"Portent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rise and rapid growth of the Life and Liberty movement within the Established Church is something like a portent and one that Nonconformists cannot but regard with the deepest interest and sympathy. They may perhaps be forgiven if they see in it an attempt to win from within the Church just those privileges and liberties for the sake of which their ancestors ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... who was not more or less affected by it. It was the first time that I had ever beheld such a sight, and I am not ashamed to confess that the sensation it produced in me was, for a short time, something very nearly akin to terror, so dreadful a portent did it seem to be, and so profoundly impressed was I with our utter helplessness away out there in mid-ocean, in that small, frail boat, with no friendly shelter at hand, and nothing to protect us from the gathering fury of the elements—nothing, that is to say, but the hand of God; ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... the dust on the piano, he perceived with remarkable clarity that the unhappiness he had suffered, the loneliness he had endured before he met Doris Cleveland was nothing to what now threatened, to what now seemed to dog his footsteps with sinister portent. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Glad Day, Day of Festival and Frolic,—once. Now Day of Portent, of Threats and the Evil Eye. Such is the miracle worked by Steam Engine, Mechanics, Quick ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... omens. Before a prosperous fishing season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a place called Columkille's Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon, renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest boscage, and ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... vous supplierons-nous tres-humblement pour ce tant bon et tant obeissant peuple francois, duquel Dieu (vostre pere et le leur aussi) vous a faict seigneur et roy; prenez en pitie, sire, et soublevez un peu les charges que des long temps ils portent patiemment. Pour Dieu, sire, ne permettez que ce tiers pied de vostre throne soit aucunement foule, meurtry ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... more. The Austrians gave way, turned to flight, and one of the great victories of the epoch had been won. In a few hours the glorious news had reached Paris, and in Paris it was interpreted as an evil portent for Robespierre. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... as though the god of silence sealed his lips. He could not speak. How could he speak, when, if he told what was in his heart, his words would be of such terrible portent? Then, like lightning, the issues became clear to him. They were written from sky to sky. If he did not speak, if he maintained the silence which he had hitherto maintained, the jury would find him guilty, and he would be hanged. But his mother's name would be saved from disgrace. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... City blood descended from heaven and was smeared all about by the birds. When at the Ludi Romani not one of the senators was entertained on the Capitol, as had been the custom, they took this, too, as a portent. Again, the incident that happened to Livia caused her pleasure, but inspired the rest with terror. A white bird carrying a sprig of fruited laurel had been thrown by an eagle into her lap. As this seemed to be a sign of no small importance, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... reddish-haired youngster, freckled almost as profusely as Billy. Three times had they met in noble battle, and three times had Billy been the conqueror, but somehow the spirit of young McMasters did not seem particularly broken, nor did he become a serf. Billy felt that the air was full of portent, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... of defiance which ran through this message, greeted by shrill cries of enthusiasm in many circles, was viewed in other quarters as a portent of war. Responsible newspapers in both countries spoke of an armed settlement of the dispute as inevitable. Congress created the commission and appropriated money for the investigation; a body of learned men was appointed to ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the weather is fine again. We had a whole day's rain (which Herodotus says is a portent here) and a hurricane from the south worthy of the Cape. I thought we should have been buried under the drifting sand. To-day is again heavenly. I saw Abd-el-Azeez, the chemist in Cairo; he seemed a very good ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... that had been cast upon himself, suspicions he had vainly endeavored to fathom. What was in the wind, anyhow? he asked himself. There seemed to be forces at work over which he had no control, forces big with portent, heavy with menace. Like a towering thunder-cloud that casts its sickly green over all about, so these unknown influences were overshadowing all ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... shaken by our sorrows and our crimes; And she bids her sons awaken to the portent of the times; With her travail pains upon her, she is hurling from their place All the minions of dishonour, to ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "It can't be helped now." We all felt that these simple words might mean much. To test their full portent I went over to him, Natalie still holding my ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... island. In the days of the Tudors, a ship from England, seeking a north east passage to the land of silk and spice, had discovered the White Sea. The barbarians who dwelt on the shores of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a portent as a vessel of a hundred and sixty tons burden. They fled in terror; and, when they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the chief of the strangers and kissed his feet. He succeeded in opening a friendly communication with them; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their fellow-citizens of all races, to free not only this country but the whole world from the oppression of the rulers of Germany, an oppression far less capable of being endured and of far graver portent. ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... with plenty and living in ostentation on one side of the road, and starveling ruffians begging their bread in the gutter on the other without attempting to take the rich men by the throat, or even burn their houses. On which the essayist's comment is "Tout cela ne va pas trop mal; mais quoy! ils ne portent point de hault de chausses," a truly Rabelaisian reason ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the aeroplane round, and descended until it was circling immediately over the junk and its assailants. Cries of amazement broke from some of the Malays as they caught sight of this strange portent from the sky, but the greater number were climbing up the sides of the junk, heedless of all else than the work in hand. There was something fascinating to Smith in the spectacle: the almost naked Malays, armed with their terrible krises, swarming ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... A week the portent stood in sun and rain And fluttered rags of dread. A sparrow, nathless, Whose nestlings cried, dashed down and snatched a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... Antiquities, ed. 1849, iii. 132, where Brand cites Melton's Astrologaster, or the Figure-Caster, 1620, to show that to dream of the devil and of gold was deemed an equally lucky portent. To dream of gold is also pronounced a happy omen in the Countryman's ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... This portent befel south at Mossfell, the self-same night, that Onund dreamed how Raven came to him, covered all over ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... Carnival; but, planted there with his face pale with fasting and his knees stiff with praying, he seemed so stern a satire on it and on the crazy thousands who were preferring it to his way, that I half expected to see some heavenly portent out of a monastic legend come down and confirm his choice. Yet I confess that though I wasn't enamoured of the Carnival myself, his seemed a grim preference and this forswearing of the world a terrible game—a gaining one only if your zeal never falters; a hard fight when it does. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Lakely and of the possibilities the night might hold; for more than once before, the weight of the 'St. George's Gazette', with Lakely at its back, had turned the political scales. To be marked by him as a coming man was at any time a favorable portent; to be singled out by him at the present juncture was momentous. A thrill of expectancy, almost of excitement, passed through him as he surveyed his appearance ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... divine manifestation against him, that he despised any exceptional scepticism as utterly beneath his notice or attention—thoroughly engrossed, as he appeared to be, with the terrible sanction of a portent of some coming retribution. His silence in some degree distressed me, as I thought he resented my levity in commenting upon his convictions; so it was with some relief that Dr. Rogers came in and sat down at the table, apparently to wait for a call to the bedroom. A man this of ostentatious ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... about the desert. Domini, leaning forward with one hand upon her horse's warm neck, watched until the full circle was poised for a moment on the horizon, holding the palms in its frame of fire. She had never seen a moon look so immense and so vivid as this moon that came up into the night like a portent, fierce yet serene, moon of a barbaric world, such as might have shone upon Herod when he heard the voice of the Baptist in his dungeon, or upon the wife of Pilate when in a dream she was troubled. It suggested to her the powerful watcher of tragic events fraught with long chains ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... conversation between Billy and myself brought with it the threat of a change of weather. It had been exceptionally hot all day, with less wind than usual, and there was a languorous quality in the atmosphere that seemed to portend thunder, a portent that was strengthened toward nightfall when the wind died away to the merest zephyr, while a great bank of heavy, lowering cloud piled itself up slowly along the eastern horizon so that the rising full ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... awakening, king," said his stout old follower. "'Twas the great Olaf, thine uncle, Olaf Tryggvesson the king, that didst call thee. Win Norway, king, for the portent is that thou and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... guant a deu en puroffrit E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint L' anme del cunte portent ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... attentive to his loss, than buried in meditation on the stupendous object that had occasioned it. He touched, he examined the fatal casque; nor could even the bleeding mangled remains of the young Prince divert the eyes of Manfred from the portent ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... releasing a flaming 'dropper.' About the time the 'dropper' reached the earth Tuxall lighted up his well-oiled barn. All Harwick, having had its attention attracted by the explosion, and seen the portent with its own eyes, believed that a huge meteor had fired the building. So Tuxall and Company had a well attested wonder from the heavens. That's the little plan which Bailey's presence threatened to wreck. Is it your opinion that the stars are ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of religion. If men in the twelfth century had been told that the lightning had been driven for leagues underground, and had dragged at its destroying tail loads of laughing human beings, and if they had then been told that the people alluded to this pulverising portent chirpily as "The Twopenny Tube," they would have called down the fire of Heaven on us as a race of half-witted atheists. Probably they would have been ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... convince her of her folly, said, "Your importunity, wife, has prevailed, listen to a dreadful and portentous matter. It has been told us by the priests that a lark has been seen flying in the air with a golden helmet and spear: it is this portent that we are considering and discussing with the augurs, as to whether it be a good or bad omen. But say nothing about it." Having said these words he went into the Forum. But his wife seized on the very first of her maids that entered ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... frontier; they had also to record the transfer of troops, the return of fugitives, the pursuit of deserters, any chance scuffle between soldiers and natives, as well as the punishment inflicted on the rebellious, the appearance of a portent in the heavens, or omens noticed by the augurs. There were plenty of envious or officious tongues among their followers to report to headquarters the slightest failure of duty, and to draw attention to their negligence. Moreover, it seems certain that the object of thus compelling them to refer ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Wingate was taking, by fits and starts, in the deposed family who were his relatives and—enemies. In Marshall's opinion the breech between these kinsfolk ought not to be healed. Amy's presence in the house was a disastrous portent. She must be gotten out of it as soon as possible, and in such a way that she would not care to come ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... two militant abolitionists, Susan B. Anthony and Parker Pillsbury, joined hundreds of others throughout the nation in honoring John Brown, sensing the portent of his martyrdom and prophesying that his soul would go ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the child Deirdre, daughter of the chief poet of Ulla, was attended with a great portent, for the child shrieked from the mother's womb. Cathvah and the Druids were consulted concerning that omen. They addressed themselves to their art of divination, and having consulted their oracles and gods and familiar spirits, they gave a ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... among Italian painters, however, was Giovanni Cimabue, who lived in Florence during the last part of the thirteenth century; he infused into his work a certain vigor and animation which were even more than a portent of the revival which was to come. Other Italian painters there had been before him, it is true, and particularly Guido of Siena and Giunta of Pisa, but they fail to show in their work that spirit of originality and that breadth of conception which were so characteristic of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... army, the general feeling is one of wonder that this act of direst portent to the rebellion has been so long delayed. Even the rebels share in this amazement. When secession was first openly mooted at the South, every Unionist argued that secession was practical abolition. It has puzzled them to comprehend the weary months ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... where she stood with her hand on the flap, turning a hasty look behind her, when a shot out of the dark from the direction of the river-bank struck her ears with a suddenness and a portent which seemed to carry the pain of death. She was facing that way; she saw the flash of it; she saw Jerry Boyle leap with lithe agility, as if springing from the scourge of flames, and sling his pistol from the hostler ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... size and strength were vaunted as more than human. "It was the arm of God, not of man," said Hadrian when he saw at last the corpse encircled by a serpent, "that could alone strike down the giant." Flame and smoke were seen to issue from his lips in speaking, a portent which was rationalized centuries later into a mere conjurer's artifice. The concourse of the Jewish nation at his summons was symbolized, with a curious reference to the prevalent idea of Israel as a school and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... these days, for as little as your mother thinks it, if you ever let yourself touch the Curse carelessly. Bless you, I know scores who were once as sweet as you who can now drink any costermonger of them all under the stools in the Haymarket bar. The young men grin and wink as that staggering portent lurches past: I do not smile; my heart is too sad for even a show of sadness. Then there are the children—the children of Drink they should be called, for they suck it from the breast, and the venomous molecules become one with their flesh and blood, and they soon learn ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... when he went out again; it blew a longer blast, and the trees made a steady sonorous rhythm in it. The sky was full of clouds that dashed upon the track of a failing moon; there was portent everywhere, and a hint of tumult at the end of the street. No two ways led from Finlay's house to his first destination. River Street made an angle with that on which the Murchisons lived—half a mile ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... my love; she is a portent—of much that we shall never know. Dorothy will live to see the coming of ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... wearing the Union flag,—"Old Glory," as I hear it called in these days. A little withdrawn from our national fleet lay two French frigates, and, in another direction, an English sloop, under that banner which always makes itself visible, like a red portent in the air, wherever there is strife. In pursuance of our official duty, (which had no ascertainable limits,) we went on board the flag-ship, and were shown over every part of her, and down into her depths, inspecting her gallant crew, her powerful armament, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they talked, Paul noticed that Peter's eyes often rested with a troubled look upon his sister. In fact, it seemed to Paul that a black shadow of direful portent hung over them throughout ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... statements. The very great multitude indeed of words I shall omit, and I will proceed to the termination itself of thine aberrations. For after that thou hadst come to the Molossian plains, and about the lofty ridge of Dodona, where is the oracular seat of Thesprotian Jove, and a portent passing belief, the speaking oaks, by which thou wast clearly and without any ambiguity saluted illustrious spouse of Jove that art to be; if aught of this hath any charms for thee.[64] Thence madly rushing along ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... Agapida, "looked upon this torment of the elements as a prodigious event, out of the course of nature. In the weakness of their fears they connected it with those troubles which occurred in various places, considering it a portent of some great calamity about to be wrought by the violence of the bloody-handed El ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... deux chemins j'hesite et je m'arrete. Je voudrais a l'ecart suivre un plus doux sentier. Il n'en existe pas, dit une voix secrete: En presence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier. Je le pense, en effet: les ames tourmentees Vers l'un et l'autre exces se portent tour a tour; Mais les indifferents ne sont que des athees; Ils ne dormiraient plus, s'ils doutaient ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... "Ces deux editions portent la meme date de 1541, mais celle qui a ete publiee a Bale a paru avant celle donnee a Lyon par Seb. Gryphe. Cette derniere, en effet, contient la dedicace datee." The title page of our copy is inscribed by three different old hands, one the characteristic ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... at the knees, might even behold a portent new to his experience, the emperor's elephant. Haroun El Raschid, the great Sultan of the 'Arabian Nights' had sent it to Charles, and it accompanied him on all his progresses. Its name was 'Abu-Lubabah', which is an Arabic word and means 'the father of intelligence[A]', ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... light of reincarnation it is probable that neither can occur there without anterior cause. But probably too it is the preponderance of either that creates the mystery of life, as it may also foreshadow the portent of death. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... Prohibition party. Although making no very considerable showing at the polls, these new movements were very significant as evidences of popular unrest. The fact that the heaviest vote of the Union Labor party was polled in the agricultural States of Kansas, Missouri, and Texas, was a portent of the sweep of the populist movement which virtually captured the Democratic party organization during President Cleveland's ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... it had accommodated itself to its environment: no wish was left in it for the assertion of its freedom. To this day, the south-east, save where leavened and permeated by Celtic influences, hugs its chains and loves them. It produces the strange portent of the Conservative working-man, who yearns to be led by Lord ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... in a queue; his eye was black, small, and painfully penetrating. His complexion was a yellowish-brown, bespeaking Indian blood. I knew at once that it must be John Randolph. As he uttered the words, 'Mr. Speaker!' every member turned in his seat, and, facing him, gazed as if some portent had suddenly appeared before them. 'Mr. Speaker,' said he, in a shrill voice, which, however, pierced every nook and corner of the hall, 'I have but one word to say,—one word, sir, and that is to state a fact. The measure to which the gentleman has just alluded originated in a dirty trick!' These ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... schoolmaster! And his fate is the portent of portents to you now! Stay awhile, till you have gone with Ezekiel into the inner chambers of the devil's temple, and you will see worse things than these—women weeping for Thammuz; bemoaning the decay of an ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... great promise of salvation. To them, to be sure, or rather to many of them, not to all, merciful helps were granted. The unseen and the hoped-for was sometimes, not always, made more tangible to them by the grant of some sign and token, some portent or miracle, by the way. But the careful Bible-reader knows how very little such things are represented in the holy histories as being the "daily bread" of the life of the old believers. Even in the lives where they occur most often they come at long and difficult intervals, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon, Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... know what I think," said Ruth exasperated at the little prattler. It seemed so awful for a girl with brains—or hadn't she brains?—to chatter on interminably in that inane fashion about a matter of such awful portent. And yet perhaps the child was only trying to cover up her fears, for she all too evidently worshipped ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... specimens enough. One morning he broke out at breakfast with an intimate conviction. They'd see that she was actually starting— they'd receive a wire by noon. They didn't receive it, but by his theory the portent was only the stronger. It had moreover its grave as well as its gay side, since Granger's paradox and pleasantry were only the method most open to him of conveying what he felt. He literally heard the knell sound, and in expressing this to Miss ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... the mother, sitting suddenly up. A direful cracking resounded under the bed-clothes as she did so, but in the excitement of the moment its possible evil portent went unnoticed. ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... apparently, for any action or attitude that would increase prices. The virus was now in the veins of the community; pulsing through every street and by-way of the little city. Dave marvelled, and wondered how he had failed to read these signs until Conward had laid their portent bare before him. But as yet it was only his news sense that responded; his delight in the strange and the sensational. He was not yet inoculated with the poison of ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... viento en —— before the wind, with a wind from astern. por prep. for, on account of, by, to, through, over, across, for the sake of, on, at; conj. —— qu why. porfa f. obstinacy, persistence. porque conj. because, in order that. portento m. prodigy, miracle, portent. porvenir m. future. pos adv. prep.: en —— behind, after. positivamente adv. positively, certainly. postrado, -a prostrate, kneeling. postrero, -a last. precipitado, -a precipitate, headlong, rash, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Ironic laughed behind the wainscot, And the Spirits of Pity sighed. It's good," said the Spirits Ironic, "to tickle their minds With a portent of their wedlock's after-grinds." And the Spirits of Pity sighed behind the wainscot, "It's a portent we ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. (5) Anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. (6) Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think Nature as mad as themselves, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... est en lozenge, de meme de celui des veuves; et en France et ailleurs, celles-ci l'ornent et l'entourent d'une cordeliere ou cordon a divers neuds. Quant aux femmes mariees, elles accollent d'ordinaire leurs armes avec celles de leurs epoux; mais quelquefois elles les portent aussi en lozenge." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... York, and on January 1st, 1905, I began to write. Within two days I had written about fifteen thousand words—for the most part on the subject of reforms and how to effect them. One of the documents prepared at that time contained grandiloquent passages that were a portent of coming events—though I was ignorant of the fact. In writing about my project I said, "Whether I am a tool of God or a toy of the devil, time alone will tell; but there will be no misunderstanding Time's answer if I succeed in doing one-tenth of the good things I hope to accomplish.... Anything ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... irresolute, before he knew how to comport himself. But before he could make up his mind—cr'r'k, a second time— the Presence had assailed him again, fighting with deadly force, and in a white heat of frenzy. Trevennack had no leisure to think what this portent might mean. Man or fiend, it was a life-and-death struggle now between them. He stood face to face at last in mortal conflict with his materialized enemy. What form the Evil Thing had assumed to suit his ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... hand with his own, and as he had recoiled from Snap Naab so now he received another shock, different indeed but impelling in its power, instinctive of some great portent. Hare was impressed by an indefinable subtlety, a nameless distrust, as colorless as the clear penetrating amber lightness of the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... the sea," called by the reverend brother "the implacable, corsairs of Barbary," were to make life intolerable on that element for centuries to come, and if the Crescent did not supersede the banner of the Cross in the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, it remained as a portent and a dread symbol of human misery ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Surely better had it been for him, if he were lying beneath the earth, enveloped in his shroud, still unconscious of bitter toils. Would that the dark wave, when the maiden Helle perished, had overwhelmed Phrixus too with the ram; but the dire portent even sent forth a human voice, that it might cause to Alcimede ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... sought to give a sinister meaning; what lapses, faults or wrongs may be discovered are given exaggerated portent and significance. ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn
... Even with these eyes I saw the molten mountains rise From out the seething deep, while Earth Shook at the portent of their birth. I saw from out the primal mud The reptiles crawl, of dull, cold blood, While winged lizards, with broad stare, Peered through the raw and misty air. Where then was Cretan Jove? Where then This king of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the latter part of the book of prodigies, compiled by the otherwise unknown writer Julius Obsequens from the records of the pontifices quoted in Livy's history, we can get a fair idea of the kind of portent that was troubling the popular mind. They are much the same as they always had been in Roman history,—earthquakes, monstrous births, temples struck by lightning, statues overthrown, wolves entering the city, and so on; they are extremely abundant ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... been elsewhere shown that the howling dog, or wish-hound of Hermes, whose appearance under the windows of a sick person is such an alarming portent, is merely the tempest personified. Throughout all Aryan mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng the souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses. [73] ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... is he, the simple fool, Who says that wars are over? What bloody portent flashes there, Across the Straits of Dover? Nine hundred thousand slaves in arms May seek to bring us under But England lives and still will live, For we'll crush the despot yonder. Are we ready, Britons all, To answer foes ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... for the comfort of a life ashore, I rise and dress. Through the window I see the Square, shrouded in mist, the nearer leafless shrubs swaying in the chill wind, pavement glistening in the flickering light of street lamps. A dismal morning to be setting off to the sea! Portent of head winds and foul weather that we may meet in Channel before the last of Glasgow's grime and smoke-wrack ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... qu'il est aussi impossible a l'homme de connoitre la cause physique du premier individu de chaque espece, que d'assigner aussi physiquement la cause de l'existence de la matiere ou de l'univers entier. C'est au moins ce que le resultat de mes connaissances et de mes reflexions me portent a penser. S'il existe beaucoup de varietes produites par l'effet des circonstances, ces varietes ne denaturent point les especes; mais on se trompe, sans doute souvent, en indiquant comme espece, ce qui n'est que variete; et alors je sens que cette erreur peut ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... came the strange return of Ugh-lomi, a wonderful animal seen galloping far across the river, that suddenly changed into two animals, a horse and a man. Following this portent, the vision of Ugh-lomi on the farther bank of the river.... Yes, it was all plain to her. Uya was punishing them, because they had not hunted down ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... and in wild despair Filled all the palace with her sobs and cries, When lo! a portent, wondrous to declare. For while, 'twixt sorrowing parents' hands and eyes, Stood young Iulus, wildered with surprise, Up from the summit of his fair, young head A tuft was seen of flickering flame to rise. Gently and harmless to the touch ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... incubation? Or is the new age born? Is it a new slope that we are on, or are we merely part of a surprisingly vigorous premonitory flutter? These are queries to ponder. Is Cezanne the beginning of a slope, a portent, or merely the crest of a movement? The oracles are dumb. This alone seems to me sure: since the Byzantine primitives set their mosaics at Ravenna no artist in Europe has created forms of greater significance ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... much he saw was real, how much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its somber portent ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... gods is sometimes abused; but wit and fine talents by a natural law gravitate towards virtue; accidents may drive them out of their proper direction; but such accidents are a sort of prodigies, and, like other prodigies, it is an alarming omen, and of dire portent to the times. For if virtue cannot keep to her allegiance those men, who in their hearts confess her divine right, and know the value of her laws, on whose fidelity and obedience can she depend? May such geniuses never descend ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... whose throat received the wound. Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, In airy circles wings his painful way, Floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries. Amid the host the fallen serpent lies. They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd, And Jove's portent with ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... netherward rattles, The stream under earth: not far is it henceward Measured by mile-lengths that the mere-water standeth, Which forests hang over, with frost-whiting covered, A firm-rooted forest, the floods overshadow. There ever at night one an ill-meaning portent A fire-flood may see; 'mong children of men None liveth so wise that wot of the bottom; Though harassed by hounds the heath-stepper seek for, Fly to the forest, firm-antlered he-deer, Spurred from afar, his spirit he yieldeth, His life on the shore, ere in he will venture To cover his head. Uncanny ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... season we may catch a storm from the West Indies, Mr. Rackham," said Captain Wellsby. "The sea has a greasy look and this heavy ground swell is a portent." ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... of the world's history through which we pass complacently is of no light portent, its happenings no casual concern, but, in point of crucial fact, a virtual "rending of the sphere"—a cosmic upheaval such as never yet before has racked the tense life sinews of the world, confounding the wisdom of the wise ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... different definitions have been given of miracles, and that the definition is not so easy a thing as one might at first suppose. All depends on the point of view which we take. If we look only at the outward fact, a miracle is a wonderful event, a portent, something out of the common course of nature, and unparalleled in common human experience. But if we look at it as regards the character of him who works the miracle, it then becomes a supernatural work, or a preternatural work, having a ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... like wild-fire. It was regarded—for reasons which will presently appear—as a portent of gravest significance. The clergy met in unofficial but well-attended conclave to deliberate as to what attitude should be adopted towards the phenomenon, and what measures taken to allay ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... repugnant to man in the word "professor." It makes the flesh creep almost as does the thought of the toad or snake. Though when a boy of ten I had never seen a "professor," the word alone was so full of portent that the prospect of seeing one, even without being caught by him, would have frightened me. I suppose that the chill which reverberated through my spine and legs echoed the horror of many generations of my ancestors who had known professors of all kinds, from those who trimmed ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... quarter of a line in the Dunciad. But it attracted some notice on account of the situation of the writer. For, a hundred and twenty years ago, an eclogue or a lampoon written by a Highland chief was a literary portent, [372] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of a sudden all full of serpents; and when these had appeared, the horses leaving off to feed in their pastures came constantly thither and devoured them. When Croesus saw this he deemed it to be a portent, as indeed it was: and forthwith he despatched messengers to the dwelling of the Telmessians, who interpret omens: and the messengers who were sent to consult arrived there and learnt from the Telmessians what the portent meant to signify, but ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... would by the same act bestow a benefit on all men and return one to him; seeing that for such characters death is the only remedy, and that he who never will return to himself, had best leave himself. However, such wickedness as this is uncommon, and is always regarded as a portent, as when the earth opens, or when fires break forth from caves under the sea; so let us leave it, and speak of those vices which we can hate without shuddering at them. As for the ordinary bad man, whom I can find in the marketplace of any town, who is feared only by individuals, I would return to ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... depths of the forest, the wedge of wild fowl flying with trumpet notes to some distant lake, the vulture hastening in heavy flight to the carrion that night has provided, the crane flapping to the shallows, and the jackal shuffling along to his shelter in the nullah, have each and all their portent to the initiated eye. Day, with its fierce glories, brings the throbbing silence of intense life, and under flickering shade, amid the soft pulsations of Nature, the cultivator lives his daydream. What there ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... through certain waste lands near Sardis, met with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured with great appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of ominous portent ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... incalculably greater. She ate as much as she could swallow and pushed the rest away. Leaving the camp-fire, she began walking again, here and there, aimlessly, scarcely seeing what she looked at. There was a shadow over her, an impending portent of catastrophe, a moment standing dark and sharp out of the age-long hour. She leaned against the balsam and then she rested in the stone seat, and then she had to walk again. It might have been long, that time; she never knew how long or short. There came a strange flagging, sinking ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... in spite of his distant and repellent attitude, Mlle. Blaye de Tartas made him her sole heir, to the violent wrath of a questionable old party known to infamy as the Sar Torrevieja, the "King of the Sorcerers." This malevolent old portent, whose gray and crafty face was often seen in the Rue M. le Prince during the life of Mlle. de Tartas had, it seems, fully expected to enjoy her small wealth after her death; and when it appeared that she had left him only the contents of the gloomy ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... no need. Across the road, partway up the slope, was a collection of green and shapely little cedars—a regular Santa Claus grove—and on the afternoon before Christmas, a gray, still afternoon, heavy with mystic portent, Elizabeth and I took a small ax and climbed up there, and picked and selected, just as we had done in those earlier years, and came home with our tree, stealthily carrying it in the back way, to the wood-house, and fitting it to the small green stand that we had ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... pause at Derby, had frightened the Londoners from their propriety, and all but scared the Second George beyond seas. This terror in time subsided, but the interest in the northern savages still survived, and was further stimulated when, about fifteen years after, the portent of Macpherson's Ossian burst on the astonished world of literature. Then about eleven years later, in 1773, the burly and bigoted English Lexicographer buttoned his great-coat up to the throat and set out on a Highland sheltie from Inverness, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... record that the day of his coronation was a day of storm and tempest, frost and snow, and that various omens of ill portent arose ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... influencing his moods and motives. It was a cold, chilling morning, and the great immensity of the ocean spread away to the occult shores of the poles. The sky was grey and sombre, the sea cloudy and unquiet; and far off on the eastern horizon, a mysterious portent was slowly rolling onward. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... she tried to admire an old Florentine cabinet near it, she still saw its portrait; and when, in desperation, she turned away to look out of the window across the sky and sloping park, the shadow of the cow hung like a portent. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... madame, they do, or they fare, as they that ben Certainement, madam, ilz se portent, or ilz le font come ceulz ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... wrought the greatest evils to the state at any time—to wit, Critias and Alcibiades—were both companions of Socrates—Critias the oligarch, and Alcibiades the democrat. Where would you find a more arrant thief, savage, and murderer (5) than the one? where such a portent of insolence, incontinence, and high-handedness as the other? For my part, in so far as these two wrought evil to the state, I have no desire to appear as the apologist of either. I confine myself to explaining what this intimacy of theirs with Socrates ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... royalists were hurt at receiving neither assistance nor even sympathy from the Austrian squadron which witnessed their destruction. The remark was acute; even Austria was, in fact, tired of the Bourbons of Naples; a portent of their not distant doom. But it was not likely that the royalists should appreciate the phlegmatic attitude of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... he found his Morning-Star all dimmed and dusky-red; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to meet no more.' The thunder-struck Air-sailor is not wanting to himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? We omit the passionate ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... portent of all time. Here the Black Country is painted in all its inspissated gloom by a master-hand—sardonic, salubrious, superb.... We approach this work on all-fours. Any other attitude on the part of a reviewer would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... a time of change and of portent, and a day well fitted to the mood of Randall Byrne. He, also, had altered, and there was about to break upon him the rain of life, and whether it would destroy him or make him live, and richly, he could not guess. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... again continued his hegira, a frosty sparkle in the air had succeeded the drowsy warmth of the day, and as this portent of a chilly night translated itself to the brain of Sir Peregrine, he lengthened his stride and bethought him of shelter. He travelled a road that faithfully followed the convolutions of the levee, running along its base, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... clasp of their hands, but scarcely saw them through the tears of sheer weakness that filled my eyes. The capacity for deep emotion was deadened in me; the strain had been too great; the reaction had left me scarcely capable of realizing the instant portent of events. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Ashtaroth, and Mars and the Pleiades, and the long trail of the Milky Way. As a little child hanging in the trees, or sprawled beside a tepee, she had made friends with them all, even as she learned and loved all the signs of the earth beneath—the twist of a blade of grass, the portent in the cry of a river-hen, the colour of a star, the smell of a wind. She had known Nature then, now she knew men. And knowing them, and having suffered, and sick at heart as she was, standing by this window in the dead of night, the cry that shook her softly was not of her new life, but of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the hand they hold worth two in the bush; and though your birds may be winged on strong desire, and your bush the burning portent of Moses, they will have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... evil portent to see a snake on the trail. The traveler must return and wait till next day, or if that can not be done, recourse must be had to other omens, such as the egg omen, or the suspension omen, in order to determine beyond a doubt ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... luxuriant cover; now brought up by a "lawyer," now stumbling over a root, now bogged in a green spring, now flushing a stray covey of birds of Paradise, now a sphinx, chimsera, strix, lamia, fire-drake, flying-donkey, two-headed eagle (Austrian, as will appear shortly), or other portent only to be seen now-a-days in the recesses of that enchanted forest, the convolutions of a poet's brain. Up they whir and rattle, making, like most game, more noise than they are worth. Some get back, some dodge ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... not the only portent having reference to his marriage. After describing shakings and tremblings of his bed, for which indeed a natural cause was not far to seek, he tells how in 1531 a certain dog, of gentle temper as a rule, and quiet, kept up a persistent howling for a long time; how ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the troubled waters of family friction and delicate adjustments, this adventurous pair had slid into a haven of peace and mutual understanding. And now behold, fresh portent of trouble arising from the dual strain in Roy—the focal point of their life ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... horrible tragedy, the brutality of the tyrant and the prostration of the friar were persuaded that the latter would never survive his martyrdom. The religious man himself holds it as a veritable portent that he outlived such a terrible trial; but even this did not satisfy them as subsequently the Secretary again called Father Ceferino to subject him to a further scrutiny, as ridiculous as it was malicious, though it did not ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... been well written: "He who thinks that he is raising a mound may only in reality be digging a pit." In his continual search for a celestial portent among the solitudes Wong Ts'in had of late necessarily somewhat neglected his earthly (as it may thus be expressed) interests. In these emergencies certain of the more turbulent among his workers had banded themselves together into a confederacy under the leadership of a craftsman named ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... you can tell 'em that your pore friend's mind was deranged by cuttin' too many palo verdes." He smiled, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes; and as he rode home that night Hardy saw in the half-jesting words a portent of the never-ending struggle that would spring up if God ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... material they contain. All these humorous stories and sallies find appreciation because there is, alas! a certain amount of truth at the heart of them. Then there is also that demand for shorter sermons in which some see so ominous a portent. We demur to the assumption that this demand invariably grows out of dislike for the subjects upon which the preacher dilates. It is objected that no one grumbles greatly concerning the length of a Shakespearian representation, nor when a prominent and eloquent politician occupies the platform for ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... revival of the "good tidings for the poor," in whom may be included the whole human community. For the revolution of to-day differs from that of the simple Galileans, and is of grave and universal portent, proceeding, as it does, from men who have thought and suffered, and profited by the disorder and misery of thousands ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... mean? Were there clouds in the sky? Had he perceived some portent of coming darkness? and had ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without gloves, henceforward," remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night?—a great red letter in the sky,—the letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or their portent, the effect was startling. Steele's bulky assailant paused, remained stock-still, his purpose arrested, all his anger ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... pressure sustained by the slender boom piles were not wanting. Above the steady gurgle of the water and the intermittent puffing and other noises of the work, they could hear a creaking and groaning of timbers full of portent to those ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... tire son nom de la meme origine. Elle est nommee dans les vieux Ecrivains, Auga, Augam, et Aucum; et dans les auteurs Anglois Ou, d'ou est forme le nom d'Eu. De cette meme origine vient le nom d'Au, qu'on a depuis ecrit et prononce O, et que portent plusieurs Seigneuries de Normandie et d'ailleurs, et qui est le meme que celui d'Ou. Ou est une Comte qui a appartenue a ce Robert, que Robert du Mont qualifie Comte d'Ou. Ces mots d'Eu, d'Au, et d'Ou, se trouvent encore dans la composition de plusieurs noms de terres et de Seigneuries. ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... jamais vu l'homme que se courbant; Un jour, elle sera duchesse de Brabant; Elle gouvernera la Flandre ou la Sardaigne. Elle est l'infante, elle a cinq ans, elle dedaigne. Car les enfants des rois sont ainsi; leurs fronts blancs Portent un cercle d'ombre, et leurs pas chancelants Sont des commencements de regne. Elle respire Sa fleur en attendant qu'on lui cueille un empire; Et son regard, deja royal, dit: C'est a moi. Il sort d'elle un amour mele ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... quoted from his master who had studied in Athens. They had escaped from his burdened soul when he heard of another portent, of which a ship from Ostia had brought tidings. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... constitues doivent necessairement s'exprimer autrement que les hommes ordinaires. Il est impossible qu'avec des ames si differemment modifies ils ne portent pas dans l'expression de leurs sentiments et de leurs idees l'empreinte de ces modifications. Si cette empreinte echappe a ceux qui n'ont aucune notion de cette maniere d'etre, elle ne peut echapper a ceux qui la connoissent, et qui en sont affectes eux-memes. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Moreover, he enjoyed the distinction of being the first negro born in the Colony, his parents having been landed from the Dutch privateer which in 1619 introduced the slave into Virginia. Viewed through a vista of nigh three hundred years, he appears a portent, a tremendous omen, a sign from the Eumenides. Upon that tranquil summer afternoon in the Virginia of long ago he was simply a ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... starry Uranus with finger bright Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom;— And the which book ye know I ever kept For my firm-based footstool:—Ah, infirm! Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent Of element, earth, water, air, and fire,— 140 At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling One against one, or two, or three, or all Each several one against the other three, As fire with air loud warring when rain-floods Drown both, and press them both against earth's face, Where, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... mind. In 1909, from the cliffs of Dover, he saw M. Bleriot arrive in a monoplane, and was so impressed by the sight that he went straight to the War Office to draw attention to the military significance of this portent, and its threat to our insular security. From this time forward his mind was set on aeronautics. He applied for military aviation service before the Flying Corps was formed, and in May 1912 repeated his application. 'A Staff Officer', he noted in his diary, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... stars that wont to start, as on a chace, Mid twinkling insult on Heaven's darken'd face, Like a conven'd conspiracy of spies Wink at each other with confiding eyes! Turn from the portent—all is blank on high, 5 No constellations alphabet the sky: The Heavens one large Black Letter only shew, And as a child beneath its master's blow Shrills out at once its task and its affright—[486:4] The groaning world now learns ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... troth with Madonna Beatrice, and that he esteemed himself, as most men esteem themselves in such a case, though not all as rightly, the man the most happy in all the world. But this joy of his had its complement and sustainer in a marvel, a portent vouchsafed to him, as he believed and averred, that same evening and journey. For as himself told me thereafter, he was, or thought himself, companioned through all that night-riding by a youth clad after the fashion of the Grecians, that wore a crimson tunic and that rode a white horse. Ever ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the gale of last night continuing, with rain and a densely overcast sky. The barometer is rising, however, which is a portent that the gale will not last long. I have abandoned the idea of attempting to run into Fayal. These Azores seem to be so guarded by the Furies of the storm, that it would appear to be a matter of great difficulty to reach them in the winter season. We have thirty-eight ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... am answered! When a king asks twice, and has A question as an answer to his question, It is a portent. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... et ruisseau Portent, en livre jolie, Gouttes d'argent, d'orfavrerie, Chascun s'abille de nouveau: Le temps a ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... shape of a section of our fortifications, the segment of a circle, with the triangle penetrating through from the north. These shapes were distinctly defined. Could the operations beneath have produced this phenomenon? was it accidental? or a portent of the future? ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... 'I am the one praised in the Koran, and the Compassionate hath described my complexion and its excellence over all other hues in His manifest Book, where Allah saith, 'A yellow, pure yellow, whose colour gladdeneth the beholders.'[FN377] Wherefore my colour is a sign and portent and my grace is supreme and my beauty a term extreme; for that my tint is the tint of a ducat and the colour of the planets and moons and the hue of ripe apples. My fashion is the fashion of the fair, and the dye of saffron outvieth all ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... were a believer of signs," replied Irene, placing her arm within that of the maiden who had addressed her, and drawing her partly aside, "I might feel sober at this portent. But I am not. Still, sign or no sign, I trust we are not going to have a storm. It ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... is resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat, considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... his turret, Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even! Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal— When she turns round, comes again in heaven, Opens out anew for worse or better! Proves she like some portent of an iceberg Swimming full upon the ship it founders, Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu Climbed and saw the very ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... many-layered and crumbling, cracking off into the pool if the hand hung or the foot weighed on them. No safe way went to the water but at this lower side, where the riven, tumbled white blocks shelved easily to the bottom; and Luis and Lolita looked down these natural stairs at the portent in the well. In that white formation shot up from the earth's bowels, arbitrary and irrelevant amid the surrounding alien layers of slate, four black stones were lodged as if built into the wall by some hand—four small stones shaping a cross, back ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... "There!" he said, "there! I knew there was something wro...." He checked himself, and was silent, staring before him, as though he had seen a portent. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... insignificant fact was published in the papers the next morning, the South burst into a storm of indignation and abuse. Some of the Southern journals saw, in what was a mere routine incident, a terrible portent, foreboding that Roosevelt planned to put the negroes back to control the Southern whites. Others alleged the milder motive that he was fishing for negro votes. The common type of fire-eaters saw ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... dicte, pour etre transmise d'urgence a Berlin, la declaration suivante: "Si l'Autriche, reconnaissant que la question austro-serbe a assume le caractere d'une question europeenne, se declare prete a eliminer de son ultimatum les points qui portent atteinte aux droits souverains de la Serbie, la Russie s'engage a ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... malefactor, polluted the air with hideous profanities. He cursed everything in nature and beyond it, and no amount of clouts on the head would stem the torrent. Sometimes he would fall to howling like a wolf, and folk ran to their cottage doors to see the portent. Groups of children followed us from every wayside clachan, so that we gave great entertainment to the dwellers in Lothian that day. The thing infuriated the dragoons, for it made them a laughing-stock, and the sins of Gib were visited upon the more silent prisoners. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... is as blind to-day to the menace of the revolution as it was blind in the past to its own God-given opportunity. It cannot see how precarious is its position, cannot comprehend the power and the portent of the revolution. It goes on its placid way, prattling sweet ideals and dear moralities, and scrambling ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... encrusted handle the noble armourial bearings, charged upon a gold escutcheon, of Lord Cedric's house. Wonderingly, she examined it and swept her brow with the back of her slender hand. Slowly she spoke, and in a voice vibrant with portent, her eyes now ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... evening," she murmured. "I'm afraid, too. Yes," she breathed, confronted by a portent, "I'm afraid. I never have been afraid before. I didn't fear Montoyo. I've always been able to take care ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... believe, is the first application of the celestial portent to this particular comparison. Yet Milton's "imperial ensign" waves defiant behind his impregnable lines, and even Campbell flaunts his "meteor flag" in Waller's face. Gray's bard might be sent to the lock-up, but even he would ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... too well do I understand the dream's portent and monition: my DOCTRINE is in danger; tares ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Japanese opera; but the opera calls for some comment. Why "Iris"? It might be easier to answer the question if it were put in the negative: Why not "Iris"? The name is pretty. It suggests roseate skies, bows of promise, flowery fields, messages swiftly borne and full of portent. The name invites to music and to radiant raiment, and it serves its purpose. Mascagni and his librettist do not seem to have been able to find a term with which to define their creation. They call it simply "Iris"; not a "dramma ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... species the ki is the male, the lin is the female, hence the name Kilin. The Japanese having no l, pronounce this Kirin. Its appearance on the earth is regarded as a happy portent of the advent of good government or the birth of men who are to prove virtuous rulers. It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and a single, soft horn. As messenger of mercy and benevolence, the Kirin never treads on a live insect or eats growing grass. Later philosophy made this imaginary ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... volcanic roaring and rapid return to land was a signal for vain flight—the miserable lover knew it to be the flamboyant ether of the pyromaniac transformed into a trumpeting tornado. And he hoped that it would not spare him, as this phantasm twirled and ululated in the heavens, a grim portent of the iron wrath of the Almighty. In a twinkling it had passed him, high in the dome of heaven, only to erase in a fabulous blast the moaning multitude. And prone upon the strand between the stormy waters and the field of muddy dead, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... rounded a point of timber, and came upon a small party of men whose attitudes even in the dimming light conveyed a subtle suggestion of portent. Some sat their horses, with one leg thrown across the pommel. Others stood in the road, and a bottle of white liquor was passing in and out among them. At the distance they recognized the gray mule, though even the fact that it carried a double ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Cleopatra; I have ruined thee as thou didst ruin me! I, working in the dark, and helped of the angry Gods, have been thy secret spring of woe! I filled thy heart with fear at Actium; I held the Egyptians from thy aid; I sapped the strength of Antony; I showed the portent of the Gods unto thy captains! By my hand at length thou diest, for I am the instrument of Vengeance! Ruin I pay thee back for ruin, Treachery for treachery, Death for death! Come hither, Charmion, partner of my plots, who betrayed me, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... 1877, America's first great industrial combination had become an established fact. In that year the Standard Oil Company of Ohio controlled at least ninety per cent of the business of refining and marketing petroleum. A new portent had appeared in our economic life, a phenomenon that was destined to affect not only the social and business existence of the every-day American but even his political and ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... but singing their third welcome to the earliest dawn, when Alcmena called forth Tiresias, the seer that cannot lie, and told him of the new portent, and bade him declare what things should come ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... brilliancy of the scene beyond the great stage opening seemed to draw us to it as to a promised land. We sat upon our horses, spellbound, gazing upon what seemed at once too grand and too beautiful to be real. Had we been superstitious like soldiers of an ancient time, we might have seen a miraculous portent in it; and even as it was, such sentiment as may be permitted in the sceptical spirit of our own day could find a happy omen in the scene. We were entering upon a new chapter in our military lives, and it ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... all run into one another like dissolving views. For the first time in my life, my sleep is broken. I fall asleep in a fever of irresolution. I awake in one. I walk about in one. I feed the jackdaw in one. I box Bobby's ears in one. My appetite (oh, portent!) flags. In intense excitement, who can eat yards of bread-and-butter, pounds of oatmeal-porridge, as has ever been my bucolic habit? Shall I marry Sir Roger, or shall I not? The birds, the crowing cocks, the church-bells, the gong for dinner, the old pony whinnying in the park, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... table, he vaulted with incredible agility clean across it and upon our hero, who, entirely unprepared for such an extraordinary attack, was flung back against the wall, with an arm as strong as steel clutching his throat and a knife flashing in his very eyes with dreadful portent of instant death. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle |
