brother's child, and joint heir with Donald to his and his brother's estates; and how Eben Slade actually had come to claim her and take her away, threatening to blight the poor child by proving that she was his niece, Delia Robertson, and ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... do not imagine from this that there are many of these, for the Chinese have been for days avoiding the Legation quarter as if it were plague-stricken, and sounds that were so roaring a few weeks ago are now daily becoming more and more scarce. A blight is settling on us, for we are accursed by the whole population of North China, and who knows what will be the fate of those ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... "Well done," as they dashed up to the first goal of their early ambition. But now, their pleasure is in memory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can be kind to you, but you nevermore can be kind to them. You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... eclipsing body. Of course there is no suggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses. My own acceptance is that if in the nineteenth century anyone had uttered such a thought as that, he'd have felt the blight of a Dominant; that Materialistic Science was a jealous god, excluding, as works of the devil, all utterances against the seemingly uniform, regular, periodic; that to defy him would have brought on—withering by ridicule—shrinking away by publishers—contempt ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... promising bud," thought the good woman, "but it may wither even without the blight of fashion; so I will try to secure ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... to blight the fruits of my students. A faith- [1] ful student may even sometimes feel the need of physical help, and occasionally receive it from others; but the less this is required, the better it ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... "'The Blight of Respectability,' by Geoffrey Mortimer, is well worth reading, and by more of us, perhaps, than imagine it. The shoddy god has votaries in England, where one would least expect ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... unkindly hot, My garden makes a desert spot; Sometimes the blight upon the tree Takes all my fruit away from me; And then with throes of bitter pain Rebellious passions rise and swell— But life is more than fruit or grain, And so I sing, and all ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... with careless consideration by the Prince. Behind his long, harsh face and sullen eyes a devil was raging, because of all his plans that had gone awry, and because the man he had sought to kill still served the Effendina, putting a blight upon Egypt. To-morrow he, Achmet, must go into the desert with the army, and this hated Inglesi would remain behind to have his will with Kaid. The one drop of comfort in his cup was the fact that the displeasure of the Effendina against himself was removed, and that he had, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the winter of 1950 and 1951, at a temperature of nineteen below zero without injury. It may have been they were caught last fall by a hard freeze in full foliage, early before the apples were all picked; and, again, it may be blight. I hope not. But this I do know, the hickory and black walnut in their natural habitat were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... competitors. The gain in productive power which the strenuous race for perfection insures is retarded, and may conceivably be brought to a standstill, by the advent of corporations largely exempt from such competition. There is threatened a blight on the future of labor, since the standard of wages, set by the productivity of labor, does not rise as it should, and the actual rate of wages lags behind the standard by an unnaturally long interval. There is too much difference between what labor produces ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... on rapidly, but with equal pace, unheeding whether, as a "swift-winged and beautiful angel," he opens flowers on the way for some, or, as a "relentless, unsparing destroyer," he nips the budding hopes and scatters the blight of disappointment on others; but still bearing the record of each minute to eternity, the gliding hours are silently working for all. Their passage had seemingly, as yet, brought no change in the circumstances of our little shoemaker; ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... whole world bright. 'Tis this that thralls my heart in love's delight, Not thy clear face of beauty glorious; For he who harbours virtue, still will choose To love what neither years nor death can blight. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... blight of the gravest character upon the local industry of the inhabitants, and it is a suicidal and unstatesmanlike policy that crushes and extinguishes all enterprise. What Englishman would submit to such a prying and humiliating position? And still it is expected ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... nap, and I have left him whirled into a waltz. For what would be sleep if it did not contrast life? Then I came to a solitary chamber, in which a girl, in her tenderest youth, knelt by the bedside in prayer, and I saw that the death-spirit had passed over her, and the blight was on the leaves of the rose. The room was still and hushed, the angel of Purity kept watch there. Her heart was full of love, and yet of holy thoughts, and I bade her dream of the long life denied ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... St. Louis. The center of the old city is one big shapeless blob of a dead area; so nice and cold that St. Louis has reversed the usual city-type blight area growth. Ever since Rhine, the slum sections have been moving out and the new buildings have been moving in. So with the dead area and the brand-new, wide streets and fancy traffic control, St. Louis was the place to go in along one road, get ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... were the elders. Granny, a gray old puss, was the mother and grandmother of all the rest. Tobias was her eldest son, and Mortification his brother, so named because he had lost his tail, which affliction depressed his spirits and cast a blight over his young life. Molasses was a yellow cat, the mamma of four of the kits, the fifth being Granny's latest darling. Toddlekins, the little aunt, was the image of her mother, and very sedate even at that early age; Miss ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... I knew them all by their pretty names, assisted them to become chrysalises, and watched over them in that unprotected state as if I had been their mother. Ah, how dear were my little charges to me then! But now I class them with mosquitoes and blight and harvesters, the pests of the countryside. Why, I would let them crawl up my arm in those happy days of old, and now I cannot even endure to have them dropping gently into my hair. And I should not know what to say ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... with life and is peopled with all manner of beautiful, powerful folk. All children are poets, and fairy tales are the poetic recording of the facts of life. In this day of commercial enterprise, if we would fit children for life we must see to it that we do not blight the poets in them. In this day of emphasis on vocational training we must remember there is a part of life unfed, unnurtured, and unexercised by industrial education. Moreover, whatever will be ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... useless days in the society of flies and lizards, with only, as a very occasional treat, the smallest glimpse of anything resembling a Front. And all this is in a country so desolated by centuries of war that in spite of obvious natural fertility it is a sullen treeless desert—a desert of blight and thistles, as profitless to our men as their periodically deferred anticipations of a grand advance. A book that sets out to record vacuity can hardly be crammed with thrilling literature, and I am not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... it. Emissaries of the Pope and the devil, as the strangers were considered—the smell of sulphur hardly yet shaken out of their canonicals—what islander would venture to jeopardize his soul, and call down a blight on his breadfruit, by holding any intercourse with them! That morning the priests actually picknicked in grove of cocoa-nut trees; but, before night, Christian hospitality—in exchange for a commercial equivalent of hard dollars—was given them in ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... that the withdrawal of the royalists from the neighborhood of the coast was merely a strategic retreat that made the occupation of the capital a more or less empty performance. This blunder and a variety of other mishaps proved destined to blight his military career. Unfortunate in the choice of his subordinates and unable to retain their confidence; accused of irresolution and even of cowardice; abandoned by Cochrane, who sailed off to Chile and left the army stranded; incapable of restraining his soldiers from indulgence ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... in happier times, had been a watering place, less fashionable than some on the French coast, but the pleasant resort of many in search of health and pleasure. And like Folkestone it had suffered the blight of war. The war had laid its heavy hand upon the port. It ruled everything; it was omnipresent. From the moment when we came into full view of the harbor it was impossible ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... tacking about to catch the erratic breeze, the gay little brig made merry and rapid way over the sparkling Mediterranean, at a rate that promised our arrival at Palermo by the sunset of the following day. As the evening came on the wind freshened, and by the time the moon soared like a large blight bird into the sky, we were scudding along sideways, the edge of our vessel leaning over to kiss the waves that gleamed like silver and gold, flecked here and there with phosphorescent flame. We skimmed almost under the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... lost love's sake, Falls a blight upon thy bliss, Smiles no more their sunshine make, Lips estranged withhold their kiss? For thy consolation take Some such song ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... measured accents, and the calm pallor of her features told how complete was the change that had set its stern seal on body and soul; and Dr. Grey's heart ached, as he realized how withering was the blight that had fallen on her once ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... he should have been also a Marxist but some narrow trait of the New England nature seemed to blight socialism, and he tried in vain to make himself a convert. He did the next best thing; he became a Comteist, within the limits of evolution. He was ready to become anything but quiet. As though the world had not been enough upset in his time, he was eager to see it upset more. He had his wish, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... or ill. We have come to the most perilous days of our years when we are tempted not so much to slight our work as to spare our nerves, in which the stored electricity is lower and scanter than it was, and to let a present feeble performance blight the fame of strenuous achievements in the past. We may then make our choice of two things—stop working; stop going, cease to move, to exist—or gather at each successive effort whatever remains of habit, of conscience, of native force, and put it into effect till ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... early-falling dusk, had brought back all her misery to Toni's mind, banishing in a flash all her recent joyful animation; and when, after observing her for a moment, Herrick came forward, he saw that a blight had ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... gypsies came the oldest of them all, who was the King's great-grandmother, and she looked from the angry parents to the unhappy lovers and said, "You can blight the tree and make the lantern dark; nevertheless you cannot extinguish the flower and the light of love. And till these things lift the curse and are seen again united among you, there will be no Lords in Gay Street ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... whose blood was kindred to that in my veins would kill me. You may think this pride a weakness, but it is too deeply rooted in my nature ever to be eradicated. When I look about the world and see girls disgracing themselves by improper marriages, elopements, often social crimes, which must blight their lives and those of all connected with them, I think what I should do ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... bruised, if worn in the hat, or rubbed on the face, will prevent flies from settling on the person. Likewise turnips, cabbages, fruit trees, or corn, if whipped with the branches and green leaves of Elder, will gain an immunity from all depredations of blight; but moths are fond of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... I the same person who had lived there, the companion of the dead—for all were gone? Even my young child, whom I had looked upon as the joy of future years, had died in infancy. Not one hope, then in fair bud, had opened into maturity; storm and blight and death had passed over, and destroyed all. While yet very young, I had reached the position of an aged person, driven back on memory for companionship with the beloved, and now I looked on the inanimate objects that had ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... them can measure the coming forces of Freedom. Rosalie Leese, the pioneer white child of California, born in 1838, at Yerba Buena, was the first of countless thousands of free-born American children. In the unpolluted West the breath of slavery shall never blight a single human existence. Old Captain Richardson and Jacob Leese, pioneers of the magic city of San Francisco, gaze upon the beautiful ranks of smiling school-children, in happy troops. They have no regrets, like the knights of slavery, to see their ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... were mixed with tubs of water; the suction-pipe of the engine was inserted in these, the hose and branch attached, and the slaughter of the insects began down between the rows of hop-poles, where the blackened, blight-covered hops clustered, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... and thorough therefore,—promise that you will leave her in safe security and freedom to-day, untouched, unscathed, unharmed, and that so ever shall she remain. And false to this oath, may no priest shrive you, no land own you, God blight you and curse you and wither you from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the days of our doom and our dread Ye were cruel and callous. Grim Death with our fighters ye fed Through the jaws of your gallows. But a blasting and blight was the fee For which ye had bartered them. And we smite with the sword that from ye We had ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... triumph from a naval victory. Laurel wreaths hung on spars and bulwarks, flags flew, trumpets sounded, and she received the enthusiastic greetings of Greeks and Egyptians as she landed. But the truth could not be long concealed, and under the blight of defeat, linked with stories of leaders deserting comrades and allies, Antony and Cleopatra failed to rally any determined support to their side when the conqueror of Actium came to threaten Egypt itself. Both ended their lives with their own hands, Cleopatra only resorting to this act of desperation ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Sir Richard looked a trifle wistfully at the younger man, envying him his superior youth and more robust physique. "For my part I confess to a distrust of the desert. It seems to me as though there were a blight on these huge tracts of sand, as though the Creator had regretted their creation, yet was too perfect a Worker to try, by altering the original purpose of His handiwork, to turn them into something for which they were ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... claims our tender, grateful, gay delight; Winter our sympathy and sacred fear; And sure the Hearts that pay not Pity's rite O'er wide calamity; that careless hear Creation's wail, neglect, amid her blight, THE SOLEMN ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... vine-clad porch, while the boarders (mostly students, I judged) came and went; but though I saw many young girls, the Empress was not among them. And all this time the years were rolling on, and I was permitting my once bright political career to blight and wither by my own neglect, as a ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... to fight their way along the Meuse, driving back the French and Belgians before they trusted their columns to enter the narrow defiles, there was in the physical aspect of things no great amount of damage visible. Stagnation, though, lay like a blight on what had been one of the busiest and most productive industrial districts in all of Europe. Except that trains ran by endlessly, bearing wounded men north, and fresh troops and fresh supplies south, the river ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... found in London; is it not with the exorbitant growth of London that many an ill has spread over the land? London is the antithesis of the domestic ideal; a social reformer would not even glance in that direction, but would turn all his zeal upon small towns and country districts, where blight may perhaps be arrested, and whence, some day, a reconstituted national life may act upon the great centre of corruption. I had far rather see England covered with schools of cookery than with schools of the ordinary kind; the issue would be infinitely more hopeful. Little girls should be ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... shook the blight; And well she knew that I knew well Her grace with silence to requite; And, answering now the luncheon bell, I laugh'd at Mildred's laugh, which made All melancholy wrong, its mood Such sweet self-confidence display'd, So glad a sense ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... invoke Robigus and Flora by whose influence the blight is kept from crop and tree, and in due season they bear fruit (for which reason is the annual festival of the robigalia celebrated in honour of Robigus, and that of the floralia ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a presumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This mistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... no sin Leading them astray, No false heart within That would them bewray, Nought to tempt them in An evil way; And if canker come and blight, Nought ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... another side to the country's history. The rainy weather in the summer brought to sudden hideous maturity the lurking potato disease. Any one who recalls the time and the aspect of the fields must retain a vivid recollection of the sudden blight that fell upon acres on acres of what had formerly been luxuriant vegetation, under the sunshine which came late only to complete the work of destruction; the withering and blackening of the leaves of the plant, the sickening foetid odour of the decaying bulbs, which tainted the heavy air ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... or bullock, decomposing in the sun, seemed to have nothing of offence for Republican noses. The yellow smear of lyddite was everywhere, and, looking over the rock-rampart upon the works below, you saw it like a blight, or yolk of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... scourged back to the chains which they had so recently broken, the affairs of the Prince of Orange were not improving in Zealand. Never was a twelvemonth so marked by contradictory fortune, never were the promises of a spring followed by such blight and disappointment in autumn than in the memorable year 1572. On the island of Walcheren, Middelburg and Arnemuyde still held for the King—Campveer and Flushing for the Prince of Orange. On the island of South Bevelaad, the city of Goes or Tergoes was still ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... girlish innocence, and, with the boxes of brilliant flowers at every window-sill, promises a gayety which the season realizes in rather unusual measure. It is said that the flowers at the windows must be renewed every month, against the blight of the London smoke and damp, and, if the paint cannot be renewed so often, it is of perhaps a little more durable beauty. For a month of preparation, while the house-fronts in the fashionable streets are escaladed by painters emulous of the perils of the samphire-gatherer's dreadful trade, the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... until I know," she had told herself over and over in great distress, "for I love him too well ever to bring any blight upon ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... with some reason in view of Laura's romantic nature—that only a career of gloomy grandeur and high renown would impress the maiden whom yesterday he proposed to make happy forever, but to-day to blight with regret like a "worm i' the bud." He already had a vague presentiment that such a role would often mortify his tastes and inclinations most dismally; and yet, what had he henceforth to do with pleasure? ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... child age, and will be able to use much of the old literature, simply substituting for "factory" the word "school" when condemning "hazardous occupations likely to sap [children's] nervous energy, stunt their physical growth, blight their minds, destroy their moral fiber, and fit them for the ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... continent have never since been able entirely to dislodge. From that ill-omened day in 709, when Tarif set foot on the Spanish coast, to this June of 1898, the Mahommedan has been in Europe; and remains to-day, a scourge and a blight in the territory upon which his cruel ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... there was more smoke about than tranquillity. Sarle seemed distrait. Belle Helene sometimes cast an uneasy glance at April, who, still very pale, sat by herself on the lounge. Only Clive and Kenna talked racily, but in jerks, of cattle, fruit-blight, mules, and white ants. But presently all subjects of conversation seemed to peter out, leaving a dark pool of silence to form between them in the room. Kenna it was who threw the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sometimes a year in advance. Developing of cleaning machinery and sorting machinery is going on apace. Mr. Endicott is interested in a sorting machine such as we use for apples. It is true we are going to get the blight out here sooner or later. Meantime we are going to try to anticipate it by securing hybrids which are resistant and of good quality at ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... does Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin inveigh against the followers of Mendelssohn, because of the latitudinarian habits of the Maskilim, who "despise the counsel of their betters, and go after the dictates of their hearts."[35] Both saw in Haskalah a deadly foe to their dearest ideals, a blight upon their most cherished hopes, and, like Elizabeta Petrovna, they would not derive even a benefit from the ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... be hard on anything 'cept blight, Master Nic," said the old man one day; "but it comes nat'ral to a man to feel shy of a gaol bird who may rise agen you at any time and take ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... him think that I accepted this statement as gospel, but in my heart I thought I had never seen a sadder face than that of Gladys Hamilton; to me it looked absolutely joyless, as though some strange blight had fallen on her youth. I kept these thoughts to myself, like a wise woman, and when Max looked at me rather searchingly, as though he expected a verbal assent, I said, 'Yes, you are right, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... prosperity. We are free from the thousand time-honoured evils and abuses that afflict and retard the nations of the Old World. Not even our neighbours of the United States occupy an equal position of advantage, for we have not the canker-worm of domestic slavery to blight our tree of liberty. And greater than these, we are but commencing our career as a people, our institutions have yet to be established. We are free to look abroad over the earth and study the lessons of wisdom ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... up the subject; I've felt the influence of this nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyse it before. I can see now that your 'Man About Town' should have been classified long ago. In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models; and the orchestra plays 'Let's ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... holds its position by love. No publisher may say to it: "Buy my books, not those of my rival"; no scientist may forbid it to give his opponent a hearing; no religious body may dictate to it; no commercial influence may throw a blight ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... at Cocker's, with the dreadful drop of August, had lost something of its savour, she had not been slow to infer that a heavier blight had fallen on the graceful industry of ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... launched out into sundry extravagances rather unusual for a man in his station of life, amongst which was the erection of this large and handsome house. But from the time the house was finished a blight seemed to fall upon his life. He gave up all his religious and regular habits, frequented evil company, took to drinking, and finally, in a fit of delirium tremens, hanged himself in the very garret room of which I have before spoken. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... friend of ours, a young Southern poet of distinct promise, who had just died. Like many Southern verse-writers of his generation, he had lived and written under the inspiration of Poe. Asbury surprised me by the almost bitter remark that Poe's influence had been a blight upon the younger Southern poets, inasmuch as it had tended to over-subjectivity, to morbid sensibility, and to a pre-occupation with purely personal emotions. He argued, as he has since done so courageously in his Texas Nativist, [Footnote: Published by the author at College Station, Texas.] ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the first time been awakened to woman's privileges in tergiversation even when it involves another person's possible blight. That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less inconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope; for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a straight course ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... sufficient evidence to warrant a definite conclusion is wanting; to the savage, the notion of any necessity for, or advantage to be derived from, such self-restraint never once occurs. Neither the lightning that strikes his hut, the blight that withers his crops, the disease that destroys the life of those he loves; nor, on the other hand, the beneficent sunshine or life-giving rain, is by him traceable to any known physical cause. They are the results of influences ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... again?" cried she, in accents soft as milk, yet bitter as gall. "Why do you cross my threshold, you false witch, when there is nothing more to blight and blast? Did you think I should not know you, that you dared to come? I should know you among all ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... other in order of size, and showing a forest of masts, occupied the wharfs. These and a thousand other objects, seen as they were under a brilliant sun, presented a picture of surpassing splendour; but the curse and blight of slavery ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies |
