"Cliff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... installed on the premises of each customer then connected. The first bill for lighting, based upon the reading of one of these meters, amounted to $50.40, and was collected on January 18, 1883, from the Ansonia Brass and Copper Company, 17 and 19 Cliff Street. Generally speaking, customers found that their bills compared fairly with gas bills for corresponding months where the same amount of light was used, and they paid promptly and cheerfully, with emphatic encomiums of the new light. During November, 1883, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... loosed herself from her companion's clasp, and stood upright upon the edge of the cliff, clasping her hands together and saying low, as to herself, 'Father, Father!' as one who cannot refrain from that appeal, but who knows the Father loves best, and that to intercede is vain; and longing was in her face and joy. For it was he, and she knew that he could ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Ganges there is a cliff called Vulture-Crag, and thereupon grew a great fig-tree. It was hollow, and within its shelter lived an old Vulture, named Grey-pate, whose hard fortune it was to have lost both eyes and talons. The birds that roosted in the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... curiosities of Puna, which gave me intense pleasure. It lies at the base of a cone crowned with a heiau and a clump of coco palms. Passing among bread-fruit and guavas into a palm grove of exquisite beauty, we came suddenly upon a lofty wooded cliff of hard basaltic rock, with ferns growing out of every crevice in its ragged but perpendicular sides. At its feet is a cleft about 60 feet long, 16 wide, and 18 deep, full of water at a temperature of 90 degrees. This has an absolute transparency ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the walls of the old Castle of Weissenstein, and then in steep curves up the cliff which blocks the head of the valley, and along a cut in the face of the rock, into the steep, narrow Tauernthal, which divides the Glockner group from the Venediger. How entirely different it was from the region of the Dolomites! There the variety of colour was endless and the change ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the captain, "we were covering the flank of the main army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor's command. We came to a bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns held one ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... lying flat on his chest could Martin look down over the edge of the awful cliff, which is one of the highest in the world; and then the sight of the sea swirling and beating at the foot of that stupendous black precipice, sending up great clouds of spray in its fury, made him shudder, it was so awful to look upon. But he could not stir from that spot; there he stayed ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... this time that a certain wild, rude valley, in the neighborhood of Five Forks, had become famous as a picturesque resort. Travellers had visited it, and declared that there were more cubic yards of rough stone cliff, and a waterfall of greater height, than any they had visited. Correspondents had written it up with extravagant rhetoric and inordinate poetical quotation. Men and women who had never enjoyed a sunset, a tree, or a flower, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... to murder you," advised Saxham, facing the passionate emotion of the younger man as a basalt cliff might oppose a breaking wave, "you had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... "shelter cave," is a room or recess formed by atmospheric erosion in the face, usually at the base, of a cliff. The depth from front to back, under the projecting or overhanging unremoved bedrock above, is generally much less than the length as measured along the face of the bluff. They are nearly always dry, more or ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... sickening skidding of wheels, Winthrop whirled the car round a corner and into the Lafayette Boulevard, that for miles runs along the cliff of ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... I was thinking of that happy time this very morning," said Sir John. "Of Arezzo, where we were kept for three days by rain, which I believe is falling there still. Of Cortona, with that wonderful little restaurant on the edge of the cliff, whence you see Thrasumene lying like a silver mirror in the plain below. Of Perugia, the august, of Gubbio, Citta di Castello, Borgo San Sepolcro, Urbino, and divers others. If you go for a drive in Italy, you still may meet with humours of the road ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... makes me recollect when I returned to my mother, a'ter the first three years of my sea service. I borrowed the skiff from the skipper.—I was in a Greenland-man, my first ship, and pulled ashore to my mother's cottage under the cliff. I thought the old soul would have died with joy." Here old Tom was silent, brushed a tear from his eye, and, as usual, commenced a ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... even the mighty Babylon, stretched onward along the beach, headland after headland, till the last sank abruptly in the far distance, and only the wide ocean stretched beyond. I passed along the insulated piles of cliff that rise thick along the basis of the precipices—now in sunshine, now in shadow—till I reached the opening of one of the largest caves. The roof rose more than fifty feet over my head—a broad stream of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... illustration (from the painting by Gegan, a local artist, executed many years since) gives a good idea of the scenery of this beautiful district. It also reproduces the profile of a huge chalk cliff not now visible, but which existed about half a century ago, having a curious resemblance to the head of a lion, and forming at the time a ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... of ground on the river's bank, with a perpendicular cliff at the end of it, was selected as the shooting-ground, and, on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, the competitors began ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... out the round pale moon, and star succeeding star. Star followed star, though yet day's golden light Upon the hills and headlands faintly stream'd; To their own pine the twin-doves took their flight; From crag and cliff the clamorous seamews screamed, In glade and glen the cottage windows gleam'd; Larks left the cloud, for flight the grey owl sat; The founts and lakes up silver radiance steamed; Winging his twilight journey, hummed the gnat— The drowsy beetle droned, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... fog curtain, of ghostly outline, a jutting cliff appeared and Sammy luffed slightly. On both sides of us the seas were dashing up some tremendous rocks, but directly ahead there was an opening between the combers that hurled themselves aloft, roaring and impotent, to fall back into seething masses of spume. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine, Jewels ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... are no appointed meal-times. Moreover, now and then, one must go to buy tobacco, a matter one can trust to no hireling, lest he get it dry. It cannot be always seaside, even as it cannot be always May, and through the gaps thought creeps in. Going over the cliff and along the parade, and down by the circulating library to the cigar divan, where they sell Parique tobacco, the swinging of one's legs seems to act like a pendulum to the clockwork of one's brain. One meditates all the way, and chiefly on how few people there are who can really—to ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... himself on the brow of a precipice which descended at an almost vertical inclination for a hundred and fifty feet. Here was a frightful dilemma. To right and left the Indian runners could be seen, their lines extending to the verge of the cliff. What was to be done? surrender to the Indians, attempt to dash through their line, or leap the cliff? Each way promised death. But death by fall was preferable to death by torture. And a forlorn hope of life remained. The ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... talk, which seemed to play like lightning round a cliff at midnight, revealing not only measureless heights and soundless depths, but the greasy wrappings and refuse bottles of a picnic, the listener had an intuition that Heine's mind did indeed, as he claimed, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of happiness among people who live in sepulchres, among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation which they know nothing of." In the deserts of Borgoo the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of bats and to the whistling of birds. Again, the Bornoos have no proper names; individuals are called after their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and have ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... possesses. The headland outside Havre is composed of ochreish rock which appears in patches where the grass will not grow. The heights are occupied by no less than three lighthouses only one of which is now in use. As the ship gets closer, a great spire appears round the cliff in the silvery shimmer of the morning haze and then a thousand roofs ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... made his home on the cliff of a mountain, so that he could look down on all below and see what was going on. Every day he went down to the Green Forest and sat on the tallest tree while he listened to the complaints of the other birds ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the leading novelists of the city—for Chicago, be it known, had a nourishing and characteristic literature of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang into fame. The author of The Cliff-Dwellers is alleged to have said that the Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of art, and that in this respect Chicago was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon. "Alleged," I say, for reports of lectures in the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... afternoon, and she set forth light-footed upon the adventure, leaving Cinders to his monotonous but all-engrossing pastime. A wide line of rocks stretched between her and her goal, which was dimly discernible in the deep shadow of the cliff—a mysterious opening that had the appearance of a low ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... of the Pali ever since we landed. It is a cliff approached by a gorge, whence one of those unpronounceable and unspellable kings once drove his enemies headlong into the sea. We could not miss a scene so provocative of sensations as this, so several of us teachers and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Harman's affair, I suppose. The girls in his London tea-shops have of course to supplement their wages by prostitution—probably don't object to that nowadays considering the novels we have. And his effect on the landscape——Until they stopped him he was trying very hard to get Shakespear's Cliff at Dover. He did for a time have the Toad Rock at Tunbridge. Still"—something like a sigh escaped from Toomer,—"his private life appears to be almost as blameless as anybody's can be.... Thanks no ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... all one could see through the cloud of dust. Suddenly there shot swiftly through the air toward the south, toward the Kaposias' goal, the ball. There was a general cheer from their adherents, which echoed back from the white cliff on the opposite side of ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... the sandy cove Beach-peas blossom late. By copse and cliff the swallows rove Each calling to his mate. Seaward the sea-gulls go, And the land birds all are here; That green-gold flash was a vireo, And yonder flame where the marsh-flags grow Was a ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... and looked out. The sight was not pleasing. The rugged rock on which the Inn was perched dropped beneath him thirty feet to the moat below, and, though his eyes eagerly scanned the face of the cliff, he could see no possibility, even for one so nimble as himself, of climbing down it successfully. To jump such a height would be to end as a jelly and be of no service to Nevers. For a few wild ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... physicians are unable to relieve Hilda Caine, 11 years old, who had had spells of hiccoughing every day for two months, scores of suggestions to help her have been mailed to Sea Cliff, N. Y., the child's home, but so far none has proved effective. Some of the seizures, which occur several times each day, last an hour or more. It is said the girl cannot live long unless she ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... United States Indian agent for the Chippewas of Lake Superior, Red Cliff, Wisconsin, the following detailed account ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... a place where the shore was much narrowed. Here the sea came to lap the foot of the steep cliff, leaving a passage no wider than a couple of yards. Between two boldly projecting rocks appeared the mouth of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... blaz'd Fierce as a comet: which with torrid heat And vapours, as the Libyan air adust, Begun to parch that temperate clime; whereat In either hand the hast'ning angel caught Our ling'ring parents, and to the eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast To the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... upward, to assure herself that her mother, who also rose betimes, was not yet stirring. So she tripped along, singing from very glee, to secure a companion, and let out Sultan; and a few moments afterwards, they were scouring over the grass, and descending the rude steps that wound down the cliff to the smooth sea sands. Evelyn was still a child at heart, yet somewhat more than a child in mind. In ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... grandest of all natural objects seemed to me incongruous and discordant; and I was so annoyed at finding myself by the sea-side and yet still surrounded with all the glare and gayety of London, that I think I wished myself at the bottom of the cliff and Brighton at the bottom of the sea. However, we walked on and on, beyond the Parade, beyond the town, till we had nothing but the broad open downs to contrast with the broad open sea, and then I ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... it were not! Standeth, instead of the troop of young warriors, Stained with the bodies of dragons, a wall— The men were cut down in their pride by the spearpoints— Blood-greedy weapons—but noble their fall. Earth is enwrapped in the lowering tempest, Fierce on the stone-cliff the storm rushes forth, Cold winter-terror, the night shade is dark'ning, Hail-storms are laden with death from the north. All full of hardships is earthly existence— Here the decrees of the Fates have their sway— Fleeting is treasure and fleeting is friendship— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thousands, a gold mosaic set into a high purple dome. Off to the south a wide blur of artificial light hung above the city, the visible expression, as it were, of the low, human roar of life, audible even in this sheltered nook. To the north, almost it seemed within touch of his hands, the temple cliff rose black, formidable, and impressive, a gigantic wall of silence. The camphor tree overhead was thrown out darkly against the stars, like its own shadow. The velvety boom of the temple bell, striking nine, held in its echoes the color and ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... a voice that rang from cliff to plain; and springing forward, he seized Houseman with a giant's grasp,—"behold ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now became intense, for the Indians declared that the owner of the coat was alive, and the one who was wearing it, and who seemed to exercise some authority over the others, began an explanation in signs. He pointed to a cliff that overhung the stony beach at the mouth of the river, and, lifting his hand high above his head; brought it down with a violent gesture, as if to simulate a fall. He next motioned toward the canoes, talking volubly all the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... cliff precipitous, Well-nigh impassable its steep ascent. How hard the task and how laborious To scale the cliff! Yet forth the order went. Then, in the darkness, stealthily they creep, And silently ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... my small command, and, first repeating to them their instructions, led the way up the steep slope of the cliff. It was very dark, the moon—what there was of her—having set nearly an hour before; but, by dint of great caution and taking our time about it, we safely reached the top of the cliff in about ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... clouds of evening were gathered round him as he hastened to his rest. And Kephalos said, "Here must I rest, also, for my journey is done, and Prokris is waiting for me in the brighter land." There on the white cliff he stood, and just as the sun touched the waters, the strength of Kephalos failed him, and he sank gently into ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... mountains still I dream, And mouldering vestiges of war; By time-worn cliff or classic stream Would rove,—but prudence holds a bar. Conic then, O Health, I'll strive to bound My wishes to this airy stand; 'Tis not for me to trace around The wonders of ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... the smugglers' ferocious idea of humour. They would hang any undesirable man, like these runners, whom it would make too great a stir to murder outright, over the edge of a low bank, and swear to him that he was clawing the brink of Shakespeare's Cliff or any other hundred-foot drop. The wretched creatures suffered all the tortures of death before they let go, and, as a rule, they never ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sit up on wakeful nights, with sleeping banks on either side, the silence is broken only by an occasional cry of a jackal in the woods near some village, or by fragments undermined by the keen current of the Padma, that tumble from the high cliff-like ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... amongst the golden flowers down the side of the cliff. The seagull cried to its mate, the waves dashed up their foam till it mixed with the silvery light, and falling like showers of dew, lay on the lips of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... of the ground was in him, the red earth; The smack and tang of elemental things; The rectitude and patience of the cliff; The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves; The friendly welcome of the wayside well; The courage of the bird that dares the sea; The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; The pity of the snow that hides all scars; The secrecy of streams that make their way Under the mountain to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... not say that I was on the point of throwing myself from yonder cliff to escape the ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... looked upon on the one side by a prison, on the other by the windows of a quiet hotel; below, under a steep cliff, it beholds the traffic of many lines of rail, and the scream of the engine and the shock of meeting buffers mount to it all day long. The aisles are lined with the enclosed sepulchres of families, door beyond door, like houses in a street; and in the morning the shadows of the prison turrets, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the reprobate to his sanctuary in the cloud, and lo he is perched on the pinnacle of a precipice an hundred fathoms high. One ketch with thy foot, or toss with thy finger, shall throw him from thy sight into the foldings of the cloud, and he shall be no more seen till found at the bottom of the cliff dashed to pieces. Make haste, therefore, thou loiterer, if thou wouldst ever prosper and rise to eminence in the work ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... more. This bank was steep, on account of the down; the other cultivated, the corn being already high. The cuckoo sang (she loves the near neighbourhood of man) and flew over the channel towards a little copse. Almost suddenly the creek wound round under a low chalk cliff, and in a moment Felix found himself confronted by another city. This had no wall; it was merely defended by a ditch and earthwork, without ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... cliff, like turret raised on high, With light-house mingling with the summer sky, How long in lonely grandeur hast thou stood, Braving alike the wild winds and the flood? What howling gales have swept those shores along, What ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Pendeen is the church town of Morvah, "the place by the sea", which has traditions relating to mermaids. Northward is Porthmorna, or Porth Moina, the Monk's Port, formed on one side by the fine cliff of Bosigran, where the rocks of granite have a pale reddish tint; so that when lit up by the sun they have a very brilliant appearance. A few years ago the bleak hills and towering cliffs in this locality were a ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... going, and rode as if he had a spare neck at any rate. When we got near the pass to the mountain, I called out to him that he'd better pull up and get off. Do you think he'd stop or make a sign he heard me? Not a bit of it. He just started the old horse down when he came to the path in the cliff as if it was the easiest road in the world. He kept staring straight before him while the horse put down his feet, as if it was regular good fun treading up rugged sharp rocks and rolling stones, and turf wasn't worth going over. It seemed to me as if he wanted to kill himself ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... were boasting of their skill at climbing. They contended as to who could climb the steepest rock, and at last they made a bet. Kolbiorn wagered his gold neck ring against Thorgils' best bronze drinking horn. After this they both climbed the high cliff. Thorgils went so far that he was in danger of falling down, and he returned in fear, saving himself with difficulty. Kolbiorn climbed up to the middle of the precipice; but there he dared go neither forward nor backward, nor even move, for ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... work assignments. Most of them had been with his father six years ago and he knew them. They hadn't done any growing up in the meantime. They climbed into an airjeep and floated out over the edge of the plateau, letting down past the sheer cliff to where the lower lateral shaft had been opened. A great deal of rock had been shoveled and bulldozed away to expose it; it was twenty feet high and forty wide. Anse simply steered the jeep inside and up ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... To catch this nocturne in the train, the exact tint of the blue-black night, framed in the window of our lamp-lit carriage; or the soft night effect on field and cliff and sea as we pass. No academical pot shot this, for we are swinging south down the east coast past Cockburnspath (Coppath, the natives call it) at sixty miles the hour, so we must be quick to get any part of the night firmly ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... where the hills were hills indeed—hills with mighty skeletons of stone inside them; hills that looked as if they had been heaped over huge monsters which were ever trying to get up—a country where every cliff, and rock, and well had its story—and Kirsty's head was full of such. It was delight indeed to sit by her fire and listen to them. That would be after the men had had their supper, early of a winter night, and had gone, two of them to the village, and the other to attend ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Lincoln Farm that falls from a cliff was a place associated with Indian cruelty. It was here in the pool of water below the cliff that the Indians would throw babies of the settlers. If the little children could swim or the settlers could rescue them they escaped, otherwise they were drowned. The Indians would ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... and look ahead at the rock yonder, jist under the tall cliff. There's a bear a-sittin' there, and if we can only get ashore afore he sees us, we're sartin sure ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... then Blancandrins and Guene Till each by each a covenant had made And sought a plan, how Rollant might be slain. Cantered so far by valley and by plain To Sarraguce beneath a cliff they came. There a fald-stool stood in a pine-tree's shade, Enveloped all in Alexandrin veils; There was the King that held the whole of Espain, Twenty thousand of Sarrazins his train; Nor was there one but did his speech contain, Eager for news, till they might hear the tale. Haste ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... his aunt, Raisky took his cap and umbrella and hurried into the park, anxious to see the landscape under the shadow of the storm, to find new ideas for his drawings, and to observe his own emotions. He descended the cliff, and passed through the undergrowth by a winding, hardly perceptible path. The rain fell by bucketfuls, one flash of lightning followed another, the thunder rolled, and the whole prospect was veiled in mist and ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... this trail but once, and he was trying to locate the cliff from which a flock of sheep had been hurled by cattle-men some years before, when he perceived a thin column of smoke rising from a rocky hillside. With habitual watchfulness as to fire, he raised his glass to his eyes and studied the spot. It was evidently ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... passed over a rough tract of ground towards a rocky cliff that formed part of the Castle boundary. In this cliff was a deep cavern, on one side of which was a stout staple with a chain attached, only a portion of which was visible. Here their young host stopped and gave a low whistle. Instantly there was a rattle of the chain, and the next moment all ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... is our refuge from our own consciousness of weakness. We look up, as a climber may do in some Alpine ravine, upon the smooth gleaming walls of the cliff that rises above us. It is marble, it is fair, there are lovely lands on the summit, but nothing that has not wings can get there. We try, but slip backwards almost as much as we rise. What is to be done? Are we to sit down at the foot of the cliff, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, where the winter roses linger and open dew-drenched and rain-washed in the watery sunbeams—there we see, hear, and welcome the birds that stay. Then and there we ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... On the cliff beetling above the bay, where she sat to look out over the sad northern sea, lit with the fishing sail they had seen before, and the surge washed into the rocky coves far beneath them, he threw himself at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Pier, watching the tireless waves dance to the cappriccio of wind and sun, there was but little evidence to show that the portcullis, recently hoist, had for four years been down. Under the shadow of the Shakespeare Cliff the busy traffic of impatient Peace fretted as heretofore. The bristling sentinels were gone: no craft sang through the empty air: no desperate call for labour wearied tired eyes, clawed at strained nerves, hastened the scurrying feet: no longer from across the Straits ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... flogged and thrown into the Dnieper. Since it (p. 043) was made of wood, it soon came to the surface, which was looked upon as a miracle by the people who rushed down to worship it. But Vladimir's soldiers gave it another bath, and this time it was caught by the current and drifted away. The cliff where it stood is still known at Kief as "the devil's leap," and the spot where Perun floated ashore, is shown ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... their nectar on 'Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habits of ants from so great a height should be but a mild diversion when coupled with the soft ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and their families. I have the Union and the Seamen's Hospital. I used to be alone here, but since they tried to make this into a fashionable sea-side resort a man has set up on the cliff, and the well-to-do people go to him. I only have those who can't afford to pay for ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... on the edge of the little cliff, above the road between the dark mountains and the sea black with depth. Too late for any passer-by; as far from what men thought and said and did as the very night itself with its whispering warmth. And he conjured up her face, making certain of it—the eyes, clear and brown, and wide apart; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ran our boat to the lee of the island, and: whilst she was steadied by the same primitive method of holding on to branches of manuka and other scrub, I scrambled out and up a little cliff, where a goat could hardly have found footing, till I reached a spot big enough to stand on, from whence I anxiously watched the disembarkation of some of the provisions, and of the gridiron and kettle. In a few moments we were all ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... the brine made amends for miles of lodgings, for breaks laden with boisterous trippers, for tram cars and piano-organs. Here at length was Sunrise Terrace, a little row of plain houses on the top of the cliff, with sea-horizon vast before it, and soft green meadow-land far as one could see behind. Bidding his driver wait, Lashmar knocked at the door, and stood tremulous. It was half-past twelve; Iris might or might not have returned ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... said the coastguard simply. He pointed up at the old graveyard on the cliff above us. Then, touching my elbow, he turned away with me toward the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... coming in," Colon told him. "It always is, when you're mounting a steep cliff; because then you can see just where you're going. When starting down you hardly know where to put each foot, and when you look to see, it makes you giddy to find how ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... more, as in a dream, into the Saxon Switzerland. Above us stretch the boldest ranges of lofty precipices, and deep amid the woods are heard the voices of children. These come from a few workmen's houses, couched at the foot of a cliff that rises high and bright amid the sun. That is Wardlow Cop; and there we mean to halt for a moment. Forward lies a wild region of hills, and valleys, and lead-mines, but forward goes no road, except such as you can make yourself through the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... summer-house which I had been fond of in my childhood. In my opinion that round, heavy summer-house on its clumsy columns, which combined the romantic charm of an old tomb with the ungainliness of a Sobakevitch,* was the most poetical nook in the whole town. It stood at the edge above the cliff, and from it there was a splendid ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... druidical antiquities in the country. These ruins lay at the back of a picturesque little bay, scooped out in the rocky wall that borders the eastern shore of the peninsula. Their shapeless masses are strewn over one of those grass-clad spurs that extend here and there to the foot of the cliff like giant buttresses. They are reached, despite the steepness of the hill, by an easy winding road that leads, with long, meandering turns, down to the yellow, sandy beach of the little bay. Clotilde and Julia made a sketch of the old Celtic temple while the gentlemen ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... meet his beloved—and found her in Luigi's arms. Tragedy followed, of course. Jose first tore the girl away and then stabbed her to the heart, afterwards turning on Luigi. They struggled—on the edge of the cliff; and Luigi proving the stronger, Jose was hurled over the edge into ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... he received many requests for aid. Tiberius consequently conceived a contempt for those still left in the fortress and thinking that he could conquer them without loss paid no further heed to the nature of the country but proceeded straight up the cliff. Since there was no level ground and the enemy would not come down against them, he himself took his seat on a platform in full view in order to watch the engagement (for this would cause his soldiers to contend more vigorously), and to render opportune assistance, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... low hills like a soft cloud of bluish-gray, clinging closely to every line of every peaceful slope. Stillness everywhere. Still cattle browsing in the distance; sheep asleep in the far shade of a cliff, shadowing the still stream; even the song of birds distant, faint, restful. Peace everywhere, but little peace in the heart of the mother to whose lips was raised once more the self-same cup that she had drained so long ago. Peace everywhere ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... another and been held fast. Or it was like a mass of blackened skeletons of drowned giants which the pool wanted to throw up on the land. Arms and legs writhed about one another, the long fingers dug deep into the very cliff to get a hold, the mighty ribs formed arches, which held up primeval trees. It had happened, however, that the iron arms, the steel-like fingers with which the pines held themselves fast, had given way, and a pine ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... the effect on the spectator's mind, had the buildings been striped vertically instead of horizontally; nor did I then know, or in the least imagine, how much practical need there was for reference from the structure of the edifice to that of the cliff; and how much the permanence, as well as propriety, of structure depended on the stones being couchant in the wall, as they had been in the quarry: to which subject I wish to-day ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... on north next day with no definite plan, came to the lower lake and the old fort on the cliff, and, taking a great liking to the place, lingered in the neighborhood from day to day. They happened one evening upon a queer, secluded public-house across the lake, where they fell in with a long, lean, leathery young native, who appeared to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... a rocky headland and below us would be the sea, eternally young and dimpling like a maiden's cheek; but the crags above were eternally old and all gashed with wrinkles and seamed with folds, like the jowls of an ancient squaw. Then for a distance we would run right along the face of the cliff. Directly beneath us we could see little stone huts of fishermen clinging to the rocks just above high-water mark, like so many gray limpets; and then, looking up, we would catch a glimpse of the vineyards, tucked into man-made terraces along the upper cliffs, like bundled herbs ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the old crater of Somma: Monte Nuovo, a mountain west of Naples; Somma, a mountain north of Vesuvius which with its lofty, semicircular cliff encircles the active cone ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... lonely one. No habitation other than an isolated fisher's cottage was to be seen between the little fishing-port at the northern curve away to the south, where beyond a waste of sandhills and strand another tiny fishing-village nestled under a high cliff, sheltering it from northerly wind. For centuries the lords of Lannoy had kept their magnificent prospect to themselves; and though they had treated their farmers and cottagers well, none had ever been allowed to settle in the great park to seaward ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... I know pretty well whereabout it is. We always set sail at night and came in at night, and none was allowed on deck except the helmsman and two or three old hands till morning; but when I was ashore and on duty at the lookout I noticed three trees growing together just at the edge of the cliff at the point where it was highest, two miles away from the entrance to the cove. They were a big un and two little uns, and I feel sure if I were to see them again ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... was up one of the neighboring hills to a cliff known as the Bout du Puig, which commanded a wonderful view up and down the valley. Here they would take their lunch and ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... to Jerusalem, and made an end of Colbrand and the Dun Cow, his fancy was to take alms in disguise from his own fair lady, at his own castle gate, and then retire (tous les gouts sont respectables) to a certain hole or cave called Guy's Cliff, where he amused himself (in the intervals of rheumatism) for the rest of his natural life in counting his beads and ruminating on his sins, which, as he was a great traveller and a hero, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... Calc. Edit. by misprint "Maktab." Jabal Mukattam is the old sea-cliff where the Mediterranean once beat and upon whose ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a remarkable development of muscle, while it was evident, from the manner in which he handled his oar, that he was the more practised rower of the two. The boat, urged by their powerful strokes, appeared to fly through the water, while cliff and headland (we were rowing along shore about half a mile from the beach) came in view and disappeared again like scenes in some moving panorama. We must now have proceeded some miles, yet still the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... himself on it, had scarcely a moment to congratulate himself, on seeing, amid a wild chaos of cliffs and woods, the gloomy ruins of Geierstein, with smoke arising, and indicating something like a human habitation beside them, when, to his extreme terror, he felt the huge cliff on which he stood tremble, stoop slowly forward, and gradually sink from its position. Projecting as it was, and shaken as its equilibrium had been by the recent earthquake, it lay now so insecurely poised, that its balance was entirely destroyed, even by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... the tried and true comrades of camp and trail are in the saddle, bent on seeing with their own eyes some of the wonderful sights to be found in that section of the Far Southwest, where the singular cave homes of the ancient Cliff Dwellers dot the walls of the Great Canyon of the Colorado. In the strangest possible way they are drawn into a series of happenings among the Zuni Indians, while trying to assist a newly made friend: all of which makes interesting reading. If there could ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... climbed well up the cliff; and presently they came on the open plateau on which stood Castle Dare, with its gaunt walls and its rambling courtyards, and its stretch of damp lawn with a few fuchsia-bushes and orange-lilies, that did not give a very ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... The cliff at Newport—the long winding path that follows it from the great beach to the point of the island, always just above the sea, hardly once descending to it, as the evenly-gravelled path, too narrow for three, though far too broad for two, winds by easy curves through the grounds, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... river, which, roaring through a narrow valley, had overflowed its banks, so that the trail was completely covered, the horses being frequently up to the girths in water. In the course of the day they came to a place where the trail passed along the face of a lofty cliff of crumbling slate. The path was only just wide enough for the horses to pass. On the right rose a perpendicular precipice. On the left, a few yards below, the swollen waters of the Fraser roared and boiled down their rocky bed with tremendous ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... my chariot guides, Which o'er the dubious cliff securely rides: And pleased I am no beaten road to take, But first the way to new ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... whirlwind! I don't know—that's hazardous. Nevertheless, if she were placed on a beetling cliff, overhanging the tempestuous ocean, lashing the rocks with its wild surge; of a sudden, after she has been permitted to finish her soliloquy, a white cloud rising rapidly and unnoticed—the sudden vacuum—the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... glittered in the sun and the Lees stretched out opposite him across the shining gulf. Sea-birds dipped and screamed. On his left, Major Bevan was talking to a flying man, and Peter glanced up with him to see an aeroplane that came humming high up above the trees on the cliff and flew ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... various activities of these people. Furthermore, the rainy season sets in about September and it is difficult ascending in this region where the rapids are numerous and swift.... I have come upon Ilongote habitations in cliff and rock shelters. Why might their ancestors or those of others not have lived in such in ages past and left evidences of an earlier culture? Many Ifugao burials are in sepulchres on mountain sides and the practise ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... neck was very thick. Its whole form was exceedingly agreeable and beautiful to look at. Its hump shone with great beauty and seemed to occupy the whole of its shoulder-joint. And it looked like the summit of a mountain of snow or like a cliff of white clouds in the sky. Upon the back of that animal I beheld seated the illustrious Mahadeva with his spouse Uma. Verily, Mahadeva shone like the lord of stars while he is at his full. The fire born of his energy resembled in effulgence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... copses of hazel and lime, Of scudding through acres of grasses knee-high, and of snuffing the fragrance of clover and thyme. But what is all this to the dumb-stricken wonder, swift followed by outbursts of full-throated glee, Which fancy can picture, when London's pale outcasts from some grassy cliff catch first sight of the Sea! Thalatta! Thalatta! There's many a lad who has never before had a glimpse of the wave; For these are of those who, from London's dark wastes 'tis the aim of their leaders to rescue and save. "Nobody's Boys," the lost waifs of the city, foredoomed, but for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... the sultan of Busa called to them, and poured their arms into the vessel; and the vessel reached the head-land or cliff, and became attached or fixed to the head of the mountain or projection in the river, and could not pass it. Then the men and women of Busa collected themselves hostilely together, with arms of all descriptions; and the vessel being unable ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... was a half-circle of pebble beach, washed by the ripples of a slowly rising tide, with a wall of gray slate rock at the back. Hemlock-trees leaned from the steep wooded cliff above, the shadows of their boughs moving with the wind across the sunny face of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... do, probably following the methods they learned from the cliff dwellers, who occupied the crude dwellings you have seen all along these walls in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... annoy me when Europeans patronize us about being a new country, doesn't it you? The Palisades, it seems, boiled up and took shape as a wall of cliff thirty million years ago, or maybe more, in the Triassic period. What can you get anywhere older than that? And Europe would give a cathedral or two out of her jewel-box to look young as long as ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... the type?' but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... German lesson, although she had little experience of her temper in other matters, was beginning to despair of persuading her, and spoke yet more earnestly and firmly, though still kindly and gently, but in vain. Edith had jumped over the stile, and was on her way to the cliff, when her course was arrested by an old sailor, who was sitting on a bench near the gangway leading to the shore. He had heard the conversation between the governess and her headstrong pupil, as he smoked his pipe on this favourite seat, and playfully caught ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a vigorous young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot up amid the rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it, uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... homeland and seeing the long white Kentish cliffs recede. One walked about the boat doing one's best not to feel absurdly adventurous, and presently a movement of people directed one's attention to a white lighthouse on a cliff to the east of us, coming up suddenly; and then one turned to scan the little different French coast villages, and then, sliding by in a pale sunshine came a long wooden pier with oddly dressed children upon it, and the clustering town ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... brake and crag, And the prince, single, pressing on the rear Of that unflagging quarry and the hounds. Now in the woods far down I saw them cross An open glade; now he was high aloft On some tall scar fringed with dark feathery pines, Peering to spy a goat-track down the cliff, Cheering with hand, and voice, and horn his dogs. At last the cry drew to the water's edge— And through the brushwood, to the pebbly strand, Broke, black with sweat, the antler'd mountain-stag, And took the lake. Two hounds alone ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... a regular scarecrow!" cried the Doctor. "I will not pay for good things for him to go cliff-climbing and wading and burrowing in caves.—Here: what ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... in June and in September. From this he wrote to me (17th June), "It's now four o'clock, and I have been at work since half-past eight. I have really dried myself up into a condition which would almost justify me in pitching off the cliff, head first—but I must get richer before I indulge in a crowning luxury. Number 15, which I began to-day, I anticipate great things from. There is a description of getting gradually out of town, and passing through neighborhoods of distinct and various ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... cliff-top bough, Like a cynic nodding there, Moved up and down, though no man's brow But mine met the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... steep-to wall of rock was a large and regularly built "humpy," in which Douglas Fraser and Kate lived. The ascent to the summit of the bluff was by a narrow path that had been found by Kate in one of the many clefts riven in the side of the black-faced cliff, and her father's mates had so improved it with pick and shovel that Aulain could discern ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... sovereign placed his nephew Bati in command, and ordered him to bring into subjection all the nations on the northern shores of the Caspian Sea, and then to continue his conquests throughout all the expanse of northern Russia. A bloody strife of three years planted his banners upon every cliff and through all the defiles of the Ural mountains, and then the victor plunging down the western declivities of this great natural barrier between Europe and Asia, established his troops, for winter quarters, in the valley ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the summit of a lofty cliff, but it was only to behold gigantic peaks rising all around, and towering far into the snowy regions of the atmosphere. He soon found that he had undertaken a tremendous task; but the pride of man is never more obstinate than when climbing mountains. The ascent was so steep and rugged that ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... the frontier, Philippe, or rather the German side of the frontier?... A craggy cliff, a series of peaks and ravines which make this part of the ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the door, and serpentises more than you can conceive in the vale. The Duke is widening it, and will make it the middle of his park; but I don't approve an idea they are going to execute, of a fine bridge with statues under a noble cliff. If they will have a bridge (which by the way will crowd the scene), it should be composed of rude fragments, such as the giant of the Peak would step upon, that he might not be wetshod. The expense ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... strange purpose of its own, has piled up, century after century, for eighteen miles along the western coast. And then the grim front of Portland Island itself loomed out above us. The road ran up steeply among the bluffs, through line upon line of grey-slated houses; to the left, at the top of the cliff, were the sunken lines of the huge fort, with the long slopes of its earthworks, the glacis overgrown with grass, and the guns peeping from their embrasures; to the left, dipping to the south, the steep grey crags, curve after curve. The ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... water-colours is mediocre; there is a good effect of Mr. Poynter's, the east wind seen from a high cliff sweeping down on the sea like the black wings of some god; and some charming pictures of Fairy Land by Mr. Richard Doyle, which would make good illustrations for one of Mr. Allingham's Fairy-Poems, but the tout-ensemble ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... a little tongue of land Shuts in with bending horns the sounding main. Yet insecure the spot, unsafe in storm, Were it not sheltered by an isle on which The Adriatic billows dash and fall, And tempests lose their strength: on either hand A craggy cliff opposing breaks the gale That beats upon them, while the ships within Held by their trembling cables ride secure. Hence to the mariner the boundless deep Lies open, whether for Corcyra's port He shapes his sails, or for Illyria's shore, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of her husband, or in any way incensed at him, would in former times throw herself from a cliff or tree, swim out to sea, hang or strangle herself, stab herself with an arrow, or thrust one down her throat; and a man jealous or quarrelling with his wife would do the like; but now it is easy to go off ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of the cliff, from which coign of vantage they had fought off Shawnee and Miami, Henry Ware, Paul Cotter and Long Jim Hart sat snug, warm and dry, and looked out at the bitter storm. Near them a small fire burned, the smoke passing out at the entrance, and at the far end of the hollow much more wood was heaped. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I declared, 'and he has set those fellows to paddling around the island. Miss Ross, let us go and see the cliff dwellers,' ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... interest. Of these the chief are Poole's Hole, a vast stalactite cave, about half a mile distant; Diamond Hill, which owes its name to the quartz crystals which are not uncommon in its rocks; and Chee Tor, a remarkable cliff, on the banks of the Wye, 300 ft. high. Ornaments are manufactured by the inhabitants from alabaster and spar; and excellent lime is burned at the quarries near Poole's Hole. Buxton is an important centre for horse-breeding, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a careful exploration of the island. Presently he came to a locked gate labelled "Biddle Stairs," and clambered over to discover a steep old wooden staircase leading down the face of the cliff amidst a vast and increasing uproar of waters. He left the kitten above and descended these, and discovered with a thrill of hope a path leading among the rocks at the foot of the roaring downrush of the Centre Fall. Perhaps this ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... by daylight, that inn. If anything, it is rather an offence. Steep behind it rise mountains that are grey all over with olive trees, and beneath it, on the other side of the road, the cliff falls sheer to the sea. The road is white, the sea and sky are usually of a deep bright blue, there are many single cypresses among the olives. It is a scene of good colour and noble form. It is a gay and a grand scene, in which the inn, though unassuming, is unpleasing, if you pay attention ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... harmonizes with all situations, rude and cultivated, level and abrupt. On the side of the mountain it adds grandeur to the declivity, and gives a look of sweeter tranquillity to the green pastoral meadow. It yields a darker frown to the projecting cliff, and a more awful uncertainty to the mountain-pass or the hollow ravine. Amid desolate scenery it spreads a cheerfulness that detracts nothing from its power over the imagination, while it relieves it of its terrors by presenting a green bulwark ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Quite at the bottom of the rocks out there, just beyond the stream which falls over them to the shore, is a smooth sandy space, not so much shut in as to be out of the moonlight; and the way down to it from this side is over steps cut in the cliff; and we can find our way down without trouble. We—we two—will find our way down; but only one of us will find ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... things comes their hour. The black column of basalt quivers to its heart with one keen lightning thrill that vindicates its kin to the electric flash without; the granite cliff loses one atom from its bald front, and every other atom quails before the dumb shiver of gravitation and shifts its place; the breathing, breathless marble, which a sculptor has rescued from its primeval sleep, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Erik's passionate appeal and, believing Senta to be untrue to himself, rushes on board his ship and hastily puts out to sea. Senta's courage rises to the occasion. Though the Dutchman has cast her off, she remains true to her vows. She hastens to the edge of the cliff hard by, and with a wild cry hurls herself into the sea. Her solemn act of renunciation fulfils the promise of her lips. The gloomy vessel of the Dutchman, its mission accomplished, sinks into the waves, while the forms of Senta and the Dutchman transfigured ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... and wondered transitorily if some complex Providence had indeed brought them together that afternoon. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked. "There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove—as high, anyhow—and a little girl fell from top to bottom. And ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... he had gone to see Pilchard about some final arrangements for their journey to Mexico—Pilchard had introduced him to the girl he was going to marry, and it had somehow happened that he and she had taken a short walk together along a cliff where some pines were growing, and which looked forlornly enough across the solitary ocean. Nothing but the most commonplace words had passed between them; they had talked of Pilchard and his enterprise, and had stopped to look at the view, and had gazed out over ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... stood still for a moment on a dry rock, and wondered, there came a low, rippling warble to her ear from a cedar tree on the cliff above her. It had been a long winter, and Margery had forgotten that there were birds, and that birds could sing. So she wondered again ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... desperate. After the Portuguese artillery had breached the walls in three places, their infantry attacked in force. They entered the city, but had to take it, foot by foot. At last, the defenders came to the center of Palmares, where a high cliff impeded further retreat. Death or surrender were now the only alternatives. Seeing that his cause was lost beyond repair, the Zombe hurled himself over the cliff, and his action was followed by the most distinguished ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... cliff or scaur To guard the holy strand; But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war, Above the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... morn: the wind in every wood Howl'd, and the meteors glancing o'er the flood Flash'd a portentous light. Before the gale With streaming eyes I spread my little sail: Swift o'er the sounding waves the vessel flew, Cliff after cliff receding from my view: Chill ran my heart—the swelling sails I furl'd, While yet emerging from the watery world One headland rose—O'er all the boundless main. } I cast my shuddering view—I wept in vain— } I wrung my hands in agonizing pain: } O'er ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... of our dwelling. To-day I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet clasps, behold! he was my friend! He knew me,—smiled faintly,—gasped,—and died; the same sweet smile that I had marked upon his face when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled some lofty cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear them home in childish triumph. I told the praetor he was my friend, noble and brave, and I begged his body, that I might burn it upon the funeral-pile, and mourn over him. Ay, on my knees, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... passing under frowning walls of cliff, and the murmur of the surf thundering about the caverns and buttresses of that rock-bound coast almost drowned the throb of the engines beneath their feet. Far out to seaward a formation of Mine-sweeping Sloops crept away to the west. Close inshore, where the gulls circled vociferously, an ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... utilized several of these vertebrae for stools, but seeing them for the first time, the little fellow looked down at them respectfully, hushed into silence by vague, sea-born feelings. Far down the beach to the southward rose the cliff's where thousands of sea-birds swarmed in the sunshine. Their screaming, softened by the distance, came to his ears with an eerie wildness. All at once he felt very small and alone among alien creatures. Kobuk had turned ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... laid the foundation of the deadly mutual repugnance which nine hundred years of bloodshed had heightened into insanity of hatred. Tarik had taken the town and mountain, Carteia and Calpe, and given to both his own name. Gib-al-Tarik, the cliff of Tarik, they are called to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering and hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place, nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, but a little troublesome, as if it might want some care to get over or through. So after a short rest I stood up, touched my Cossack's arm, and pointed upward. He reconnoitred the cliff with his eye, and shook his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... English sea-captain relates the following fact, of which he was an eyewitness:—"A collier brig was stranded on the Yorkshire coast, and I had occasion to assist in the distressing service of rescuing a part of the crew by drawing them up a vertical cliff, two or three hundred feet in altitude, by means of a very small rope, the only material at hand. The first two men who caught hold of the rope were hauled safely up to the top; but the next, after being drawn to a considerable height, slipped his hold and fell; and with ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... remote a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the Twins, and away they ran to join their brother, who was already some little distance ahead of them. They turned as the path rounded the great cliff where the echoes lived, and the Twins waved their hands, while Fritz played his merry little tune on the horn. Then the rocks hid them from view, and the ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... be delightful," replied Bessie, to whom a book was a powerful attraction. She was some time making her selection from the well-filled bookcase, but at last fixed on some poems by Jean Ingelow, and "The Village on the Cliff," by Miss Thackeray. Bessie had read few novels in her life; Dr. Lambert disliked circulating libraries for young people, and the only novels in the house were Sir Walter Scott's and Miss Austin's, while the girls' private book shelves ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... chieftains. So it was: a Huron arrow had pierced his heart, and his last words were of his maiden in the Fairy Isle. Sad grew the heart of the lovely Mae-che-ne-mock-qua. She had no wish to live. She could only stand on the cliff and gaze at the west, where the form of her lover appeared beckoning her to follow him. One morning her mangled body was found at the foot of the cliff; she had gone to meet her lover in the spirit-land. So love gained its sacrifice and a maiden ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... We arrived at Nagasaki on the morning of April 8th in a pouring rain which rather dampened our ardor, inasmuch as we had a full day's programme arranged. We went ashore, however, and proceeded to the Cliff House for a short time, but as the storm increased we returned to the steamer somewhat crestfallen. The Korea was taking on coal when we left, but on our return there was an ominous silence, and we learned ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... confession. 'LESS THAN ONE-HALF of the island,' you say, 'is devoted to the lepers.' Molokai—'Molokai ahina,' the 'grey,' lofty, and most desolate island—along all its northern side plunges a front of precipice into a sea of unusual profundity. This range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and frontier of the island. Only in one spot there projects into the ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy, and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater: the whole bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of early Autumn when I stood knee-deep in the heather of Glengyle, and looked wistfully over the grey sea. 'Twas but a month later when, homeless and friendless, I stood on the beach by the Cliff House of San Francisco, and gazed over the fretful waters of another ocean. Such is the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... battery at the other three. Tim, whose hat came well down over his eyes, felt comparatively safe; but the cook, conscious that his perched lightly on the top of his head, drew back a pace. Then he uttered an exclamation as Captain Nibletts, who was officiating as best man, came hurriedly down the cliff. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... make the harbour of Mazatlan, on the Mexican coast. The courtesy of the Captain secures us a good view from "the bridge" as we approach our first port. A great white rock juts up in the bay like a fragment of some Titan's fortress; a lighthouse stares out to sea from a cliff at the harbour's entrance; the tall cocoa palms wave their fern leaves in the blinding sunshine, and red-roofed houses huddle below the dome of the Cathedral ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... eras, visible in the extinct volcanoes, the barrancas, the painted buttes, the petrified forests, but as well in the evidences of civilizations gone by, or the remains of them surviving in our day—the cliff dwellings, the ruins of cities that were thriving when Coronado sent his lieutenants through the region three centuries ago, and the present residences of the Pueblo Indians, either villages perched upon an almost inaccessible rock like Acamo, or clusters ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner |
