"Reft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Death, that hast us of much riches reft, Tell us at least what hast thou with it done? What has become of him whose flower here left Is but the shadow of his likeness gone? Scarce like the shadow of that which he was, Nought like, but that he like ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... would that I had ne'er to Susa gone, To ask that fatal boon of thee, Hystaspes' generous son. Oh, deadly fight! oh, woeful sight! to greet a monarch's eyes! All desolate—my native land, reft of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... arrogance, whose cynical materialism, whose dogmatic intolerance, put them on a level with the bigoted mediaeval ecclesiasticism which they denounce. Yet our debt to scientific men is incalculable, and our civilization of to-day would have reft from it all that which most highly distinguishes it if the work of the great masters of science during the past four centuries were now undone or forgotten. Never has philanthropy, humanitarianism, seen such development as now; and though we must all beware of the folly, and the viciousness ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... sun had lost his hue, For th' horizon had reft the sun of light, (This is as much to ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... there, above, below, Their looks of wild avoidance throw! Nay, gentle cousin, blush not so! And do not, pray thee, rise to go! I am bewilder'd with my woe; But hear me fairly to the end, I will not pain thee, nor offend. O no! I would thy favour win; For, when I die, as next of kin, So 'reft am I of human ties, It is thy ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... could do no wrong to no Scottishe man; for a certane French man delivred a coulvering to George Tod, Scottisman, to be stocked, who bringing it throwght the streat, ane other French man clamed it, and wold have reft it from the said George; but he resisted, alledgeing that the Frenche man did wronge. And so begane parties to assemble, asweall to the Scottishman, as to the French; so that two of the French men war stryckin doune, and the rest chassed from the Croce to Nudrye's Wynd head.[558] The Provost ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... and gallery cry "Hats off!" And awed Consumption checks his chided cough, Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love Drops, reft of pin, her play-bill from above; Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap, Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap; But, wiser far than he, combustion fears, And, as it flies, eludes ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... duke was he, rich, powerful—and yet Fate had on him a heavy burden set, For, while a youth, as he did hunt the boar, The savage beast his goodly steed did gore, And as the young duke thus defenceless lay, With cruel tusk had reft his looks away, Had marred his comely features and so mauled him That, 'hind his back, "The ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... with the 'elfin grey' who might have been an 'earthly knight'; and he tells her how, as a youth, he had been reft away ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... reft; There as thou sleptst in tender swadling band, And her base elfin brood there for thee left: Such men do changelings call, so chang'd by Fairies theft. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... by virtue and by birth, Of Heaven lov'd, and honour'd on the earth; His country's hope, his kindred's chief delight, My husband dear, more than this world's light, Death hath me reft. But I from death will take His memory, to whom this tomb I make. John was his name (ah, was! wretch must I say), Lord Russell once, now ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... thyself to woe, * Thou art slain and worse sorrows my bosom rend! Thou hast reft me of fairest companionship, * Made her home Earth's womb till the world shall end. To Time, who hath wrought me such grief, I say, * 'Allah grant in her stead never ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Sickness she could bear, or death if it should come, because they were factors of the common lot; but it had never occurred to her that so resplendent a thing as a silver tea-set could belong to any one and then be reft away. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... watch I keep, Dear heart that wak'st though senses sleep To thee my heart turns gratefully. All it can give to thee is given. From all besides, its heartstrings riven. Could ne'er be reft more fatefully. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... come the biting chill of night, the manifold rays of stars and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility of the crouching ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... reft her suddenly at the age of seventeen from the educational care of an English gentlewoman warranted to fit her for marriage with any prince in Europe, and thrust her for the mornings and a moiety of the afternoons of the better part of a year, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... This was a difficult and doubtful business. Funds had to be collected to buy instruments. Musicians who could play the instruments had to be picked out from among the men, and nobody knew how to find them. Hardly anybody stayed long in these base camps, and a good musician might at any moment be reft away and sent ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... she went with me, pouring still with patient spirit Balm upon my wounded feelings, peace upon my burning soul; So that though man's love was reft me, 'twas the better to inherit That which far transcends man's ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Reft of a carriage, life is poor: A well-conducted set Needs ready money to procure Their butler and Debrett. The country totters to its fall, Disgraced to all intents, Unless you instantly recall Our solid Three ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... temptations of this world, he has been shedding a glory round human life. We are now to look at him equally alone; equally majestic, shedding by martyrdom, almost a brighter glory round human death. He has hitherto been receiving the homage of almost unequalled popularity. We are now to observe him reft of every admirer, every soother, every friend. He has been hitherto overcoming the temptations of existence by entire seclusion from them all. We are now to ask how he will stem those seductions when he is brought into the very midst of them, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... not esteem, Being authors of sweet peace and unity, But pleasing to th' infernal empery, Under whose ensigns Wars and Discords fight, Since an even number you may disunite In two parts equal, naught in middle left To reunite each part from other reft; And five they hold in most especial prize, Since 'tis the first odd number that doth rise From the two foremost numbers' unity, That odd and even are; which are two and three; For one no number is; but thence doth flow The powerful race of ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... went down the road that ran to the quay a terrible streak of lightning reft the dark sky, and the wild crash of thunder that followed drowned even the roaring babel of ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now. Before the Chastener humbly let me bow, O'er hearts divided and o'er hopes destroyed: Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow, Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed, And with the ills of ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... rashly pushed back a little too far, a clamorous, jostling mass of humanity stormed the opening. Its guardians were flung aside, helpless, and the foremost of the mob poured out upon the platform, while the pressure about the gap grew insupportable. Women screamed, children were reft away from their mothers, panting men trampled over bags and bundles torn from their owners' hands, and George and the elderly Canadian struggled determinedly to prevent the girl's being badly crushed. Edgar had disappeared, though they ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... visions or dream-episodes full of colour and sound which succeeded each other so swiftly. Therefore it hardly seemed remarkable to me when I saw the heavy curtain of mist which hung in front of my eyes suddenly reft asunder in many places and broken into a semblance ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... the storm has reft us But the brave and kindly clay ('Tis but dust where Lander left us, And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... in a movement of sweet, wild abandon, and, as if in response to an incantation, the sky was reft asunder and the moon rushed forth, free for the moment of the clutching clouds, fugitive, headlong, a shining Maenad of the heavens, surrounded by the rush and whirl that had whelmed earth and its waters and was hurrying them to an ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ambrosia—what the throne Of high Olympus—what the power I own, The golden sceptre of the starry skies— What the omnipotence that never dies, What might eternal, immortality— What e'en a god, oh love, if reft of thee? The shepherd who, beside the murmuring brooks, Leans on his true love's breast, nor cares to look After his straying lambs, in that sweet hour Envies me not my thunderbolt of power! She comes—she hastens nigh! Pearl of my works, Woman! the artist who created thee Should be adored. 'Twas ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... heave-a-ho!— Lower him to the mould below; With the well-known sailor ballad, Lest he grow more cold and pallid At the thought that Ocean's child, From his mother's arms beguiled. Must repose for countless years, Reft of all her briny tears, All the rights he owned by birth, In the dusty ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... reft of sense, By gazing on their excellence, But meeting Mopsa in my way, And looking on her face of clay, Been healed, and cured, and made as sound, As though I ne'er had had a wound? And when in tables ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... waves of death and strife Flowed deeply, wildly as before, Though he was reft of light and life, And sunk in death to rise ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... true, my sov'reign king, My skill may weel be doubted: But facts are chiels that winna ding, An' downa be disputed: Your royal nest beneath your wing, Is e'en right reft an' clouted, And now the third part of the string, An' less, will gang about it Than did ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... absence, Viridis sat sad and silent and downcast, though she wept not, for her gladness, which erst had been so great, seemed now reft from her; and no merrier was Aurea, as might have been looked for. But Atra came quietly unto Birdalone, and said softly: I have a word for thee if thou wilt come forth with me into the hall. Birdalone's ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... before myself, and instead of living have ensured thy life, and so I die, though I need not have died for thee, but might have taken for my husband whom I would of the Thessalians, and have had a home blest with royal power; reft of thee, with my children orphans, I cared not ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... portentous shape above him, and then he set his lips, and pulled up the helm another spoke as it swung. He never quite knew what happened after that. There was a horrible crash, and the schooner appeared to be rolling over bodily. The spokes he clung to desperately reft themselves from his grasp, the deck slanted until one could not stand upon it, and something heavy struck him on the head. He dropped, and Dampier flung himself upon the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... too late the damage to repair? Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, But in my hands ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... makes wilde greefe tame, My tongue should to thy eares not name my Boyes, Till that my Nayles were anchor'd in thine eyes: And I in such a desp'rate Bay of death, Like a poore Barke, of sailes and tackling reft, Rush all to peeces on ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... death, may deign to come and see it, And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me. This only boon for all my mortal bane I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat: That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain, And soul is fled, and body reft of heat, She might perceive how much she might command, That had my life and death within ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... love for Greane, but greater far His love for Agathar Born of his pain, A strange dependence tinged pathetically The proud possession of his trust as guard Of her reft life and lonely widowhood. He waited for her coming in the morn With flowers he had gathered ere she woke; At night he led her to her chamber door, With boyish homage touched with stately grace, And Agathar said to her widowed heart, "How like his ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... face so mild, And in her bashful mien, The winning softness of the child, The blushes of fifteen. The witching smile, when prone to go, Arrests me, bids me stay; Nor joy, nor comfort can I know, When 'reft of Helen Gray. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... mother dead! Her one true guide and friend! Her heart seemed reft in twain. Would she had died! A year at least it meant ere yet again, She needs must list to suits to be denied. O death, or Harold, come and let there ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... French colonies, Pitt followed the course successfully adopted by England in several wars. But here again his difficulties were greater than those of Chatham. Indeed, they were enhanced by the triumphs of Chatham. Where now could he deal the most telling blow? Not against Canada; for his father had reft that prize. The French settlements in the East Indies were of small account. It was in Hayti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe that French commerce could be ruined. At them, therefore, he struck. But in so doing he ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... me concerns me little. The project will as roundly ripe itself Without as with me. Trusty souls remain, Though my far bones bleach white on austral shores!— I thank you for the audience. Long ere this I might have reft ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... rose that breathes of love, The myrtle leaf, and Laura's hallow'd bay, The deathless flowers that bloom o'er Sappho's clay; For thee, Callirhoe! yet by love and years, I learn how fancy wakes from joy to tears; How memory, pensive, 'reft of hope, attends The exile's path, and bids him fear new friends. Long may the garland blend its varying hue With thy bright tresses, and bud ever new With all spring's odours; with spring's light be drest, Inhale pure fragrance from ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... the new-sprung flower to smell, Comparing it to her Adonis' breath; 1172 And says within her bosom it shall dwell, Since he himself is reft from her by death: She drops the stalk, and in the breach appears Green dropping sap, ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... and intolerant, and indignant peers cannot always be taken seriously, but it is surely permissible to feel a regret for kindly, improvident Dick Talbot-Lowry, his youth and his income departing together, and the civic powers that he had once exercised, reft from him. Such power as he had had, he had exercised honourably and with reverent confidence in precedent, and when he had damned Parnell, and had asserted, in stentorian tones, that Cromwell was the only man who had ever known how to govern Ireland, and he, unfortunately, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... woman had scanned Shibli Bagarag, she called to him, 'O thou! what is it with thee, that thou rollest as one reft of his wits?' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... head the trenchant blade cleaves to the teeth, And dead the Kalif falls.—"Pagan accursed," He cries, "not here shalt thou say Carle lost aught; To wife nor lady shalt thou ever boast In thine own land, that thou hast reft from Carle One denier's worth, or me or others harmed!" And then he called Rolland unto his ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... Vancouver, duly arrived at a pretty wooden villa which looked down upon a deep inlet. He knew the mountain valleys of the Cumberland, and had wandered, sometimes footsore and hungry, under the giant ramparts of the Selkirks and the Rockies, but he had never seen a fairer spot than the reft in the hills which sheltered Savine's villa, and was known by its Indian name, "The Place of the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... is force fighting; completion is force quiescent, its work done. Nature's forces are patent enough in some scarred volcanic moon in which no creature can breathe; only the sage, in some soft green earth, can discover the same forces reft of fierceness and terror, and translated into sunshine, and falling dew, and the rainbow gleaming on the shower. It is somewhat in this way that the propriety of Hazlitt's criticism is to be vindicated. Chaucer is the most simple, natural, and homely of our poets, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Since ease from them alone it hopes to prove. Ye verses, weep!—ye rhymes, your woes renew! For Cino, master of the love-fraught lay, E'en now is from our fond embraces torn! Pistoia, weep, and all your thankless crew! Your sweetest inmate now is reft away— But, heaven, rejoice, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Through this remoter Lorn I went, less conscious of cruelty than when I plied fire and sword with legitimate men of war, for ever in my mind was the picture of real Argile, scorched to the vitals with the invading flame, and a burgh town I cherished reft of its people, and a girl with a child at her neck flying and sobbing among ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... however, has held at all times the question of human liberty to be superior to considerations of mere expediency. If the question be, who gains or loses most, there never can be a doubt that the man whose freedom has been reft from him has the greatest of all claims for indulgence. Accordingly, Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge, looking in the face all the threatened evils to property, held that nothing but absolute law could trench ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... which the old houses knew has gone. They pulled it down in the forties—that unhappy decade for anything ancient and quiet in Surrey villages; all they left was the tower, a mighty mass of stone and ivy that stands with its nave reft from it, the forlornest and most meaningless of ruins. If the tower might stand, why not the nave? They pulled the nave down, and left the tower standing, so Mr. C.J. Swete, one of Epsom's historians, tells you, in order that it "should remain to beautify the landscape." They ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... superiority of the West. Just as severely shaken is their belief in its moral superiority, even with many whose loyalty to the British cause never wavered during the Great War and who still pride themselves on India's share in its final victory, when they see how the world of Western civilisation has been reft asunder by four years of frightful conflict which drenched all Europe with blood and left half of it at least plunged in black ruin. We have preached to Indians, not untruly, but with an insistence that seems to them now more than ever ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... bowl,[11] The rich repast prepare; Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast. Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon the baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle bray,[12] Lance to lance and horse to horse? Long years ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... that still use of grief makes wild grief tame, My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys Till that my nails were anchor'd in thine eyes; And I, in such a desperate bay of death, Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft, Rush all to pieces on thy ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... him, too. He felt for corners of his being untouched by his disaster; but there was no limit to the flood of damage; not one of his possessions was safe now. Katharine had deceived him; she had mixed herself with every thought of his, and reft of her they seemed false thoughts which he would blush to think again. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... broken open, but not rifled, the American boltlocks having defied the clumsy efforts of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, who had cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous night, crossing, with the portable property reft from the accursed Englander, the barbed-wire fence that formed the line of demarcation between the British Imperial Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had meant to wait yet another day, and take many things ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... cliff—where the mad waves Rush echoing thro' the high-arched caves below, I view some love-reft fair Whose sighing warms the air, Gaze anxious on the ocean as it raves And call on thee-alone, of power to ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... the land, and not one that had worth is remaining! Mentor the gallant and goodly, and Troeilus prompt with the war-team; Hector, a god among men—he, too, who in nothing resembled Death-doom'd man's generation, but imaged the seed of Immortals— Battle hath reft me of these:—but the shames of my house are in safety; Jesters and singers enow, and enow that can dance on the feast-day; Scourges and pests of the realm; bold spoilers of kids and of lambkins! Will ye bestir ye at length, and make ready the wain and the coffer, Piling in all that ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... here, Grendel's attack with terror of blades. Then was this mead-house at morning tide dyed with gore, when the daylight broke, all the boards of the benches blood-besprinkled, gory the hall: I had heroes the less, doughty dear-ones that death had reft. — But sit to the banquet, unbind thy words, hardy hero, as heart shall ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... think on the lads an' the land I hae left, An' how love has been lifted, an' friendship been reft; How the hinnie o' hope has been jumbled wi' ga', Then I sigh for the lads an' the land ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... din of steel and iron in the grey clouds rang about; But how to tell of King Volsung, and the valour of his folk! Three times the wood of battle before their edges broke; And the shield-wall, sorely dwindled and reft of the ruddy gold, Against the drift of the war-blast for the fourth time yet did hold. But men's shields were waxen heavy with the weight of shafts they bore, And the fifth time many a champion cast earthward Odin's door And gripped the sword two-handed; ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... tell this tale Of inconsistence faint and frail? And art thou He of Lodi's bridge, Marengo's field, and Wagram's ridge! Or is thy soul like mountain-tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which these wrecks ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... misery In sacked townes can hardlie euer be. Not if the fire had scal'de the highest towers: That all things were of force and murther full; That in the streets the bloud in riuers stream'd; That sonne his sire saw in his bosome slaine, The sire his sonne: the husband reft of breath In his wiues armes, who furious runnes to death. Now my brest wounded with their piteouse plaints I left their towne, and tooke with me this sworde, Which I tooke vp at what time Antonie Was ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... to move from side to side. No, no! The ground was rising, falling! It seemed no longer solid. Like a wave it rose and fell. The foot-hills below us separated, reft into awful chasms. I looked toward our home. Just then ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... flitted, The gem-stones much worthy, all over the waves' cup. The King the full mighty cring'd under the shield; Into grasp of the Franks the King's life was gotten 1210 With the gear of the breast and the ring altogether; It was worser war-wolves then reft gear from the slain After the war-shearing; there the Geats' war-folk Held the house of the dead men. The Hall took the voices; Spake out then Wealhtheow; before the host said she: Brook thou this roundel, lief Beowulf, henceforth, ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... cheaper in the country, since they have to be carried from the country into the town, and many necessaries may be had for the asking. Persuaded by these arguments, I went to this place, and I was not altogether deceived, seeing that I recovered my health, and the son—who was to be reft from me later on by ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... my Love! The sea-breeze moans Through yon reft house! O'er rolling stones In bold ambitious sweep The onward-surging tides supply The silence of the cloudless sky 35 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that he imagined her an injured beauty, reft from her faithful adorer by her stern aunt or duenna, and that he considered himself to be doing her a kindness by keeping her informed of her hero's vicinity, while he denied it to her companion; but she scorned to enter into an explanation, or ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wite ow in ower blodletunge{;} [&] halde ow i swuch reste{;} [/] [gh]e longe reft{er} mahen i godes seruise e monluker swinken {110} ant alswa hwen [gh]e fele eani secnesse. Muchel sotschipe hit is leosen for an dei{;} tene oer tweolue. Vessche ow hwer{}se neod is as ofte as [gh]e ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... thrust forward blindly into this reek, with naught of comfort on any hand, nor even the dimmest ray of hope visible from any fixed thing on ahead, in like travail of going, in like groaning to the very soul, the bark of my life now lay in the welter, helpless, reft of storm and strife, blind, counseled by no fixed ray ahead. I know not what purpose remained in me, that, like the ship which bore us, I still, dumbly and without conscious purpose, forged onward to some point fixed by reason or desire ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... through the sacred grove Great birds flew, as a dream, troubling the leaves, passing at length. I knew Long expected and long loved, that afar, God of the dim wood, you Somewhere lay, as a child sleeping, a child suddenly reft from mirth, White and wonderful yet, white in your youth, stretched upon foreign earth, God, immortal and dead! Therefore I go; never to rest, or win Peace, and worship of you more, and the dumb ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... separate, leave. Adj. disjoined &c v.; discontinuous &c 70; multipartite^, abstract; disjunctive; secant; isolated &c v.; insular, separate, disparate, discrete, apart, asunder, far between, loose, free; unattached, unannexed, unassociated, unconnected; distinct; adrift; straggling; rift, reft^. [capable of being cut] scissile [Chem], divisible, discerptible^, partible, separable. Adv. separately &c adj.; one by one, severally, apart; adrift, asunder, in twain; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... In a line with them is their handsome, unfortunate grandson Richard II., whose picture hangs beside the altar. Here also is the Coronation Chair, which encloses the Stone of Scone, and upon this "Seat of Majesty," ever since the time of Edward I., who reft the ancient stone from the Scots, all our Sovereigns have been seated at the moment of their coronation. On the west of the royal chapel a screen depicts the legends of the Confessor's life; on the east is the mutilated tomb of Henry ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... nature and man's passions still are made. The music of their motion as they pranced Lulled me to flawless ease as of a God; Never upon me pain or pleasure chanced; Unknown the dew of bliss, or fate's hard rod. Thus dreamed I ... But I know our mother Earth Waits to give back the peace she reft ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to any one who would deliver up the duke, Banastar betrayed him to John Mitton, sheriff of Shropshire, and he was conveyed to Salisbury, where he was beheaded. The ghost of the duke prayed that Banastar's eldest son, "reft of his wits might end his life in a pigstye;" that his second son might "be drowned in a dyke" containing less than "half a foot of water;" that his only daughter might be a leper; and that Banastar himself might "live in death and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... desolate cities. Roman camps still crowned hill and down. The old divisions of the land remained to furnish bounds of field and farm for the new settlers. The Roman church, the Roman country-house, was left standing, though reft of priest and lord. But Rome was gone. The mosaics, the coins which we dig up in our fields are no relics of our English fathers, but of a world which our fathers' sword swept utterly away. Its law, its literature, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... would have shared the same fate, had it not been for an angel of a young woman, daughter of the gentleman of the house. This charming girl was engaged to be married to Crookshanks. Waked by the firing and horrid din of battle in the piazza, she was at first almost 'reft of her senses by the fright. But the moment she heard her lover's voice, all her terrors vanished, and instead of hiding herself under the bedclothes, she rushed into the piazza amidst the mortal fray, with no armor but her love, no covering but her flowing tresses. Happily for ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... itself had been, Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea, Or bloom of myrtle, or murmur of laden bee, Whom lately from his unconsenting breast The Fates, at some capricious blind behest, Intolerably had reft—Eurydice, Dear to the sunlight as Illyrian sea, Sweet as the murmur of bees, or myrtle bloom— And uncompanioned led ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... O God!' cried my father, 'by what art do they thus spirit out of life the solid body? What death do they command that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in a moment from the world of sense? A horror dwells in that thought more ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... of severall of them, called home by death, your bounty will super-adde some able men of your own that may help to lay the foundation of Gods house, according to the Pattern. But for these so unjustly reft from us, not only our necessity, but equity pleads, that either you would send them all over, which were a Work to be parallelled to the glories of the Primitive times, or at least that ye would declare them transportable, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... the chamber, Where lay two souls opprest, One a white lady sighing, "Why am I sad!" To him who sighed back, "Sad, my Love, am I!" And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber, And these two reft of rest. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... things we now pass by Unmarked, because familiar, shall engage The antique reverence of men to be; And that quaint interest which prompts the sage The silent fathoms of the past to gauge Shall keep alive our own past memory, Making all great of ours—the garb we wear— Our voiceless cities, reft of roof and spire— The very skull whence now the eye of fire Glances bright sign of what the soul can dare. So shall our annals make an envied lore, And men will say, 'Thus did ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... a long farewell! O Poverty, Affection's fondest dream how hast thou reft! But though, on thy stern brow no trace is left Of youthful joys, that on the cold heart die, With thee a sad companionship I seek, Content, if poor;—for patient wretchedness, Tearful, but uncomplaining of distress, Who turns to the rude storm her faded ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... room at home where Jack Rupert had come to her, and Isabel's suffused, desperate face as she snatched the letter from its owner. And as a pendant picture she saw the bleak, solitary railway station in the gray December morning, where Gerard, ill and reft of his splendid strength, had waited alone for the girl ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... well,—say, brothers, will ye go? From home and kin for many a year our steps have wander'd wide, And never may our bones be laid our fathers' graves beside. 50 No children have we to lament, no wives to wail our fall; The traitor's and the spoiler's hand have reft our hearths of all. But we have hearts, and we have arms, as strong to will and dare As when our ancient banners flew within the northern air. Come, brothers! let me name a spell shall rouse your souls again, 55 And send the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... bit name! O wae's the heart When nought but that is left, But doubly dear it comes to be When time a' else hath reft, An' youth, an' hope, an' innocence, An' happiness, an' hame, Are a' concentred in a word, That word—a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... ere the tangled web is reft, The kid-gloved villain scowls and sneers, And hapless innocence is left With no assets save ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for you, Barbarian, that if only for a while Fate has reft power from my hands. Oh! this is the bitterest drop in all my cup, that I who for a score of years ruled the world must live to suffer the insults of ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... beneath thy dread expanse, One hopeless, dark idolater of chance, Content to feed, with pleasures unrefined, The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind; Who, mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust, In joyless union wedded to the dust, Could all his parting energy dismiss, And call this barren world ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... girl, who was kneeling, consoling the dog, who, reft 'tween pride and pain, showed a lamentable countenance. Suddenly she looked up and rose, and ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... 228). "The King must be skilful in smiting" (ibid., p. 174). "Fierceness and ambition are the qualities of the King" (ibid., p. 59). "The King who is mild is regarded as the worst of his kind, like an elephant that is reft of fierceness" (ibid., p. 171). Indeed, failure to treat subjects with rigour is visited with penalties as tremendous as failure to protect them. "They forget their own position and most truly transcend it. They disclose the secret counsels of their master; without the least anxiety ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... with Pallas and with Dian cold. Fairer than mortal mould, She moved majestic with celestial gait; And with her hand her robe in royal state Raised, as she went with pride ineffable. Of me I cannot tell, Whether alive or dead I there was left. Nay, dead, methinks! since I of thee was reft, Light of my life! and yet, perchance, alive— Such virtue to revive My lingering soul possessed thy beauteous face, But if that powerful charm of thy great grace Could then thy loyal lover so sustain, Why comes there not again More often or more soon the sweet delight? Twice hath the wandering ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... been the fellest strife, There lay in the moonlight clear The good Earl Douglas, reft of life By a hellish ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... O Prince of True Believers, was thus keening over the folk of the house,[FN341] behold, out came a black slave therefrom and said to me, 'Hold thy peace, O Shaykh! May thy mother be reft of thee! Why do I see thee bemoaning the house in this wise?' Quoth I, 'I frequented it of yore, when it belonged to a good friend of mine.' Asked the slave, 'What was his name?'; and I answered, 'Jubayr bin Umayr the Shaybani.' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... grey web of trouble and care that we call our life. Think of how he gives, who takes away. Out of the bottom of the miry clay I write this; and I look forward confidently; I have faith after all; I believe, I hope, I will not have it reft from me; there is something good behind it all, bitter and terrible as it seems. The infinite majesty (as it will be always in regard to us the bubbles of an hour) the infinite majesty must have moments, if it were no more, of greatness; must sometimes be touched with a feeling for our infirmities, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Braggart words from his lips were tost: "This day the honour of France is lost." Hotly Sir Olivier's anger stirs; He pricked his steed with golden spurs, Fairly dealt him a baron's blow, And hurled him dead from the saddle-bow. Buckler and mail were reft and rent, And the pennon's flaps to his heart's blood went. He saw the miscreant stretched on earth: "Caitiff, thy threats are of little worth. On, Franks! the felons before us fall; Montjoie!" 'Tis ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... Gallia as Gal. Mon. saith.] After that Leir was fallen into age, the two dukes that had married his two eldest daughters, thinking it long yer the gouernment of the land did come to their hands, arose against him in armour, and reft from him the gouernance of the land, vpon conditions to be continued for terme of life: by the which he was put to his portion, that is, to liue after a rate assigned to him for the maintenance ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (2 of 8) - The Second Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... ill!— Isolda! mistress! Heart of mine! What secret dost thou hide? Without a tear thou'st quitted thy father and mother, and scarce a word of farewell to friends thou gavest; leaving home thou stood'st, how cold and still! pale and speechless on the way, food rejecting, reft of sleep, stern and wretched, wild, disturbed; how it pains me so to see thee! Friends no more we seem, being thus estranged. Make me partner in thy pain! Tell me freely all thy fears! Lady, thou hearest, sweetest and dearest; if for true friend you ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... thought it sweet to die, And reft of this gross vision, see at last, As the large soul, quit of the body can, Another soul set ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... the fair person, which in its Bloom was ta'en from me, yet the mode offends. or, Seized him for the fair form, of which in its Bloom I was reft, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... march in strength upon it. And if that city once fall, why what hope is there even for such remnants of his kingdom as still remain faithful south of the Loire? The English will have them all. Already they call our King in mockery 'the King of Bourges;' soon even that small domain will be reft away, and then what will remain for him or for us? If the visions of the maiden had been true, why doth not the Lord strike now, before Salisbury of England can invest the city? If ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... day he lived to see Unbroken, but by one misfortune dire, When fate had reft his mutual heart—but she Was gone-and Gertrude climbed a widowed father's knee. —Gertrude ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... they spoke of strange ill: "A Palace, a Palace; and a great King thereof: A bed, a bed empty, that was once pressed in love: And thou, thou, what art thou? Let us be, thou so still, Beyond wrath, beyond beseeching, to the lips reft of thee!" For she whom he desireth is beyond the deep sea, And a ghost in ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... raise me from my life's long dream. "The whole night through thou liest here Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream, And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste; Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste, And show thee, reft from the embrace of night, The barren world, barren of revelry. Happy art thou, O Man, happily free, Who wilt never see A thousand ages shed their life and light As petals fall at eventide. Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside Into the frozen ocean of the Vast, ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. 'Ah! who hath reft,' quoth he, 'my dearest pledge?' Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain— The golden opes, the iron shuts amain. He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake: 'How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Beechcroft's holy fane The villagers are kneeling. Dreary and mournful seems the shrine Where sound their prayers and hymns divine; For every mystic ornament By the rude spoiler's hand is rent; Scarce is its ancient beauty traced In wood-work broken and defaced, Reft of each quaint device and rare, Of foliage rich and mouldings fair; Yet happy is each spirit there; The simple peasantry rejoice To see the altar decked with care, To hear their ancient Pastor's voice Reciting o'er each ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turn awake From virtue, as a man from his brief love, And, roughly shaken, face the useless truth; No answer to brute fact has e'er been found. Slaves of your slaves, caged in your furnished rooms, Ushered to meals when reft of appetite— Though hungry, bound to wait a stated hour— Your dearest contemplation broken off By the appointed summons to your bath; Racked with more thought for those whom you may flog Than for those ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... by many a bitter sign. 'Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh, I knew but to obtain or die. I die—but first I have possessed, And come what may, I have been blessed. Shall I the doom I sought upbraid? No—reft of all, yet undismayed[eg] But for the thought of Leila slain, Give me the pleasure with the pain, So would I live and love again. 1120 I grieve, but not, my holy Guide! For him who dies, but her who ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... up, And slowly, slowly left him, And sighing said, she could not stay, Since death of life had reft him. ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... words, tripped over his tongue to meet her. What a lovely vision she had made!—"Una donzella non con uman' volto (a gentle lady not of human look)." Well, what next? Ah, something about "Amor, che ha la mia virtu tolto (Love that has reft me of my manly will)." Then should come amore, and of course cuore, and disio, and anch' io! This was very new; it was also very strange what a fascination he found in his phrenetic exercises. Rhyme, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... could at other times go by sea; but now that the Spaniards are seeking to win back the rock of Gibraltar, which we have lately reft from them, and which Marlborough says must never be yielded up again, we cannot safely try that way; for we might well fall into the hands of some Spanish vessel, and languish, unknown and uncared for, in Spanish dungeons. We cannot travel ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... on us even like his brother Death— We know not when it comes—we know it must come— We may affect to scorn and to contemn it, For 'tis the highest pride of human misery To say it knows not of an opiate; Yet the reft parent, the despairing lover, Even the poor wretch who waits for execution, Feels this oblivion, against which he thought His woes had arm'd his senses, steal upon him, And through the fenceless citadel—the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... shrilly that even Slivers started. She was pointing stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one brief second the swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out eastward, in the dead-land of white, a small dark object—the form of ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... still exist some fragments of the ancient Catholic families of Ireland; but, alas! what VERY fragments! They linger like the remnants of her aboriginal forests, reft indeed of their strength and greatness, but proud even in decay. Every winter thins their ranks, and strews the ground with the wreck of their loftiest branches; they are at best but tolerated in the land which gave them birth—objects of curiosity, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Bharata, all sprout forth. And men, unholy in deed and thought, take pleasure in envy and malice. And, O sinless one, the earth then becometh full of sin and immorality. And, O lord of the earth, he that becometh virtuous at such periods doth not live long. Indeed, the earth becometh reft of virtue in every shape. And, O tiger among men, the merchants and traders then full of guile, sell large quantities of articles with false weights and measures. And they that are virtuous do not prosper; while they that are sinful proper exceedingly. And virtue loseth her ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... when the moon is hidden, Have naught but memories of beauty left. Hard, hard to bear! Her lot whom heaven has bidden To live alone, of love and lover reft. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... unjust! Can you behold this fact, this bloody fact, And shower not fire upon the murderer? Ah, peerless Lingua! mistress of heavenly words, Sweet tongue of eloquence, the life of fame, Heart's dear enchantress! What disaster, fates, Hath reft this jewel from our commonwealth? Gustus, the ruby that adorns the ring, Lo, here defect, how shalt thou lead thy days, Wanting the sweet companion of thy life, But in dark sorrow and dull melancholy? But stay, who's this? inhuman ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... to Asturias march'd Beneath Count Julian's banner.... To revenge His quarrel, twice that number left their bones, Slain in unnatural battle, on the field Of Xeres, where the sceptre from the Goths By righteous Heaven was reft." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... sank she / ere she a word did say, And reft of all her pleasure / there the fair lady lay. Soon had Kriemhild's sorrow / all measure passed beyond: She shrieked, when past the swooning, / that did the chamber ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... one, may the Adityas and the Vasus, and the twin Aswins together with the Marutas protect thee, thy virtue being thy best guard.' And addressing thus his dear wife peerless on earth in beauty, Nala strove to go, reft of reason by Kali. Departing and still departing, king Nala returned again and again to that shed, dragged away by Kali but drawn back by love. And it seemed as though the heart of the wretched king ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and to hug the rock that had torn him so rudely; which with both hands he clasped, wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow which had driven him upon it was past; but then again the rock drove back that wave so furiously, that it reft him of his hold, sucking him with it in its return, and the sharp rock (his cruel friend) to which he clinged for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in parting, that he fell off, and could sustain no longer: quite under water he fell, and past the help of fate, there had the hapless ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... prey once raised his pinions An eaglet; A huntsman's arrow came, and reft His right wing of all motive power. Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove, For three long days on anguish fed, In torment writhed Throughout three long, three weary nights; And then was cured, Thanks to all-healing ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... have borne torment rather than betray the secret of the dream, now that it could no longer be a secret lay reft of all but memories and the wild longing to hold to her breast some shred which was her own. He let her wail, but when her wailing ceased helplessly ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... glorious man, whose pious labours Shield from every ill his grateful country! That man, whom friends to adoration love, And enemies revere.—Yes, M'Donald, Even in the presence of the first of men Did I abjure the service of my country, And reft my helmet of that glorious badge Which graces even the brow of Washington. How shall I ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... that the holding of this stone, reft from our crown, had something to do with the hold of these English upon our fair domains ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... then with infinite despondency. Once or twice he pshawed his melancholy vapours, gave a pace back and forward on the oaken floor, with a bent head, a bereaved countenance, and sat down again, indulging in the passionate void that comes to a bosom reft of its joys, its hopes and loves, and only mournful recollection left. A done man! Not an old man; not even an elderly, but a done man none the less, with the heart out of him, and all the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the implacable sea vex me, Lysis hidden beneath a lonely rock, ever sounding harshly by my ear and alongside of my deaf tomb. Why, O fellow-men, have you made my dwelling by this that reft me of breath, me whom not trading in my merchant-ship but sailing in a little rowing-boat, it brought to shipwreck? and I who sought my living out of the sea, out of the sea likewise ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... their confidant in every plan of improvement, their comforter in every anxious doubt, their nurse in every passing ailment, her very smile a refreshment in the weariness of daily toil. "How all that is best in womanhood," wrote the old man, with the enthusiasm which no time had reft from his hearty, healthful genius,—"how all that is best in womanhood is here opening fast into flower from the bud of the infant's soul! The atmosphere seems to suit ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once so fair, So ripe with joy for Daisy Dare, Fate's cruel sickle swept, and left Life of its golden harvest reft. ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge, Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. "Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?" Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). He shook his mitred locks, and ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... &c. v.; discontinuous &c. 70; multipartite[obs3], abstract; disjunctive; secant; isolated &c. v.; insular, separate, disparate, discrete, apart, asunder, far between, loose, free; unattached, unannexed, unassociated, unconnected; distinct; adrift; straggling; rift, reft[obs3]. [capable of being cut] scissile[Chem], divisible, discerptible[obs3], partible, separable. Adv. separately &c. adj.; one by one, severally, apart; adrift, asunder, in twain; in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... race was nearly run. Steep, slippery rocks, shelving down to the edges of a small, deep pool of water, the source of the stream, formed an apparently insurmountable barrier in that direction. Rooted—Heaven knows how!—in some reft or fissure of the rock, grew a wild ash, throwing out a few boughs over the solitary pool; this was all the support Luke could hope for, should he attempt to scale the rock. The rock was sheer—the pool deep—yet still he hurried on. He reached the muddy embankment; mounted its sides; and seemed ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Persephone! Still I fancy I can see Thee amid the daffodils. Golden wealth thy basket fills; Golden blossoms at thy breast; Golden hair that shames the West; Golden sunlight round thy head! Ah! the golden years have fled; Thee have reft, and me have left Here alone, thy ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... were it possible, by any disastrous miracle, ever to dispel the mist which romance has evoked about all human doings." Therefore romance has created the "dynamic illusions" of chivalry and love and common sense and religion and art and patriotism and optimism, and therein "the ape reft of his tail and grown rusty at climbing" has clothed himself so long that as he beholds himself in the delusive mirrors he has for centuries held up to nature he believes he is somehow of cosmic importance. Poor and naked as this aspiring ape must seem to the eye of reason, asks Mr. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... What subtiltee. What newe lust, what beautee, what science, 1255 What wratthe of iuste cause have ye to me? What gilt of me, what fel experience Hath fro me raft, allas! Thyn advertence? O trust, O feyth, O depe aseuraunce, Who hath me reft Criseyde, al my ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... its elfin spell Into the peasant's being! A sublime And fervid mind was his, whose pencil trac'd The grandeur of this scene! Oh! matchless Claude! Around the painter's mastery thou hast thrown An halo of surpassing loveliness! Gazing on thy proud works, we mourn the curse Which 'reft our race of Eden, for from thee, As from a seraph's wing, we catch the hues That sunn'd our primal heritage ere sin Weav'd her dark oracles. With thee, sweet Claude! Thee! and blind Maeonides would I dwell By streams ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... that have long since fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,— Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left; And my native land, whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time When the feelings were young, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... cooper's vessel, that by chance hath been Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft, Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin I noticed lengthwise through his carcass ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... successive waves to pass over their bodies, whilst others, driven wild by the blows, returned them with their hunting-crops and walking-canes. And then, as half the crowd strained to the left and half to the right to avoid the pressure from behind, the vast mass was suddenly reft in twain, and through the gap surged the rough fellows from behind, all armed with loaded sticks and yelling for "Fair play and Gloucester!" Their determined rush carried the prize-fighters before them, the inner ropes snapped like threads, and in an instant the ring was a swirling,' ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but feel, a little ruthlessly. In my personal quality I am of course averse to all great fortunes; and in my civic capacity I am a patriot. But still I feel a sort of grace in wealth a century old, and if I could now have my way, I would not have had their possessions reft from those kindly Pepperrells, who could hardly help being loyal to the fountain of their baronial honors. Sir William, indeed; had helped, more than any other man, to bring the people who despoiled him to a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... upon cloud of crimson and gold, crossed by rapid flashes of pale yellow and white lightning, which momentarily obliterated their rich colours. To the south was a great bank of black thunder-cloud crested with crimson, reft to its deepest darkness by successive flashes of forked lightning. Immediately overhead a narrow curtain of leaden clouds was driven hither and thither by uncertain winds; while below, the prairie and all its varied life lay bathed in ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... smell, it happens thus That not to all thou givest sounds and smells. So, too, since we behold not all with eyes, 'Tis thine to know some things there are as much Orphaned of colour, as others without smell, And reft of sound; and those the mind alert No less can apprehend than it can mark The things that ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... wives of Troy with scattered hair, bearing the gown refused, 480 Sad they and suppliant, whose own hands their very bosoms bruised, While fixed, averse, the Goddess kept her eyes upon the ground. Thrice had Achilles Hector dragged the walls of Troy around, And o'er his body, reft of soul, was chaffering now for gold. Deep groaned AEneas from his heart in such wise to behold The car, the spoils, the very corpse of him, his fellow dead, To see the hands of Priam there all weaponless ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the time, woe worth the day, That reft us of thee, Tabitha! For we have lost, with thee, the meal, The bits, the morsels, and the deal Of gentle paste and yielding dough, That thou on widows did bestow. CHOR. All's gone, and death hath taken Away from us Our maundy; thus Thy ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... my comfort wast thou 'neath the sun, Dark gloom, now I'm reft of thee, filleth my mind; I shall know no more happiness now thou art gone, O my Mary, of wit and of ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... our stone and mold. Powered of genius, panoplied of gold, We build the bastions of our high emprise. But yet, but let the plunging torrent rise, The winds awake on glutted rivers rolled— We die as the reft robin fledgeling dies— We perish as the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall |
