"Defile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself not only in the splendour of the great processions (1) in honour of the gods, but in the manouvres of the exercising-ground; in the valorous onslaught of real battle when occasion calls; and in the ease with which whole regiments will prosecute their march, or cross a river, or thread a defile without the slightest symptom of confusion. What this formation is—essential, at least in my opinion, to the noblest execution of their several duties—I will now, without delay, endeavour to ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... "May bats defile his Ancestral Tablets and goats propagate within his neglected tomb!" chanted the band in unison. "May the sinews of his hams snap suddenly in moments of achievement! May the principles of his warmth and cold never ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... chose the ground on which to receive Burgoyne's attack, at one of these places where the heights crowd upon the river, thus forming a narrow defile, which a handful of men could easily defend against an army. At this place the house of a settler named Bemis stood by the roadside. Our army filed off the road here, to the left, scaled the heights, and encamped along a ridge of ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... words which by my mother, Thy faithful one, Thou sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great anxiety warned me, "not to commit fornication; but especially never to defile another man's wife." These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not: and I thought Thou wert silent and that it was she who spake; by whom Thou wert not silent unto me; ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... entered the dark defile known as the "Devils' Descent." And, in fact, it needed all the noon sunshine to light up the gloom of that fearful pass. Here the delight of the impressible ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... is the caste that keeps him rigidly to himself, since, as a rule, he can touch no food that others have handled. He sits apart, over his own tiny fire, baking his unappetising little cakes; and in many cases even the shadow of a passer-by falling across his cookery is held to defile it beyond possibility of his eating it. As a rule he has but one idea in life—to make enough money to carry him back to end his days in comfort by the waters ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... see the tar smeared over his face, even if it did look like a map of the devil's wild land, as he kicked and scratched and tried to bite, swearing all the time like a pirate. It seemed a degrading kind of thing to defile a human being in that way. The leader came up to me and said, "That was good work, Dutchy. Lucky I was right about its being a single-barrel, ain't it? Help get his team hitched up. We want to see him ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... circle steadily growing less, and the terrified beasts becoming more crowded together, until at length they were driven down some narrow defile, along whose course the lords and gentlemen had been posted, lying in wait for the coming of the deer, and ready to show their marksmanship by shooting such of the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I dance in short skirts! Some day I will give you an exhibition in this room! Now don't look like that," I added quickly; "I was only joking. I would not defile the air around your saintliness for the world! But I want to tell you this: my dancing is recognised as an art. I rank everywhere with the men and women who are called artists, the men and women who are ever striving to ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Turks, they were now practically cleared of men in order to avoid casualties from our own gunfire. The scheme laid down for our Battalion required a north-east advance by C and B Companies out of the narrow defile known as Krithia nullah. A gap was therefore made overnight in the barrier that had hitherto crossed the mouth of the defile and linked our fire trenches with those neighbouring. A machine gun was placed at the north-west corner of ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, —pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour of slate. "It puts ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... bowed submission, dumb a little while. Then said my soul: "Thy will I dare not balk; I reach my hands to labours that defile, And help to rear a ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... there breaks on view a wall of water hurtling down in shimmering floods at the Chaudiere Falls. The high cliff to the left and countercurrent from the falls swirl the canoes over on the right side to the sandy flats where the lumber piles to-day defile the river. Here boats are once more hauled up for portage—a long portage, nine miles, all the way to the modern town of Aylmer, where the river becomes wide as a lake, Lake Du Chene of the oak forests. Here camp for the night was made, and leaks in the canoes mended with ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... himself was startled at his own saying, and rode silent till they crossed the drawbridge of St. Bertin, and entered that ancient fortress, so strong that it was the hiding-place in war time for all the treasures of the country, and so sacred withal that no woman, dead or alive, was allowed to defile it by her presence; so that the wife of Baldwin the Bold, ancestor of Arnulf, wishing to lie by her husband, had to remove his corpse from St. Bertin to the Abbey of Blandigni, where the Counts of Flanders lay in glory for many ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... group of dark-cloaked figures outside crept off in single file like a slithering serpent, moving down the rock defile toward where in the cauldron pit the lights of the mine shone on its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... from every point, which gave out a tinkling sound as I picked it up. I let it fall again as though it had scorched me, the memory of what stood between Madonna Paola and me rising like a warning spectre in my mind. I would not again defile myself by the garb of folly; not again would I incur the shame of playing the Fool for the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the son of England prove a thief, and take purses? a question to be ask'd. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest: for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also. And yet there is a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... rode down from the castle of Blentz toward the village. Just out of sight of the grim pile where the road wound down into a ravine Barney turned his horse's head up the narrow defile. In single file Butzow and the troopers followed until the rank undergrowth precluded farther advance. Here the American directed that they dismount, and, leaving the horses in charge of three troopers, set out once more with ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... left the great canon and turned into the rugged defile which wound its tortuous course upward into the heights of the Barra Principal. They were now in a region where, in Rosendo's belief, there was not one human being in an area of a hundred square miles. He himself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Sabbath day, according to the commandment; but neither they, nor Joseph, nor Nicodemus, nor John, would be able to partake of the Paschal festivities. To take part in a burial at any time would defile them for seven days, and make everything which they touched unclean; to do so at that time involved seclusion through the whole of the Passover week, with all its ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... these confounded bullock-cars broke down just at the angle of the road where the commander-in-chief was standing with his staff to watch the troops defile, and out rolled, among bread rations and salt beef, a whole avalanche of precious relics and church ornaments. Every one stood aghast! Never was there such a misfortune. No one endeavored to repair the mishap, but all looked on in terrified amazement ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... first dawn of morning the Austrian army—the first that ever entered the country—made its appearance in the pass, headed by Duke Leopold and his formidable cavalry. Suddenly, when the whole narrow defile was blocked with horse and foot, thousands of heavy stones and trees were hurled among them from the neighboring heights, where the peasant band, forming the Swiss force, lay concealed. The suddenness and vigor of this unexpected attack quickly threw the first ranks of the invaders into ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... volcanic rocks, the landscape becomes more beautiful and wooded. It is, however, dangerous, on account of the shelter which the wooded mountains afford to the knights of the road, and to whose predilection for these wild solitudes, the number of crosses bore witness. In a woody defile there is a small clear space called "Las Cruces," where several wooden crosses point out the site of the famous battle between the curate Hidalgo and the Spanish General Truxillo. An object really ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the sweetest and fullest. No cruel coldness has crept in to defile their perfect love. Living as they are on a mere shadow, a faint streak of hope, that may never break into a fuller gleam, they still are almost happy. He loves her. Her heart is all his own. These are their crumbs of comfort,—sweet ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... to the world: if the realm finds no inconvenience from the regiment of a woman, that which they approve shall I not further disallow than within my own breast; but shall be as well content to live under your Grace as Paul was to live under Nero. And my hope is, that so long as ye defile not your hands with the blood of the saints of God, neither I nor my book shall hurt either you or your authority." All this is admirable in wisdom and moderation, and, except that he might have hit upon a comparison less offensive than that with Paul and Nero, hardly to be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first gun was fired from Saint-Menges. The fog still hung over the bottom-lands in shreds and patches, and through it they dimly descried a shadowy body of men moving through the Saint-Albert defile. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Comforter that He may enlighten your mind, that He may fill your hearts. Oh, pray for the Spirit of God, for there is no other way of walking to heaven but by the Spirit. Let Him lead you. My dear brethren, in this way, and in this way alone, will you not defile your garments." "Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness."—Psalm cxliii. 10. She had faith in the power of the Comforter, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... Indra spake:—"He is unclean, And into Swarga such shall enter not. The Krodhavasha's wrath destroys the fruits Of sacrifice, if dogs defile the fire. Bethink thee, Dharmaraj; quit now this beast! That which is seemly is not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and names and lands Disgust my reason and defile my hands. I had as lief respect an ancient shoe, As love old things for age, and hate the new. I spurn the Past, my mind disdains its nod, Nor kneels in homage to so mean a God. I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze, The bald antiquity ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... restlessness and disquietude. Getting up at daybreak, he met a messenger at the entrance of his tent, who informed him that Sir Thomas de Richmont, with a force of ten thousand men, had crossed the Borders, and would pass through a narrow defile, which he mentioned, where he could be attacked with great advantage. Sir James gave instant orders to march to the spot; and, with that genius for scheming, for which he was so remarkable, commanded his men ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Pimodan rushed upon the two farms already mentioned. His watchword was to carry them and hold them as long as possible, as they commanded the pass of Musone, where the bulk of the army, with the baggage, must defile, and there was no other way than this pass by which the route of Ancona could be gained. The first farm, although warmly defended, was carried, and a hundred prisoners were taken. Six six-pounders were immediately brought up, in order to protect the position ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... one dangerous place to pass, of which our guide told us, if there were any more wolves in the country, we should find them there; and this was a small plain, surrounded with woods on every side, and a long narrow defile or lane, which we were to pass to get through the wood, and then we should come to the village where we ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... went, the more wildly roared the storm. There was something appalling in the fierce volleyings of the wind along the stark and broken faces of the precipice: it was like the rattle of thunder. In the sombre defile of the Schoellenen the air rushed as through a funnel. We could see nothing save the thread-like road illuminated by our steadfast lanterns—the sole beacon of safety in this welter. We had a ghostly impression of ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... ring with their shrill war-whoop. The Spaniards, astonished at the appearance of the savages, with their naked bodies gaudily painted, and brandishing their weapons as they glanced among the trees and straggling underbrush that choked up the defile, were taken by surprise and thrown for a moment into disarray. Three of their number were killed and several wounded. Yet, speedily rallying, they returned the discharge of the assailants with their cross-bows, - for Pizarro's troops do not seem to have been provided with muskets on this expedition, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... their northward route, Tontz's band were struggling wearily on when they were met by a solitary Indian, who, though he carried a long bow, had not an unfriendly aspect. He eyed the little band silently as they passed by him in defile, then ran after them, and inquired if the Pere Francois Xavier, of Mission St. Ignace, was not of their number. He was informed that the reverend father had remained a short distance behind to write in his ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... right flank of Sedgwick's two army corps. We're not dealing in army corps these days but only regiments, however, the position is relatively as important. Jack Altshuler's cavalry is largely concentrated here. When the action is joined, he can move in one of three ways. Through this defile, is least likely. However, if his heavy cavalry does work its way through here, I must know immediately. This ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... confirmed. And I establish this PEACE on the part of ourselves and of our kinsmen, our friends and belongings, alike of women and of men, bondsmen and thralls, youths and adults. Be there any truce-breaker who shall violate this PEACE and defile this faith, so be he rejected of God and expelled from the community of righteous men; be he cast out from Heaven and from the fellowship of the holy; let him have no part amongst mankind and become an outcast ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... down. It was their Method in these polemical Debates, first to discharge their Syllogisms, and afterwards to betake themselves to their Clubs, till such Time as they had one Way or other confounded their Gainsayers. There is in Oxford a narrow [Defile, [1] (to make use of a military Term) where the Partizans used to encounter, for which Reason it still retains the Name of Logic-Lane. I have heard an old Gentleman, a Physician, make his Boasts, that when he ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... self-control. You insinuate something to his disadvantage and dishonour. You quote some authority you have heard to his hurt. And so on past all our power to picture you. For detraction has a thousand devices taught to it by the master of all such devices, wherewith to drag down and defile the great and the good. But with all you can say or do, you cannot for many days get out of your mind the heart-poisoning praise you heard spoken of your envied neighbour. Never praise any potter's pots in the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... adoration before the rising sun, and kiss his first rays when they strike on a wall or other object near them; and they will not blow out a candle with their breath, or spit in the fire, lest they should defile that ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... horrible wilderness. He was utterly at a loss what course to take. Gladly would he have given the excited beast its liberty and have allowed it to rush away into the night and spend its fury, had he not feared that is this narrow defile it might come thundering with its iron-shod hoofs over the ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... a shifting of chairs to distribute the view, a tense moment of silence as the chorus came down a rocky defile and then—a white pencil of flame shot out from the royal box and a sharp crash of a ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended road. ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... followed some forty yards behind, he saw the light of hope. Not far ahead, the water looked black and still, as it glided through a narrow defile, shut in by the rocks. That meant deep water; but if he could reach that, he would have to swim, and the men probably would not dare ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... "intercede with thy glorified Son to quicken our faith and shorten the days of our trouble. Let not these insatiable locusts from the pit of darkness, whose end is destruction—these deceivers and deceived, who would tear down thy church, and defile her altars, have, even in seeming, their will! O, let a strong wind arise and cast them into the sea, that they may devour ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... between Dundee and Ladysmith. The Biggarsberg range, the cross-line of the A, is about fifty miles long. It is traversed from north to south by three passes. In the centre runs the railway through a defile. Twelve miles to the west of the railway runs the direct Newcastle-Ladysmith road; eight miles to the east runs the road Newcastle-Dannhauser-Dundee-Helpmakaar. A third road runs from De Jager's Drift through ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... ah! confession of a woman's breast: She eminent, she honoured of her sex! Truth speaks, and takes the spots of the confessed, To veil them. None of women, save their vile, Plays traitor to an army in the field. The cries most vindicating most defile. How shall a cause to Nature be appealed, When, under pressure of their common foe, Her sisters shun the Mother and disown, On pain of his intolerable crow Above the fiction, built for him, o'erthrown? Irrational he is, irrational Must they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... terrible collision there, and the conflict began among friends who should have been united against the enemy. Finally, the two troops, leaving behind them some corpses stifled in the press, or even killed by their companions, passed through the defile pell-mell and were lost sight of in the ravine. But during this struggle Seyton and Arbroath had lost precious time, and the detachment sent by Murray, which had taken the road by Glasgow, had reached the village beforehand; it was now necessary not ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh ... are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.... Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh ... despise dominion and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... and, leaving Nick Schmouder and the other German prisoners under guard, the officer, with Ned, Bob, and some other Americans, went back to where Jerry had been seen to fall. It was just outside of a little defile leading to the dugout where the machine ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... guarded by a large body of troops, which had been posted there to oppose his passage. He immediately got together all the ships, boats, galleys, and vessels of every kind which he could procure, and, embarking his army on board of them, he sailed past the defile, and landed in Thessaly. Thence he marched ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... from men rather than sin against God." When his family had withdrawn, he declared: "I leave my life as a seal to the justness of that quarrel. Ten thousand deaths, rather than defile the chastity of my conscience; nor would I, for ten thousand worlds, resign the peace and satisfaction I have ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... ice-scoured rocks and above the timber-line, the trail ran around Crater Lake and gained the rocky defile that led toward Happy Camp and the first scrub-pines. To pack his heavy outfit around would take days of heart-breaking toil. On the lake was a canvas boat employed in freighting. Two trips with it, in two hours, would see him and his ton across. But he was broke, and the ferryman charged forty ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... and rendered darkness visible. The two men passed rapidly along the little footpath that led from the colony to the more open country beyond. This gained, they turned abruptly to the right, and, entering a narrow defile, proceeded at a more cautious pace into the gloomy recesses of ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle that shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra, and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, withstood a whole army. I did not then know what war meant; but my cheeks burned, I knew not why; and I clasped the hand of that venerable man, till my mother, parting the hair from off my brow, kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... reputation. As my father is a Christian preacher I feel I have a right to protest against his being placed on a clerical parity with bilkers of hack bills and crapulous associates of two-for-a-penny prostitutes. If Harman attempts to defile the Christian pulpit with his presence, I hope to the good Lord that the decent members of that denomination will tie him across a nine-rail fence and enhance the torridity of his rear elevation with a ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is to commit shame upon women and children, and to defile the shrines of his own faith with his own dung. It is done by him as a drill. We believed till then they were some sort of caste apart from the rest. We did not know they were outcaste. Now it ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... practicable, and as time did not permit of an attempt to turn Turenne, it was necessary to crush him out of hand, if that were possible, before he could effect a junction with Hocquincourt. The defile was the key of the position; and both sides fought therein with equal fierceness. Turenne defended himself sword in hand, and upon the six squadrons which Conde hurled against him he opened a battery, as they passed, with terrible execution, showing a courage ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... placed such implicit confidence in the nerve courage of their companions. I must own that I felt very anxious, and carefully examined the lock of my rifle, and assured myself that I had properly loaded it. Soon after this we entered a broad defile with high broken rocks on either side of us, beyond which towered up to the sky the white masses of mountain-tops. The defile as we advanced gradually narrowed, till I found that we were approaching a narrow gorge with cliffs rising on each side almost perpendicularly ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... mind he laid crafty plans to seize the Heidlemann grade. The Trust had ceased active work on its old right-of-way and moved to Kyak, to be sure, but it had not abandoned its original route, and in fact had maintained a small crew at the first defile outside of Cortez, known as Beaver Canon. Gordon reasoned shrewdly that a struggle between the agents of the Trust and the patriotic citizens of the town would afford him precisely the advertising he needed and give point to his charge of ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... set out with that little place as our serious destination. It was Brunow who suggested this lingering method of approach, and it was he also who gave a semblance of nature to our proceedings by pausing here and there to set up his camp-stool and easel in some picturesque defile, or in the streets of some quaint village. Twice this innocent blind brought us into collision with the military police, who were in a condition of perpetual disquiet, and suspected everybody. Our papers, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... dark, he resolved to attempt the passage of the Gap, for he was so tired of inaction that peril and hardship seemed preferable to doing nothing. Returning to the road, he pursued his way with due diligence through the narrowing defile of the mountains, till he suddenly came upon a sentinel, who challenged him. Before he started from his hiding place, Tom had carefully loaded the revolver which he had taken from the rebel soldier; and, as he walked along, he carried the weapon ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... away from this interview with some new problems to ponder upon. He had seen a little of this power of the newspapers to defile and torment a man; but he had never dreamed of anything as bad as this. This was murderous, this was monstrous. He saw these papers now as gigantic engines of exploitation and oppression—irresponsible, unscrupulous, wanton—turned loose in society ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... was wheeled, Grant's and Lewis' companies had proceeded so far in advance, that a large body of the enemy rushed down from both sides of the ravine, and intercepted them. A most deadly contest ensued. Those who intercepted Grant and Lewis, could not pass down the defile, as the main body of Braddock's army was there, and it would have been rushing into the midst of it, to inevitable destruction—the sides of the ravine were too steep and rocky to admit of a retreat up them, and their ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... vivid, various, and strange foliage of the trees, the magnificent river, broad and blue as a lake, with its high and richly wooded shore, and the sparkling, glittering town opposite. We looked down to the Narrows, the defile through which the waters of this noble estuary reach the Atlantic, and between whose rocky walls two or three ships stood out against the brilliant sky. The ebbing tide plashed on the rocks far below us, and the warm grass through which we walked was alive with grasshoppers, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Latin will serve his turn. In front of all is a Miller, who has been drinking over-night, and is now but indifferently sober. There is not a door in the country that he cannot break by running at it with his head. The pilgrims are all ready, the host gives the word, and they defile through the arch. The Miller blows his bagpipes as they issue from the town; and away they ride to Canterbury, through the boon sunshine, and between the white ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the mountain-range of Guadarrama, which had to be crossed by the pass of Somosierra. This defile was found to be strongly guarded; there were not only infantry stationed on the heights, but artillery also, sixteen guns being below the turn of the pass in a most advantageous position. In the early morning of the thirtieth the French ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lay through the mountainous districts of Savoy; but, with experienced guides to lead them, the dragoons were able to defile through secret passes unknown to any but the natives, and to arrive unsuspected upon the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Valley pike. Meanwhile, Wilson was to strike up the Berryville pike, carry the Berryville crossing of the Opequon, charge through the gorge or canyon on the road west of the stream, and occupy the open ground at the head of this defile. Wilson's attack was to be supported by the Sixth and Nineteenth corps, which were ordered to the Berryville crossing, and as the cavalry gained the open ground beyond the gorge, the two infantry corps, under command of General Wright, were expected to press on after and occupy ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... his love? They say your people Are learned in these questions. Once I thought There was no spell like duty—that devotion Would bulwark love for ever. Now, I'd distil Philtres, converse with moonlit hags, defile My soul with talismans, bow down to spirits, And frequent accursed places, all, yea all— I'd forfeit ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... little in language and manners, that the pass was only beset during the day, and that at night each withdrew to his own dwelling, he advanced at the dawn to the heights, as if designing openly and by day to force his way through the defile. The day then being passed in feigning a different attempt from that which was in preparation, when they had fortified the camp in the same place where they had halted, as soon as he perceived that the mountaineers ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... brought to the indolent habit inherited from his father a depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and dishonour his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and brigandage. Early in his career he followed the evil counsels of his provost Etienne, and purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... land. And I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them out of all their dwelling places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them, so shall they be my people, and I will be their God. ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... entrance to the crater lay through a natural gateway of rock that rose high on either hand and almost shut out the light. Through it the strange path led, and here in the gloom the horror of this awful place again came upon me and I could scarce bring myself to enter the narrow defile. I remember clutching my revolver as I went forward at last: remember thinking too that it could avail me nothing, for here was no live being to fear, here was naught but the dead. . The utter silence and loneliness ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... a maiden be? Pure as the rill, Ere it has left its first home in the hill; Thinking no evil, suspecting no guile, Cherishing nought that can harm or defile. ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... sacked, her castles ta'en; But now "My wars are done," he cried, "And home to gentle France we ride." Count Roland plants his standard high Upon a peak against the sky; The Franks around encamping lie. Alas! the heathen host the while, Through valley deep and dark defile, Are riding on the Chistians' track, All armed in steel from breast to back; Their lances poised, their helmets laced, Their falchions glittering from the waist, Their bucklers from the shoulder swung, And so they ride the steeps among, Till, in a forest on the height, They rest to wait the morning ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... full noon of a cloudless day, beneath them a tumultuous sea of pines surged, heaved, rode in giant crests, stretched and lost itself in the ghostly, snow-peaked horizon. The thronging woods choked every defile, swept every crest, filled every valley with its dark-green tilting spears, and left only Table Mountain sunlit and bare. Here and there were profound olive depths, over which the gray hawk hung lazily, and into ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the only ones worthy of attention from native and barbarian alike. The very antagonism of the few foreign manners and habits he is obliged by his position to cultivate, tend rather to confirm him in his own sense of superiority than otherwise. For who but a barbarian would defile the banquet hour "when the wine mantles in the cups" with a white table-cloth, the badge of grief and death? How much more elegant the soft red lacquer of the "eight fairy" table, with all its associations of the bridal hour! The host, too, at the head of his own board, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... child's play, sir; nevertheless, there were some of our men wounded, and the little waggon, upon which I was riding, was ordered up in the advance to take them in. Unfortunately, to keep clear of the troops, the driver kept too much on one side of the narrow defile through which we passed: the consequence was, that the waggon upset, and I was thrown out a considerable distance down the precipice.' 'And ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... kill the captain, and if misfortune should come to pass, it may, just the same, fall on me as well. But my refusing it was in vain, and so I consented to it. Discipline goes above all! We started and soon reached the defile; not a Bedouin could be discovered, and only a few distant barren rocks looked rather suspicious. Night set in: we thought of preparing our supper, but suddenly a curious noise could be heard, and the next moment we were surrounded by a swarm of Bedouins. A desperate combat began—the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... invaders. From the Feast of the Epiphany there was mustering and massing, until, in the first week of February—three days after the White Company joined the army—the word was given for a general advance through the defile of Roncesvalles. At five in the cold winter's morning the bugles were blowing in the hamlet of St. Jean Pied-du-Port, and by six Sir Nigel's Company, three hundred strong, were on their way for the defile, pushing swiftly ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... threatened judgments upon the house of Eli with the accompanying sign (1 Sam. 2:34); the warning that David received by Urim and Thummim of Saul's approach to destroy him (1 Sam. 23:9-12); the prediction that Josiah should defile Jeroboam's altar at Bethel with men's bones (1 Kings 13:2); etc. Minute events, in themselves unimportant, sometimes come within the sphere of prophetic revelation, but always in connection with and subserviency to important transactions affecting the interests of God's people. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... defends. Chase far away, the robbers, chase, Slay those barbarians black and base. And save us, Indra, from the spite Of sprites that haunt us in the night, Our rites disturb by contact vile, Our hallowed offerings defile. Preserve us, friend, dispel our fears, And let us live a hundred years. And when our earthly course we've run, And gained the region of the Sun, Then let us live in ceaseless glee, Sweet ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... managed to slip into a field, and so avoid recognition. Before reaching the town the hunter branched away into a rugged and narrow footpath which led to the mountains. Two dark jagged peaks loomed above them through the darkness, and the defile which led between them was the Eagle Canon in which the horses were awaiting them. With unerring instinct Jefferson Hope picked his way among the great boulders and along the bed of a dried-up watercourse, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... narrow defile in which we now are, there are many remains of avalanches that neither the water of the torrent nor the heat of the sun has had power to melt. The bed of the river is strewn with displaced and broken rocks, and great stones bound together by the snow as if with cement; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... noise as possible, I ran across the plain and warned my companion, then picked my way silently down the defile to the camp. The captain responded to my touch and was up in an instant. The men were awakened and the news whispered from one to another. Gathering up what food and utensils we possessed, we hurried to get on top of the plateau before our exact whereabouts became known. The ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... unexpectedly surprised. The emperor of the West had only twenty thousand, and the sovereign of the East no more than five and thirty thousand, men. The inferiority of number was, however, compensated by the advantage of the ground. Constantine had taken post in a defile about half a mile in breadth, between a steep hill and a deep morass, and in that situation he steadily expected and repulsed the first attack of the enemy. He pursued his success, and advanced into the plain. But the veteran legions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... about this narrow defile through which the party traveled. But he agreed that they were breaking through the wall of the glacier on the right side. Aleukan, the big native ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... hills, with hideous outcrie, A troupe of satyres in the place did rout,@ Which with their villeine feete the streame did ray,$ Threw down the seats, and drove the nymphs away. [* Rayle, flow.] [** Grayle, gravel.] [@ Rout, burst.] [$ Ray, defile.] ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... youth, "purposed in his heart not to defile himself with the King's meat or the wine which he drank," or be swerved from his fidelity to the living and true God by threats of the lion's den. When the lives of the wise men of Babylon were in danger of being suddenly taken by royal ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... a subsequent period all provisions sold in the markets, in some parts of the empire, were sprinkled with the water or the wine employed in idolatrous worship, that the Christians might either be compelled to abstinence, or led to defile themselves by the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful to defile himself, but a hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he might defile himself. It is worth noting that these attacks of the "sublime and the beautiful" visited me even during the period of dissipation and just ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... into the wind. The chastiser of Paka always assumes these disguises. Do thou, therefore, O Vipula, protect this slender-waisted spouse of mine with great care. O foremost one of Bhrigu's race, do thou take every care for seeing that the chief of the celestials may not defile this spouse of mine like a wretched dog licking the Havi kept in view of a sacrifice. Having said these words, the highly-blessed Muni, viz., Devasarman, intend upon performing a sacrifice, set out from his abode, O chief of the Bharatas. Hearing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... every turn are the beautiful views, commanding Bagnoli, Camaldoli, Ischia, Baia and Procida, Capri, Nisida and the Neapolitan waters. The hill slopes are overgrown with myrtles and orange trees and roses. Here and there a defile is filled with a ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... which was occasionally justified, and which the king of the Thafurs took care to encourage. This respectable monarch was frequently in the habit of stopping his followers, one by one, in a narrow defile, and of causing them to be searched carefully, lest the possession of the least sum of money should render them unworthy of the name of his subjects. If even two sous were found upon any one, he was instantly expelled the society of his tribe, the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... are his holy temple. "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... a general engagement as was his fiery opponent. He was kept well informed of what was going on in Paris, and knew that the king's death was imminent. His position on a plain, surrounded on all sides by woods and marshes with but one approach, and that through a narrow defile, was practically impregnable; and by occupying the defile he could have kept the French at bay without the slightest difficulty until Rocroi surrendered. He knew, too, that General Beck with a considerable force was hastening to join him; but he feared that prudent ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... horses, and galloped forward, Turk, after one more growl in the direction of the Indians, following. Presently the defile divided. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... track of the deer, had they returned to the same spot,—a deep and lovely glen, which had once been a water-course, but now a green and shady valley. This they named the Valley of the Rock, from a remarkable block of red granite that occupied a central position in the narrow defile; and here they prepared to pass the second night on the Plains. A few boughs cut down and interlaced with the shrubs round a small space cleared with Hector's axe, formed shelter, and leaves and grass, strewed on the ground, formed ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... traversed, and valley after valley crossed, and yet the wadi of Ariab, with its cool, deep wells of precious water, was still afar. It was not till past two o'clock in the afternoon that a long, toilsome defile of rugged rock brought us on the edge of a steep descent, and before us lay the winding Khor of Ariab, with its mass of green fresh foliage throwing gentle shadows on the silver sand of its dry watercourse. It seemed an age ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... unfit to come out of your lips, Ellen," he answered with an oath. "He met a better fate than he deserved, for he died with honest men. Now put him away from your thoughts altogether, and never defile your lips ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... analysis. The reading of them hurried him in pursuit of her from house to house during the autumn; and as she did not hint at the shadow his coming cast on her, his conscience was easy. Regarding their future, his political anxieties were a mountainous defile, curtaining the outlook. They met at Lockton, where he arrived after a recent consultation with his Chief, of whom, and the murmurs of the Cabinet, he spoke to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... often noticed on Alpine glaciers, only that these tremendous cracks in the surface are produced by the shrinkage of the crust consequent on cooling. Can we point out some analogies to this on the Earth? Certainly. The defile of the Jordan, terminating in the awful depression of the Dead Sea, no doubt occurs to you on the moment. But the Yosemite Valley, as I saw it ten years ago, is an apter comparison. There I stood on the brink ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... mile on mile, With cheer, and waving, and smile, The war-worn legions defile Where the nation's noblest stand; And the Great Lieutenant looks on, With the Flower of a rescued Land,— For the terrible work is done, And the Good Fight is won ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... that edge the waterway. When the troops entered the towns they found juju-houses everywhere, and in almost every home were rude images smeared with the blood of sacrifice. The dreaded Long Juju was discovered in a gloomy defile about a mile from Arochuku. The path to it wound a tortuous way through dense bush, with others constantly leading off on both sides, evidently intended to puzzle the uninitiated. A watch-tower was passed where sentinels had been posted. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... is with our heart. Justification inducts us into Christ; sanctification purifies our hearts and seals us in him; now when sin would come in contact with our hearts and defile it, there is something there, the Holy Spirit, the seal, which keeps sin from entering in. "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."—1 John 1:7. Notice the word "cleanseth." ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... north. When at last we reached them the wicked glister of their purple flanks seemed like a volcanic upheaval of the plain. For some time we had watched the clouds gathering over them, and as we got to the top of the defile rain was falling from a fringe of thunder to the south. Then the vapours lifted, and we saw below us another red plain with an island of palms in its centre. Mysteriously, from the heart of the palms, a tower shot up, as if alone in the wilderness, ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... the faithful, after receiving the grace of Christ and fellowship of the Spirit, may by unrighteous conduct "grieve the Holy Spirit" (Eph. iv. 80), and even by persistence in sin defile the gift of the Spirit which had been imparted to them. In the foregoing passage from St. Matthew xii., it is said that there is forgiveness for one who "speaketh against the Son of man," which expression ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... teachers, and thine ears shall hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the way," etc. Several tests follow descriptive of the condition of things or the circumstances in which these teachers are to be found. First, the absence of idolatry: "Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the ornaments of thy molten images of gold"; and next the multitude of fellow-believers: "Then shall He give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground withal; in ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... believers and hypocrites, of sheep and goats, &c., now as well as it was then? Is there not as great cause to separate and distinguish by church power, between the precious and the vile, the clean and the unclean, (who are apt to defile, infect, and leaven one another,) now as well as then? Ought there not to be as great care over the holy ordinances of God, to preserve and guard them from contempt and pollution, by a hedge and fence of government, now as well as then? Is it not as necessary ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... compose the main mass of the tableland, and are exposed in every deep valley in Tigre and along the valley of the Blue Nile. Mica schists form the prevalent rocks. Hornblende schist also occur and a compact felspathic rock in the Suris defile. The foliae of the schists strike north ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I cried, addressing them all, "that His Majesty were here to see how you conduct your trials and defile his Courts. As for you, Monsieur le President, you violate the sanctity of your office in giving way to anger; it is a thing unpardonable in a judge. I have told you in plain terms, gentlemen, that I ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Creator has made: wood and lane, cornfields red-ripe, turnip fields in squares of dazzling green, were spread out before them in rich embroidery with belts of silver stream flashing like diamonds on the robe of beauty with which Almighty love had clothed the earth. Oh! To think that sin should defile so fair a prospect! Yet sin was there, though unseen by those delighted gazers. Ay, and thickly sown among those sweet hills and dales were drunkards' houses, where hearts were withering, and beings made for immortality were destroying body and ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... gentleman who made the complaints informed me first of his own high standing as a lawyer, a citizen and a Christian. He was a deacon in the church which had been defiled by the occupation of Union troops, and by a Union chaplain filling the pulpit. He did not use the word "defile," but he expressed the idea very clearly. He asked that the church be restored to the former congregation. I told him that no order had been issued prohibiting the congregation attending the church. He said of course ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Opposite the defile through which the enemy was to march to the attack eight field-pieces were concealed behind a hill. The King must necessarily have been informed of the whole plan of the Austrian general, for he had called in the advanced posts ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... food, which he had already consumed. The soup-house was surrounded by a cloud of these famine spectres, half naked, and standing or sitting in the mud, beneath a cold, drizzling rain. The narrow defile to the dispensary bar was choked with young and old of both sexes, struggling forward with their rusty tin and iron vessels for soup, some of them upon all fours, like famished beasts. There was a cheap bread dispensary opened in one end of the ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt
... sprung on the cliffs. His brave peasants followed him; and taking their rapid march by a near cut through a hitherto unexplored defile of the Cartlane Craigs, leaping chasms, and climbing perpendicular rocks, they suffered no obstacles to impede their steps, while thus rushing onward like lions to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... westward rolls the battle's din, 495 That deep and doubling pass within.— Minstrel, away! the work of fate Is bearing on; its issue wait, Where the rude Trossachs' dread defile Opens on Katrine's lake and isle.— 500 Gray Benvenue I soon repassed, Loch Katrine lay beneath me cast. The sun is set, the clouds are met, The lowering scowl of heaven An inky hue of livid blue 505 To the deep lake has given; Strange gusts of wind from mountain-glen Swept o'er the lake, then ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... home or any ordinary village. He must be celibate; if he is married he must leave his wife. On no account may any ordinary person touch the holy milkman or the holy dairy; such a touch would so defile his holiness that he would forfeit his office. It is only on two days a week, namely Mondays and Thursdays, that a mere layman may even approach the milkman; on other days if he has any business with him, he must stand at a distance (some say a quarter ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... when it abruptly terminated in a perpendicular precipice. A considerable river flowed into the bay here, and between the river and the rock was a narrow passage, which at high water would be overflowed. We thought it most likely that our ass had passed by this defile; and I wished to see whether these rocks merely bordered or divided the island; we therefore went forward till we met with a stream, which fell in a cascade from a mass of rocks into the river. We ascended ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... after a violent struggle, conquered the passes of the Vosges, but the conquest was vigorously opposed and took more time than the French had reckoned on. As soon as it had become master of the Donon and the passes, the first French army pushed forward into the defile of Saarburg. At St. Blaise it won the first German colors, took Blamont and Cirey (August 15, 1914), seized the defiles north of the canal of the Marne and the Rhine, and reached Saarburg. Here a connection was established with the army of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... rapidly approaching. It consisted of a nearly straight defile, about half a mile in length, with a bend in its middle just sufficient to shut out the view of one end of it from the other. This defile was simply a cleft in the stupendous mass of rock that formed a great spur of the mountain on the left-hand side of the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... and on the flank, were held by strong parties of the enemy. A mile in the rear was a steep and lofty ridge that afforded a strong second line of defence. By the side of this ridge the road passed through a deep defile, and then mounted over a pass through the range of hills extending from the sea to the Tagus, and occupying the intermediate ground until close to Lisbon. Laborde's position was an embarrassing one. If he retired upon Torres Vedras his line of communication with Loison ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... closing round them, but the capture of Pontorson deranged the plans of the Republicans. The place had been held by four thousand men and ten pieces of cannon and, as it could be approached only by a narrow defile, it was believed that it would be impossible for the Vendeans to force their way into it. However, after three hours' fighting, their desperate valour won the day, and the Republicans were routed, with the loss of most of ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... present occupied as a barrack by the Bavarian troops. Whenever the Osmanlis take possession of a Greek village, they invariably ride into its Christian church, and endeavour to force their horses to defile the altar. By way of retaliation, when their mosque was delivered up last Sunday, certain Englishmen imitated their example. As may be readily supposed, this incensed the Turks to a great degree; but, like the conquered Christians, they ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... themselves under a tree, in front of the palace of the Thuilleries, within a few yards of the spot where Louis XVI. and many other victims of the revolution had perished; and they saw the last man of their armies defile past the town, and proceed to take a position beyond it, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... narrowness, or its material poverty is hidden by its intellectual wealth. From its stock of mighty men—its heroes, and bards, and sages—who have brightened the roll of fame; or from its memorable battle-fields, on rude heath and in mountain defile; or from its achievements which have swelled the tides of human enterprise, and made the world its debtor; he draws the inspiration, he carries away the conviction of greatness—so that wherever its emblems come before his eyes, they touch the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... complaint and denouncement, always with Patriot fervour of sentiment: Deputation of Women, pleading that they also may be allowed to take Pikes, and exercise in the Champ-de-Mars. Why not, ye Amazons, if it be in you? Then occasionally, having done our message and got answer, we 'defile through the Hall, singing ca-ira;' or rather roll and whirl through it, 'dancing our ronde patriotique the while,'—our new Carmagnole, or Pyrrhic war-dance and liberty-dance. Patriot Huguenin, Ex-Advocate, Ex-Carabineer, Ex-Clerk of the Barriers, comes deputed, with Saint-Antoine ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... dwarf sumach. A huge cliff stands up and seems to bar all passage. Yet the river foams in torrents at our side. Whence can it issue? What pass or cranny in that precipice is cloven for its escape? These questions grow in interest as we enter the narrow defile of limestone rocks which leads to the cliff-barrier, and find ourselves among the figs and olives of Vaucluse. Here is the village, the little church, the ugly column to Petrarch's memory, the inn, with its caricatures of Laura, and its excellent trout, the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... not to be titled of forbears vile * O whose ape-like face doth the tribe defile! Nay, I'm rending lion amid mankind, * A hero in wilds where the murks beguile. Al-Hayfa befitteth me, only me; * Ho thou whom ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton |
