"Lithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power that deliciously confused the senses and laid a spell of wild perplexity upon the heart. It was a personality that cloaked, and yet revealed, itself through all this sheeted whiteness of snow. It rose, went with him, fled before, and followed after. Slowly it dropped lithe, gleaming arms about his ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... said. He knew the spot at the edge of the moor, where young Alex. Hadden had rescued Willie from the jaws of death, and he recognised the clump of dark old firs, where the hoodie-crows used to take counsel together, and the lithe nook where the two bairns were wont to shelter from the east wind or the rain. And he reminded Allison of things which she had herself forgotten. At some of them she wept, and at others she laughed, joyful to think that her brother should remember them so well. And she ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... stood alone on one of the mountain terraces, his tall, lithe form silhouetted against the evening sky, his arms folded, his face lifted upward. It was a face of marvellous strength and sweetness combined. Sorrow had set its unmistakable seal upon his features; ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... handkerchief down to her shoulders, and there, at the tips, became tangled and curling. Her figure was magnificent, and she swayed and swung from the hips with an easy grace, which reminded the onlookers of a panther's lithe movements. And there was a good deal of the dangerous beast-of-prey beauty about Chaldea, which was enhanced by her picturesque dress. This was ragged and patched with all kinds of colored cloths subdued to mellow tints by wear and weather. Also she jingled ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... As I wished to become acquainted with Captain Mason, and to see his station, I readily accepted his invitation. I found a family very similar to that of Mr Strong, and quite as numerous; the girls and boys tall and lithe, but as active as crickets. The girls told me to tell my cousins that they would ride over some day to see them, as soon as those abominable bushrangers ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... crescent, these men of scarred limbs and fierce visage fasten their eyes curiously upon a white man who, standing against the bole of the elm, comes to them as white man never came before. He is a young man of about eight and thirty, wearing about his lithe and well-knit figure a sash of skyblue silk. He is tall, handsome and of commanding presence. His movements are easy, agile and athletic; his manner is courtly, graceful and pleasing; his voice, whilst ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... put the brush under her arm, still further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—which quickly became a genuine inability to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... grim silence that ensued the two men unhitched the team from the long, light wagon, while the buffalo hunter staked out his wiry, lithe-limbed racehorses. Soon a fluttering blaze threw a circle of light, which shone on the agitated face of Rude and Adams, and the cold, iron-set visage of their ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... perpetual fire burned on her smooth, oval cheeks, deepening and fading according to her moods. She wore the usual every-day attire of the women of the region,—mistresses as well as "hired girls,"—a dark-print gown, but, like Ophelia's rue, "it was worn with a difference," fitting her lithe, graceful figure to perfection, and set off by a dainty band of white and knot of ribbon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... in the servants' hall. The newly engaged maids accepted him for his youth and sharp manners, as an innovation which they rather fancied than otherwise. Borkins alone stood aloof. It seemed to the man that here, in Dollops' lithe, young form, in the very ginger of his carrotty hair, in the stridency of this cockney accent—which Cleek had endeavoured to eradicate without a particle of success—was the reembodiment of the older, shorter, more mature James Collins. To hear him speak in that sharp, young voice of his ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... that night with Elizabeth. She was a tall blonde girl, lithe and graceful, and with a ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... rest for an instant on Flint Kreeger, who sat just beyond McCabe. What he saw there Buck did not know, but it must have been something of warning or information. When his eyes returned to Stratton their expression was veiled under drooping lids; his lithe figure relaxed into an easier position against the door-casing, both hands ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... of the men indeed retained their strength and energy, and though the percentage actually on the sick list never got over twenty, there were less than fifty per cent who were fit for any kind of work. All the clothes were in rags; even the officers had neither socks nor underwear. The lithe college athletes had lost their spring; the tall, gaunt hunters and cow-punchers lounged listlessly in their dog-tents, which were steaming morasses during the torrential rains, and then ovens when the sun blazed down; but ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... with the red L on their black sweaters were apart, tossing the ball back and forth and taking playful tackles at one another. Stover, hiding himself modestly in the common herd, watched with entranced eyes the lithe, sinuous forms of Flash Condit and Charlie DeSoto—greater to him than the faint heroes of mythology—as they tumbled the Waladoo Bird gleefully on the ground. There was Butcher Stevens of the grim eye and the laconic word, a man to follow and emulate; and the broad span ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... and she dwelt with us until we bore her to the little churchyard on the hill-side, where there is a clump of trees to break the cold sough of the winds into a lullaby. By that time another Marget, beautiful of face like the Forbeses, lithe of limb like the Gordons—we never could agree whom she most resembled!—had been given to us. She was our guerdon of the reverent gospel of home, which is the high altar of this world, the source and sanctuary of our well-being ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... With face like morning, shone One there, and wide her yellow hair out-blown As 'twere in play. Red-flushed her cheeks, and deep About her lips the baby smiles. Asleep Was one, white-gleaming, pure as pearl unseen In sunless caves, close-shut. And one did lean Against his fellow, lithe, sun-flushed and brown, With rings of jetty hair that low adown His bosom streamed. And one there was, whose dream O'erflowed with laughter. And one did seem Half-waking. One, with dimpled arms in sleep Thrust elbow-deep ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... harmony with every other. He was struck, too, with the gracefulness of Isa's figure. Her face was not handsome, but the good genius that gave her the feeling of an artist must have molded her own form, and every lithe motion was full of poetry. You have seen some people who made upon you the impression that they were beautiful, and yet the beauty was all in a statuesque figure and a graceful carriage. For it makes every difference how a face ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... came the boom and thud of drums and dancing sticks, until the urge of them caused even Ellen's feet to beat time to the primitive music. She glanced at her sister. Jean's eyes were sparkling. Her lithe body was swaying and her hands moving in rhythm with the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... countries of Asia are a little different from those in the hot southern countries. For the tigers in the cold countries have thick fur on their skin, and a layer of fat under their skin—just to keep them warm. So they are too fat to be as muscular and active as the slim and lithe tigers that live in the hot countries in ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... were nearer than they are or seem to be now, to the irrational world? Throughout the sprightly movement of the lads' daily life it was as if their "tribal" pets or monsters were with or within them. Tall Exmes, lithe and cruel like a tiger—it was pleasant to stroke him. The tiger was there, the parrot, the hare, the goat of course, and certainly much apishness. [35] And, one and all, they were like the creatures, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... origin the women are often very beautiful, especially when the blood of the latter prevails. They are, we are told, the best-looking of all the Peruvian women, possessing brilliantly fair complexions, magnificent long black tresses, lithe and graceful figures of exquisite proportions, regular and classic features, and the most ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him, and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where she had fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her, almost in the water of the little ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... do you speak the tongue of the master whom you serve. No more do you know of us the "Masters" than you know of them the "dogs." We are above you, they below. And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect and splendid, lithe and male. Your scarlet turban frames your neat black ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... coffee brown, with the lean lithe grace of youth garbed in the picturesque regalia of the vaquero, Flandrau was a taking enough picture to hold the roving eye of any girl. A good many centered upon him now, as he sauntered forward toward the Cullison box cool and easy and debonair. More than one pulse quickened ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... instant they were at the door, tumbling out into the darkness, pouring up the passage in hot pursuit. And it was at that moment the balance changed again. Those who were in the front rank of the pursuers were in time to see a lithe, thin figure, dressed as one of their own kind, spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it, clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it, and bear it, struggling and kicking, to ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... A lithe old man came into the parlor. His waxed moustache and his white imperial made him look like an old soldier; but his glance betrayed, under his glasses, the fine softness of eyes worn by science and voluptuousness. He was a Florentine, a friend of Miss Bell and of the Prince, Professor ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... roof and turret and bell-tower and chimneys of strange fashion with quaint conical tops. The canal lies dusk in the eventide, but the dark surface throws into relief a crowd of gondolas, and the lithe, glowing figures of their gondoliers. The boats themselves are long and narrow as now, but without the indented prora which has become universal; the sumptuary law of the Republic has not yet robbed them ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... on the couch, and began a wild, fantastic dance on the hearth rug before him, the firelight flashing through the thin, gray draperies. Even the Professor breathed a little faster as the lithe figure swayed and bent and curved into wonderful lines, which melted ever into new ones. It was young, elemental joy, every step of it; sexless, no Bacchante dance, but rather a paeon of ecstasy, such ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... colony, the women regarded his fine person, his smile, at once sorrowful and tender, and his free, noble bearing with admiration, not unmingled with terror; while men, even in that age of manly physique looked upon his frame, lithe yet firm as iron, athletic and yet graceful, with eyes of envious delight. Truth to say, John Bonyton had never impaired a fine development by any useful employment, or any elaborate attempts at book-knowledge. He knew all that was essential for the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... said—about forty years of age, with a daughter of sixteen, an only child. Of course the first time I saw her at church I fell desperately in love: boys always do that with a new face. She was a sprightly girl, with soft blue eyes, dark hair, fair complexion, white teeth, a lithe figure and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... have been worn out for want of sleep. The girl, however, her eyes ever bright with happiness, seemed utterly untiring, and Grom watched her with daily growing delight. He had never heard or dreamed of a man regarding a woman as he regarded the lithe, fierce creature who ran beside him. But he had never been afraid of new things or new ideas, and he was not ashamed of this sweet ache of tenderness at ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... three things about the lithe, invisible body that the Arvanians could see: the crumpled papers, a slowly drying patch of blood that moved shoulder high in the air, and a blood-rimmed, ice-gray eye that glared defiance at ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... Japanese Anemone, render it of great beauty, while the light gray leaves are of themselves sufficient to make the shrub one of particular attraction. The Carpenteria is nearly related to the Mock Orange (Philadelphus), grows about 10 feet in height, with lithe and slender branches, and light gray leaves. The flowers, which are pure white with a bunch of yellow stamens, and sweet-scented, are produced usually in fives at the branch-tips, and contrast markedly with the long and light green foliage. ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... steadily into the dust and the reins had chafed his neck to a lather. Marianne flashed into indignation and that, of course, made her scrutinize the rider more narrowly. He was perfect of that type of cowboy which she detested most: handsome, lithe, childishly vain in his dress. About his sombrero ran a heavy width of gold-braid; his shirt was blue silk; his bandana was red; his boots were shop-made beauties, soft and flexible; and on his heels ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... odour of jasmines afloat on the breeze, That woke in the dawning the birds on each bough; The frolicsome squirrels, that scampered at case 'Mid lithe leaves and soft moss that smiled down below: Heaps piled up of mangoes, all fragrant and rich; Guavas pink-cored, such a wealth of sweet alms Presented by bright maids, whose sweet songs bewitch Under ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... just seems to me that Isobel might do better back in Dakar, or in New York with your friend Jake Armstrong. Somewhere where her sensibilities wouldn't be so bruised, and where her assets"—his eyes went up and down her lithe body—"could ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... was a groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure, that his soul sickened with disgust at her deformity, even when his words were kindest. Through this dull consciousness, which never left her, came, like a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and lithe figure of the little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The recollection struck through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow of beauty and of grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh as ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Histoire' is the title of Miss Mary Shepard Greene's graceful canvas. The lithe and youthful figure of a girl is extended upon a straight-backed settle in somewhat of a Recamier pose. She is intently occupied in the perusal of a book. The turn of the head, the careless attitude, and the flesh ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... we were on our way to shelter, for even as I spoke there came the sudden, steady swish of the shower. Laughing merrily, my companion threw her light shawl over her head, and, seizing picture and easel, ran with the lithe grace of a young fawn down the furze-clad slope, while I followed after ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of age, with kind bright eyes and the drawn but ruddy face of one whose strength seems to have been acquired more from athletic sports than by hard work. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim- waisted, big-hipped and handsome; he stepped along through the clinging sand with the lithe careless grace of a mountain lion. An old greasy wide-brimmed gray felt hat, pinched to a "Montana peak," was shoved back on his curly black head; his shirt, of light gray wool, had the sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing powerful forearms tanned ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... of his den, and wandered for miles through the forest. As his lithe, spotted body glided amongst the tropical undergrowth, other creatures slunk out of his path, and he found nothing on which to prey. Hunger and restlessness drove the animal on, however, till a new and strange object made him pause to see what it was that stood in his way. The ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the forecastle, to watch the channel and give timely warning of anything barring the way that might escape the wider-ranging eye of the intrepid young pilot; and as the Cayuga pressed on, receiving the first shock of the outburst from the forts, what finer subject for the painter, than that lithe young figure standing up in bold and unflinching relief, at the extreme bow of the ship, peering ahead in the morning starlight to pilot her safely on her way, amid the blinding flame and screaming bolts, the hurtle of shot and crash of shell, the explosion and deafening ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... length on the carpet, absorbed in a book, was Robert, a boy on whom the same capacious brow as Janet's sat better than on the feminine creature. He was reading on, undisturbed by the pranks of three younger children, John Lucas, a lithe, wiry, restless elf of nine, with a brown face and black curly head, and Armine and Barbara, young persons of seven and six, on whom nature had been more beneficent in the matter of looks, for though brown was their ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up it was like the lithe Greek athlete compared with the brawny Roman gladiator. "Three to one on Locasto," some one shouted. Then a great hush came over the house, so that it might have been empty and deserted. Time was called. The ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... two natives standing at the edge of the wood quietly watching us. One of them I at once recognised as the lithe and active leader, whom I had seen upon the shore in swift pursuit ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Sainfoy now first looked at the sportsman standing by the roadside, and Angelot looked at him. Monsieur des Barres, a little stiff from a long day's shooting—for he was not so lithe and active as his host, and not so young as the Baron—now got down from the carriage and ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... how well she looked in it—better than ever now that her bosom showed under its seamless curves, and her figure had grown so lithe and shapely. But though she was laughing he saw she was ashamed of her poverty, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... careworn expression. But, thanks to cleanliness, to wholesome and sufficient food, to a calm and well-regulated life, to the pure, healthy air they breathe, the natural hues and the joyousness of youth soon reanimate the little faces; and with lithe, invigorated limbs, and happy hearts, these young creatures join merrily in the games of their new companions. They have entered the institution old; they will leave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... umbrellas over the favoured guests, usher them through marble-paved courts, in one of which a little prince is seated, with furled golden umbrella behind him to denote his rank, a group of royal children playing round him, their lithe brown forms half-hidden in the green shadows of a great tamarind tree. A superb marble ball-room with crystal chandeliers, forms an incongruous modern feature of the spacious Palace, but helps to popularise ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... roomy, clean kitchen of the deacon's house might be seen the lithe, comely form of Diana Pitkin presiding over the roaring great oven which was to engulf the armies of pies and cakes which were in due course of preparation on ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... near day, my sweet one; love be my help, the lark lies." In these songs, the women are slight and lithe; they are more gentle than doves; their faces are all pink and white: "If the flowers of the hawthorn were united to the rose, not more delicate would be their colour than that on my lady's ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... edge of the ancient terrace where broad-leaved clover grows in the broken urns. A girlish form, slender and lithe, swinging a great, old-fashioned straw hat, having a shawl wound crosswise over throat and waist, has stepped forth from the decaying old gate. She carries a little white bundle under her arm, and looks tentatively to the right ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... charging bull—the prisoner came head on straight to where young Ray was standing, heedless of a yell to halt, and in less time than it takes to tell it, the lithe little athlete of West Point's crack football team had sprung and tackled and downed him ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... draw aside to watch the perfection of their step and the exquisite ease with which they seemed to float through space, circling and reversing and winding among the other dancers, he ever alert, watchful, quick as a cat and lithe and strong as a panther—she all yielding lissome airy grace. That dance was "Gov" Prime's reward, and almost only reward for hours of impatient waiting. Other women, charming and pretty and better women, would gladly have been his partners. Some two or ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... is, of course, wearing armour, and the armour fits him, clothes him. It is not the clumsy inelastic stuff which must have prevented so many soldiers from moving a limb or mounting a horse. In this case the lithe and muscular frame is free and full of movement, quite unimpeded by the defensive plates of steel. He stands upright, his legs rather apart, and the shield in front of him, otherwise he is quite unarmed; the St. George in the niche is alert and watchful: in the bas-relief he manfully slays ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... blown for dinner there were two arrivals on the scene, one joyfully welcomed by all and the other rather unexpected but not less welcome to many of the boys. 'Siah Bolderwood entered the clearing from a forest-path at almost the same instant that a lithe young figure appeared from the direction of the creek. Enoch ran to his old friend and hugged him in his delight. "Ain't I glad you've come, 'Siah! We got most of the work done; we're goin' to get lots of nice ashes, ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... pair of you,' said Mr. Jim Elliott, marking the brown faces, the lean, lithe look of the hardy, ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... cypress log. In the end of each an Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... fire kindled fire in return. When he was not at Crownlands she could laugh at him, even though her thoughts were full of him. But when he was there, life to her was more radiant, more full, more glowing with colour and fragrance. The books he touched, the chair he had at breakfast, his young, lithe body in its golfing knickerbockers, or his sleek black head above the dull black of evening wear, haunted her oddly. He troubled her, but she had neither quite the power nor quite ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... were six Englishmen and two naked, helpless natives. At a given signal, while their unsuspecting victims were gazing at some curiosities in a box, the English sprang upon them, three to each man. The natives, young, vigorous, and lithe as eels, struggled with Herculean energy. The kidnappers, finding it difficult to hold them by their naked limbs, seized them by the long hair of their heads, and thus the terrified creatures were dragged into the boats and conveyed to the ship. Soon after this Captain Weymouth weighed anchor, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Theocritus again, with the civilization of the added centuries contributing its spangles of reason, philosophy, and grace. Who among all the short-kirtled damsels of all the eclogues will match us this fair, lithe, witty, capricious, mirthful, buxom Rosalind? Nowhere in books have we met with her like,—but only at some long-gone picnic in the woods, where we worshipped "blushing sixteen" in dainty boots and white muslin. There, too, we met a match ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... hoofs on the turf a short distance away, and Marie of Reist in a white riding-habit and the military cap of the Thetian Guards galloped past. Her lithe, superb figure was at its best—she managed her charger with the easy confidence of a born horsewoman. ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... merry boys circling around her, as she sits in a carved and high-backed oaken chair. In trim suits of crimson, green, and russet velvet, with curious hanging sleeves and long, pointed shoes, they range themselves before the trembling little maiden, while the eldest lad, a handsome, lithe, and active young fellow of fourteen, sings ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... chief must have been about ninety years of age. His head was white. He was about six feet two inches in height, lithe of form, and long featured, with a grave countenance, and cranial developments of decided intellectuality. He was of the Crane totem, the reigning family of that place, and the last survivor of seven brothers, of whom Shingabowossin, who died in the fall of 1828, was ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... her a deck-chair with a characteristic gesture. Nella was obliged to acknowledge, in spite of herself, that the fellow had distinction, an air of breeding. No one would have guessed that for twenty years he had been an hotel waiter. His long, lithe figure, and easy, careless carriage seemed to be the figure and carriage of an aristocrat, and his voice was quiet, restrained, ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... lay eavesdropping with all his might he tried to construct an image of the two girls from their voices. The one with the crystalline laugh was little and lithe, quick in movement, of a mobile face, with gray eyes and fair hair; the other was tall and pale, with full, blue eyes and a regular face, and lips that trembled with humor; very demure and yet very honest; very shy and yet very ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... watered silk; her collar was pinned with a flashing diamond brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, but the silver setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists she wore bracelets: one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other looked as if it might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to gold ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... flung herself into an easy-chair beside him. Carroll remained standing. She leaned her head back and crossed her hands behind her neck in a way she had. She was a thing of lithe grace in her soft red silk. The dim light obliterated all the worn lines in her face. Carroll regarded her even in the midst of the distressful stress of affairs with a look of admiration. It was an absent-minded ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... see the irresistible forces beneath them. But consider the full meaning of these words, and glance for a moment at the two figures conjured up by them. We see Hawk Carse, a man slender in build, but with gray eyes and lithe, strong-fingered hands and cold, intent face that give the clue to the steel of him; we see Dr. Ku Sui, tall, suave, unhurried, formed as though by a master sculptor, in whose rare green eyes slumbered the soul of ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... not heeding me, peered down at Jones, between widespread paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones' gray hat came pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly shoulders. The quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and his lithe body crouched low on the branches. He was about to jump. His open dripping jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for some means of escape, his tufted tail, swinging against the twigs and breaking them, manifested his extremity. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... greet him may have been twenty-seven or thirty-seven. He was tall, but lithe rather than broad. His face was the colour of mahogany, and the blue eyes turned to Lyne were unwinking and expressionless. That was the first impression which ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... I know you, Pau-Puk-Keewis!" With their clubs they beat and bruised him, Beat to death poor Pau-Puk-Keewis, Pounded him as maize is pounded, Till his skull was crushed to pieces. 160 Six tall hunters, lithe and limber, Bore him home on poles and branches, Bore the body of the beaver; But the ghost, the Jeebi in him, Thought and felt as Pau-Puk-Keewis, 165 Still lived on as Pau-Puk-Keewis. And it fluttered, strove, and struggled, Waving hither, waving thither, As the curtains of a wigwam Struggle ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... mem-sahib," promptly replied the lithe, good-looking son of the East as he salaamed. "If the mem-sahib will pardon her servant he would advise driving to Jessore and resting the night there at the dak bungalow, that is if the mem-sahib is not in ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... selected to sustain the honour and verify the pluck of Attakapas on this trying occasion was a black animal from the Opelousas, lithe and sinewy as a four year old courser, and with eyes like burning coals. His horns bore the appearance of having been filed at the tips, and wanted that keen and slashing appearance so common with others of his kith and ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... watching him from a distance, a sweet lithe creature, leaping on my shoulders, clapped her little hands to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... hath hymned The writhing maid, lithe-limbed, Quivering on amaranthine asphodel, How can he paint her woes, Knowing, as well he knows, That all can be set right ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the other began to dance "La Gitana" to her playing. The spirit and feeling, the coquettish grace and seductive charm, which the dancer put into the movements of her lithe form, challenge description. If only a man could have seen her then! From sheer amazement Blanka found herself unable to control her fingers, which struck more ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... selfish end could prompt my warning, pray? Think you to keep your prize?"—"And wherefore not? My whip was worn; I've found another new: This counsel grave from envy springs in you."— The stubborn wight would not believe a jot, Till warm and lithe the serpent grew, And, striking with his venom, slew The man almost upon the spot. And as to you, I dare predict That something worse will soon afflict.' 'Indeed? What worse than death, prophetic hermit?' 'Perhaps, the compound heartache I may term it.' And never was there truer prophecy. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... see that she had taken him at his word and was lying upon his clothes. Cautiously he took a seat on the door-sill. The night was as still as death and as lonesome as the grave. For half an hour he sat gazing upon the tired, pretty face and the lithe young figure of the sleeper. He found himself dreaming, although he was wide awake—never more so. It occurred to him that he would be immensely pleased to hear that Havens's reason for failing her was due to an accident in which ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... free. No danger of overflown sentiment with them. No danger of blighted affections or broken hearts. No nonsense there, my boy. All fair, and pleasant, and open, and above-board, you know. Clear, honest eyes, that looked frankly into yours; fresh, youthful faces; lithe, elastic figures; merry laughs; sweet smiles; soft, kindly voices, and all that sort of thing. In short, three as kind, gentle, honest, sound, pure, and healthy ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... driving was her order of the day: Morning freshness, rolling up as many miles as possible before lunch, that she might loaf afterward. The invariable two P.M. discovery that her eyes ached, and the donning of huge amber glasses, which gave to her lithe smartness a counterfeit scholarliness. Toward night, the quarter-hour of level sun-glare which prevented her seeing the road. Dusk, and the discovery of how much light there was after all, once she remembered ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... new to June, and often Hale would stroll up to the school-house to watch them—Prisoner's Base, Skipping the Rope, Antny Over, Cracking the Whip and Lifting the Gate; and it pleased him to see how lithe and active his little protege was and more than a match in strength even for the boys who were near her size. June had to take the penalty of her greenness, too, when she was "introduced to the King and Queen" and bumped the ground between ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... went up to Briton's Mead a two-three days gone, or maybe something more, and gave good Master Benden a taste of her horsewhip, that he hath since kept his bed—rather, I take it, from sulkiness than soreness, yet I dare be bound she handled him neatly. Tabitha is a woman of strong build, and lithe belike, that I would as lief not be horsewhipped by. Howbeit, what shall come thereof know I not. Very like she thought it should serve to move him to set Mistress Alice free: but she may find, and ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... his breath. Always lithe and graceful, to-night Patty looked like a veritable spirit. Her floating draperies, her golden hair, and her perfect face, crowned with the single silver star, seemed to belong to some super-human being, not to a ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... that bound Us twain together, beauteous river; And, though these limbs just crawl around That once would scarcely touch the ground, And alcohol upsets my liver, Still, in a punt or lithe canoe I can revive my vernal heyday, Pretend the sky's ethereal blue, The golden kingcups' cheery hue, Spell my, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... let them pass. Unsuspicious the Askaris proceeded until their movements were hidden from their friends by the intervening scrub, then with hardly a sound the five lithe and muscular Waffs leapt ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... ear, successively lifts them by the neck, to make them grow faster. Then she darts off toward the east, running out for about a quarter of a mile and back. This she does each morning until after the public ceremony. By so doing she is assured of continuing strong, lithe, and active ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Embury was possessed of a quick, sometimes ungovernable temper. It was because of this that her husband called her Tiger. And also, as he declared, because her beautiful, lithe grace was suggestive of "the fearful ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... opposite slope (slopes are, you must remember, here as steep as house-roofs, the last spurs of true mountains) is covered with a grass like tall rye-grass, but growing in tufts. That is the famous Guinea-grass {78e} which, introduced from Africa, has spread over the whole West Indies. Dark lithe coolie prisoners, one a gentle young fellow, with soft beseeching eyes, and 'Felon' printed on the back of his shirt, are cutting it for the horses, under the guard of a mulatto turnkey, a tall, steadfast, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... as strongly and surely as a lithe animal. At the top, the spirit of roguery, ever on her lips and eyes, struck in and ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... donga's depth and mount unsunned: A quire's rune, in onyx dress, And black-linkt harps with eyes that see Each blood-set jazel in a sky, Where heights eternal reign unstunned, Pierce sylvan airs that wizards bless. Come from sequestered shoals of hell Blithe pixies and lithe naiads fair That revel till the ev'ning skies Grow lustrous as Arcadian noon. Then witches in an implex dell, With stranggling robes and burnished hair, Flee thro' Autumnal shades and dyes, While quickly from the sandaled gloom, That struggles at the pillared ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... of victory cleaves the dark flood;— And the foe is o'erwhelmed in a deluge of blood! The spirit of Alice no longer is bowed By the troubles, and tumults, and terrors, that crowd So closely around her:—the willow's lithe form Bends meekly to meet the ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... cowboy. A look of contempt and derision was in his eyes. The Greek was no taller, but full eighty pounds heavier than the other. But he forgot that the other's lithe body moving with the calm, undulating grace of a panther preparing to spring was all clean youth, muscle and courage, ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... lithe arms gathered her forcefully to him, and her irritation at his strength was lost in her admiration of his grace and ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... when the library door opened quietly and Sue, clad in a dressing gown through which the new roundness of her lithe little figure was plainly apparent, came into the room. She ran across to him and putting her head down ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... palm. It fell with the faintest splash, and there was a little puff of spray as his head dipped and the water washed across his lips. Then the white limbs flashed amidst the green shining of the river, and the long, lithe form contracted, gleaming as a salmon gleams when it breaks the surface with the straining line. The still river rippled, and a sun-bronzed face shot half-clear again. Miss Kinnaird watched the swimmer's progress with ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... he had unbuckled the life buoy. Then like a seal the lithe youngster sought the dark green depths, following the line of bubbles. Down he swam, deeper and deeper, for on the white, sandy bottom he could see a dark, shapeless mass turning round and round with the action of the water. He reached out to seize it and his lingers ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... walks forlorn the Damsel, crowned with rue, Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs, who drew Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn, The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur Of Puss, that with verminicidal claw Struck the weird Rat, in whose insatiate maw Lay reeking malt, that erst in Ivan's courts we saw Robed in senescent garb that seems in sooth Too long a prey to Chronos' ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... in no mould Of beautiful proportion cast; his limbs Nothing exalted, but with sinews braced Of Chalybean temper, agile, lithe, And swifter than the roe; his ample chest Was overbrow'd by a gigantic head, With eyes keen, deeply sunk, and small, that gleam'd Strangely in wrath as though some spirit unclean Within that corporal tenement install'd Look'd from its windows, but ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... cuckoo mock the spring While the last violet loiters by the well, And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing The song of Linus through a sunny dell Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... on. I'll warrant this lad could get off more book-stuff in five minutes 'an mine ever heerd on." His eyes followed the boy as he went out to stand by Jack's elbow and ply this slow-witted gentleman with quick, eager questions. He was slender and rather tall for one of his age, but lithe and agile, as the skipper noted. "One o' mine could jes' trip him with a turn o' his hand," thought he; yet he regarded the lad with a mixture of kindness and respect, after all. There were other things in the world beside bone and muscle, he remembered, and when the boy came slowly along the ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... beasts fearfully. One was an enormous Lion with clear, intelligent eyes, a tawney mane bushy and well kept, and a body like yellow plush. The other was a great Tiger with purple stripes around his lithe body, powerful limbs, and eyes that showed through the half closed lids like coals of fire. The huge forms of these monarchs of the forest and jungle were enough to strike terror to the stoutest heart, and it is no wonder Jim was afraid to ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... the young man's grim, set face, looked at his lithe, clean-limbed figure and his steady black eyes which burned with a purposeful ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... only as one of a family which seems to hold genius by the tenure of gavelkind, but as having a special claim by inheritance to a love and understanding of Dante. She writes English with a purity that has in it something of feminine softness with no lack of vigor or precision. Her lithe mind winds itself with surprising grace through the metaphysical and other intricacies of her subject. She brings to her work the refined enthusiasm of a cultivated woman and the penetration of sympathy. She has ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... had won his title from his great height, towering as he did above every man in the company, nodded drowsily as he settled himself upon the ground. He was lithe and hardy as a young hickory, and his abundant hair was of the colour of ripe wheat. At the call to arms he had come, with long strides, down from his bare little cabin in the Blue Ridge, bringing with him a flintlock musket, a corncob pipe, and a stockingful of Virginia tobacco. Since ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... They were slight, slender, and as lithe as serpents; their great eyes shone between the black lines of their lids, their pearly teeth between the red bars of their lips. Long curls floated down on their cheeks. Some wore full tunics striped ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... vivid moment. He had a flair for women, though he had never encountered any possessing the higher values, and it was characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this one should remind him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung, capable of fierceness. The pain of having her scratch ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... case would ever be true of him. Further, I felt sure that no one would ever be hardy enough to give the supposed occasion. I can hardly tell how I knew; it was by some of those indescribable natural signs. We were slowly mounting the hill; and in every powerful, lithe movement, in the very set of his shoulders and head, and as well in the sparkle of the bright eye which looked round at me, I read the tokens of a spirit which I thought neither had known nor ever would know the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... soul seems fastened On thy words, compelling me, How I know not, to regard thee With strange reverence and fear, Thinking thou must be that vassal — That poor slave whom in my dream I beheld outbreathing flashes, Saw outflashing living fire, In whose flame, so lithe and lambent, My Polonia and my Lesbia Like poor ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... with him, but while he had occasionally fired a six-shooter, he was by no means a crack shot, and he realized that if he fired at and only wounded the creature he would unquestionably be attacked. And there was a lithe suppleness in the manner that the movement of the muscles rippled over the skin that was alarmingly suggestive of ferocity. Wilbur did not like the looks of it at all. On the other hand, he had not the slightest intention of going back to the camp without water. He had come for water, and he ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... pride in her power over them. Still—and yet—The princess scattered the patteran with her foot, for she knew that all the wagons must be ahead of her, since she had lagged so, and she leaped to her seat with one easy, lithe swing and drove on up ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,—her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a barred plaid skirt, and stained, faded velvet bodice,—her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,—the soft, fair hair gathered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Miss Palliser's lithe figure grew rigid. She turned on him a look of indignation and contempt. "Everybody wants to see her on business. But some of them have ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... day-books and this ledger open on the desk for her. As soon as he was gone, she shut the door, listening until his heavy boots had thumped creaking down the rickety ladder leading to the frame-rooms. Then she climbed up on the high office-stool (climbed, I said, for she was a little, lithe thing) and went to work, opening the books, and copying from one to the other as steadily, monotonously, as if she had been used to it all her life. Here are the first pages: see how sharp the angles are of the blue and black lines, how even the long columns: one ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... leafy, Lecher, fornicator, Leech, physician, Leman, lover, Let, caused to, Let, hinder, Lewdest, most ignorant, Licours lecherous, Lief, dear, Liefer, more gladly, Lieve, believe, Limb-meal, limb from limb, List, desire, pleasure, Lithe, joint, Longing unto, belonging to, Long on (upon), because of, Loos, praise, Lotless, without a share, Loveday, day for. settling disputes, Loving, praising, Lunes, leashes, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... broad-shouldered, with clear-cut bronzed features and a chin and eyes that would have done honour to any man. John Lincoln, among all his confused sensations, was aware that this slim, agitated young creature before him was the loveliest thing he ever had seen, so lithe was her figure, so glossy and dark and silken her bare, wind-ruffled hair, so big and brown and appealing her eyes, so delicately oval her flushed cheeks. He felt that she was frightened and in trouble, and he wanted to comfort ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had the best of it, and had got out of the yard. A long lithe lad, stationed outside on horseback, was in full chase, and Jim, leaping on one of the horses tied to the rails, started off to his assistance. The two chased the unhappy bull as a pair of greyhounds chase a hare, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... lithe, tall girl, with a small young, wicked face; and meekly demure. Her hair was sleeked down provocatively over her ears, in which emerald drops dangled. She was an Enemy. As she took her client's hand and dabbled ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... and pine away with weariness. Then there is a sullen canal, which flows through the forest from the marshes to the sea; it is alive with frogs and newts and snakes. You may see these serpents basking on the surface among thickets of the flowering rush, or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers—lithe monsters, slippery and speckled, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to the place where the man had been seen. He was there still. A young man, in excellent health, brown, muscular, lithe. He had an old coverlet around his loins—that was ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... Our lithe thoughts gambol close to God's abyss, Children whose home is by the precipice. Fear not thy little ones shall o'er it fall: Solid, though viewless, is the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... bowed low in courtesy—joined hands—advanced—retired. Then Raoul's violin alone continued the measure, as, one by one, the others drew away and left Mademoiselle alone. It was the Bouvard water-colour, but living and moving. Her lithe, slender body seemed light as air. Every gesture, every pose, was full of a grave dignity. In the dark theatre there was complete silence. All eyes were centred on the supple, graceful form of the dancer. Music, life, and colour were in harmony. Gradually the full orchestra took up the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... holes, and cut at the horses as they passed, to hamstring or maim them; and good-bye to the poor fellow whose horse fell! We ought to have had lances, and it would have been a very different tale. But the troopers' swords could not reach the beggars, who are as lithe as monkeys. If they had run it would have been easy to get a cut at them; so it would if they had stood up. But they were as cool as cucumbers, and dodged just at the right moment. Of course some were not quite so spry as others, and got cut down; it was a case of the survival ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... all the while thinking of the mischievous, manly, sunny-hearted lad who had given it to her. M. Riel's words and the sneer were lost, so far as she was concerned. Her ears were where her heart was, out on the plain beyond the cottonwood, where she could see the tall, straight, lithe figure of young Scott, with his dog at his heels, its head now bobbing up from the grass, and ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... had been beautiful on shipboard, in the informal costume he affected on the island he was more splendid still. His white cotton shirt and trousers showed him lithe and lean and muscular. His bared arms and chest were like cream solidified to flesh. Instead of his nose peeling like common noses in the hot salt air, every kiss of the sun only gave his skin a warmer, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... left elbow; and the artist has given her a more alert pose and resolute air than we find in the stiff carriage of her contemporary Tui. The little girl in the Turin Museum is a looser work, but where could one find a better example of the lithe delicacy of the young Egyptian maiden of eight or ten years old? We may see her counterpart to-day among the young Nubian girls of the cataract, before they are obliged to wear clothes; there is the same thin chest, the same undeveloped hips, the same meagre thighs, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sprang towards Tommy, but the latter, who was lithe and active as a kitten, leaped aside and avoided him. For five minutes the furious man rushed wildly about the deck in pursuit of the boy, calling on Bunks to intercept him, but Bunks would not stir hand or foot, and Jim could not quit the helm, for the wind had increased to ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... apprehensive? In disobedience to the scriptural injunction, we had observed the clouds and the birds. Twice a flock of lesser frigate-birds, those dark, fish-tailed high-fliers which are for ever cutting animated "W's" in the air with long lithe wings—had appeared. Seldom do they come unless as harbingers of boisterous weather. On each recent occasion they had been absolutely trustworthy messengers. Watching them soaring and swooping, we said one to another: "Behold the cyclone cometh!" But ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... young breast of Oxenford's daughter—and in her father's arms the maiden gasped and died; all this in the space of time in which a cloud of the bigness of a man's hand might pass across the sun. Down from the lower branches of that accursed oak dropped the lithe figure of a man garbed all in gray. "Stop him!" called a weak, uncertain voice, but no one moved. The man in gray waved his hand derisively and disappeared into the bush. An inarticulate sound arose ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven. Nearly twenty years have passed since men heard his voice, looked on his strong, lithe, active form, saw the gleam of his honest eyes, and felt the presence of a man—a man who wanted nothing and gave everything—a man who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... short, neatly-built, very lithe and active man. He stood five feet six inches in height.* (* These particulars are from the manuscript sketch by a friend, previously cited; Flinders' Papers.) His figure was slight and well proportioned. When he was in full health, his light, buoyant step was remarked upon by ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... who thus obstructed Sir Francis and his party was a young man with a lithe active figure, bright black eyes, full of liveliness and malice, an olive complexion, and a gipsy-like cast of countenance. Attired in a tight-fitting brown frieze jerkin with stone buttons, and purple hose, his head was ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... the upper gallery, leaning against the stone rail and gazing steadily through the field glasses in the direction of the bungalow. They held back and watched her, unseen. The soft light of early evening fell upon her figure as she stood erect, lithe and sinuous in the open space between the ivy-clad posts; her face and hands were soft tinted by the glow from the reflecting east, her hair was like a bronze relief against the dark green of the mountain. She was ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... straight through the snow-covered hills to the church where the meeting was to be held. Only one man was in sight, coming towards them, on horseback. A sudden gleam of light showed him to them clearly. A small, middle-aged man, lithe, muscular, with fair hair, dressed in some shaggy dark uniform and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... odorless pink before morning; exquisite vetches, with bloom like our sweet pea, and of more than fifty varieties; harebells in great clumps, and castilleias which dot the State with scarlet; rosy cyclamens "on long, lithe stems that soar;" and mertensias, whose delicate bells, blue as a baby's eyes, turn day by day to pink; the cleome, which covers Denver with a purple veil; the whole family of ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the city a certain steep mound apart in the plain, with a clear way about it on this side and on that; and men indeed call this "Batieia," but the immortals call it "The tomb of lithe Myrine." There did the Trojans and their allies ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... view the world as a whole, it rushes into vision—man, beast, bird, reptile, fly, sky, ocean, mountains, plain, rock, pebble. The warmth of life, the reality of creation is over all—the throb of human hands, glossiness of fur, lithe windings of long bodies, poignant buzzing of insects, the ruggedness of the steeps as I climb them, the liquid mobility and boom of waves upon the rocks. Strange to say, try as I may, I cannot force my touch to pervade this universe in all directions. The ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Smith he looked! He had lost that curious chunky appearance which Barber's old clothes gave him, and which was so misleading. On the other hand, his thin arms and pipelike legs were concealed, respectively, by becoming cloth and canvas. As for his body, it was slender, and lithe. And how straight he stood! And how smart was his appearance! And how ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... itself from the trammels with which foolish opinion has enswathed it—not one of these celebrated persons who did not in his secret soul condemn the folly to which he lent himself. The bonds of reason, though iron-strong, are easily burst through; but those of folly, though lithe and frail as the rushes by a stream, defy the stoutest heart to snap them asunder. Colonel Thomas, an officer in the Guards, who was killed in a duel, added the following clause to his will the night before he died:—"In the first place, I commit my soul to Almighty God, in hope ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... "Fair is Lithe: so fair that it has never seemed to me so fair; the corn fields are white to harvest, and the home mead is mown: and now I will ride back home, and not fare abroad ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... cakes with persuasive slaps as a dairymaid pats butter. Low-caste sweepers glided like shadows to and fro. Suddenly some one crossed the gangway and the sentry stiffened and presented arms. The O.C. looked down from the upper deck and saw a lithe, sinewy little figure with white moustaches and "imperial"; the eyes were of a piercing steel-blue. The figure was clad in a general's field-service uniform, and on his shoulder-straps were the insignia of a field-marshal. The colonel ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Rawdon was wounded in the body or in the upper part of a leg. Hurriedly he pursued, entering the strip of woodland towards the brook, when something fell upon him, and two keen qualms of pain shot through his breast. Then he lay insensible. Meanwhile, a lithe active form, leaving a horse tethered at the gate, had sprung to meet a second intruder, issuing from the front door of Bridesdale. The opposing forces met, and Mr. Bangs had his hands upon the younger gaol breaker. A loud shout brought Timotheus on ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... on up the stairs, but she had caught his smile, momentarily illumining a face which was ordinarily rather grave. Georgiana closed the living-room door upon the sight of the lithe figure rapidly ascending the staircase without a glance behind. As she faced her father she assumed the expression of a merry ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... effort, it seemed the most natural proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable things. She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into another, like the dissolving figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe, radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above the gaslights, and now gleaming through the air like a slender ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... mast. And now I saw the sail was ill-stowed, the canvas lying all abroad and as I rose I beheld this canvas stirred as by a greater wind; then as I stared me this, it lifted, and from beneath it crept a shape that rose up very lithe and graceful and stood with hands reached out towards me, and then as I staggered ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... girls, all adoring Jeff, and his ever-present control bade him be civilised. Jeff did not answer. He was full of a choking rage and blind desire for them to get their hands off him. Not in his imprisonment even had he felt such debasement under control as when these lithe creatures hurried him along. Yet he knew then that his rage was not against them, innocent servitors of a higher power. It was against the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... top of the mountain-the two youngsters who made the life of Fabian and his wife so busy. Fabian was a man of little speech. He was slim and dark and quiet, with a black moustache and smoothly brushed hair, with a body lithe and composed, yet with hands broad, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of agility and elasticity quite aerial. One lithe and active dancer grasped his fair partner by the waist. She was dressed in a red dress; was small, elastic, agile, and went by like the wind. And now and then, in the course of every few seconds, he would give her a whirl and a lift, sending her spinning through the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... completed herself a dress of grass. Three years before she had learned the trick from the natives in Hawaii. The many days of hardship had made her thinner, but never had she been so hardy, so clear eyed, so quick and lithe in her actions. She had lived precariously, stealing her food at dusk from the tents of the ryots; raw vegetables, plantains, mangoes. Sometimes she recited verses in order that she might break the oppressive silence which ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Catharine, against her will, obeyed his voice, and raised her eyes to his. She saw his lofty brow, like that of an angry demi-god, his dark, dangerous, fiery eyes, his glistening teeth, his magnificent frame, lithe, athletic, and graceful as that of "The statue that enchants the world," and a sensation of shuddering ecstasy flooded her whole being. Forgotten were her fears, her terror, her dream of vengeance; and, regardless of the hand which was still raised to threaten her, she cried out, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a noted outlaw known as Jazz. The horse was a sorrel, and it knew all the tricks of its kind. It went sunfishing, tried weaving and fence-rowing, at last toppled over backward after a frantic leap upward. The rider, long-bodied and lithe, rode like a centaur. Except for the moment when he stepped out of the saddle as the outlaw fell on its back, he stuck to his seat as though he were ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... its first sunshine hour, For the luxuriant strawberry blossoms spread Like a snow shower then, and violets Bowed down their purple vases of perfume About her pillow,—linked in a gay band Floated fantastic shapes; these were her guards, Her lithe ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Of those two lips, which should be opening soft In the pure profile; not as when she laughs, For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's Burthen of honey-coloured buds to kiss And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this. Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround, How it should waver on the pale gold ground Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts! I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb: But these are ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... discussed the matter most seriously with Araminta. "A situation of unparalleled gravity has arisen," I said, "with regard to the wedding of William. It is going to be carried out at Whittlehampton in top-hats. Picture to yourself the scene. Waterloo Station full of lithe young athletes of either sex arrayed for sports on flood and field, carrying their golf-clubs, their diabolo spools and their butterfly nets, and there, in the midst of them, me with my miserable coat-tails, the June sun glaring on my burnished topper, and in my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. 45 Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue 50 That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, And says a plain word when ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... dark, homely face, only redeemed from positive ugliness by her deep, expressive eyes. Her figure was superb; rather slender, lithe and sinewy, but without an angle or thin curve. Like Diana, she was long limbed, so that she seemed taller than she really was. The sweep of neck and shoulder was exquisite, and her simple dress was admirably adapted to display the lines of her supple form. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... far from being in accordance with the statutes of beauty, are of a singularly pleasing class, their faces beaming with animation and good humour. They are a small race, averaging 4 feet 5 inches, but there is perfect proportion in all parts of their form, and their supple, pliant, lithe figures are often models of symmetry. There is about the young Oraon a jaunty air and mirthful expression that distinguishes him from the Munda or Ho, who has more of the dignified gravity that is said to characterise the North American Indian. The Oraon is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... introduced him at once to her affianced husband, a handsome young doctor of the town, a man of sterling ability and sound common sense, who very soon made Caper at home, insisted on his dancing the Tarantella and Saltarella Napolitana with a lively, lithe young lady, who cut our artist's heart to fiddlestrings before they had danced five minutes together a polka—for let the truth be told, Caper never could ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rollicking song from one of the latest musical comedies. There followed two of the sauciest, most irresponsible tunes that ever made a vaudeville success. She played with abandon, a kind of reckless fury, sitting erect, with her head flung back, an insouciant smile flickering about her lips, her lithe body swaying with the music. Then suddenly, in the midst of a tune, she stopped, arose, faced Seth and Claire with flaming ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... privileged to hear on the following day some further conversation on the subject of Sabriny's guardian. I was sitting on the front porch with the sweet and simple-hearted mother of the young 'squire when Jeb Hilson's lithe ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... on all-fours over the springy grass, and did not mind her. Slowly, stealthily he went—near, nearer, and yet nearer the root of the beech tree with every movement of his lithe, wriggling body. He is now only a few feet from the squirrels, who seem not to notice the intruder. He puts out his hand. He almost touches the smallest member of the group, a bright-eyed, furry little fellow. Joan ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... a handsome girl, something more than even pretty. The lithe gracefulness of her figure spoke of familiarity with both tennis and tango, and her face with its well-chiselled profile denoted intellectuality from which no touch of really feminine charm had been removed by the fearsome process of the creation of the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... wanderings around Boston that night Wilson passed the girl twice, and each time, though he caught only a glimpse of her lithe form bent against the whipping rain, the merest sketch of her somber features, he was distinctly conscious of the impress of her personality. As she was absorbed by the voracious horde which shuffled interminably and inexplicably up and down the street, he felt a sense ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... don't have spring blossoms North?" asked Mrs. Colton. Her own eyes had been drinking in the charm of his personality; no color-schemes or palette-tones were interesting her. The straight, lithe, figure, square shoulders, open, honest face, sunny brown eyes, with the short, crisp hair that curled about the temples, meant something alive and young: something that could laugh when she laughed and be ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith |
