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Smoulder   Listen
verb
Smoulder, Smolder  v. i.  (past & past part. smoldered or smouldered; pres. part. smoldering or smouldering)  
1.
To burn and smoke without flame; to waste away by a slow and supressed combustion. "The smoldering dust did round about him smoke."
2.
To exist in a state of suppressed or smothered activity; to burn inwardly; as, a smoldering feud.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Smoulder" Quotes from Famous Books



... shyings, inconstant as a hare, I could even conceive as a creature possibly noxious. Of the mother I had no thoughts but those of kindness. And indeed, as spectators are apt ignorantly to take sides, I grew something of a partisan in the enmity which I perceived to smoulder between them. True, it seemed mostly on the mother's part. She would sometimes draw in her breath as he came near, and the pupils of her vacant eyes would contract as if with horror or fear. Her emotions, such as they were, were ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... an epidemic is comparable only to fire on shipboard. The wisest expert can but guess at the time or place of its catastrophic explosion. It may thrust forth here and there a tongue of threat, only to subside and smoulder again. Sometimes it "sulks" for so protracted a period that danger seems to be over. Then, without warning, comes swift disaster with panic ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... cannot finish it unless a great change comes over me; and if I make too great an effort to do so, it will be my death; not that I should care much for that, if I could fight the battle through and win it, thus ending a life of much smoulder and a scanty fire in a blaze of glory. But I should smother myself in mud of my own making.... I am not low-spirited, nor fanciful, nor freakish, but look what seem to me realities in the face, and am ready to take whatever may ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... street, and ran at full speed toward the Via Portuensis, whence he had come; the fire seemed to pursue him with burning breath, now surrounding him with fresh clouds of smoke, now covering him with sparks, which fell on his hair, neck, and clothing. The tunic began to smoulder on him in places; he cared not, but ran forward lest he might be stifled from smoke. He had the taste of soot and burning in his mouth; his throat and lungs were as if on fire. The blood rushed to his head, and at moments all things, even the smoke ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... to harden northern hostility to slavery into resolute hatred, a fire which might smoulder long but could not die out. The fugitive slave law for the rendition of runaways found in free States operated cruelly at best, and was continually abused to kidnap free blacks. The owner or his attorney ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... the conclusion that peaceful money-making is the Americans' chief interest in life. Only when they think that their rights have been seriously infringed do they lash themselves into an hysterical war-fever. Why should war passion smoulder in the hearts of a people whose boundaries are so secure that no enemy has ever been seen inside them, nor in all ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... the last red brands of day Smoulder away, And when the vernal showers Bring back the heart to all my valley flowers In the ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... of silica or salts in bagasse has sometimes been ascribed as the reason for the tendency to smoulder in certain cases of soft fiber bagasse. This, however, is due to the large moisture content of the sample resulting directly from the nature of the cane. Soluble salts in the bagasse has also been given as the explanation of such ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... required on Sparkes' farm, and for a few minutes the two men were engrossed in details connected with the management of the estate. But Ann noticed that Coventry seemed curiously abstracted. He allowed his cigarette to smoulder between his fingers till it went out beneath their pressure, and presently, bringing the discussion with Robin to a sudden close, he got up to go. He tendered his farewell somewhat abruptly, mounted his horse, which had been standing ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... war against Austria ended. And not youth only, nor Italians only. The British troops loudly and healthily and almost riotously sang also, all the temporary soldiers and nearly all the regulars. Yet here and there were gloom, and drab, wet blankets, trying to make smoulder those raging fires of joy. In a few officers' Messes, especially among the more exalted units, men of forty years and more croaked like ravens over their impending loss of pay and rank, Brigadier Generals ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... the grey immensity of sky. Bells ring. The bugles of the soldiers blow retreat in convents turned to barracks. Young men roam the streets beneath, singing May songs. Far, far away upon the plain, red through the vitreous moonlight ringed with thundery gauze, fires of unnamed castelli smoulder. As we lean from ledges eighty feet in height, gas vies with moon in chequering illuminations on the ancient walls; Etruscan mouldings, Roman letters, high-piled hovels, suburban world-old dwellings plastered like martins' nests against ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Thabor on the left to Carmel on the far right, above the hills twenty miles away rested an enormous vault of colour; here were no gradations from zenith to horizon; all was the one deep smoulder of crimson as of the glow of iron. It was such a colour as men have seen at sunsets after rain, while the clouds, more translucent each instant, transmit the glory they cannot contain. Here, too, was ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... finger-tips she touched the sand that was in Time's hour-glass, and in the sand she drew a triangle with equal sides, she who was strangely gifted and perverse. Then she drew just such another figure so that the tip of it penetrated the first triangle. The sand began to smoulder there, and vapors rose into the upper part of the hour-glass, and Jurgen saw that all the sand in Time's hour-glass was kindled by a magic generated by the contact of these two triangles. And in ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... cried. "The spark once transmitted may smoulder for generations under ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will flare up to warm the world. God never allows waste. And we fools rub our eyes and wonder, when we see genius come out of the gutter. It didn't begin there. We tell ourselves that Shakespeare was the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... faint Strings, Musician, With thy long lean hand; Downward the starry tapers burn, Sinks soft the waning sand; The old hound whimpers couched in sleep, The embers smoulder low; Across the walls the shadows Come, ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... marvelled at her intractability, which even the fact that Chris was one of those headstrong Wyndhams did not, in her opinion, wholly justify. No open rupture had occurred, but a very decided animosity had begun to smoulder between them, which a very little provocation might at any ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... superior officers; but their attention was averted from political feuds by military operations. In the preceding years, under the appearance of general tranquillity, the embers of war had continued to smoulder in the Highlands: they burst into a flame on the departure of Monk to ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... Then fill your canteen and rejoin us here, and we'll be off for the boundary monument," ordered Garry, thus proving himself to be a real woodsman and Ranger, never forgetting that a stray spark or ember may smoulder for some little time and perhaps start a fire that would sweep through the forests as though they ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... Patience had cooked, and then lie down on the beds of dried leaves stuffed into sacking, drawing over them the blankets and cloaks that had happily been saved in the chest, and nestling on either side of the fire, which, if well managed, would smoulder on for hours. There the two elder ones would teach Rusha her catechism and tell old stories, and croon over old rhymes till both the little ones were asleep, and then would hold counsel on their affairs, settle how to husband their small stock of money, consider ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... got some charcoal fires alight, and is obliged to go and see to them. They have to be kept covered up with wet leaves and earth, so that the wood shall only smoulder," the man said, as he lounged out of the hut to ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... of a twofold character, depending partly on the change effected in its physical properties, and partly on a chemical decomposition produced by the heat. The operation of burning is effected by mixing the clay with brushwood and vegetable refuse, and allowing it to smoulder in small heaps for some time. It is a process of some nicety, and its success is greatly dependent on the care which has been taken to keep the temperature as low as possible during the ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... noticed that one side of Lapierre's face—the side he had managed to keep turned from her—was battered and disfigured by some recent misadventure. Noticed, too, the really fine features of him—the dark, deep-set eyes that seemed to smoulder in their depths, the thin, aquiline nose, the shapely lips, the clean-cut ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... estate, and how a man might enjoy himself in its possession. Then she told him that I was to have all these things when Sir Thurstan died, and thereafter my cousin Jasper hated me. But he let his hate smoulder within him a good while before he showed it openly. One day, however, when we were out in the park with our bows, he began to talk of the matter, and after a time ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... wood, that's you and me, and when I was away from you the fire went down to a smoulder; but now that we're close a wind hits us, and the flames come together and rise and jump and twine together. Two pieces of burnin' wood, but only one flame—d'you feel it?—Oh, Kate, our bodies is ashes and dust, and ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... Under my trembling feet! Back, through the gates of hell, now give me way. I come.—I bring new Breath! Over the trampled shards of mine own clay, That smoulder still, and burn, Lo, I return! Hail, singing Light that floats Pulsing with chorused motes:— Hail to thee, Sun, that lookest on all lands! And take thou from my weak undying hands, A precious thing, unblemished, undefiled:— Here, on my heart uplift, Behold the Gift,— ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody

... perceive God. But, for myself, I know no experience more wholly and deeply religious than when I pass in solitude among deep stream-fed valleys, or over the wide fenland, or through the familiar hamlet, and see the dying day flame and smoulder far down in the west among cloudy pavilions or in tranquil spaces of clear sky. Then the well-known land whose homely, day- long energies I know seems to gather itself together into a far and silent ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... dark, That splendid brow of chastity, That soft and yet subduing light, At which, as at the sudden moon, I held my breath, and thought 'how bright!' That guileless beauty in its noon, Compelling tribute of desires Ardent as day when Sirius reigns, Pure as the permeating fires That smoulder in the ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... little fishing-cove and lifeboat station of Polpeor. In old times this headland was lit by a bonfire beacon, kept burning at night; and there is a story that a Government packet, passing in the days of our French wars, noticing that the sleepy watchman had allowed the fire to dwindle to a mere smoulder, discharged a cannon-ball at the spot to arouse the neglectful watcher. It must be remembered that the Lizard is rendered doubly perilous by a sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was introduced ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... for them to feed upon. Along the entire edge of the burned area the fire crew had made sure there was a wide belt of ground in which no spark remained. Thus, though these glowing embers might continue to smoulder for hours, they could do no harm. The quantity of smoke arising was still considerable, but it did not shut off the vision as the dense clouds of smoke had done during the fire. So the onlookers could get a fair idea of ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... or pipe is filled up with the small sticks and twigs from the trees, and when all is in readiness the contents of the cylinder are fired from the top, the fire slowly burns downwards and sets light to the surrounding logs which in their turn smoulder till they become charcoal. But the match is not applied until the whole mass of wood has been covered up and plastered over with mud, to prevent the entrance of any air. The kiln thus forms an enclosed retort, and the wood ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... Light-hearted Sholto MacKim, the careless lad of the jousting day, the proud young captain of the Earl's guard, was dead with all his vanity. And in his place a man rode southward grim and determined, with vengeful angers a-smoulder in his bosom,—hunger, thirst, love, the joy of living and the fear of death all being swallowed up by deadly hatred of those ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... intelligent, vital, conscious recognition of it. Nor is this law confined to mind alone; all nature attests its presence. All effects are the result of properties or susceptibilities in one thing, solicited by external contact with those of others. The fire no doubt may smoulder in the dull and languid embers; it is when the external breeze sweeps over them, that they begin to sparkle and glow, and vindicate the vital element they contain. The diamond in the mine has the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... sturdy trunk, and breaks it; and the shattered branches fly to all the four corners of the heavens. No wonder, then, like a tree that has lost its crown, his strength is broken and he expects but to smoulder into the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... scorched hole. That inference was obvious, but Colwyn saw more in the two holes than that. It seemed to him that the live ring of flame caused by the close-range shot must have been extinguished by the murderer, or it would have continued to smoulder and expand in an ever-widening circle. And that thought led to another of much greater significance. The shot had been fired at close range to ensure accuracy of aim or deaden the sound of the report. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... also outside the lodges, the July night being hot. They cackled together to the windward side of the lordly males, and did not approach except to throw more wet sticks upon the smoulder. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... The river in the gorge plunged and thundered. The night came down, and a blind glare of dull red seemed to show itself above, revealing nothing else. For the first time since the forest fires had begun to smoulder, the dead air took a sense of motion. It stirred with a long, sluggish heave, and brought with it a dreadful heat, and a noise altogether disproportionate to the pace at which it moved—the sound of a mighty tempest. It ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... "Cynthia's Damages,") that a cordial reception was assured for his latest book "Peace on Earth." It is a pathetic story that he has to tell; of the sorrows of the outcast amid poverty, and the rage against law and government provoked thereby; of the less obvious, but equally poignant, griefs which smoulder beneath the surface of "comfortable circumstances." The plot is, in short, one that in the hands of any other than a thorough man of the world, would fail hopelessly, which makes Mr. Turner's complete and undoubted success all the ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... connected with the dominant church, were never from Celtic times entirely wanting in Britain; and it may have been that, through Richard Rolle and a few other hermits, the feeble spark in the smoking wick continued to smoulder on till it was blown into a flame by Wycliffe. At any rate it was blown into a flame by him and his poor priests; and from their time witness after witness arose to contend for the right of the laity to read the Word of God, and to maintain that ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... hotels the guests may ring in vain now for food. I sleep on credit in a gorgeous bed, a pauper. The room is large. I wish it were smaller, for the firewood comes from trees just cut down, and it takes an hour to get the logs to light, and then they only smoulder, and emit no heat. The thermometer in my grand room, with its silken curtains, is usually at freezing point. Then my clothes—I am seedy, very seedy. When I call upon a friend, the porter eyes me distrustfully. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... leaning towards the flames, "some of these blazing sentimentalists want to release our Huns. But I've put my foot on it; they won't get free till they're out of this country and back in their precious Germany." And I saw the familiar spark and smoulder in ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... fortress, and there were some big logs in the river, which I suppose had been there ever since the work was constructed, and we dragged them out and used them to eke out our fires. They were all water-soaked, and hardly did more than smoulder, but they helped some. At night we would crowd into those little pup-tents, lie down with all our clothes on, wrap up in our blankets and try to sleep, but with poor success. I remember that usually about midnight I would "freeze out," and get up and stand around those sobbing, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... and faded Like an old opera tune Played upon a harpsichord; Or like the sun-flooded silks Of an eighteenth-century boudoir. In your eyes Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes, And the perfume of your soul Is vague and suffusing, With the pungence of sealed spice-jars. Your half-tones delight me, And I grow mad with ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... continued to smoulder, exploding occasionally in insurrection,[477] occasionally blazing up in nobler form, when some poor seeker for the truth, groping for a vision of God in the darkness of the years which followed, found his ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... wood and the fluff together, and rubs them on the larger piece of wood. After four or five minutes the fluff catches fire, without bursting into actual flame, upon which the native continues the rubbing process, blowing gently upon the fluff, until the two pieces of wood begin to smoulder, and can then be blown into a sufficient flame for lighting ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... lazy, care-free manner left his lithe body, and in an instant every muscle stiffened to action. The smoulder of anger in his eyes blazed. He looked ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... dry wood per 200 cubic feet of air space is sufficient for clearance of any gas. The best fuel is split wood, but any fuel which does not smoulder or give off thick smoke can be used. The materials for the fire, e.g., the split wood, newspaper, and a small bottle of paraffine for lighting purposes, should be kept in a sand bag, enclosed in a biscuit ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... bonfire, held the rag to the coals until it began to smoulder, and swung around to point it at the fence. There was no sound. Evidently the bottle did not make as good a pistol as he thought it would. "The light's gone out," he muttered, bringing the bottle cautiously around to look at it. Then he blew it, either to see if he could rekindle ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... went to look, had got withdrawn. A Tuileries, sold to Austria and Coblentz, should have no subterranean passage. Out of which might not Coblentz or Austria issue, some morning; and, with cannon of long range, 'foudroyer,' bethunder a patriotic Saint-Antoine into smoulder and ruin! ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... than his harshness (which did not, even on the representations of his enemies, amount to cruelty) was a certain want of absolute truthfulness, which made it difficult for a beaten foe to trust his promises of forgiveness, and thus caused the fire of civil discord, once kindled, to smoulder on almost interminably. The religious party to which he belonged had probably the majority of the aristocracy of Constantinople on its side, but the mob and the monks were generally against Anastasius, and some scenes very humiliating to the Imperial ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... it grew dark; the horizon began to redden and smoulder; the stream gleamed like a wan thread among the distant fields. It was time to hurry home, to dip in the busy tide of life again. Where was my sad mood gone? The clear air seemed to have blown through ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... foe. Do not disappear from the sight of all so miserably. Make thyself known by thy deeds. Never occupy the intermediate, the low, or the lowest station. Blaze up (like a well-fed fire). Like a brand of Tinduka wood, blaze up even for a moment, but never smoulder from desire, like a flameless fire of paddy chaff. It is better to blaze up for a moment than smoke for ever and ever. Let no son be born in a royal race, who is either exceedingly fierce or exceedingly mild. Repairing to the field of battle and achieving ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... oblation has commenced. You were conscious of some supreme administrative influence everywhere imposing itself. That influence was Ezra Brunt. And yet the man differed utterly from the thing he had created. His was one of those dark and passionate souls which smoulder in this harsh Midland district as slag-heaps smoulder on the pit-banks, revealing their strange fires only in ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, May well see flame where each beholder Acknowledges the embers smoulder. But I, a mere man, fear to quit The clue God gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Because himself discerns all ways Open to reach him: I, a man Able to mark where faith began To swerve aside, till from its summit Judgment drops her damning ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning

... run down in molten streams upon that fatal night when Abbot Ingulf leaped out of bed to see the vast wooden sanctuary wrapt in one sheet of roaring flame, from the carelessness of a plumber who had raked the ashes over his fire in the bell-tower, and left it to smoulder through the night. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... rebellious States, but will also secure to the people of the United States permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion. The bill challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of the rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will always smoulder; of those who think that freedom and permanent peace are inseparable, and who are determined, so far as their constitutional authority will allow them, to secure these fruits by adequate legislation. * * * It is entitled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House, whatever their ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... mocked Grimm, his Dutch temper beginning to smoulder behind his gentle, obstinate little eyes. "If? What do you mean? That's the second time you've—Why do you ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... his sympathy, which was beginning to smoulder, and he felt again the pleasant sense of being in the position of benefactor rather than of the benefited. His eyes rested without shrinking on her sallow face, with the faint bluish tinge to the eyelids, and on her scant drab coloured hair, which was combed smoothly ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... subsoil. All except the subsoil have a dark colour, but the wood and garden soils are probably darker than the field soil. Now weigh out 2 grains of each of these and heat in a dish as you did the soil on p. 4; notice that all except the subsoil go black and then begin to smoulder, but the moulds smoulder more than the soils. Then weigh again and calculate how much has burnt away in each case. Here are some results that ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... day old Tubal Cain Sat brooding o'er his woe; And his hand forbore to smite the ore, And his furnace smoulder'd low. But he rose at last with a cheerful face, And a bright courageous eye, And bared his strong right arm for work, While the quick flames mounted high. And he sang—"Hurra for my handiwork!" And the red sparks lit the air; "Not alone for ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... Beeding on Friday," he said, "because Harold always gives me an admirable glass of vintage port"; and with that he dismissed the subject. Mrs. Pettifer was content to let it smoulder in his mind. She was not quite sure that he was as disturbed as she wished him to be, but that he was proud of Dick she knew, and if by any chance uneasiness grew strong in him, why, sooner or later he would let fall some little sentence; and that little sentence would probably ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... it. There was hair upon the end, which blazed and shrunk into a light cinder, and, caught by the air, whirled up the chimney. Even that frightened him, sturdy as he was; but he held the weapon till it broke, and then piled it on the coals to burn away, and smoulder into ashes. He washed himself, and rubbed his clothes; there were spots that would not be removed, but he cut the pieces out, and burnt them. How those stains were dispersed about the room! The very feet of the dog ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... beholds thy work, Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age, He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check The long wave rolling from the southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires, That smoulder under ocean, heave on high The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs Ripple ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... cases a shell had entered an attic and blown up the roof. Plainly only small shells had been used. We did not realize that many of the houses we passed were just beginning to get comfortably alight, and that there was no one to put out the fires that had only begun so far to smoulder. A few people were about, evidently on their way out of Antwerp, but the vast bulk of the population had already gone. It is said that the population of half a million numbered by the evening only a few hundreds. ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... with the closest attention, fixing upon the narrator her splendid eyes, and in them, despite their feminine beauty and softness, seemed to smoulder a deep fire of resentment at the treatment accorded her kinsman, a luminant of danger transmitted to her down the ages from ancestors equally ready to fight for the Sepulcher in Palestine or for the gold on the borders of the Rhine. In the pause, during which the monk wiped from his wrinkled brow ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... smoulder under his lids again, and he returned himself to servitude. But he grew cunning. There was no need for him to wander through his mind. He had been a fool. He pulled a lever and made his mind revolve ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... whitewashed. A fowling-piece, once a flint-lock, now converted to the percussion cap system, hangs against the beam, and sometimes dried herbs may be seen there too. The use of herbs is, however, going out of date. In the evening when the great logs of wood smoulder upon the enormous hearth and cast flickering shadows on the walls, revealing the cat slumbering in the ingle-nook, and the dog blinking on the rug—when the farmer slowly smokes his long clay pipe with his jug of ale beside him, such an interior might furnish a good subject ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... on from Willey Water along the course of the bright little stream. The afternoon was full of larks' singing. On the bright hill-sides was a subdued smoulder of gorse. A few forget-me-nots flowered by the water. There was a ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... scandal, sickening, grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only an odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment it might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom to let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give the alarm, the first to lead the way to the ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... would be already middle age. It is just the wasteful flare of it that leaves such a dazzle in old eyes, as they look back in fancy to the conflagration of fragrant fire which once bourgeoned and sang where these white ashes now slowly smoulder towards extinction. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... The same idea lies at the bottom of the English superstition that "if a person's hair burn brightly when thrown into the fire, it is a sign of longevity; the brighter the flame, the longer the life. On the other hand, if it smoulder away, and refuse to burn, it is a sign of approaching death" (Henderson's Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... time, two places where the blue-shining did be; and truly it seemed as that a low gas hung to the earth in this part and that, and made a slow burning, having neither noise nor spurtings; but slow, as that it did smoulder and be all to shine and luminous. And oft there did be a strong smelling of a bitter gas, very horrid ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... a question. "Any man could strike a spark from his flint and steel that he had for his gun. And he'd keep striking it till it happened to fly out in the right direction, and you'd catch it in some fluff where it would start a smoulder, and you'd blow on it till you got a little flame, and drop tiny bits of shaved-up dry pine in it, and so, little by little, you'd build ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... a twist that led me face to face with a small whitewashed cottage, smear'd with black stains of burning. For seemingly it had been fir'd in one or two places, only the flames had died out: and from the back, where some out-building yet smoulder'd, rose the smoke that I spied. But what brought me to a stand was to see the doorway all crack'd and charr'd, and across it a soldier stretch'd—a green-coated rebel—and quite dead. His face lay among the burn'd ruins of the door, that had wofully singed ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... inmates burst forth to force their way through their foes, or sell their lives as dearly as they could. The firing almost immediately ceased, and a fearful stillness ensued, almost as unbearable in our present situation as the former tumult. The ruins still continued to smoulder, and we feared even to breathe, lest we should betray ourselves ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... and enduring charm is the appeal to imagination it makes. Moreover, he is an enthusiast in behalf of just that which is distinctively modern: he is a white flame of precisely those heats which smoulder now in the duller breast of the world in general; he worships at all the pet shrines; he expresses the peculiar loves and hatreds of the time. Who is so devout a believer in free speech and free trade and the let-alone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... intervals with a darkly suspicious eye, and, finally, I believe, said something to his nurse about us, I doubt if a solitary person remarked our sudden appearance among them. Plop! We must have appeared abruptly. We ceased to smoulder almost at once, though the turf beneath me was uncomfortably hot. The attention of every one— including even the Amusements' Association band, which on this occasion, for the only time in its history, got out of tune—was arrested by the amazing fact, and the still more ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... that if they were on the bluff, above the tents, they could very easily have thrown down bombs that would smoulder, and soon set the canvas on fire. And there was a high wind last night, and it wouldn't have taken long, once a spark had touched the canvas, for everything to blaze up. They couldn't have picked a ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart

... Bois, how I envy you! You will have an object in life, while I, who feel as though a pent-up volcano were roaring within me, am condemned to let my struggling energies smoulder beneath the ashes of my father's autocratic will! You have heard of his opposition to my studying for the bar? What is to become of me if I am deprived of every stimulating incentive to action?—especially now—now that"—he checked himself suddenly. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... stoves and dreary black holes in the wall and burnt dead heat, and longing for some cheerful household centre, were restoring the old fireplaces and open fires, where the flames could leap and roar, and the logs burn and glow and smoulder,—Knapp, I say, humored this fancy by opening his shop and offering his old-fashioned fenders and andirons to the public. He had bought them at a mere song, and sold them again at a price so reasonable that any purchaser ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... Enraged at being thus baffled by a woman, two of the Indians clambered on the roof of the cabin, and prepared to drop down the wide chimney; for at night the fire in such a cabin was allowed to smoulder, the coals being kept alive in the ashes. But Mrs. Merrill seized a feather-bed and, tearing it open, threw it on the embers; the flame and stifling smoke leaped up the chimney, and in a moment both Indians came down, blinded and half smothered, and were killed by the big resolute ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... those Kokko fires burnt. Indeed, it would be considered ill luck if they did not smoulder through the whole of the night. And it is round such festive flames that the peasant folks gather to dance and sing and play games, and generally celebrate the festival of the ancient god Bael. The large landed proprietors invite their tenantry to these ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... Trouble its mad heart many an hour, Where burn and smoulder the hidden fires, Coupled ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... excitant the physico-chemical action of the brain and the ductless glands cannot be reversed—the effect of the stimulus cannot be recalled, therefore either a purposeful muscular act or a neutralizing act must be performed or else the liberated energy must smoulder in the various parts ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... mostly barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation. Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this day beneath ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... the stones. This work took him so long, that it was four o'clock in the morning when he had quilted the last diamond into the belt. He gave a long sigh of relief as he threw the waste scraps of leather upon the top of the low fire, and watched them slowly smoulder away into black ashes. Then he put the chamois-leather belt under his ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... and had illegally bestowed benefices on great numbers of priests. These all harbored a deep-seated dislike towards Rome, and only awaited a favorable opportunity to renew the breach with her. Thus that sectarian spirit which Photius had kindled continued to smoulder on like a spark beneath the ashes, and spread itself wider and wider, as well among the worst sort of the clergy as among the fickle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... began to smoulder, and the smoke of them rose up in a thin, straight stream, that, striking upon the face of the Bee, clung about her head enveloping it as though with a strange blue veil. Then of a sudden she stretched out her ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard

... parliament, the summons should be to meet at Oxford,[275] where the conservatism of the country would be released from the dread of the London citizens. The spirit which, thirteen years before, had passed the Six Articles Bill by acclamation, continued to smoulder in the slow minds of the country gentlemen, and was blazing freely among the lately persecuted priests. The Bishop of Winchester had arranged in his imagination a splendid melodrama. The session was to ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... roads without slackening speed. In spite of all that I knew, I found myself compelled to admire him. Alfonso sat back, for the most part silent. The melancholy in his face seemed to have deepened. He seemed to feel that he was but a toy in the hands of fate. Yet I knew that underneath must smoulder the ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... upon the north. Unseen, behind their backs, behind the towering mountains to the south, the sun swept toward the zenith of another sky than theirs. Sole spectators of the mighty canvas, they watched the false dawn slowly grow. A faint flame began to glow and smoulder. It deepened in intensity, ringing the changes of reddish-yellow, purple, and saffron. So bright did it become that Cuthfert thought the sun must surely be behind it—a miracle, the sun rising in the north! Suddenly, without ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... his voice was very terrible, for it was the rumble of thunder in the clouds. 'Who is it,' he said, 'making that fire smoulder ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... volcanic, that rather mends it, And the buildings have an aspect lugubrious, That inspires a feeling of awe and terror Into the heart of the beholder, And befits such an ancient homestead of error, Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried away, in the zeal of youth, And sown like tares in the field of truth, To blossom and ripen in other lands. What have we here, affixed to the gate? The challenge of some scholastic ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... followed the parliamentary session of 1690, as quiet as they had ever been within the memory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused much anxiety to the government. The civil war in that wild region, after it had ceased to flame, had continued during some time to smoulder. At length, early in the year 1691, the rebel chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germains that, pressed as they were on every side, they could hold out no longer without succour from France. James had sent them a small quantity of meal, brandy and tobacco, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... poverty, which wrecked the ancient societies; and surely it is a poor way to begin by repeating in our own persons the most ancient blunders of the moral life. To light the fires of lust in our hearts, and let them smoulder there, and imagine we are trying new experiments in psychology! Who does not know the radical woman who demonstrates her emancipation from convention by destroying her nerves with nicotine? Who does not know the genius of revolt who demonstrates ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... deliberate purpose in the clear carrying tones with which she had repulsed Jase Mallows. He had been the first man to make advances, because he was the boldest, but for all her guise of unconsciousness she had seen the passion smoulder in the eyes about her and later others might become emboldened unless they were discouraged by a clear precedent. Heretofore her father's stern repute had safeguarded her. Now she was ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... altars with more than their former radiance. Then, as though it were but a house of cards—as indeed it was nothing else—you gave it one delicate touch and razed it to its foundations. Yet I am afraid those altar lamps were not wholly extinguished. They smoulder beneath the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... and charge me with the overpayment. I cannot finish it unless a great change comes over me; and if I make too great an effort to do so, it will be my death; not that I should care much for that, if I could fight the battle through and win it, thus ending a life of much smoulder and scanty fire in a blaze of glory. But I should smother myself in mud of my own making. I mean to come to Boston soon, not for a week but for a single day, and then I can talk about my sanitary prospects more ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... saw the miracle of life flow back through the channels of the inert body and stiffen the legs to upstanding, and saw consciousness, the mystery of mysteries, flood back inside the head of bone that was covered with hair, smoulder and glow in the opening eyes, and direct the lips to writhe away from the teeth and the throat to vibrate to the snarl that had been interrupted when the stick smashed him down ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... young genius as scientists do wood, which they wish to convert into pure carbon, i.e., cover it up with neglect and discouragement, and pat these down with wholesome discipline, solid study and useful work, and so let the fire smoulder out of sight. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... An indubitable token of life! The spark may smoulder and go out, or it may glow and expand, but see! The four rough fellows, seeing, shed tears. Neither Riderhood in this world, nor Riderhood in the other, could draw tears from them; but a striving human soul between the two can do ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... old square palaces of the North, in which Bernard Langdon, the son of Wentworth, was born. If he had had the luck to be an only child, he might have lived as his father had done, letting his meagre competence smoulder on almost without consuming, like the fuel in an air-tight stove. But after Master Bernard came Miss Dorothea Elizabeth Wentworth Langdon, and then Master William Pepperell Langdon, and others, equally well named,—a string of them, looking, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... on better, liking the looks of the man. He did not observe Saint-Pol on King Philip's left hand; but there he was, flushed, excited, and tensely observant of his enemy. That same night, when they held a council of war, there was seen a smoulder of that fire which you might have decently supposed put out. King Philip came down in a mighty hurry, and sat himself in the throne; Montferrat, Burgundy, and others of that faction serried round about him. The English and Angevin chiefs were furious, and the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... over his war-shield rolled, And cumbered his sword for a season, and the many blades fell on, And sheared the cloudy helm-crest and rents in his hauberk won, And the red blood ran from Gunnar; till that Giuki's sword outburst, As the fire-tongue from the smoulder that the leafy heap hath nursed, And unshielded smote King Gunnar, and sent the Niblung song Through the quaking stems of battle in the hall of Atli's wrong: Then he rent the knitted war-hedge till by Hogni's side he stood, And kissed him amidst of the spear-hail, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... Ay, do you not remember Envying his immunity of flight, As, rising from his throne of rock, he sail'd Above the mountains far into the West, That burn'd about him, while with poising wings He darkled in it as a burning brand Is seen to smoulder in the fire ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... pocket 'n' hot's a footstove. Three or four Injuns talkin' 'n' smokin'. Scrap 'f a fire smoulder'in a kind 'f standee ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... leaf-tree wall was an obstruction behind which the men worked. When the ground began to smoulder they brought water in their vessels and dampened it. When a tree became wreathed in smoke they felled it at once, threw it down and put out the flames. Where the fire crept along the heather, they beat it with the wet pine ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... toughen the fibre, were split into thongs and bound the hands securely in a solid mass, layer upon layer like shingles. Crude as it may appear, this was a most serviceable roof, being both rain proof and impervious to heat, while, owing to its compactness, a live coal of fire laid upon it would smoulder but not ignite. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... made up so that it might smoulder all through the night, and the great kettle had been filled and placed over it ready for the morning; and then they all sat upon box, basket, and rug spread upon the grass, talking in a low voice, listening to the crop, crop of the cattle, and watching ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... point of his sandaled foot he touched the dimpled, shiny back of the nearest boy—"Up, and away! ... Fetch rose-water and sweet perfumes hither! By the gods! ye have let the incense in yonder burner smoulder!"—and he pointed to a massive brazen vessel, gorgeously ornamented, from whence rose but the very faintest blue whiff of fragrant smoke—"Off with ye both, ye basking blackamoors! bring fresh frankincense,—and palm-leaves ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... the first time, in its utter wretchedness. Had that, then, been life such as her thoughts had depicted to her, had that been the mystic happiness such as she had yearned for?... And a dull feeling of resentment against everything and everybody, against the living and the dead, began to smoulder within her bosom. She was angry with her dead husband and with her dead father and mother; she was indignant with the people amongst whom she was now living, whose eyes were always upon her so that she dared not allow herself any freedom; she was hurt with Frau Rupius, who had ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... were glittering in the sky cleared by the tempest. Sisa sat on the wooden bench, her chin in her hand, watching some branches smoulder on her hearth of uncut stones. On these stones was a little pan where rice was cooking, and among the cinders were three ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal



Words linked to "Smoulder" :   experience, smolder, fire, combust, feel



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