"Looming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... detestable, dark, cloudy, and so damp that the dry and the wet bulbs showed a difference of only 4—5. This morning, too, the fire of colour had suddenly gone out; and the heavens were hung with a gloomy curtain. The great Shrr, looming unusually large and tall in the Scandinavian mountain-scene, grey of shadow and glancing with sun-gleams that rent the thick veils of mist-cloud, assumed a manner of Ossianic grandeur. After three hours and a half we were abreast of Zib, around ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... accomplished the long journey, re-crossing the treacherous Way of the Thousand Steps without a single mishap, and ascended to the lofty plateau of Omar's kingdom until, high up in the grey morning mist, we saw looming before us with almost spectral indistinctness the gigantic battlements and domes of the City in the Clouds. On ascending the rope steps at the Gate of Mo a few days previously we had ascertained that the expedition to the Hombori Mountains had been entirely ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... He was more like a father than a master to me. And he was cut off suddenly by a bloody death! In the midst of my grief for his loss I was arrested and accused of murdering him—my beloved master. I have seen the gallows looming before me for the last three months. I have been shut in prison, with no companions but my own awful thoughts. I have been put on trial for my life. And though the jury could not convict me, it would not ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... crowded streets, and soon were through the Porta Ratumena, outside the walls, and struck out across the Campus Martius, upon the Via Flaminia. It was rapidly darkening. The houses grew fewer and fewer. At a little distance the dim structures of the Portico and Theatre of Pompeius could be seen, looming up to an exaggerated size in the evening haze. A grey fog was drifting up from the Tiber, and out of a rift in a heavy cloud-bank a beam of the imprisoned moon was struggling. Along the road were peasants with ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and his friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast. John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller—though, (trifles in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference. John was lean and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so that it never occurred to you to think of him as thin. Winthorpe's spare figure, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... shadows long on the levels, and the hills were looming to the east in softest tones of gray and amethyst; the whitish green of desert growths lay between, and much of ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... looming a very serious situation. Only sailors were available to help American settlers in seizing and holding the coast against a very active and exceptionally well-provided and intelligent Mexican, or Spanish-speaking, opposition. Fremont and his "surveying party" ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... over the land in a northwestern direction on a bright day you can see South Mountain, "forerunner of the sierrated Alleghanies," looming up between the town and Cumberland Valley. Back of it the serried ranks of the Alleghanies rise in hazy indistinctness and blend imperceptibly with the blue along the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... began to blow, and gradually rose to a gale, causing our river ripple to mimic ocean waves, and the dust and sand to fly before us in clouds, obscuring earth and sky. About ten we approached a mountain range, which had been for some time looming on the horizon. We found we had to pass through a channel of about a quarter of a mile wide; on our left, a series of barren hills, bold and majestic-looking in the mist; on the right, a solitary rock, steep, conical-shaped, and about 300 feet high. On the side of it a Buddhist ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Hades was supposed to be an opening that led down into Tartarus, "a place made underneath all things, so low and horrible that hell is its heaven." Here the old earth giants, the looming Titans, lay, bound, transfixed ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of civilization; it brought the steam-engine, the telephone, woman's rights, and the county councillor directly in its train. With the eye of faith, had he only possessed that useful optical organ, the Stone Age artizan might doubtless have beheld Pears' soap and the deceased wife's sister looming dimly in the remote future. Till that moment human life had been almost stationary: thenceforth, it proceeded by leaps and bounds, like a kangaroo society, on its upward path towards triumphant democracy and the penny post. The nineteenth ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... that if due care were used this danger need not be too formidable, and, indeed, in his heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man's nerve was broken, and in these days fear swept wavelike over reason and had its way with him. Fear looked up to this looming, portentous shadow and saw there youth and health and strength, courage and hopefulness, and, best of all armors, a righteous cause. How was an ill and tired and wicked old man to fight against these? It became an obsession, the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... point occurred in the year 1755, and is associated with the illustrious name of Rodney. The Seven Years War was at the time looming in the near future, and England's secret complicity in the causes of that tremendous struggle rendered necessary the placing of her Navy upon a footing adequate to the demands which it was foreseen would be very shortly made upon it. In common with ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Around the old mission, whose bells have rung o'er the valley for a century, a few houses were grouped; but beyond this there was scarcely a sign of man's work except the far-off speck of a herdsman looming in the mirage, or the white walls of the old Spanish ranch-house glimmering afar through the hazy sunshine in which the silent ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... left behind in full belief the mountain looming in the south could be reached before nightfall, while the road to its left would serve as a sure guide to food and shelter for the evening. But, as it turned out, the morning's haze developed a strong mist ere the afternoon was half gone, through ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... and the fondling of a little hand (a hand in a greatly mended glove of cheap kid). Then indeed one seemed to be nearer that elusive something that threaded it all together. And the dangers of the street corners, the horses looming up suddenly out of the dark, the carters with lanterns at their horses' heads, the street lamps, blurred, smoky orange at one's nearest, and vanishing at twenty yards into dim haze, seemed to accentuate the infinite need of protection on the part of a delicate young lady who ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... and Ruth appeared blushing in the door-way, with a handsome young man looming in ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... thought—everything was wonderful to-night, most of all this romantic scene in the den, with their hands clinging and the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her life seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight and pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low, cosy roadsters stopped under sheltering trees—only ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... took the first daguerreotype from the roof of that famous building. That was the greatest wonder of the day. What was more remarkable, a picture or portrait could be copied in a few moments. Then there was a hint of war with Mexico, and the Oregon question was looming up with its cabalistic figures of "54, 40, or fight." Indeed, it seemed as if ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... awaiting Theodore Roosevelt. The "depot" was deserted. Roosevelt dragged his belongings through the sagebrush toward a huge black building looming northeastward through the night, and hammered on the door until the proprietor ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... all prospect but that of the ocean, was a tall cliff, covered with ragged yellow pines and stunted cedars, from which on stormy nights many a quivering flame had shot upward, luring ships to their ruin. Still, with this grim protest against the name looming behind it, the lonely old house was called "The Sailor's Safe Anchor," and was known all along the coast as ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... she began to feel its heat oppressive; she let her hands fall with a gesture half of contempt, half of despair, and then rose abruptly, and walked into the darkness of the larger room, from the unshuttered windows of which she could see the dark bulk of her husband's studio looming against the gray, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the great buildings and tall irregular blocks of houses appearing all massed together among the trees from different points of view, and taking on fine architectural effects, now transformed into huge grey palaces, large and distinct, now looming in the mist, sketchily, with uncertain outlines, and all the fascination of the fabrics, innocent of detail, that confront the dreamer in enchanted woods, or lure him to the edge of fairy lakes with twinkling lights all multiplied ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... there came from either hand A sense of change upon the land; A brooding stillness rustled through With creeping winds that hardly blew; A shadow from the looming west, A stir of leaves, a dim unrest; It seemed as ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it was in no measure ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Poseidonia late in the afternoon, casting back many regretful glances at the three giant sentinels of the plain, looming preternaturally large in the rapidly fading light of a starless evening. At that hour we felt we could understand and sympathise with the poor untutored peasant's fear and avoidance of these lonely ruins, for superstition is often as much the result of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... is still bad enough to discourage us landsmen, we put to sea, and once more head for the Farallones. They are hidden in mist, but we beat bravely about, and by-and-by distinguish the faint outlines of the islands looming through the fog! We try to secure the buoy, tacking to and fro; just at the wrong moment our main halyards part, and the sail comes crashing to the deck. To avoid being cast on the inhospitable shore, we put to sea under jib and foresail, and are ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... foremen swinging all's well. The deepening drum of the steaming engine as it entered the gorge walls, the straining of the injectors, and the frequent hissing check of the air as the powerful machine restrained its moving load, was music to the tired listener above. Then, looming darkly behind the tender, surprising the onlookers, even Glover himself, came the real train. Not till the roadbuilders heard the heavy drop of the big cars on the new rail joints did they realize that the first train of fruit ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... beach she steamed, looming larger and ever larger; then her speed slackened, slackened, until at last she lay rolling quietly a quarter of a mile off-shore. A shrill piping came over the water as the crew was mustered amidships and the ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... gloated over the pictures of the herd of giraffes and the monkey-band and the graceful "Human Fly" walking upside down "defying the laws of gravitation;" and they considered no future, however pleasant, after the day and date on the bills. Thus the golden day approached, looming larger and larger upon the horizon as it came. In the interim, how many a druggist bought his own bottles the third and fourth time, how many a junk-dealer paid for his own iron, how many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman, the world ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... also had to wait for Rolla. The woman sat for a long time in the growing dusk, looming out pensively over the valley. Corrus was somewhere within a mile or two, and so Kinney was not surprised to see the herdsman's image dancing, tantalizingly, before Rolla's eyes. She was thinking of him with all ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... minute, dear," she pleaded. "You haven't seen this gorgeous view to the southwest, with Mount Pisgah looming in the center like some vast cathedral spire—look, ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... Liberal Members each were returned for Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, to the first reformed Parliament—for Hertfordshire, Sebright, Calvert and Alston, and for Cambridgeshire, Townley, Childers and Adeane, but with the great issue of the Corn Laws looming in the distance, these agricultural counties gradually went round, and in 1841 all the representatives of the two counties were Conservatives. In Cambs., Yorke, Allix and Eaton, were returned without a contest, and in Herts., Grimston, Ryder and Smith, were returned, Alston ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... was his duty, as he thought, to see that this should be effected, if possible,—and as quickly as possible. This was his duty, not only as a lawyer employed in a particular case, but as a man who would be bound to prevent any great evil which he saw looming in the future. In his view of the case the marriage of Lady Anna Lovel, with a colossal fortune, to Daniel Thwaite the tailor, would be a grievous injury to the social world of his country,—and it was one of those evils which may probably be intercepted by due and discreet precautions. ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... a moment that it would sweep us below the enemy's camp, and that my expedition would fail. By dint of hard rowing, however, we had got three-quarters of the way over, when I saw an immense black mass looming over the water. Then a sharp scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... lay-figure in sketching in those features of prehistoric life of which we are totally in ignorance. It is peculiarly useful to the student of Roman religion because he stands on the borderland and looking backwards sees just enough dark shapes looming up behind him to crave more light. For in many phases of early Roman religion there are present characteristics which go back to old manners of thought, and these manners of thought are not peculiar to the Romans but are found in many primitive peoples ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... suppose," Miss Gostrey concurred, "realise in advance, in such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block. Little by little it looms up. It has been looming for you more and more till at ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (secret agent to arrest disloyal men endeavoring to cross the Potomac) and Mr. Secretary Seddon. Mr. Foote, arrested by their great skill, has applied, indignantly, for a writ of habeas corpus. Thus the time of our great dignitaries is consumed removing molehills, while mountains are looming up everywhere. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... no, no! Not this week-end. Not this particular triumphant looming week-end. No! He said, ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... It was delightful. He tugged still harder, and repeatedly, until the whole tepee was in motion. Then the sharp cry of a squaw inside sent him scampering back to Kiche. But after that he was afraid no more of the looming bulks ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... across the heavens in spotless sheen, curved the turquoise dome of a southwestern midday sky, flooding the dust and dunes below in throbbing heat-rays. It was God's own section of earth, and not the least beautiful of its vistas, looming now steadily ahead on their right, was the place belonging to Judge Richards. House and outhouses white, and just now aglint in the white light of the sun, the whole ranch presented the appearance of diamonds nestling in ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... I was crossing Waterloo Bridge and saw the dark mass of the Houses of Parliament looming on the other side of the river, and the light in the tower which showed that the House was sitting, that I began to realise my situation. As exiles in desert lands yearn for green fields, so yearned I for those green benches. In vain I represented to myself how often I had yawned on them, how often ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Roberts. The man who is to rule South Africa must be a great soldier, not a tyrant, not a martinet, not a bundle of red tape tied up with a Downing Street bow and adorned with frills. The negro trouble is looming large on the African borders, and the negro chiefs know that in Lord Roberts they have their master. We must not pander to them to the injury of the Dutch, or how are we to weld Dutch and British into a national whole? Our generals have so ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... over. We had just emerged into the main street when a dog-cart came dashing up, the two cigars in it looming red. It was pulled up. Harold's outline could be recognised in any light, but I was entirely hidden in his great shadow, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and day was breaking when a step on the door-sill of the bunk-house awakened him. He raised himself slightly on his elbow and stared at McArthur, looming large in the gray dawn, with a skull carried carefully in ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... swift and painted black—these little steamers were commanded by men who knew every inch of coast; who knew equally that on them depended life and death—or more. With banked fires and scarce-turning wheels, they would drop down the Cape Fear, at night, to within a hundred yards of the looming blockade giant. Then, putting on all steam, they would rush by him, trusting to speed and surprise to elude pursuit and distract his aim—and ho! ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... integrated circuit (IC), and in particular the microprocessor, continue to increase unabated. Certainly, physical limits must be approached at some point, but each looming barrier has so far been met by technological innovation. Nevertheless, should the march of IC improvements slow somewhat, the software and networking technologies that are being developed at an accelerating pace will permit the vision of Rapid Dominance ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... in the car grew cooler, she fell asleep, and did not waken till the sun was down, and a great bank of black clouds was looming up in the west, with mutterings of thunder, and an occasional flash of lightning showing against the dark sky. She might not have wakened then if the car had not given a lurch, with a jar which brought every one to his feet. The train was off the track, and it would be ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... hand, picked his way across the monstrous tangle of the face of the jam between the great white jets, till he gained the centre of the structure. Here his practised eye, with the aid of a perilous axe-stroke here and there,—strokes which might possibly bring the whole looming mass down upon him in a moment,—presently located the timbers which held the structure firm, "the key-logs," as the men call them. These he marked with his axe. Then, returning to the shore, he called for two volunteers to dare the task ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... out my hand to catch myself from falling, I clung to a hard surface like an iron railing. For a moment I was stunned and confused. The sunlight seemed to fade, and there was a vague hint of darkness all about me, with black walls looming up on all sides. It was as though I stood in two worlds at once, transfixed between night and day. Then the darkness went away, the sunlight brightened. I looked around, and found Selda watching me curiously, a ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... mean-looking streets, and finally turning down a kind of alley, arrived at their destination. On one side of this street was a row of small houses; facing these were a number of buildings of a miscellaneous description—sheds and stables; and beyond these a plot of waste ground on which could be seen, looming weirdly through the dusk, a number of empty carts and waggons with their shafts resting on the ground or reared up into the air. Threading their way carefully through these and avoiding as much as possible the mud, pools of water, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the face that Gisborne gave her she would never have had any charm for Tanqueray. For what Gisborne had tried to get was that oppressive effect of genius, heavily looming. Not a hint had he caught of her high levity, of her look when the bright devil of comedy possessed her, not a flash of her fiery quality, of her eyes' sudden gold, and the ways of her delicate, her brilliant mouth, its fine, deliberate sweep, its darting tilt, like wings ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... his armor reverberating in the hollow depths of his helmet, he saw the mail-clad figure from the other end of the lists rushing towards him, looming larger and larger as they came together. He gripped his saddle with his knees, clutched the stirrup with the soles of his feet, and bent his body still more forward. In the instant of meeting, with almost the blindness of instinct, he dropped the point of his spear ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... a towering surge Chases across the thunder-booming sea A flying bark, whose white sails strain beneath The wind's wild buffering, and all the air Maddens with roaring, as the rollers crash On a black foreland looming on the lee Where long reefs fringe the surf-tormented shores. So chased she, and so dashed the ranks asunder Triumphant-souled, and hurled fierce threats before: "Ye dogs, this day for evil outrage done To Priam shall ye pay! No man of you Shall from ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... fears, mine friendts," rumbled. Houten, looming up like a hill in the blackness. "All dis iss planned. Dose mans beside us are real navy mans. I toldt you all iss vell. It iss mooch better ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... succeeding in keeping the peace with Mrs. Plunkett for young Bob?" And firing this volley of questions through the gently agitated smile-veil the Honorable Gideon Newsome stood in the door of the store, large-looming and jocular. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a momentous day in her life, a day calling for rare courage and endurance, and the demands on her strength had left her so tired that the other hard days looming in the near distance seemed all the more terrible because of the present exhaustion of body and mind. It was nearly time for shutting up the store, but it was twilight still, for in those northern latitudes the afterglow on clear nights lasts for hours. Katherine was busy at her ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... across. In the confusion, with all eyes centered on Polter, we escaped discovery. It was dim under the dock canopy. Polter had backed from the road and was walking to the barge. It lay like the length of an ocean liner, its sail looming an enormous spread above it. The gunwale was level with the dock-floor. A dozen or more fifty-foot men were greeting ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... left," he said, recalling their position. Painfully he forced his way through the scrubby underbrush. His foot struck hard against an obstruction that nearly threw him to the ground. It was a jutting rock. Peering through the white mass before his eyes, he could make out a great black, looming mass. Eagerly he pushed forward. It was a towering slab of rock. Following it round on the lee side, he suddenly halted with a shout of grateful triumph. A great section had fallen out of the rock, forming a little cave, storm-proof ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... surfaces of outcropping rock, through avenues of clustered tombs, pillars, pagan monuments which were tracks of the Herods, dead and abandoned, splendid pleasure gardens, suburban palaces lifeless and still, toward the looming Tower of Hippicus, brooding over ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... Against the blinding glory, looming gigantic in the mist, I saw the Sagamore, an awful apparition in his paint, turn to salute the rising sun. Then, the mysterious office of his priesthood done, he lifted his rifle, tossed the heavy piece lightly to his shoulder, and strode ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... provided with some of the captured rifles and swords. As soon as we were clear, Captain A——, who was a tiny man, even among a tiny race, drew a little sword, and pointing to the enemy's barricades now looming up very close, ordered his bugler to sound the charge once more. The notes ripped out, and giving a mixed attempt at a European cheer, we quickened our pace, running as rapidly as we could over the rubbish which covered the ground and taking advantage of every piece of cover. A few stray shots pecked ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... lost in a delicious reverie, his horse turned of its own accord to the left, and went for some distance up an embowered road; Arthur suddenly roused himself to find that he was passing close to a large sombre house, that had evidently once been fortified, looming very impressively in the languorous air; the gate had been opened for some purpose and not closed again, and he was, in fact, trespassing ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... have Jacky and I, God knows! I had the curious sensation of fear, I fancy—though I am loath to call it that—for the first time in my life; and I was very much relieved when, at dusk, we rounded the looming Watchman, ran through the white waters and thunderous confusion of the Gate, with the breakers leaping high on either hand, sharply turned Frothy Point and came at last into the ripples of Trader's Cove. Glad I was, you may be sure, to find my mother waiting on my father's wharf, and ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... after that to the hotel roof, whence you can see the whole of Jerusalem. It was just before moonrise. The ancient city lay in shadow, with the Dome of the Rock looming above it, mysterious and silent. Down below us in the street, where a gasoline light threw a greenish-white glare, three Arabs in native costume were squatting with their backs against the ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... late, for I saw nothing but the looming figure of a second ruffian and his upraised arm; then painless darkness seemed to enfold me, and I was conscious of plunging down ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... spacious harbour, sheltered deep From access of the winds, but looming vast With awful ravage, AEtna's neighbouring steep Thundered aloud, and, dark with clouds, upcast Smoke and red cinders in a whirlwind's blast. Live balls of flame, with showers of sparks, upflew And licked the stars, and in combustion massed, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... spectacle, if not actually repellent. Rightly or wrongly, one is apt to associate that time of life with stern resolve. A young man, it appears to me, should hold himself well in hand. Youth has so much to spare! Youth can afford to be virtuous. With such stores of joy looming ahead, it should be a period of ideals, of self-restraint and self-discipline, of earnestness of purpose. How well the Greek Anthology praises "Temperance, the nurse of Youth!" The divine Plato lays it down that youngsters should not touch wine at all, since ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... a Modern Solomon, who had been chosen to preside as Judge in a Divorce Mill, climbed to his Perch and unbuttoned his Vest for the Wearisome Grind. He noticed that the first Case looming up on the Docket was that of Flora Botts vs. ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... said, "I reckon I'll meander along," took another long breath, this time secretly, as if conscious of my eyes, and then slouched sideways out of the house into the darkness again, where he seemed suddenly to attain his full height, and so looming, disappeared. I shut the door, went to ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... were too alarmed to notice her absence. They went hurrying back and forth with this remedy and that. Again and again they were ready to give up; once Henry Roberts said, "He is gone!" and once Hannah began to cry, and said, "Poor lad, poor boy!" Yet each made one more effort, their shadows looming gigantic against the walls or stretching across the ceiling, bending and sinking as they knelt beside the poor young man, who by that time was beyond speech. So the struggle went on. But little by little life began to gain. John Fenn's ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... places where elephants and other heavy animals had trodden numerous alleys. Along one of these narrow passages we stealthily advanced, until Jali stepped quietly on one side, and pointed with his finger; I immediately observed two elephants looming through the thick bushes about eight paces from me. One offered a temple shot, which I quickly took with a Reilly No. 10, and floored it on the spot. The smoke hung so thickly, that I could not see sufficiently ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... forget. They were all in the same boat, and this was a job that had to be done, they couldn't get out of it; best not think about the future! So they had lulled their consciences to sleep. But it was there, back in their minds all the time, a looming big awful question about the hereafter; and when the great guns boomed afar as a few were doing tonight and they thought how soon they might be called to go over the top, they would have been fools ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... to the prudent Charles V. succeeded the mad fool Charles VI. In England the strong King Edward III. was followed by the incompetent Richard II. In Germany the Emperor Charles IV., a statesman, had as his successor the drunken sot Wenceslas. In England the Wars of the Roses were looming in the future. Agincourt proved more disastrous to England than to France. There was hopeless turmoil everywhere. As Luther said when a somewhat similar condition existed in Germany—"God, tiring of the game, has thrown the cards on ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... crest he worked his wary way, until he was so close that he fancied he could see the vague outline of some monstrous silvery bulk looming there in the heart of the red thicket. He took another cautious step forward—and then his careful stalking ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... a lofty construction of carved masonry with an iron ladder clamped into it, far transcending the net. Not immediately did he comprehend that it was merely one of the famous Lechford chimney-stacks looming gigantic in the night. He walked cautiously onward and came to a precipice and drew back, startled, and took another pathway at right angles to the first one. Presently the protective netting stopped, and he was exposed to heaven; he had reached the roof of the servants' ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... that, a dark figure looming out of the gloom. And the next instant we had him one by each hand ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... was an insult. And, as I stared out at misty trees and hedgerow I began as it were to sense a grimness in the very air—the million-sided tragedy of war; behind me the weeping girl, before me and looming nearer with every mile, ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... consummate skill also he arranges his recital like a series of dissolving views, showing how epochs overlap, and how as Babylon is fading Assyria is rising, and as the latter in turn is waning Media is looming into sight. We are, in this third instalment of Maspero's monumental work, brought to understand how the decline of one mighty Asiatic empire after another, culminating in the overthrow of the Persian dominion ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... whole Church—to assert a position as the representative or president of all the bishops of the Catholic world [342:1]—and to carry out a new system of ecclesiastical unity. The experiment was a failure, simply because the idea looming in the imagination of the Roman bishop had not yet obtained full possession of the mind ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... too chagrined to answer. First it was Capps; now it was my own friend Kennedy chaffing me for my ignorance. I was glad to see Paddy's huge form looming in the semi-darkness. He had seen that we were ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... great war trail—arranging clothing, light supplies of food, and, above all, ammunition. Then they left at night in their canoe. As they approached the mainland, all, as if by involuntary impulse, looked back at the haunted island, looming darkly in the night. ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... others were doing something, no matter how fruitless it might prove, while she was doing nothing. Steve was riding full-tilt to meet the herd. She saw him and his men, strange figures in the uncertain light, looming big against the dawn sky and the fires' glow. They were shouting, waving their arms. Then, going down over a swell of earth they ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... another gateway, and then to another, the Pa-ta-ling, thirteen miles from Nankow and the top of the Nankow Pass. From every side long vistas could be seen; then portions of the Wall winding in and out, and ever and anon a massive watch tower looming forth. ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... a time when Emily Louise divined why. All at once talk began at school, about a thing looming ahead, called an Election. It seemed a disturbing thing, keeping Uncle Charlie at the office all hours. And when in time it actually arrived, Emily Louise could not go to school that day because the way ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... no sound from the half-ruined chapel or the long, empty corridors. The storm had ceased, and the casements no longer rattled in the wind. To the man who lay there, nursing his fast-ebbing strength, it seemed indeed like the silence before the one last tragedy of death, looming so black ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see the great grove in which the manor-house stands, looming up in the midst of the cleared land like a small forest reservation. Our route this time brought us to the homestead from the landward side through an open park, and we got a better view of the building than the dense foliage on ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... throng pressing eagerly into the lobbies, and seeking with more confusion than grace seats in the dress circle. The orchestra has played an overture, and the house presents a lively picture of bright-colored robes. Mr. Snivel's handsome figure is seen looming out of a private box in the left-hand procenium, behind the curtain of which, and on the opposite side, a mysterious hand every now and then frisks, makes a small but prudent opening, and disappears. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... political organization and their military strength, of offering him serious resistance. These were Ethiopia and Carthage—the one the great power of the South, the equal, if not even the superior, of Egypt—the other the great power of the West—remote, little known, but looming larger for, the obscurity in which she was shrouded, and attractive from her reputed wealth. The views of Cambyses comprised the reduction of both these powers, and also the conquest of the oasis of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... them and pulled weary legs up, one after the other. So steep lay the jumble of cliff fragments that we lost sight of the cave long before we got near it. Suddenly we rounded a stone, to halt and gasp at the thing looming before us. ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... he devised a funding scheme which, taken in connection with his system of issues, was in effect what in these days would be called an "interconvertibility scheme" By various degrees of persuasion or force,—the guillotine looming up in the background,—holders of assignats were urged to convert them into evidence of national debt, bearing interest at five per cent, with the understanding that if more paper were afterward needed more would be issued. All in vain. The official tables of depreciation ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... early childhood are always vague and hazy; but in the distance, among shifting forms and changing prospects, there was always a big, big figure, with kind eyes and strong arms, looming ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for leagues, beneath the eye. Some six or seven barks were in view, their sails drooping in negligent forms, as if disposed expressly to become models for the artist, their yards inclining as chance had cast them, and their hulls looming large, to complete the picture. To these near objects must be added the distant view, which extended to the Jura in one direction, and which in the other was bounded by the frontiers of Italy, whose aerial limits were to be traced in that region which ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Sheridan at the great battles in the West," he said. "I particularly remember how he planted himself and the batteries at Perryville and saved us from defeat, but he seems to be looming up so much more now in ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sun." The honest sailor was rubbing his hands with delight as he spoke, his broad, open countenance beaming with a perfect glow of satisfaction. I looked in the direction indicated by his finger, and beheld, not the lofty pinnacled cliffs of the "Pilgrim Fathers," but a low gloomy coast, looming through a mist. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... smoke again—on one hand lay the Isle of Rathlin, with the north coast of Ireland, bleak and bare; on the other, the Mull of Kyntyre, with a tide of its own rushing by like a mill-race, and over it the cloudy crest of Isla, looming through the flitting vapours, cold, dark, and hard-visaged, as though no drop of whisky had ever been brewed therein. One could not recognise the misty monster, thus grimly shadowed forth, to be the parent of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... and long hard miles over gradually rising hills, with the huge mass of the Tetons looming ever nearer, and the next day we climbed the ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... was now more plain. "Be silent and ready," whispered the informer, and the whisper was passed round. In another minute a large lugger-built boat, evidently intended for sailing as well as pulling, was seen through the fog looming still larger from the mist, pulling into ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of utmost importance. Insecurity of employment, insufficient means to provide the mother and baby with medical supervision and good food, or looming debts are in themselves sufficient to prevent prospective parents from attaining the other kinds of readiness—physical and psychological. On the other hand, young people with steady incomes should not postpone having children merely because those incomes are not high. Three ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... different bridges traced on either side a dozen starry lines through the dark air, and a continued blaze lighted the two shores in their whole length, revealing the outline of the Isle da la Cite. I recognized the Palaces of the Louvre and the Tuileries in the dusky mass beyond. Eastward, looming against the dark sky, I could faintly trace the black towers of Notre Dame, The rushing of the swift waters below mingled with the rattling of a thousand carts and carriages, and the confusion of a thousand voices, till it seemed like some grand ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... danger which the young dude, of a certain type which sits often in the front row of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping forehead and feeble jaw, watching the unhappy women who dance for gold—sees looming before him, as he lisps out his deep disapproval of increased knowledge and the freedom of obtaining the means of subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and expresses his vast preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all types of cultured and productive labouring womenhood in ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... in our allotted places, the canoe was quite full; and we started from Isle Jeremie in good spirits, with the broad, sun-like face of Mike Lynch looming over the bows of the canoe, and the black muzzle of Humbug (the dog) resting on ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... any longer. The place slightly stifled him with its stillness, rugs—the odours that came from lacquered shapes, looming dimly, flowered and golden in the dusk—the ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... 'What thou sayest, O father, is perfectly true. But in view of the evil that is looming on the future as regards thyself, if we conciliate the people with wealth and honours, they would assuredly side with us for these proofs of our power. The treasury and the ministers of state, O king, are at this moment under our control. Therefore, it behoveth thee ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator) |
