"Drowse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them too was the drowse of blood-intimacy, calves sucking and hens running together in droves, and young geese palpitating in the hand while the food was pushed down their throttle. But the women looked out from the heated, blind intercourse of farm-life, to the spoken world beyond. They were aware of the lips ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... things done by chemists in public are seldom of much value beyond giving a thrill to visitors who would otherwise drowse; it is like humor in an oration: it opens ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces— We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. Is it that we ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... discipline by Col. Barlow. The evening before, on dress parade, I was named to take charge of a police detail from the Sixty-first, which was to report at brigade headquarters the next morning at five o'clock. I had slept but little during the night. Toward morning I fell into a drowse, and was awakened out of it by the reveille. I hurried out of my tent and was getting my detail together, hoping that the colonel would not notice my tardiness. I got to the place of rendezvous the first of any one in the brigade, and had to wait for an hour before a start was ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... remorseful tenderness, Uncle Alec worked over his new patient till she declared she was all right again. He would not let her get up to dinner, but fed her himself, and then forgot his own while he sat watching her fall into a drowse, for Aunt Plenty's cordial made ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... on the Lost Lagoon, And we two dreaming the dusk away, Beneath the drift of a twilight grey— Beneath the drowse of an ending day. And the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... the beach your crooked fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... casting weights. Some sped leaping, some running; others tried their strength by sturdily hurling stones; others tested their archery by drawing the bow. Thus they essayed to strengthen themselves with divers exercises. Some again tried to drink themselves into a drowse. Roller was sent by his father to find out what had passed at home in the meanwhile. And when he saw smoke coming from his mother's hut he went up outside, and, stealthily applying his eye, saw through ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Josiah and me got to bed agin. And then jest as I was gettin' into a drowse, I heered the cat in the buttery, and I got up to let her out. And that roused Josiah up, and he thought he heered the cattle in the garden, and he got up and went out. And there we was a-marchin' ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... shadow he'd drowse in the meadow, Lazily swinging his tail, At break of day he used to bray,— Not much too hearty and hale; But a wonderful gumption was under his skin, And a clean calm light in his eye, And once in a while; ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... Long Street. The drays have gone home. The Earls of Leicester drowse in their own kitchens, or spread whole slices of bread on their broad, aristocratic palms. Somewhere in the dimmest recesses of those cluttered buildings ten thousand rat-traps await expectant the oncoming of the rats. And in your own basement—the shadows having prospered in ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... little drowse fell upon the two charter members. They had lunched more richly than was their wont. "Oh, these distressing, heavy lunches!" as Aldous Huxley cries in one of his poems. But Lawton was still of bright vivacity. At that time the club was perturbed by the coming Harding-Cox ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat. Our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet. Now in the ungirt hour—now ere we blink and drowse, Mithras, also a soldier, keep ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... frowned as they passed a closed carriage and pair. The body of this comfortable vehicle sagged slightly to one side; the paint was old and seamed with hundreds of minute cracks like little rivers on a black map; the coachman, a fat and elderly darky, seemed to drowse upon the box; but the open window afforded the occupants of the cutter a glimpse of a tired, fine old face, a silk hat, a pearl tie, and an astrachan collar, evidently out to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... city by the sea, is the place for dreams and reveries and the utter rendering of one's self up—to a good cigar. Is it not a place for reverie? Has not one with this most respectable weed, this prime havana, the concomitants of a thousand reveries? Will not one puff of that narcotic breath drowse deep all watching dragons, and make for him the sleeping beauties of his will? And, presto, there they are! and, oh! ye houris of the South, with what a smile and glance between the azure puffs! ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... after examining, said, quizzically, "Mr. ——, I see you have walked just half a mile in the last four hours." Of course, walking is not imperative, one may watch standing; but movement tends to wakefulness—you can drowse upon your feet—while to sit down, besides being forbidden by unwritten law, is a treacherous snare ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Arcadian: both stuff for dreams. The one excogitated in spring-time, when Nature was taking her break-of-day drowse, previous to getting up and going about business; the other suggestive of Nature indulging in a half-light reverie in a sort of crimson and scarlet dressing-gown, previous to putting on her night-cap and going to bed, after a hard summer's ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... April when we left Vilna. We had not slept any the night before. Fannie and I spent the long hours in playing various quiet games and watching the clock. At last the long expected hour arrived; our train would be due in a short time. All but Fannie and myself had by this time fallen into a drowse, half sitting, half lying on some of the many baskets and boxes that stood all about the room all ready to be taken to the station. So we set to work to rouse the rest, and with the aid of an alarm clock's loud ringing, we ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... from now they would say a mass for her, a year from now another, but to-morrow, to-day, yesterday even, she was finished with all of life: with the fussy, excited robins of dawn; with the old dog that wanted to drowse by the fire; with the young husband who was either too much or too little of a man for her; with the clicking beads she would tell in her sharpish voice; ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... plied her so briskly that he promised to know the sea-bottom between Kelsey Head and Godrevy Rock better than his own fields. As for me, after years of salt water and stumping decks, I asked nothing better than to steer a plough and smell broken soil, and drowse after supper in an armchair, with good tobacco ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and swims with glimmering limbs, With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip: Where beechen boughs build a leafy house, Where her eyes may drowse or her beauty trip: And the liquid beat of her rippling feet Makes three times sweet the forest mazes, As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs, With dripping limbs through the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... sleep half-an-hour all told. At this rate, in a very short time I shall have consumed all the cream of tartar on the ship. I never have had hives like these before. I can't understand it. So long as I keep my lamp burning and read I am untroubled. The instant I put out the lamp and drowse off the irritation starts and the lumps on ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... it's lovely in summer to drowse on the deck that's all warm with the sun, and see the trees and the fields and the little houses slipping by on either side.... If there weren't so many old people.... All the boys go away to the cities.... I hate old people; they're ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... as he sat there, chatting in desultory way, the fretting wind died to a breath, the line of men in the chairs grew indistinct in the gloom of early night, and Ascalon rose up like a sleeping wolf, shaking off the drowse of the day, and sat on its ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Wilkinson. Then, left alone, he gradually yielded to the sedative effect of dinner and drink and fell into a drowse. The dusk of evening had stolen over the river and darkened the woods around the fort. The sound of footsteps at ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... squealing of the holy woman in the room above, the scent of hyacinths, the drowse of the fire, on which a cedar log had just been laid, the feeling of the port soaking down into the crannies of his being, made up a momentary Paradise. Then the music stopped; and no sound rose but the tiny groans of the log trying to resist the fire. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... no sense of the pathetic or he could never have done what he did—sell to the old gentleman, on the strength of the knowledge he had imparted to him, a house and lot upon terms so easy that he might drowse along for a little time and then wake to find himself both homeless and penniless. This was the promoter's method, and for so long a time had it proved successful that he had now grown mildly affluent and had set up a buggy in which to drive about ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I know So well, yet only well enough To wish for further news thereof. Here, in this early autumn dawn, By windows opening on the lawn. Where sunshine seems asleep, though bright, And shadows yet are sharp with night, And, further on, the wealthy wheat Bends in a golden drowse, how sweet To sit and cast my careless looks Around my walls of well-read books, Wherein is all that stands redeem'd From time's huge wreck, all men have dream'd Of truth, and all by poets known Of feeling, and in weak sort shown, And, turning to my heart again, To find ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... prophetic recoil from responsibility that clogged his resolve. His eyes roved uncertainly about the familiar domestic scene, darkening now, duskily purple beneath the luminous pearly and roseate tints of the twilight sky. The old woman was a-drowse on the porch of the rickety little log-cabin beneath the gourd vines, the paralytic grandfather came hirpling unsteadily through the doorway on his supporting crutch, his pipe shaking in his shaking hand, while he muttered and ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and a beating heart, rose suddenly and escaped to the back stairway. She left old Polly sitting in the kitchen so long that she fell into a comfortable drowse, from which she was recalled by Maria's reappearance with a bundle of discarded garments, but there was something stern and inhospitable in these last moments of the visit, and Polly soon shuffled ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... cedars; the twilight is creeping With shadowy garments, the wilderness through; All day we have carolled, and now would be sleeping, So echo the anthems we warbled to you; While we swing, swing, And your branches sing, And we drowse to your dreamy whispering. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... rain would be a capital excuse for lying in bed; for she still liked to cuddle and drowse in her cosey, warm nest. But she was curious to know where the curious place was; so she ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... of a winter sleeping time; the wild animals all come more or less under its spell, and the dogs, the nearest creatures of all to man, as soon as snow covers the ground and they have their experience of ice-cut feet, drowse as near the fire as possible and in case of a stove almost under it. I wonder if nature did not intend that we also should have at least a half-drowsy brooding time, instead of making the cold season so often a period of stress and strain and short days stretched into long nights. ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... too old to believe in Santa Claus, but even so, on this magic night might not a skeptic be at fault—might there not be a chance that the discarded world had returned to us? Once a year, surely, reason might nod and drowse. Perhaps if we put our noses on the cold glass and peered hard into the glittering darkness, we might see the old fellow himself, muffled to his chin in furs, going on his yearly errands. It was a jingling of sleigh bells on the street that started this agreeable ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... there was any variation of the monotonous quiet; and indeed the tall clock had just announced the usual bedtime of the family when Clarion's bark made the squire sit up from his drowse before the fire, and set all listening. Presently came the now familiar sound of hoof-beat and sabre-clank; springing to his feet and seizing a candle, Mr. Meredith was at the front door as a troop ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... him, but I've never been good at boiling things down into descriptions, and when he found I was not disposed to talk, he fell silent and I was free to drowse over what I knew of the ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... always stuck together, haven't we?" She lay back with her head against Beatrice's shoulder. "You always were so clever, Beaty. I'm sure it will be all right. You'll see your poor mother through." The eyelids sank; she dropped into a drowse of complete mental and physical breakdown, and for a moment no one spoke. Mrs. Carmichael had shifted from her defiant attitude, and her hard, set face expressed a grim satisfaction ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... suddenly to his feet, and bade Edgar retire. He obeyed, and closed his eyes, but not to sleep. Opening them after a while, he beheld his uncle sitting before the table engaged in writing. Again the lids closed, and he fell into a light drowse, during which Florence Howard flitted before him in countless variety of forms. When again he looked around he was alone. The long summer twilight had deepened into evening, and Edgar rose and lighted a lamp. On the table he discovered a small, folded billet, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... wife comes there to speak to me . . . Sometimes the grey cat waves his tail around me . . . Goldfish swim in a bowl, glisten in sunlight, Dilate to a gorgeous size, blow delicate bubbles, Drowse among dark green weeds. On rainy days, You'll see a gas-light shedding light behind me— An eye-shade round my forehead. There I sit, Twirling the tiny brushes in my paint-cups, Painting the pale ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... to her—outcast of the older lands— With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying hands; And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main: "Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again! Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow, Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow. Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; 45 The single crow a single caw lets fall; And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be, Who snows his soft, white ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the mid-heavens, hot and bright— Nor slept, nor wink'd, but with a steadfast spite Watch'd their wan looks and tremblings in the skies; And that he might not slumber in the night, The curtain-lids were pluck'd from his large eyes, So he might never drowse, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... chaise, a Dobbin gray Had brought him here to spend the day. Now his old aunt and uncle drowse; No chick nor child is in the house— No cat, no dog, no bird, or mouse; No fairy picture-book to spell, No music-box of wonder, Nor ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... she said at last, "and on an arbor-moss the sun shall drowse you, the flower-scents be your opiates, the birds your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... a quaint device, And sees, across the city's din, Afar its silent Alpine kin; I track thee over carpets deep To Wealth's and Beauty's inmost keep; Across the sand of bar-room floors, 'Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; Where drowse the hayfield's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; I dog thee through the market's throngs, To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green fringes of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from the burning wood made his eyes grow heavy; he began to drowse. He dreamt that he had taken Peggy's advice and had gone with her into the forest, having joined himself to the people of her tribe. It must have happened years ago, for their child was a sturdy boy who ran beside them. She was leading the way through a dark wood, holding him by the hand. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... to the highroad and awoke from their sun-soaked drowse at the sound of the clopping hoofs. They paused to look for partridges in a rim of woods, little woods, very clean and shiny and gay, silver birches and poplars with immaculate green trunks, encircling a lake of sandy bottom, a splashing seclusion demure ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... of the night, Filling the chilly room with perfume light.— "And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake! Thou art mine heaven, and I thine eremite: Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, Or I shall drowse beside thee, so ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... travelling is contrast. Suffer, that you may drowse thereafter: grill, that you may have a heat on you worth assuagement. Wherefore, to the Italian wanderer, it will be worth while to endure the fierceness of the Lombard plain, even the gilded modernisms of Milan (blistering though they may be under the stroke of the naked sun) and the dusty, painful ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the cushion for the Judge, and do her pretty utmost to make him comfortable. For the Judge is a prosperous man. He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other people, and reasonably brighter than most others; or did so, at least, as he lay abed this morning, in an agreeable half-drowse, planning the business of the day, and speculating on the probabilities of the next fifteen years. With his firm health, and the little inroad that age has made upon him, fifteen years or twenty—yes, or perhaps five-and-twenty!—are no more than he may fairly ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or 1912, Ireland dominates British politics, and the English members descend on her with a heavy flop of hatred or sympathy as it may happen. But at all other times the Union Parliament abdicates, or at least it "governs" Ireland as men are said sometimes to drive motor-cars, in a drowse. Three days—or is it two?—are given to Irish Estimates, and on each of these occasions the Chamber is as desolate as a grazing ranch in Meath. Honourable members snatch at the opportunity of cultivating their souls in ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... drop red leaves like coals into the grass. The golden arrows of the sunset fall; And on the vine-hung wall Great purple clusters in delicious drowse, Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst, Yet by the sun unkissed, Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass, Brimful of red, red wine Sweet as brown peasants ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... irrational conclusions as it would have been for her to find her mother babbling in drunkenness; and this feeling that for Yaverland to know of her misery would be a culminating humiliation that she could not face seemed disgustingly mad. So she threw herself into a black drowse of misery unfeatured by specific ideas, until she began to think smilingly of the way his eyebrows grew; they were very thick and dark and perfectly level save for a piratical twist in the middle. But she became conscious that he was standing over her, and her heart almost stopped. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... rest and dream; there comes a vision of soft turf under the golden-fruited boughs—"places of nestling green for poets made." Alas! the soil is bare and lumpy as a ploughed field, and all the leafage that hangs low is thick with a clayey dust. One cannot rest or loiter or drowse; no spot in all the groves where by any possibility one could sit down. After rambling as long as I chose, I found that a view of the orchard from outside was more striking than the picture amid the trees themselves. Senza nulla toccare, I went ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... good by-and-by, but now I'm tired and cross, so let me keep out of every one's way and drowse myself into a cheerier frame of mind. I want nothing but solitude, a draught of water, and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... city of a dream! From glory unto glory gleam; And I will gaze and pity those Who on their pillows drowse and doze . . . And as I've nothing else to do, Of tea I'll make a rousing brew, And coax my pipes until they croon, And chant a ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... slipped along. After a while they began to drowse, until one by one the little groups became quiet and fell asleep. Only the glowing, flickering pine knots stayed awake to watch the ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... to wake her. But she sleep on, and I may not wake her though I try. I do not wish to try too hard lest I harm her. For I know that she have suffer much, and sleep at times be all-in-all to her. I think I drowse myself, for all of sudden I feel guilt, as though I have done something. I find myself bolt up, with the reins in my hand, and the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever. I look down and find Madam Mina still asleep. It is now not far off sunset time, and over the snow ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... wit, and wealth, and wine, the hours of night In sombre Babylon may dispense delight. These revellers, slumber-scorning, Radiant and well-arrayed, will stop, and stop, Till waiters drowse. But then, yon slaves of Shop Must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... with a bowl of goldfish. Something a little more responsive is demanded where the peace and quiet of nature press so close. A cat to drowse on the hearth or catch an occasional mouse; a dog to accompany one on walks and greet the head of the house ecstatically each evening; these, of course, are the most obvious and popular pets. Both can be and are kept in city apartments and ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... who weep, Those whose lips are set with care, Those whose brows are smooth and fair; Mourners whom the dawning light Shall grapple with an old distress; Lovers folded at midnight In their bridal happiness; Pale watchers by beloved beds, Fallen a-drowse with nodding heads, Whom sleep captured by surprise, With the circles round their eyes; Maidens with quiet-taken breath, Dreaming of enchanted bowers; Old men with the mask of death; Little children soft as flowers; Those who wake wild-eyed and ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... as black and mum as mutes, A-waiting for the blackbirds, with their calls like meller flutes. Just to whistle them awake like. Oh! but now they stir and rouse Like a girl who has bin dreamin' of her lover in a drowse, And wakes up to feel 'is kisses on 'er softly poutin' lips. How they burst, all a-thirst for the April shower that drips Tinkle-tink from leaf to leaf, washing every spraylet clean From the sooty veil of London, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... man was limp When laid in his chest; Yea, limp; and why But to signify That the grave will crimp Ere next year's sun Yet another one Of those in that house - It may be the best - For its endless drowse!" ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... own, they always are. They endure enormously, in saecula saeculorum. Storms drive over them, mists and rains blot them out; rarely they are shrouded in a fleece of snow. In spring the clouds and the light hold races up their flanks; in summer they seem to drowse like weary monsters in the still and fervent heat. They are never profoundly affected by such changes of Nature's face; grow not awful, sharing her wrath, nor dangerously fair when she woos them with kisses to love. They are the quiet and sober spokesmen ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... from his drowse in the cave's mouth. He had ridden down from Castle Raincy to see if he could help. The moment had come and ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... was carried out, and in a paradise, made up of blue sea, white sands, warm sun and Rodney—Rodney always there, and queerly content to drowse away the time with her, she almost forgot the great dam and the pressure of the waters that had mounted up behind it. Was it an obsession just as Rodney said? Would she find when it was all over and she rallied herself for the great endeavor, that there ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster |
