"Raven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the waters the second time. If you had not done so the first night the otter brought me to you I should have been changed into a hooting owl; if you had not done so the second night, I should have been changed into a croaking raven. But, thanks to you, Enda, I am now a snow-white swan, and for one hour on the first night of every full moon the power of speech is and will be given to me as long as I remain a swan. And a swan I must always remain, unless you are willing to break the spell of enchantment that is over me; ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... eyes red. She takes a consoler, for the loss of whom another consoles her; thus up to the age of thirty or more. Then, blase and corrupted, with no human sentiment, not even disgust, she meets a fine youth with raven locks, ardent eye and hopeful heart; she recalls her own youth, she remembers what she has suffered, and telling him the story of her life, she teaches him ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... warranted by the chilly wind, a tight-fitting tunic of dark green cloth, caught in by a broad buff leather belt with the clasp of a University, admirably defined the shapeliness of a slight but manly form. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was worn long and came curling down on his shoulders; his complexion was dark but clear. But the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a physiologist would have pointed to him as a model and ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... sorts of strange animals: badgers, squirrels, monkeys, cat-a-mountains, dwarf-donkeys, horses, racers, little Elba ponies, jackdaws, bantams, doves of India, and other creatures of this kind, as many as he could lay his hands on. Over and above these beasts, he had a raven, which had learned so well from him to talk, that it could imitate its master's voice, especially in answering the door when some one knocked, and this it did so cleverly that people took it for Giovannantonio himself, as all the folk of Siena know quite well. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the name of Tom Rowley (after one of the officers of the regiment). He had accompanied Mr. Raven, in the Britannia, to Bengal, in ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... I shall be civil. When they came to the meeting (as their custom was) they sat for some time silent, some with their faces to the wall, and some covered; and, there being a void in the loft above, there came down the appearance of a raven, and sat on one man's head, who rose up and spoke with such vehemence, that the foam flew from his mouth. It went to a second, and he did so likewise. Mr. Peden, sitting next the landlord, said, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... a line-of-battle ship, as she launched herself in long floating rushes from gleaming pinnacle to seething valley with a heavy, melancholy sobbing of water all about her decks, and her narrow, distended band of maintopsail hovering overhead black as a raven's pinion in the flying hoariness. We were washing through it at twelve or thirteen knots an hour, though the ship was as stiff as a madman in a strait-jacket, with the compressed wool in her hold and loaded down to her main-chain bolts besides. ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... Her eye-lashes, of the deepest jet, and silken gloss, were of uncommon length. Her lips were apart, and disclosed small but exquisitely formed teeth. Their hue was not that of ivory, but the more delicate though more transient one of the pearl. One arm supported her head—its hand tangled in the raven tresses—of the other, the snowy ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Diliana in horror, "where has the wolf gone? we were pursuing a wolf." Upon which the horrible and accursed night-raven recovered herself quickly, and pointing with her finger to the crucifix which lay upon the ground, said with a tone of mingled scorn and anger, "There, thou stupid fool! ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... intercalates a k.[260] The Arawaks have words which only men may speak, and others which only women may speak.[261] Dialectical variations are illustrated for us by facts which come under observation and report. Christian[262] mentions an American negro castaway, who settled on Raven's Island with a native wife and children and a few relatives and servants. In forty years they had produced "a new and peculiar dialect of their own, broadening the softer vowels and substituting th ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... oily peaked cap until the straight raven hair flowed out from under like a cataract, and gave his thin, waterfall moustache a twist, while his swarthy, parchment face cracked into a ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... will make a sailor yet, son Raven, for you watch things. Now I will tell you what I saw today. There was the one kite sailing over my head as I was at the ship garth, and presently it screamed so that I looked up. Then it left its wide circles over the town, and flew northward, ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... you a piece of advice, old man; fill your mouth full of tow, light it, and blow at everybody. Or, better still, take your hat and go home. This is a wedding, we all want to enjoy ourselves and you are croaking like a raven. Yes, really. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... those raven tresses Adown her cheek, like willow leaves, As stooping still, with fond caresses, She plies her task of ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... mast, and, as we understood, no force except the command of the chief would have induced him to release his hold. Like the other men his body is blackened, but his distinguishing mark is a collection of two or three raven-skins fixed to the girdle behind the back in such a way that the tails stick out horizontally from the body. On his head, too, is a raven-skin split into two parts, and tied so as to let the beak ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... with a start, and then, raven-like, "nothing more." I played with the tassel of the window-curtain and wondered how I should ever get on without this aunt, the dearest, bravest and handsomest woman in all the world—to me. She was thirty-six years old, just ten ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... would certainly have put more breadth and solidity into the figure of Carker; but the woman he could scarcely have improved upon—I doubt if he could have matched her. As for Cruikshank, he would have given her an impossible waist, a puffy face surmounted with bandeaux of raven hair scrupulously plastered to each side of her lofty forehead; whilst Carker would have been presented to us in an uncomfortable coat, hair parted and dressed after the Cruikshankian fashion, and a pair of boots at least half a ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... with his heat the Bharata host; or like Soma swallowed up by Rahu; or like the ocean reft of water. The mighty car-warriors of thy army beholding Abhimanyu whose face had the splendour of the full moon, and whose eyes were rendered beautiful in consequence of lashes black as the feathers of the raven, lying prostrate on the bare earth, were filled with great joy. And they repeatedly uttered leonine shouts. Indeed, O monarch, thy troops were in transports of joy, while tears fell fast from the eyes of the Pandava heroes. Beholding the heroic Abhimanyu lying on the field ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... preparing to take possession of the world. It also might be a type of the opening the law and testimony, that light might by that come into the church; for we find not that this window had any other use, but to be a conveyance of light into the ark, and as a passage for the raven and the dove, as may be further showed after. Now much like this, is that of John: "The temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament" (Rev 11:19). And again, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... then. One Sunday morning in 1808, his eldest daughter sitting alone in the minister's pew, a strange gentleman was shown into it, whose appearance and demeanor strongly arrested her attention. The slenderness of his frame, the pale yellow of his complexion, and the raven blackness of his hair, seemed only to bring out into grander relief his ample forehead, and to heighten the effect of his deep-set, brilliant eyes. At this period of his life there was an air of delicacy and refinement about his face, joined to a kind of strength that women can admire, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... dancing before the storm, on like a whirlwind over the shoulder of Suletind, over the knees of Torholmenbrae—the Giants that sit at the gateway. Faster than man or beast could follow, up—up—up—and on; and no one saw them go, but a Raven that swooped behind, and flew as Raven never flew, and the Troll, the same old Troll that sang by the Vand-dam, and now danced and sang between ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... figure, which was not quite devoid of martial dignity, however, soon began to be seen in the best drawing-rooms in Moscow. His bald head with its tufts of dyed hair, and the soiled ribbon of the Order of St. Anne which he wore over a cravat of the colour of a raven's wing, began to be familiar to all the pale and listless young men who hang morosely about the card-tables while dancing is going on. Pavel Petrovitch knew how to gain a footing in society; he spoke little, but from old habit, condescendingly—though, of course, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... array of witnesses was overwhelming, and then his temptations! and his past career! She had been told he was addicted to the vices of drink and cards in their worst form. Ah, no; it was futile to hope. She feared the worst. And Mrs. Stannard was wellnigh ready to bid her begone,—the old croaking raven! as down in her inmost heart she termed her. She was full of faith and loyalty, but she was fearfully worried, and Blake's coming was ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Barbara seated herself, knitting in hand, by the little white bed, and Jinty listened to the stories she loved best of all, those of the days when her father was a little boy and played under the great elms of Old Studley with Mike, the ancient raven, that some people declared was a hundred years old at least. He was little more than a dream-father, for he had been for most of Jinty's little life away in far-off China in the diplomatic service. Her sweet, young, gentle mother Jinty did not remember at all, for she dwelt in a land that is ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... two chasms called respectively Almanna Gja, [Footnote: Almanna may be translated main; it means literally all men's; when applied to a road, it would mean the road along which all the world travel.] or Main Gja, and Hrafna Gja, or Raven's Gja. In the act of disruption the sinking mass fell in, as it were, upon itself, so that one side of the Gja slopes a good deal back as it ascends; the other side is perfectly perpendicular, and at ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... habitually half closed, as if weighed down by the black length of their borders. The habit of arching up one or other of the eyebrows, in surprise or interrogation, gave a drollery to the otherwise nonchalant sweetness of the countenance. The mass of raven black hair was only adorned by a crimson ribbon, beneath which it had been thrust into a net, with a long thing that had once been a curl on the shoulder of the white tumbled bodice worn over a gray skirt which looked as if it had done ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his return to Temple's house, Swift found his old playmate grown from a sickly child into a girl of fifteen, in perfect health. She came, he says, to be "looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... other raven said, "Poor Claus, did you say, brother? Do you not see the witch-hazel lying on ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... coextensive with three-fourths of the continent. No sterility discourages him. He seems as thrifty on the wiry grama as among the most succulent grasses of the Republican. The sneaking coyote and a number of larger wolves put in an occasional appearance. Birds of the hawk and raven families are common. The waters swarm with numerous varieties of duck. It surprises us at this utmost distance from the maritime border to see flocks of Arctic gulls circling around the low sand-hills, and sickle-bill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... you. Then go at once to the swineherd who is in charge of your pigs; he has been always well affected towards you, and is devoted to Penelope and your son; you will find him feeding his pigs near the rock that is called Raven {124} by the fountain Arethusa, where they are fattening on beechmast and spring water after their manner. Stay with him and find out how things are going, while I proceed to Sparta and see your son, who is with Menelaus at Lacedaemon, where he has gone to ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... sat a Raven, Blind, and from the bitter Cistern Forc'd his only Drink to draw. Suddenly the Pelican Flying over Fortune's Shadow Cast upon his Head, and calling— "Come, poor Son of Salt, and taste of Sweet, sweet Water from my Maw." Said the Raven, "If I taste it Once, the Salt I have to ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... raven hair, Spreading is the parting straight, Mottled the complexion fair, Halting is the youthful gait. Hollow is the laughter free, Spectacled the limpid eye, Little will be left of me, In the ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... Winchester station treated her with civility and good-nature. The pale beauty of her pensive face won her friends wherever she went. It is very hard upon pug-nosed merit and red-haired virtue, that a Grecian profile, or raven tresses, should be such an excellent letter of introduction; but, unhappily, human nature is weak; and while beauty appeals straight to the eye of the frivolous, merit requires to be appreciated by ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... little incidents that are always occurring, and which only observing minds would notice. For the time he sees nothing that would suggest even to the most sparkling intellect the shadow of a rhyme, and he begins to be in despair. He walks up and down his dingy room, thrusts his long fingers amid the raven locks that adorn his poetical cranium, and gently at first, then furiously, irritates the cuticle of his imaginative head-piece, hoping thereby to waken up his ideas and find a foundation upon which to erect another stone in the edifice ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... made a step, and threw the ring through the window into the room. The wizard roared with rage till the castle quaked, and then, bang! went the third iron hoop that was round his waist, and sprang off him; the wizard turned into a raven, and flew out and ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... all that pomp and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast with the misery, squalid, agonizing, ruffianly, which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces more ominous a note than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... cheerer of the harper and bard—"a giver of bounteous gifts." Besides, you should have heard a practical admonition to the fair-haired son of the stranger, who lives in the land where the grass is always green—the rider on the shining pampered steed, whose hue is like the raven, and whose neigh is like the scream of the eagle for battle. This valiant horseman is affectionately conjured to remember that his ancestors were distinguished by their loyalty as well as by their courage. All this you have lost; but, since ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the light, calmly and proudly, and with a gleam in her eyes, as if she enjoyed his astonishment. Her dress was of purple silk, wrought with clusters of gold-tinted flowers, that scintillated and gleamed as she moved out of the shadows; her raven hair, arranged in heavy bandeaux on each side her face, was surmounted by a cashmere scarf of pale green, which was carelessly knotted on one side of her head, and fell in a mass of fringe and embroidery on her left shoulder. The flowing waves of her robe swept the carpet as she moved, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... nor did any one pass out. All were now well scared, and got home as fast as possible. On reaching their home their mother opened the door, and at once told them that she was in terror about their father, for, as she sat looking out the window in the moonlight, a huge raven with fiery eyes lit on the sill, and tapped three times on the glass. They told her their story, which only added to their anxiety, and as they stood talking, taps came to the nearest window, and they saw the bird again. A few days later news reached them that Mr. Ross-Lewin had died suddenly in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... I, as now, be there, The Christian's scorn, the Christian's jest; But let me see and hear, From some dim mansion in the sky, Thy bright ones and their melody." The sun goes down with sudden gleam, And—beautiful as a lovely dream And silently as air— The vision of a dark-eyed girl, With long and raven hair, Glides in—as guardian spirits glide— And lo! is kneeling by his side, As if her sudden presence there Were sent in answer to his prayer. (Oh say they not that angels tread Around the good man's dying bed?) His child—his sweet and sinless child— And as he gazed on her He ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... The center of the group was Count Storri—a giant Russ. This Storri did not belong to the Russian legation, did not indeed reside in town, and had been vouched into the club by one of his countrymen. He had onyx eyes, with blue-black beard and mustaches which half covered his face, and hair as raven as his beard. Also he valued himself for that a favorite dish with him was raw meat chopped fine with ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... supper, for her mother could not eat, though she drank a cup of tea. The morning sun would shine upon them again, bringing another day of want and wretchedness, but the poor girl banished her fears, trusting for the morrow to Him who feedeth the hungry raven, and tempereth the wind to ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... search of the dangerous walrus and white bear and the monstrous whale. Here they made strange fire to the spirits of the monsters they had slaughtered, and spoke in grave tones of the great spirit that had come down from the moon in the form of a raven with ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... woman, with hair as black as a raven's wing, walked through the depot, where a dozen or more bodies were awaiting burial. Passing from one to another, she finally lifted the paper covering from the face of a woman, young and with traces of beauty showing through the stains of muddy water. With a cry of anguish she reeled ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Germanpoet Schiller loved to write by candle-light with a bottle of Rhine-wine upon the table. Nor do I wonder at the worthy schoolmaster Roger Ascham, when he says, in one of his letters from Germany to Mr. John Raven, of John's College; 'Tell Mr. Maden I will drink with him now a carouse of wine; and would to God he had a vessel of Rhenish wine; and perchance, when I come to Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year I will have a little piece of Rhenish wine.' ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... A raven cried "Croak!" and they all tumbled down, Bumpety, bumpety, bump! The mare broke her knees, and the farmer his crown, Lumpety, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... was dressed in the Phrygian cap, and simple garb of a Sicilian mariner. His appearance, as far as it could be judged of by the dim light of the lantern, was anything but prepossessing. A profusion of long, straggling, grizzly locks, once probably of raven hue, which evidently had not felt the barber's scissors for many a year, concealed the greater part of his face which was still further hidden by a patch over one eye, and a handkerchief bound round his head, while his mouth was surrounded by an enormous pair of moustachios, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Piercing the mighty monarch on his throne; While from a towering cypress growing near Every disease to which frail flesh is heir Like ravening vultures watch each arrow's flight, And quick as thought glide off on raven's wings To bring the wounded, writhing victim in— As well-trained hunters mark their master's aim, Then fly to bring the wounded quarry home. Meanwhile a stifling stench rose from below— As from a battle-field where nations met And fiery ranks of living valor ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... mangroves, and here and there an isolated group of large and small, parents and children, breeding and spreading, as if in hideous haste to choke out air and sky. Wailing sadly, sad-colored mangrove-hens ran off across the mud into the dreary dark. The hoarse night-raven, hid among the roots, startled the voyagers with a sudden shout, and then all was again silent as a grave. The loathly alligators, lounging in the slime, lifted their horny eyelids lazily, and leered upon him as he passed with stupid savageness. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Thalaba lying distracted upon her grave, in the neighbourhood of which he had wandered, till "the sun, and the wind, and the rain, had rusted his raven locks"; and there he is found by the father of his bride, and visited by her ghost, and soothed and encouraged to proceed upon his holy enterprise. He sets out on his lonely way, and is entertained the first night by a venerable dervise: ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... metropolis and, as we have seen, every village receives its own quota of birds each morning, and there they spend the daylight hours and subsist on the waste food and on what they can steal, just as the semi-domestic raven and the kite did in former ages, from Roman times down ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the Ylfing's offspring, and the woman who had the child brought forth. Sitting on a lofty tree, on prey intent, a raven to a ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... she was a royal Princess. Then they put the coffin on the top of the mountain, and one of the Dwarfs always remained beside it and kept watch over it. And the very birds of the air came and bewailed Snowdrop's death, first an owl, and then a raven, and last of all a ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... humour, and inimitably successful in parody, has, in some of his "Tales of Terror" undertaken to mock the doleful tones of Mr. Lewis's muse, or shall we rather say the hoarse caw of the German raven. The midnight hour has been beguiled, by transcribing the following sarcasm, founded on a well-known nursery story, and our readers will thank us for sitting up so late ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... dancers passed backwards and forwards across the open space. His slow eyes followed one figure without seeing the rest. In the set nearest to him a beautiful girl was dancing with one of Don John's officers. She was of the rarest type of Andalusian beauty, tall, pliant, and slenderly strong, with raven's-wing hair and splendidly languorous eyes, her creamy cheek as smooth as velvet, and a mouth like a small ripe fruit. As she moved she bent from the waist as easily and naturally as a child, and every movement followed ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Raven mentions a case of spontaneous retraction of the penis in a man of twenty-seven. While in bed he felt a sensation of coldness in the penis, and on examination he found the organ (a normal-sized one) rapidly ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... here to croak like an old raven," continued Lady Lufton, when she had brought this embrace to an end. "It is probable that we all may have our sorrows; but I am quite sure of this,—that if we endeavour to do our duties honestly, we shall all find our consolation and all ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... designs in white, blue, yellow and black are of totemic significance and relate to the ceremonial life of the Indian. In earliest times this blanket was undecorated, a plain field of white; then color was introduced on the white field in stripes of herring-bone pattern typifying raven's tail, because similar to the vanes of the tail feathers; and later the elaborate geometric designs of present day blankets developed. These designs are first painted upon a pattern board the size and shape of those ...
— Aboriginal American Weaving • Mary Lois Kissell
... medical orders. This, Dr. Baker explained to me, was a very necessary stipulation, for Sir Richard now looked upon the time spent over his meals as so many half-hours wasted. He never ate his food properly, but used to raven it up like an animal in order to get back quickly to his books. So a treaty was made, and Dr. Baker remained a member of the household ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... maintained a navy that would have caused both belligerents to respect her rights, and thereby saved the principal entirely, to say nothing of all the other immense losses dependent on an interrupted trade; but demagogues were at work with their raven throats, and it is not reasonable to expect that the masses can draw very just distinctions on the subject of remote interests, when present expenditure is the question immediately before them. It is true, I remember ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... from my dark abode, Where nests the raven, sits the toad, Hither I come, at thy command: Sister, sister, join thy hand! I will smooth the way for thee, Thou shalt furnish food for me. Come, let us speed our way Where the troops of spectres play. To charnel-houses, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... the house of the Old Woman of the Mountain with the fish's scale, the fox's hair, and the raven's feather each safely tied in a corner ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... and the love I had for him prevailed, and I took on myself the charge. The eldest was a beautiful girl of seventeen, Miguel two years younger. They were wonderfully alike, only in the boy's case the raven black hair had a lock of white on one side, the "Sarreco streak," as it was proudly called, which appeared in the family generation after generation. I brought the children home with certain of their most cherished possessions, some fine riding-horses, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... The raven croaks as Torksey's lord Attends that bannered host; But the lover is deaf to the omen-bird— The fatal ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... quoth an old raven, who sat on the fence-rail, and was condescending enough to acknowledge that we are all like little birds in the sight of Heaven, and therefore was not above speaking to the sparrows, and giving them information. "I know who the old man is. It is Winter, the old man ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... rocks, and decorations of implements, in other countries, are certainly known to be a kind of shorthand design of the totem animal. Thus a circle, whence proceeds a line ending in a triple fork, represents the raven totem in North America: another design, to our eyes meaningless, stands for the wolf totem; a third design, a set of bands on a spear shaft, does duty for the gerfalcon totem, and so on. {64a} Equivalent marks, ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... left, Who, breathing Love's own air, Me of myself bereft, Who reigned in Cinara's stead, a fair, fair face, Queen of sweet arts? But Fate to Cinara gave A life of little space; And now she cheats the grave Of Lyce, spared to raven's length of days, That youth may see, with laughter and disgust, A firebrand, once ablaze, Now smouldering in ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... might be a raven as far as croaking's concerned. One would think we were in a hole and couldn't get out. Trust to Sucre and Miller; they'll pull ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... his steed's mouth and quiv'ring flanks doth come; Nor heeds the whitened flowing mane, but flies, While clouds of dust him follow, and arise Behind him o'er the road like black storm clouds, While Zu[5] the storm-bird onward fiercely goads The seven[6] raven spirits of the air, And Nus-ku[7] opens wide the fiery glare Of pent-up lightnings for fierce Gibil's[8] hand, Who hurls them forth at Nergal's[9] stern command, And Rimmon[10] rides triumphant on ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... laughed the giant, "that is a good joke! I'll pitch you into that raven's nest up there to teach you to make less ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... than Mr. Poe's crow! Or was it a raven? What's the difference, anyhow? Now don't tell me they're both anthropeds or pods, or whatever it is, because I'm onto you as a disseminator of knowledge! I never got even with you yet for calling me 'something like a ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... that, without having the soft and fluent graces of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting-dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's plume, blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes, with the love of the fantastic and the picturesque which bespeaks the presiding genius of the proud mother. The younger son had scarcely told his ninth year; and the soft, auburn ringlets, descending ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the eagle ravine-eager, Raven of my race, to-day Better surely hast thou catered, Lord of gold, than for thyself; Here the morn come greedy ravens, Many a rill of wolf[14] to sup, But thee burning thirst down-beareth, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... those pensive eyes would close, And bid their lids each other seek, Veiling the azure orbs below, While their long lashes' darken'd gloss Seemed stealing o'er thy brilliant cheek, Like raven's ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... they be about but marking the spots where to bore the holes for the blasting powder that should scatter it to the winds, and let death and destruction, and the wild sea howling in upon Scaurnose, that the cormorant and the bittern might possess it, the owl and the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their husbands and fathers would say to it when they came home! In the meantime they must themselves do what they could. What were they men's wives for, if not to act for their husbands when they happened ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... his boat between two rocks, at the end of which was a small sandy beach, where a capstan being placed he was enabled to haul her up out of the water. As he approached, a woman was seen descending from the hut. The same dark eyes and raven hair, though somewhat streaked with white in her case, which characterised the boy, was observable in the woman. Her figure was thin and wiry, giving indication of the severe toil to which she was exposed. ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... to her wont, entered Bluebell's room, hair-brush in hand, as if disposed for a cozy confab. But that employment, so provocative of feminine disclosures, appeared futile this night, and the raven and chestnut coils were brushed to the sheen of a bird's wing ere Cecil had discovered what she had ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... English, who are accustomed to them from childhood, and often suffer from their petty depredations, consider them as mere nuisances; but I have been very much struck with their peculiarities. I like to behold their clear olive complexions, their romantic black eyes, their raven locks, their lithe, slender figures, and to hear them, in low, silver tones, dealing forth magnificent promises, of honours and estates, of world's worth, and ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... how it was. You know the waterfall at the head of Raven's Nook? Well, I have long wanted to take that, so I went up with father and Mr Mabberly. We found the captain and McGregor sitting there smoking their pipes, and when I was arranging the camera, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... fastened in a club on the crown of his head with a large pin, I should rather say skewer, of silver; but the outlandishness of the fashion was not offensive, when I came to take into the account the beauty of the plaiting, and of the long raven lovelocks that hung down behind each of his small transparent ears, and the short Hyperion—like curls that clustered thick and richly on his high, pale, broad forehead. His eyes were large, black, and swimming, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of noon-day is he; Yet seems [7] a form of flesh and blood; Nor piping shepherd shall he be, 25 Nor herd-boy of the wood. [8] A regal vest of fur he wears, In colour like a raven's wing; It fears not [9] rain, nor wind, nor dew; But in the storm 'tis fresh and blue 30 As budding pines in spring; His helmet has a vernal grace, Fresh as the bloom upon ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... you. Heaven knows, I haven't anything to write about. It isn't as if we were living at one of the beach houses; then I could do you some character studies, and fill your imagination with groups of sea-goddesses, with their (or somebody else's) raven and blonde manes hanging down their shoulders. You should have Aphrodite in morning wrapper, in evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing suit. But we are far from all that here. We have rooms in a farm-house, on a cross-road, two miles ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... placed him in West Point, from which he got himself dismissed. After that he supported himself in a hand-to-mouth fashion by writing for and editing newspapers and periodicals, living successively in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. The publication of his remarkable poem, "The Raven," in 1845, brought him fame, and for a short time he was a literary lion. But in 1847 his wife died, and his two remaining ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the ingrate! the viper! the raven with a nightingale's voice! You wish to see her? Why? This is singular. I thought she was a stranger to you. No! Then, ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... singing heart, My lover, my lord, all hail! Fear shall be underfoot, I feel that we shall not fail. In the shadowy land we leave The grim wolves raven and bark, But our hearts are steadfast at length And our faces turn from ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black gloves. Her sable ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... from the stone, and, striking her hand upon her brow, cried—'Jonathan Moor! ye cruel man! ye disregarder of the warnings of her whose life is as the shadow of your life! said I not that the hound was howling, and the raven was flapping its wings for a feast?—yet ye would not listen to my voice! And my brother!—where is my brother?—the son of my mother—more headstrong and foolish than yoursel'! Ye daurna answer, and ye needna answer. He is dead! The horse ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... savour of both. Oh, then, and I know, too, you'd weary of me. I know you, Monsieur Nicholas, better than you can ever know yourself, though you have risen from your grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face or flesh and blood; and not to do what the one old raven within you cries you must, would be in time to hate the very sound of my footsteps. You shall go back, poor turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly more difficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we faced the dark. Life is a little while. And though I ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... I am on tiresome people, who think only of themselves, let me recall P. George Rawdon; the Raven, Bertha; I always believed his first name was Pluto, because of the shades around him. They say every one has a text book; his was neither the Bible, the Prayer Book, Thomas a Kempis, La Nouvelle Heloise, or 'Queechy,' but Mrs. Crowe's 'Night ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... characteristics than the Common Crow, being, in many of his actions, very like the Raven, especially in his love for carrion. Like the Raven, he has been known to attack game, although his inferior size forces him to call to his assistance the aid of his fellows to cope with larger creatures. Rabbits and hares are frequently ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... thee, O field, so fair and verdant! A clump of bushes stands—a clump of hazels, Upon their very top there sits an eagle, And upon the bushes' top—upon the hazels, Compress'd within his claw he holds a raven, And its hot blood he sprinkles on the dry ground; And beneath the bushes' clump—beneath the hazels, Lies void of life the good and gallant stripling; All wounded, pierc'd and mangled is his body. As the little tiny swallow or the chaffinch, Round their ...
— The Talisman • George Borrow
... tossed it away when she and Haamoura, the chief's wife, kissed each other on both cheeks in the French way. The Princesse de Joinville was tottering, but with something in her face, a disdain, a trace of power, that attracted me before I knew her rank or history. Her once raven hair was streaked with gray, she trembled, and her step was feeble; but all her weaknesses and blemishes impressed me as the disfigurement by age and abrasion of a beautiful and noble statue. She ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Marishka remembered the legend which connects every misfortune of the House of Habsburg with the appearance of this bird of ill omen: the flight of ravens at Olmuetz, the raven of the ill-fated Maximilian at Miramar, the raven of the Archduchess Maria Christina on the eve of her departure for her future kingdom of Spain, the raven which came to the Empress Elizabeth on the afternoon before the day of her assassination,—all ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... of any birds besides some of the gallinaceae which are polygamous? Do you know of any birds besides pigeons, and, as it is said, the raven, which pair ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... uffish spectral gleaming of that wild resounding clang Came hooting o'er the margin of the dusky moors that hang Like palls of inky darkness where the hoarse, weird raven calls, And the bhang-drunk Hindoo staggers on and on ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... As a raven, disturbed into night omen-croaking, he sent forth his news from utter blackness into nerve-strung tension. No one member of the thirty but was on the alert for friction or sudden treachery; the were all eyes for each ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... were going to strike him. A regular flight! However, I followed him, and gradually he recovered his composure, and showed me his hens, his ducks, his rabbits and dogs—an extraordinary collection of birds and beasts; there was even a raven among them. He lives in the midst of them all; he speaks to no one but his animals. As for the view, it's simply magnificent; you see the whole of the St. Denis plain for miles upon miles; rivers and towns, smoking factory-chimneys, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... tied the goat to the little trees, and set to work. I held Frank while he skinned; and then he held me while I skinned. It was very awkward. The tiny landscape almost directly beneath us was blue with the atmosphere of distance. A solitary raven discovered us, and began to circle ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... crows, and occasionally ducks, and one abominable croaking creature at night used to annoy me exceedingly, and though I often walked up the glen I could never discover what sort of bird it was. It might have been a raven; yes, a raven never flitting may be sitting, may be sitting, on those shattered rocks of wretchedness—on that Troglodytes' shore, where in spirit I may wander, o'er those arid regions yonder; but where I wish to squander, time and energies no more. Though a most romantic region, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... her calm. The bright moon shone full on her face. Oh! how changed since the morning she stood in Madame ——'s schoolroom. The large dark eyes were sunken; the broad brow marked with lines of mental anguish; the cheeks colorless, and her long raven hair tossed back, and hanging like a veil below her slender waist. There was a hollow, wasted look in every feature; the expression was one of hopeless misery, and a something there was which made the ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... about the same period, that in a tender mood he promised the Duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The Duchess, on his death, so much expected the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isteworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... there an enormous difference between a well-bred and an ill-bred strain of animals? Take, for instance, a common barn-door hen. What sort of eating do you get from a shrivelled up old scrag of a fowl like that? Not much, do you! And what sort of eggs does it lay? A fairly good crow or a raven can lay pretty nearly as good an egg. But take a well-bred Spanish or Japanese hen, or a good pheasant or a turkey—then you will see the difference. Or take the case of dogs, with whom we humans are on such intimate terms. Think first of an ordinary common cur—I mean ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... him "Tink-a-tink," which we have previously heard, and to state how in former days she had been called the Ravenswing. And Lumley, on this hint, made a poem, in which he compared Morgiana's hair to the plumage of the Raven's wing, and Larkinissa's to that of the canary; by which two names the ladies began soon to ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... She was tall, with a bold sweep of fulness in figure, which was on a large scale of beauty. Her hair, which was abundant and worn full over the forehead, was raven black and glossy, and it threw off the sunshine that fell on her face. Her complexion had a golden tint, and her eyes, which were violet, had a slight recklessness of expression. Her carriage drew up at the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... remained at anchor in the Tagus, his majesty's ships the Orion, Minerve, Romulus, Southampton, Andromache, Bonne Citoyenne, Leander, and Raven, received orders to put themselves under the command of Commodore Nelson; and, on the 6th of March, sailed from the Tagus, with sealed instructions to the squadron, which were only to be ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... and recitations. Every young man of any elocutionary ability felt himself empowered to recite "The Raven," that much admired and sharply discussed poem by the Poet Poe, whose melancholy end still created much interest. Critical spirit ran high. One party could see only a morbid faculty heightened by opium and intoxicants; others found the spirit of true and fine genius in many of ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... to suppose tender. She would have been meanwhile a wonderful lioness for a show, an extraordinary figure in a cage or anywhere; majestic, magnificent, high-coloured, all brilliant gloss, perpetual satin, twinkling bugles and flashing gems, with a lustre of agate eyes, a sheen of raven hair, a polish of complexion that was like that of well-kept china and that—as if the skin were too tight—told especially at curves and corners. Her niece had a quiet name for her—she kept it quiet; thinking of her, with a free ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... life is fled, My spirit's power, my bosom's glow; The raven locks that grac'd my head, Wave in a wreath of snow! And where the star of youth arose, I deem'd life's lingering ray should close, And those lov'd trees my tomb o'ershade, Beneath whose arching bowers my childhood play'd." ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... ourselves, made cache in it from a band o' pursuin' Kimanch. Thar's a way leads out at the back; an' just as soon as we kin throw dust in the eyes o' these yellin' varmints in front, we'll put straight for it. I don't know what sort o' a passage thar is—up the rocks by some kind o' raven, I b'lieve. We must do our ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... In the bosom of a mountain Where the fairy people dwell, By the cold and sunless fountain! Breathless as a holy shrine, When the voice of psalms is shed! And there upon her stately bed, While her raven locks recline O'er an arm more pure than snow, Motionless beneath her head,— And through her large fair eyelids shine Shadowy dreams that come and go, By too deep bliss disquieted,— There sleeps in love and beauty's glow, The high-born ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... the snow is flying, There a wounded Cossack's lying; On a bush his head he's leaning, And his eyes with grass is screening, Meadow-grass so greenly shiny, And with cloth the make of China; Croaks the raven hoarsely o'er him, Neighs his courser sad before him: "Either, master, give me pay, Or dismiss me on my way." "Break thy bridle, O my courser, Down the path amain be speeding, Through the verdant forest leading; Drink of two lakes on thy way, Eat of mowings two the hay; Rush the castle-portal ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... seemed generally to set greater store on the elaborate and artistic perfection of his works, than in the spontaneity of genius therein displayed. So it would seem, at least, in his voluntarily exposing the skeleton design of his greatest poem, 'The Raven,' and the various processes by which this grand shadow attained its final harmonious and terrible proportions. This may be a noble sacrifice to the principles of Art, intended as a warning to rash novices ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... since the incidents related in the preceding chapter. The scene changes to an island in the Mediterranean Sea. There, seated on the strand, with garments dripping wet, and with all the silken richness of her raven hair floating wildly and disheveled over her shoulders, the Lady Nisida gazed vacantly on the ocean, now tinged with living gold by the morning sun. At a short distance, a portion of a shipwrecked vessel lay upon the shore, and seemed to tell her tale. But where were the desperate, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... interesting place and so different from other parts of India and the rest of the world. It is a land of romance, poetry and strange pictures. Lalla Rookh and other fascinating houris, with large brown eyes, pearly teeth, raven tresses and ruby lips, have lived there; it is the home of the Cashmere bouquet, and the Vale of Cashmere is an enchanted land. Average Americans know mighty little about these strange countries, and it takes time to realize that they actually exist; but we find our fellow citizens everywhere we ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Thy grace the rite from check can free. And yield the fruit I long to see. Thy duty bids thee, King, defend The suffering guest, the suppliant friend. Give me thy son, thine eldest born, Whom locks like raven's wings adorn. That hero youth, the truly brave, Of thee, O glorious King, I crave. For he can lay those demons low Who mar my rites and work me woe: My power shall shield the youth from harm, And heavenly might shall nerve his arm. And on my champion will I shower Unnumbered ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... West-Saxons and Mercians, slaughter the Scots and Northmen. Constantine and his Scots flee to their homes in the North. Anlaf and his Northmen flee across the sea to Dublin. Athelstan and Edmund return home in triumph, and leave the corpses to the raven, the ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... goes down with sudden gleam, And beautiful as a lovely dream, And silently as air, The vision of a dark-eyed girl With long and raven hair, Glides in as guardian spirits glide, And lo! is standing by his side, As if her sudden presence there Was sent in answer to his prayer. Oh! say they not that angels tread Around the good man's dying bed? His child—his sweet ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... eighteen species, among which is the Raven, which here takes the place of the Crow, the two species not being able to live together, as the stronger robber drives away the weaker. Of the insectivorous birds, some sixty or seventy species are found here, among which is the Mocking-Bird, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... was of that true, glossy black which suggests the blue sheen of raven's plumage, and her thickly fringed eyes were dark and southern as her hair. She had full, voluptuous lips, and a bold self-assurance. In the swift, calculating glance which she cast about the room there was something greedy and evil; and when it ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... will see, if you refer to the chart, near Twaddlecomb—having now sufficiently indicated the locality, I repeat, will you be kind enough to say whether, in your opinion, the necessity of building a bridge over the River Raven—(is prompted by Junior)—I should say, over the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... he ceased, a curiously wild, mournful strain struck his ear, ascending from below him on the west, and forming a strange contrast to the merry notes he had been singing. It was like the noonday song of the joyous lark, as he soars into the blue sky, answered by the midnight croak of the raven as he sits on the old abbey's ivy-covered wall. He listened. It seemed rather like a continued shriek than a song, or the fearful cry of the fabled Banshee as she flits by the family mansion in Ireland, to warn the inmates, as is ignorantly ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... indefinitely, and like all Indian horses can "run like a deer." So, altogether, he will do very well for this place, where rides are necessarily curtailed. I call him Cheyenne, because we bought him of Little Raven, a Cheyenne chief. I shall be so glad when I can ride again, as I have missed so much the rides and grand ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... That dark delight, Is both as fair And dusk as night. I know some lovelorn hearts that beat In time to moonbeam twinklings fleet, That dance and glance like jewels there, Emblazoning the raven hair! ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... black shadows walking to and fro in the quadrangle, near the statues of the Patron Saint and his sister; and hopping on behind them, in and out of the old arches, is a raven, croaking in answer to the bell, and uttering, at intervals, the purest Tuscan. How like a Jesuit he looks! There never was a sly and stealthy fellow so at home as is this raven, standing now at the refectory door, with his head on one side, and pretending to glance ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... his neck. Torquatus in Latin means "provided with a chain," and this word was added to the name of Manlius ever after. It was at the same time that Marcus Valerius encountered another huge Gaul in single combat, and overcame him, though he was aided by a raven which settled on his helmet, and in the contest picked at the eyes of the barbarian. Corvus is the Latin word for raven, and it was added to the other names of Valerius. A golden crown and ten oxen were presented to him, and the people ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... very graceful figure. Complexion dark enough to make her pass for a brunette. Large black eyes and raven hair." ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... sapling, I was fostering the growth of those habits which, like rings in the grain, are the signature of unyielding years. Naturalists say that a bullfinch fed only on hempseed gradually loses his fair plumage and becomes black as a raven: so my soul, nourished on thoughts of rebellion, put off its bright and diverse enthusiasms and was clothed in the dark garment ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... poured into her sympathizing ear the confidences which his mother, alas! could not receive. With tearful eyes and sorrowing heart this new-found friend watched by him to the last—then closed the heavy eyes, and smoothed the raven locks, and sent the quiet form, lovely even in death, to her who waited its arrival ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... true, pure, abiding joy is to hold fellowship with God and to live in His love. The secret of all our unrest is the going out of our desires after earthly things. They fly forth from our hearts like Noah's raven, and nowhere amid all the weltering flood can find a resting-place. The secret of satisfied repose is to set our affections thoroughly on God. Then our wearied hearts, like Noah's dove returning to its rest, will fold their wings and nestle ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you old croaking Scotch raven," he cried. "Your professional ways will be the death of some one yet. But the 'some one' won't be Peter Grimm. That sick bed manner is splendid for bullying old maids into taking their tonic. But it's wasted on a grown man. No, no, Andrew. You can't make me out an invalid. You ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... must be careful not to disturb the little tell-tale creatures of the woods or success that seems so near may vanish in a moment; for a raven may fly overhead, and spying you, circle about—just as the pigeons used to do—and then crying out may warn the moose of your presence. Or you may flush a partridge; or a squirrel, taking fright, may rush up a tree and begin chattering about you; or a rabbit may go drumming into a ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... ravenous bird, and asked his advice how to get rid of them; to which Turges answered, that he had better destroy the nests—eggs, nestlings, and all—counsel which the Irish hardly needed; and the massacre of the Danish raven's brood was frightful. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Challenge" illustrated one sentimental motto throughout the three days' tourney. The first day they were apparelled in purple satin, "broched" with gold, and covered with black-ravens' feathers, buckled into a circle. The first syllable of "corbyn" (a raven) is cor, a "hart" (heart). A feather in French is pennac. "And so it stode." The feather in a circle was endless, and "betokened sothe fastnesse." Then was the device "Hart fastened ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... ponder, Bereaved of him, her child of wonder, No earthly power could break asunder His love for England's weal. And now those locks once dark as raven (For laurel leaves ne'er deck'd a craven) Wear a laurel crown ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... "Croak, you old raven—you'll be embarrassed when we fill your money-box," she replied, gayly. "You should have an ideal, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... does a leaping Fish Send through the Tarn a lonely chear; The Crags repeat the Raven's croak, In symphony austere; Thither the Rainbow comes, the Cloud; And Mists that spread the flying shroud; 30 And Sun-beams; and the sounding blast, That, if it could, would hurry past, But that enormous Barrier binds ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... god there is all the difference that exists between the Demeter of Cnidos and an image from Easter Island. Again, the Scandinavian gods, when their tricks are laid aside, when Odin is neither assuming the shape of worm nor of raven, have a martial dignity, a noble enduring spirit of their own. Race comes out in that, as it does in the endless sacrifices, soma drinking, magical austerities, and puerile follies of Vedic and Brahmanic gods, the deities of a people fallen early into its sacerdotage ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... father's love, she permitted her daughter-in-law to decide as she pleased. A second time he presented himself, and Lady Mar, still indifferent, allowed Helen a second time to refuse him. Years flew over the heads of the ill-joined pair; but while they whitened the raven locks of the earl, and withered his manly brow, the beauty of his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... their hands clasped as age swept over their raven locks and stalwart shoulders. Bishop Pierce never hesitated to go to Robert Toombs when his churches or his schools needed money. Toombs would give to the Methodist itinerant as quickly as he would to the local priest. Whether he was subscribing for a Catholic Orphans' Home or a Methodist ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Each one is intent on her volume, and an irritable answer, in a don't bother kind of manner, is all that I can obtain. The novel is Miss BRADDON's latest, One Life, One Love (but three volumes, for all that), in which they are absorbed. Later on, at intervals, I get the volumes, and, raven-like, secrete them. I can quite understand the absorption of my young friends. Marvellous, Miss BRADDON! Very few have approached you in sensation-writing, and none in keeping up sensationalism as fresh as ever it was when first I sat up ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... poplars, and their tears to amber. Transformation of Cycnus to a swan. Mourning of Phoebus. Jupiter's descent to earth; and amour with Calistho. Birth of Arcas, and transformation of Calistho to a bear; and afterwards with Arcas to a constellation. Story of Coronis. Tale of the daw to the raven. Change of the raven's color. Esculapius. Ocyrrhoe's prophecies, and transformation to a mare. Apollo's herds stolen by Mercury. Battus' double-dealing, and change to a touchstone. Mercury's love for Herse. Envy. Aglauros changed to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... significant that amongst the stories of souls of men taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human being is usually a woman, accompanied by "a fox, a dog, an old raven ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... author of "Poe's Raven in an Elevator" and "A Holiday Touch." With 24 illustrations. Tenth ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... do it!" and, standing on the post where he had perched, Joe waved his arms and shouted: "Smash-up! Smash-up! Run! Run!" like a raven croaking over a battlefield when the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... Mme. R. was an Italian of commanding stature, impassioned and jealous. She sang badly, although possessed of a fine voice, which she was less skilful in showing to advantage than in displaying the luxuriant splendor of her raven hair. The public, initiated into the secret of the green-room, used to be intensely amused at the piteous attitudes of Nemorino Brignoli, contrasting, as they did, with the ardent pantomime of Adina R., who looked by his side like a wounded lioness. Poor woman! What has been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... his officers and prepared to fly. His conduct on this occasion is characteristic of the man. 'So he ordered the national flag to be brought, which was made of white silk, and bore a device consisting of a raven with a red cross in its beak upon a green field. This was torn from the staff, and Michael hid it in his bosom. The officers followed his example with the remaining ensigns. Then he gave spurs to his horse, and with loosened rein, accompanied by his officers and some Polish ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... the ark rested on the hills of Armenia. The tenth month, of the first day of the month, the tops of the hills appeared first. After these forty days after the lessing of the waters, Noah opened the window and desired sore to have tidings of ceasing of the flood. And sent out a raven for to have tidings, and when he was gone he returned no more again, for peradventure she found some dead carrion of a beast swimming on the water, and lighted thereon to feed her and was left there. After this he sent out a dove which flew out, and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... remembering only that you had been his wife. In a little box where no eyes but mine ever look, there is a bunch of flowers plucked from Wilford's grave. They are faded now and withered, but something of their sweet perfume lingers still; and I prize them as my greatest treasure, for, except the lock of raven hair severed from his head, they are all that is remaining to me of the past, which now seems so far away. It is time to make my nightly round of visits, so I must bid you good-by. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... all take off their sev'ral way; The youngling cottagers retire to rest: 155 The parent-pair their secret homage pay, And proffer up to Heaven the warm request, That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest, And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride, Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, 160 For them and for their little ones provide; But, chiefly, in their hearts with Grace ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... go, he saw a small dark object scurry over the snow. At first he thought it a raven. But at last, with a little circle, it appeared to flop over and to lie still, a dark spot on ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... was protected by chains of the finest steel interwoven with the folds, was of the most dazzling white—white, also, were his tunic and short mantle; on his left arm hung a short circular shield, in his right hand was poised a long and slender lance. As this Moor, mounted on a charger in whose raven hue not a white hair could be detected, dashed forward against Pacheco, both Christian and Moor breathed hard, and remained passive. Either nation felt it as a sacrilege to thwart the encounter of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... let you do that—bring me food, Phyllis," said Roxanne gently; and her little head with its raven black, heavy curls again rose to the stately ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess |
