"Reft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come the biting chill of night, the manifold rays of stars and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility of the ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... incident to his vocation—when he has toiled for months to add by his honest labor to the comfort of his fellow men, and to the aggregate wealth of the nation, he finds himself suddenly in the clutches of the law for trespassing on the public domain. The proceeds of his long winter's work are reft from him, and exposed to public sale for the benefit of his paternal government . . . and the object of this oppression and wrong is further harassed by ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... out so shrilly that even Slivers started. She was pointing stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one brief second the swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out eastward, in the dead-land of white, a small dark ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... sat sad and silent and downcast, though she wept not, for her gladness, which erst had been so great, seemed now reft from her; and no merrier was Aurea, as might have been looked for. But Atra came quietly unto Birdalone, and said softly: I have a word for thee if thou wilt come forth with me into the hall. Birdalone's heart failed her somewhat, but she suffered Atra to take her hand, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the new-sprung flower to smell, Comparing it to her Adonis' breath; 1172 And says within her bosom it shall dwell, Since he himself is reft from her by death: She drops the stalk, and in the breach appears Green dropping sap, which she compares ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... those wild waves of death and strife Flowed deeply, wildly as before, Though he was reft of light and life, And sunk in death to ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... arms aloft, in a movement of sweet, wild abandon, and, as if in response to an incantation, the sky was reft asunder and the moon rushed forth, free for the moment of the clutching clouds, fugitive, headlong, a shining Maenad of the heavens, surrounded by the rush and whirl that had whelmed earth and its waters and was hurrying them to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... them could not be taken away, wherein we trust in regard of severall of them, called home by death, your bounty will super-adde some able men of your own that may help to lay the foundation of Gods house, according to the Pattern. But for these so unjustly reft from us, not only our necessity, but equity pleads, that either you would send them all over, which were a Work to be parallelled to the glories of the Primitive times, or at least that ye would declare them ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... woman whose career is, I believe, at this moment revived into fresh notoriety as the heroine of some drama on the stage of Paris—a woman who, when years paled her fame and reft her spoils, as a courtesan renowned for the fools she had beggared, for the young hearts she had corrupted, sought plunder still by crimes, to which law is less lenient; charged with swindling, with fraud, with forgery, and at last more than suspected as ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Isabel's suffused, desperate face as she snatched the letter from its owner. And as a pendant picture she saw the bleak, solitary railway station in the gray December morning, where Gerard, ill and reft of his splendid strength, had waited alone for the girl who ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... unity. Herein lies his great work. Without Mazzini, when would the Italians have got beyond the fallacies of federal republics, leagues of princes, provincial autonomy, insular home-rule, and all the other dreams of independence reft of its only safeguard which possessed the minds of patriots of every party in Italy and of nearly every ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... to desert places Shadowless, reft of rain and dew, Where stars stare down with sharpened ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... was unaware of Clarence's approach. Tears fast and large were rolling from those haughty eyes, which men who shrank from their indifferent glance little deemed were capable of such weak and feminine emotion. Far, far through the aching void of time were the thoughts of the reft and solitary mourner; they were dwelling, in all the vivid and keen intensity of grief which dies not, upon the day when, about that hour and on that spot, he sat with Isabel's young cheek upon his bosom, and listened to a voice ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of former years; And shadows of things that have long since fled Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,— Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon; Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; Companions of early days lost or left; And my native land, whose magical name Thrills to the heart like electric flame; The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time When the feelings were young, and the world was new, Like the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... men had to Asturias march'd Beneath Count Julian's banner.... To revenge His quarrel, twice that number left their bones, Slain in unnatural battle, on the field Of Xeres, where the sceptre from the Goths By righteous Heaven was reft." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... full Of holy divination in their dreams, Then in a vision did I seem to view A golden-feather'd eagle in the sky, With open wings, and hov'ring for descent, And I was in that place, methought, from whence Young Ganymede, from his associates 'reft, Was snatch'd aloft to the high consistory. "Perhaps," thought I within me, "here alone He strikes his quarry, and elsewhere disdains To pounce upon the prey." Therewith, it seem'd, A little wheeling in his airy tour Terrible ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his door he stood, And, as a man awaking from a dream, Seemed waked from his old folly; nought seemed good In all the things that he before had deemed At least worth life, and on his heart there streamed Cold light of day—he found himself alone, Reft of desire, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... would that I had ne'er to Susa gone, To ask that fatal boon of thee, Hystaspes' generous son. Oh, deadly fight! oh, woeful sight! to greet a monarch's eyes! All desolate—my native land, reft of her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... countenance, mounted upon a black mare as stout and sporting-looking as himself, was, as Doctor Mangan drew near to the Misses Talbot-Lowry, beaming upon these two lambs from another fold, and having congratulated Miss Judith on the appearance of the grey mare that she was riding (reft from Lady Isabel and the victoria), was endearing himself to Miss Christian by tales of the brace of hound puppies that he was walking ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... torn him so rudely; which with both hands he clasped, wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow which had driven him upon it was past; but then again the rock drove back that wave so furiously, that it reft him of his hold, sucking him with it in its return, and the sharp rock (his cruel friend) to which he clinged for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in parting, that he fell off, and could sustain no longer: ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Voice which did thy sounds approve, Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above, What art thou but a harbinger ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Reft of a carriage, life is poor: A well-conducted set Needs ready money to procure Their butler and Debrett. The country totters to its fall, Disgraced to all intents, Unless you instantly recall Our solid Three ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... wisest and most beautiful of cherubim, A god betrayed by fate and reft of worshipping, O Satan, have ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... multipartite[obs3], abstract; disjunctive; secant; isolated &c. v.; insular, separate, disparate, discrete, apart, asunder, far between, loose, free; unattached, unannexed, unassociated, unconnected; distinct; adrift; straggling; rift, reft[obs3]. [capable of being cut] scissile[Chem], divisible, discerptible[obs3], partible, separable. Adv. separately &c. adj.; one by one, severally, apart; adrift, asunder, in twain; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... unity, But pleasing to th' infernal empery, Under whose ensigns Wars and Discords fight, Since an even number you may disunite In two parts equal, naught in middle left To reunite each part from other reft; And five they hold in most especial prize, Since 'tis the first odd number that doth rise From the two foremost numbers' unity, That odd and even are; which are two and three; For one no number is; but thence doth flow The powerful race of number. Next, did go A noble matron, that did spinning ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... that gifted practitioner. A roll-top desk was partly broken open, but not rifled, the American boltlocks having defied the clumsy efforts of the thief, Koets, the Dutch dispensarist, who had cleared out of Gueldersdorp, under cover of the previous night, crossing, with the portable property reft from the accursed Englander, the barbed-wire fence that formed the line of demarcation between the British Imperial Forces and the Army of the United Republics. He had meant to wait yet another day, and take many things more, but the coming of those verdoemte soldiers ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... limbs grow old and weary, Trembling in the wintry air; And my life be dark and dreary— Still I feel that thou art near; Stripped of all my blossoms golden, 'Reft of stalwart forest pride— Sere and sallow, leafless, olden; Yet remain'st thou by my side. Time wings on: my strength is fleeing, And my leafy beauties too; Life-long cling'st thou round ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... bit name! O wae's the heart When nought but that is left, But doubly dear it comes to be When time a' else hath reft, An' youth, an' hope, an' innocence, An' happiness, an' hame, Are a' concentred in a word, That word—a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... of mine! What secret dost thou hide? Without a tear thou'st quitted thy father and mother, and scarce a word of farewell to friends thou gavest; leaving home thou stood'st, how cold and still! pale and speechless on the way, food rejecting, reft of sleep, stern and wretched, wild, disturbed; how it pains me so to see thee! Friends no more we seem, being thus estranged. Make me partner in thy pain! Tell me freely all thy fears! Lady, thou hearest, sweetest ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... ere the tangled web is reft, The kid-gloved villain scowls and sneers, And hapless innocence is left With no ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had gone forth—that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion of an accursed race there were ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... that to my heart are dear, Since ease from them alone it hopes to prove. Ye verses, weep!—ye rhymes, your woes renew! For Cino, master of the love-fraught lay, E'en now is from our fond embraces torn! Pistoia, weep, and all your thankless crew! Your sweetest inmate now is reft away— But, heaven, rejoice, and hail ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... shed to mar My radiant star-crown grown oracular, For I must speak and give an answer true. An end of silence and of quiet days, The Lover with two words my counsel prays; And when my secret from my heart is reft, When all my silver petals scattered lie, I am the only flower neglected left, Cast down and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... flow'rs and gems in dust. His head the trenchant blade cleaves to the teeth, And dead the Kalif falls.—"Pagan accursed," He cries, "not here shalt thou say Carle lost aught; To wife nor lady shalt thou ever boast In thine own land, that thou hast reft from Carle One denier's worth, or me or others harmed!" And then he called Rolland unto his ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... she went with me, pouring still with patient spirit Balm upon my wounded feelings, peace upon my burning soul; So that though man's love was reft me, 'twas the better to inherit That which far transcends man's favour,—sentience ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... however, has held at all times the question of human liberty to be superior to considerations of mere expediency. If the question be, who gains or loses most, there never can be a doubt that the man whose freedom has been reft from him has the greatest of all claims for indulgence. Accordingly, Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge, looking in the face all the threatened evils to property, held that nothing but absolute law could trench on personal freedom. He used on the occasion ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... dead grey ash of the peat-fire. He sighed now and then with infinite despondency. Once or twice he pshawed his melancholy vapours, gave a pace back and forward on the oaken floor, with a bent head, a bereaved countenance, and sat down again, indulging in the passionate void that comes to a bosom reft of its joys, its hopes and loves, and only mournful recollection left. A done man! Not an old man; not even an elderly, but a done man none the less, with the heart out of him, and all ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... eyeing reached across the chamber, Where lay two souls opprest, One a white lady sighing, "Why am I sad!" To him who sighed back, "Sad, my Love, am I!" And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber, And these two reft of rest. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... every one was pointing him out as the eminent literary man who was the pride of the district, and that the whole town was ringing with that magnificent effusion. Mr. Tennyson, it is certain, felt that his crown was being reft away. But, on the other hand, there is no commoner form of morbid misery than that of the poor nervous man or woman who fancies that he or she is the subject of universal unkindly remark. You will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... and such the monarch whose reft hand made discord ring Like a clarion through the country that had gladly hailed him king. Darkly, like the tempest, rode he on the avenger's wing! And when midnight drew her curtain round the land, that hour In her blood-stained chamber did he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... and Wallulah occupied the first; the other two were laden with the rich things that had once made her lodge so beautiful. It stood all bare and deserted now, the splendor stripped from its rough bark walls even as love and hope had been reft from the heart of its mistress. Tapestries, divans, carpets, mirrors, were heaped in the canoes like spoil torn from ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Knowing that thou art God I do not fear,— Speak to me, raise me from my life's long dream. "The whole night through thou liest here Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream, And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste; Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste, And show thee, reft from the embrace of night, The barren world, barren of revelry. Happy art thou, O Man, happily free, Who wilt never see A thousand ages shed their life and light As petals fall at eventide. Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside Into the frozen ocean ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... Lesbia's illusions were reft from her. A year ago she had fancied beauty all-powerful, a gift which must ensure to its possessor dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. Rank, intellect, fame would bow down before that magical diadem. And, behold, she had been shining upon London society for seven weeks, and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... father, "by what art do they thus spirit out of life the solid body? What death do they command that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in a moment from the world of sense? A horror dwells in that thought ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have buried in my own? 'Tis there, shrunk 'gainst two rows of dead pale pearls, and cold and colorless as lip of statue carved of marble. Was it the form whose perfect outline stamped it with divinity? It's there, but 'reft of all its winsome roundness, and stiffening in the chill of death. It makes me cold to look upon its rigidness. But just this hour the breath went out; was't that I loved? 'Twas this I clasped and ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... be to thee a token Of a fond heart reft and broken; And the month of joy and gladness Shall but fill thy soul with sadness— And thou wilt ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... Reft the charm of the social shell By the touch of the sorrowful mood; And already the worm, in her cell, Is preparing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... shout, Yet the din of steel and iron in the grey clouds rang about; But how to tell of King Volsung, and the valour of his folk! Three times the wood of battle before their edges broke; And the shield-wall, sorely dwindled and reft of the ruddy gold, Against the drift of the war-blast for the fourth time yet did hold. But men's shields were waxen heavy with the weight of shafts they bore, And the fifth time many a champion cast earthward Odin's door And gripped the sword two-handed; and ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... high the sparkling bowl, The rich repast prepare; Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast: Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Heard ye the din of battle bray, Lance to lance, and horse to horse? Long years of havoc urge their destin'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... lover sped I sight; * Nor life enjoying neither life's delight: My case is one whose cure is all unknown; * Can any cure the sick but doctor wight? O who hast reft my sleep-joys, leaving me * To ask the breeze that blew from that fair site,— Blew from my lover's land (the land that owns * Those charms so sore a grief in soul excite), 'O breeze, that visitest her land, perhaps * Breathing her scent, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... had scanned Shibli Bagarag, she called to him, 'O thou! what is it with thee, that thou rollest as one reft of his wits?' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... speed before the winde, And in our sight they three were taken vp By Fishermen of Corinth, as we thought. At length another ship had seiz'd on vs, And knowing whom it was their hap to saue, Gaue healthfull welcome to their ship-wrackt guests, And would haue reft the Fishers of their prey, Had not their backe beene very slow of saile; And therefore homeward did they bend their course. Thus haue you heard me seuer'd from my blisse, That by misfortunes was my life prolong'd, To tell sad stories of my ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of the Gar-Danes in distant days, The folk-kings' fame have found. How deeds of daring the aethelings did. Oft Scyld-Scefing from hosts of schathers, From many men the mead seats [reft]. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Flemish Philippa. In a line with them is their handsome, unfortunate grandson Richard II., whose picture hangs beside the altar. Here also is the Coronation Chair, which encloses the Stone of Scone, and upon this "Seat of Majesty," ever since the time of Edward I., who reft the ancient stone from the Scots, all our Sovereigns have been seated at the moment of their coronation. On the west of the royal chapel a screen depicts the legends of the Confessor's life; on the east is the mutilated tomb ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... and allowed successive waves to pass over their bodies, whilst others, driven wild by the blows, returned them with their hunting-crops and walking-canes. And then, as half the crowd strained to the left and half to the right to avoid the pressure from behind, the vast mass was suddenly reft in twain, and through the gap surged the rough fellows from behind, all armed with loaded sticks and yelling for "Fair play and Gloucester!" Their determined rush carried the prize-fighters before them, the inner ropes snapped like ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... call'd awa for to cross the stormy main, An' to face the battle's bray in the cause of injured Spain; But in my love's departure hard fate has injured me, That has reft him frae my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... length the mind shall be all free, From what it hates in this degraded form, Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be Existent happier in the fly or worm; When elements to elements conform, And dust is as it ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... in with the 'elfin grey' who might have been an 'earthly knight'; and he tells her how, as a youth, he had been reft away ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... fancy I can see Thee amid the daffodils. Golden wealth thy basket fills; Golden blossoms at thy breast; Golden hair that shames the West; Golden sunlight round thy head! Ah! the golden years have fled; Thee have reft, and me have left Here alone, thy loss ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... thee vp aboue thy silent Graue. I meruail'd much the Derbian Nimphes were dumbe, Or of those Muses, what should be become, That of all those, the mountaines there among, Not one this while thy Epicediumsung; 10 But so it is, when they of thee were reft, They all those hills, and all those Riuers left, And sullen growne, their former seates remoue, Both from cleare Darwin, and from siluer Doue, And for thy losse, they greeued are so sore, That they haue vow'd they will come there no more; But leaue thy losse to me, that ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... imagined her an injured beauty, reft from her faithful adorer by her stern aunt or duenna, and that he considered himself to be doing her a kindness by keeping her informed of her hero's vicinity, while he denied it to her companion; but she scorned to enter into an explanation, or make any disavowal, and found ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... go alive," cried William at that, seeing himself reft of his arms. "It were great villainy to do to death an ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... in turn awake From virtue, as a man from his brief love, And, roughly shaken, face the useless truth; No answer to brute fact has e'er been found. Slaves of your slaves, caged in your furnished rooms, Ushered to meals when reft of appetite— Though hungry, bound to wait a stated hour— Your dearest contemplation broken off By the appointed summons to your bath; Racked with more thought for those whom you may flog Than for those dear; obsessed by your possessions With a dull round of stale anxieties;— Soon maintenance ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... too late the damage to repair? Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, But in my hands the wheat and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the road that ran to the quay a terrible streak of lightning reft the dark sky, and the wild crash of thunder that followed drowned even the ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... the charred and reeling prow Reft of hope, they gather now, Finding, one by one, a grave In the vexed and sullen wave. Here the child, as if in sleep, Floats on waters dark and deep; There the mother sinks below, Shrieking in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... superiority of Europe over Asia; the Saracens were proud of the recent conquest of the East, Africa, and Southern Europe, by their arms; the former pointed to a world subdued and long held in subjection—the latter to a world newly reft from the infidel, and won by their sabres to the sway of the Crescent. The one deemed themselves secure of salvation while combating for the Cross, and sought an entrance to heaven through the breach of Jerusalem; the other, strong in the belief of fatalism, advanced fearless to the conflict, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... this same moment he Is as softly moved—"no rose Would he pluck before the storm Reft it of ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... love—that love was mine, 1110 And shown by many a bitter sign. 'Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh, I knew but to obtain or die. I die—but first I have possessed, And come what may, I have been blessed. Shall I the doom I sought upbraid? No—reft of all, yet undismayed[eg] But for the thought of Leila slain, Give me the pleasure with the pain, So would I live and love again. 1120 I grieve, but not, my holy Guide! For him who dies, but her who died: She sleeps beneath the wandering wave— Ah! had she but an earthly grave, This ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... herself as the messenger from Heaven, the angel of the realm of France. Possibly the illusion, so cruelly reft from her, returned at last to enfold her in its beneficent veil. At any rate, she appears to have been crushed; all that remained to her was an infinite horror of death ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and my comfort wast thou 'neath the sun, Dark gloom, now I'm reft of thee, filleth my mind; I shall know no more happiness now thou art gone, O my Mary, of wit and of ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... is fate that brings you to my sight; May I be reft of heaven's light, Ere I desert you in your ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... bearing the gown refused, 480 Sad they and suppliant, whose own hands their very bosoms bruised, While fixed, averse, the Goddess kept her eyes upon the ground. Thrice had Achilles Hector dragged the walls of Troy around, And o'er his body, reft of soul, was chaffering now for gold. Deep groaned AEneas from his heart in such wise to behold The car, the spoils, the very corpse of him, his fellow dead, To see the hands of Priam there all weaponless outspread. ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... in Helen's face so mild, And in her bashful mien, The winning softness of the child, The blushes of fifteen. The witching smile, when prone to go, Arrests me, bids me stay; Nor joy, nor comfort can I know, When 'reft ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... from my Tuscan grove, The lily chaste, the rose that breathes of love, The myrtle leaf, and Laura's hallow'd bay, The deathless flowers that bloom o'er Sappho's clay; For thee, Callirhoe! yet by love and years, I learn how fancy wakes from joy to tears; How memory, pensive, 'reft of hope, attends The exile's path, and bids him fear new friends. Long may the garland blend its varying hue With thy bright tresses, and bud ever new With all spring's odours; with spring's light be ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... child, thou must not take. A boy unskilled, he knows not yet The bounds to strength and weakness set. No match is he for demon foes Who magic arts to arms oppose. O chief of saints, I have no power, Of Rama reft, to live one hour: Mine aged heart at once would break: Rama, my child, thou must not take. Nine thousand circling years have fled With all their seasons o'er my head, And as a hard-won boon, O sage, These sons have come to cheer mine age. My dearest love amid the four Is he whom ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... on the lads an' the land I hae left, An' how love has been lifted, an' friendship been reft; How the hinnie o' hope has been jumbled wi' ga', Then I sigh for the lads an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... King must be skilful in smiting" (ibid., p. 174). "Fierceness and ambition are the qualities of the King" (ibid., p. 59). "The King who is mild is regarded as the worst of his kind, like an elephant that is reft of fierceness" (ibid., p. 171). Indeed, failure to treat subjects with rigour is visited with penalties as tremendous as failure to protect them. "They forget their own position and most truly transcend ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... from which our bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which reveled there in frolicsome adventure. The very Lives of the Saints helped us to understand what was so carefully left unsaid! But the day when I was reft of your sweet company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they appeared to us, a modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless barrel, draws every day, from Heaven knows what deep, an empty pitcher, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... through these deep woods inhabited by beasts and serpents? O blessed one, may the Adityas and the Vasus, and the twin Aswins together with the Marutas protect thee, thy virtue being thy best guard.' And addressing thus his dear wife peerless on earth in beauty, Nala strove to go, reft of reason by Kali. Departing and still departing, king Nala returned again and again to that shed, dragged away by Kali but drawn back by love. And it seemed as though the heart of the wretched king was rent in twain, and like a swing, he kept going out from cabin ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is;—(breaks the sword)—take it—and with it all Th' allegiance that I owe to France; ay take it; And with it, take the hope I breathe o'er it: That so, before Colonna's host, your arms Lie crush'd and sullied with dishonour's stain; So, reft in sunder by contending factions, Be your Italian provinces; so torn By discord and dissension this vast empire; So broken and disjoin'd your subjects' loves; So fallen your son's ambition, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... shall tear her; if they wrong her honour, The proudest of them shall well hear of it. Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine, Nor age so eat up my invention, Nor fortune made such havoc of my means, Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends, But they shall find, awak'd in such a kind, Both strength of limb, and policy of mind, Ability in means, and choice of friends, To ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... "one night of Christmas." It was at Christmas-time that the Danish boy acquired his supernatural strength by giving back to the elf-maiden the horn he had taken from her. The Halsteengaard horn and the golden beaker of Aagerup were both reft from the trolls on Christmas Eve, and the horn of Wexioe on Christmas morning. The night of St. John's Day is mentioned as the time when the horn now at Arendal was obtained. The saint here referred to is probably ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... been whole save by the blood of this Black Knight. And for this carried they off the body piecemeal and the head, for that they well knew you were wounded; and of the head shall I have right sore need, for thereby shall a castle be yielded up to me that was reft from me by treason, so I may find the knight that I go seek, through whom it ought to be ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... sank she / ere she a word did say, And reft of all her pleasure / there the fair lady lay. Soon had Kriemhild's sorrow / all measure passed beyond: She shrieked, when past the swooning, / that did the ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... or later; and there remained only the question as to how and when it was to be. Diana sat like a statue, enduring her pain. So may have suffered the Christian martyrs in their death-agony; so suffers a woman when the one dear hope of her life is reft from her, and she ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... worth the time, woe worth the day, That reft us of thee, Tabitha! For we have lost, with thee, the meal, The bits, the morsels, and the deal Of gentle paste and yielding dough, That thou on widows did bestow. CHOR. All's gone, and death hath taken Away from us Our maundy; ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... deed and thought, take pleasure in envy and malice. And, O sinless one, the earth then becometh full of sin and immorality. And, O lord of the earth, he that becometh virtuous at such periods doth not live long. Indeed, the earth becometh reft of virtue in every shape. And, O tiger among men, the merchants and traders then full of guile, sell large quantities of articles with false weights and measures. And they that are virtuous do not prosper; while they that are sinful proper exceedingly. And virtue loseth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... The sea-breeze moans Through yon reft house! O'er rolling stones In bold ambitious sweep The onward-surging tides supply The silence of the cloudless sky ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... whose loyalty to the British cause never wavered during the Great War and who still pride themselves on India's share in its final victory, when they see how the world of Western civilisation has been reft asunder by four years of frightful conflict which drenched all Europe with blood and left half of it at least plunged in black ruin. We have preached to Indians, not untruly, but with an insistence that seems to them now more than ever to savour of self-righteousness, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... woman slain! My Lady Lingua dead? O heavens unjust! Can you behold this fact, this bloody fact, And shower not fire upon the murderer? Ah, peerless Lingua! mistress of heavenly words, Sweet tongue of eloquence, the life of fame, Heart's dear enchantress! What disaster, fates, Hath reft this jewel from our commonwealth? Gustus, the ruby that adorns the ring, Lo, here defect, how shalt thou lead thy days, Wanting the sweet companion of thy life, But in dark sorrow and dull melancholy? But stay, who's this? inhuman wretch! Bloodthirsty miscreant! is this thy handiwork? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... sayest well, my father. Go then, for having proceeded to salute[34] thy sister, whose breast I first sucked, Jocasta I mean, deprived of my mother, and reft from her, an orphan, I will depart and save my life. But haste, go, let ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... the crow he started, like one mad, And tore out every feather that he had, And made him black, and reft him of his stores Of song and speech, and flung him out of doors Unto the devil; whence never come he back, Say I. Amen. And hence ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... brethren fell on strife; Sweet fruits are sair to gather: The tane has reft his brother of life; And the wind wears owre ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... anguish rack'd the father's mind, Reft of his son, a murderer of his kind; His guilty sword distained with filial gore, He beat his burning breast, his hair he tore; The breathless corse before his shuddering view, A shower of ashes o'er his head he threw; "In my old age," ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... From nature and man's passions still are made. The music of their motion as they pranced Lulled me to flawless ease as of a God; Never upon me pain or pleasure chanced; Unknown the dew of bliss, or fate's hard rod. Thus dreamed I ... But I know our mother Earth Waits to give back the peace she reft at birth. ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... thy dread expanse, One hopeless, dark idolater of chance, Content to feed with pleasures unrefin'd, The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind; Who mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust, In joyless union wedded to the dust, Could all his parting energy dismiss, And call this barren world sufficient bliss? 1584 CAMPBELL: Pl. of Hope, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... shape above him, and then he set his lips, and pulled up the helm another spoke as it swung. He never quite knew what happened after that. There was a horrible crash, and the schooner appeared to be rolling over bodily. The spokes he clung to desperately reft themselves from his grasp, the deck slanted until one could not stand upon it, and something heavy struck him on the head. He dropped, and Dampier flung himself upon the wheel above ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Prince of True Believers, was thus keening over the folk of the house,[FN341] behold, out came a black slave therefrom and said to me, 'Hold thy peace, O Shaykh! May thy mother be reft of thee! Why do I see thee bemoaning the house in this wise?' Quoth I, 'I frequented it of yore, when it belonged to a good friend of mine.' Asked the slave, 'What was his name?'; and I answered, 'Jubayr ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... night when his spirit was by treachery and violence reft from his body, there was no rest for ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Phillis that repines me All grace but death, may deign to come and see it, And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me. This only boon for all my mortal bane I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat: That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain, And soul is fled, and body reft of heat, She might perceive how much she might command, That had my life ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... Deep waving fields and pastures green, With gentle slopes and groves between:— These fertile plains, that softened vale, Were once the birthright of the Gael; The stranger came with iron hand, And from our fathers reft the land. Where dwell we now? See, rudely swell Crag over crag, fell over fell. Ask we this savage hill we tread, For fattened steer or household bread; Ask we for flocks these shingles dry, And well the mountain ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... the entrails of my lambs. But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame, My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys Till that my nails were anchor'd in thine eyes; And I, in such a desperate bay of death, Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft, Rush all to ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... as the rudder went hard over, the "Bertha Millner" fretted and danced and shook her sails, calling impatiently for the wind, chafing at its absence like a child reft of a toy. Then again she scooped the nor'wester in the hollow palms of her tense canvases and settled quietly down on the new tack, her bowsprit pointing straight toward ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... the Frisians; the fretwork he flitted, The gem-stones much worthy, all over the waves' cup. The King the full mighty cring'd under the shield; Into grasp of the Franks the King's life was gotten 1210 With the gear of the breast and the ring altogether; It was worser war-wolves then reft gear from the slain After the war-shearing; there the Geats' war-folk Held the house of the dead men. The Hall took the voices; Spake out then Wealhtheow; before the host said she: Brook thou this roundel, lief ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... With the old, sweet smile on his quiet face, Dead to the sting of a heart's disgrace.... How should I wish him a lesser grace, How should I strive with a wiser Will? Yet how can the heart that is reft divine Death's mystical, measureless charity? The cry of the stricken king is mine: "Would ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... Mon. saith.] After that Leir was fallen into age, the two dukes that had married his two eldest daughters, thinking it long yer the gouernment of the land did come to their hands, arose against him in armour, and reft from him the gouernance of the land, vpon conditions to be continued for terme of life: by the which he was put to his portion, that is, to liue after a rate assigned to him for the maintenance of his estate, which in processe of time was diminished ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (2 of 8) - The Second Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... from Gylfi, Rich in stored up treasure, The land she joined to Denmark. Four heads and eight eyes bearing, While hot sweat trickled down them, The oxen dragged the reft mass That formed ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... in a second course again, They forward came with might and main, Yet which had better of the twain, The seconds could not judge yet; Their shields were into pieces cleft, Their helmets from their heads were reft, And to defend them nothing left, These champions would not ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thou be, Lend me thy hand; thou seest I cannot see: Blessing betide thee, little feel'st thou want; With me, good child, food is both hard and scant. These smooth even veins assure me he is kind, Whate'er he be, my girl, that thee doth find. I, poor and old, am reft of all earth's good, And desperately am crept into this wood To seek the poor ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Then slow he rose, Mykenai's king of men, Gentle his voice to hear. "Laertes' son," He said, but 'twas Nestor he looked upon, The wise old man who sat beside his chair, Mild now who once, a lion, kept his lair Untoucht of any, or if e'er he left it, Left it for prey, and held that when he reft it From foe, or over friend made stronger claim: "Laertes' son," the king said, "all men's fame Reports thee just and fertile in device; And as the friend of God great is thy price To us of Argos; for without the Gods How ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... the back parts of a town. The last glimpse of a place you may have grown to like or love is, ignobly, interminable rows of the bedroom-windows in mean streets, a few hovels, some cinder-heaps, and a factory chimney. As like as not, you are reft from a last wave to the city's unresponsive and dingy back by the roar and suffocation of a tunnel. By sea one takes ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the avid greed Of pirate fathers, smocked as Grace, Sent Judas missioners to read Christ's Word to many a feebler race — False priests of Truth who made their tryst At Mammon's shrine, and reft or slew — Some hands you taught to pray to Christ Have prayed His curse to ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... remaining! Mentor the gallant and goodly, and Troeilus prompt with the war-team; Hector, a god among men—he, too, who in nothing resembled Death-doom'd man's generation, but imaged the seed of Immortals— Battle hath reft me of these:—but the shames of my house are in safety; Jesters and singers enow, and enow that can dance on the feast-day; Scourges and pests of the realm; bold spoilers of kids and of lambkins! ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Death, that hast us of much riches reft, Tell us at least what hast thou with it done? What has become of him whose flower here left Is but the shadow of his likeness gone? Scarce like the shadow of that which he was, Nought like, but that he ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... urge thy chase so far astray? And why so late returned? And why"— The rest was in her speaking eye. "My child, the chase I follow far, 'Tis mimicry of noble war; 570 And with that gallant pastime reft Were all of Douglas I have left. I met young Malcolm as I strayed Far eastward, in Glenfinlas' shade, Nor strayed I safe; for all around, 575 Hunters and horsemen scoured the ground. This youth, though still a royal ward, Risked life and land to be my guard, And through the passes ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... scrupulously withheld from the cognizance of the Houses were now absolutely forced on their attention. It was by Parliament that England was torn from the great body of Western Christendom. It was by parliamentary enactment that the English Church was reft of its older liberties and made absolutely subservient to the Crown. It was a parliamentary statute that defined the very faith and religion of the land. The vastest confiscation of landed property which England had ever witnessed was wrought by Parliament. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... in silence. Her physical strength was coming back to her, but yet she could not move, and she had no words to speak. He seemed to have reft from her every faculty of thought and feeling save a burning sense of shame. By his violence he had broken down all her defences. She seemed to have lost both the power and the will to resist. She remained speechless while the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... himself with the remainder sought shelter in Powys, in the hall of Cynddylan, its prince. But the Saxon bills and bows found their way to Powys too. Cynddylan was slain, and with him the last of the sons of Llewarch, who, reft of his protector, retired to a hut by the side of the lake of Bala, where he lived the life of a recluse, and composed elegies on his sons and slaughtered friends, and on his old age, all of which abound with so much simplicity and pathos that the heart of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... is thy soul like mountain tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which these ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... found so sharp a sword, And a knife with a golden heft: “King Sigfred be God’s grace with thee, For here thy life was reft! ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... such remnants of his kingdom as still remain faithful south of the Loire? The English will have them all. Already they call our King in mockery 'the King of Bourges;' soon even that small domain will be reft away, and then what will remain for him or for us? If the visions of the maiden had been true, why doth not the Lord strike now, before Salisbury of England can invest the city? If Orleans fall, ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... love the duke as his dearest friend; but when Richard III. offered L1000 reward to any one who would deliver up the duke, Banastar betrayed him to John Mitton, sheriff of Shropshire, and he was conveyed to Salisbury, where he was beheaded. The ghost of the duke prayed that Banastar's eldest son, "reft of his wits might end his life in a pigstye;" that his second son might "be drowned in a dyke" containing less than "half a foot of water;" that his only daughter might be a leper; and that Banastar himself might ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... old Astronomer; Therefore at midnight to his house he went And prayed him be his tale's interpreter. And yet upon the heaven his eyes he bent, Hearing the marvel; yet he sought for her That was a wanting, in the hope her face Once more might fill its reft abiding-place. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... decorations of the nest Which saw our mutual ardor burn, Already seem to wear their best At the mere hope of return. Come, see if you can recognize Things your departure reft of glee, The bed, the glass of extra size, In which you often drank ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... face appear, When youth and years are flown: Such is the robe that kings must wear, When death has reft their crown. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... than life itself had been, Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea, Or bloom of myrtle, or murmur of laden bee, Whom lately from his unconsenting breast The Fates, at some capricious blind behest, Intolerably had reft—Eurydice, Dear to the sunlight as Illyrian sea, Sweet as the murmur of bees, or myrtle bloom— And uncompanioned led her to ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... miracle, ever to dispel the mist which romance has evoked about all human doings." Therefore romance has created the "dynamic illusions" of chivalry and love and common sense and religion and art and patriotism and optimism, and therein "the ape reft of his tail and grown rusty at climbing" has clothed himself so long that as he beholds himself in the delusive mirrors he has for centuries held up to nature he believes he is somehow of cosmic importance. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... allas! What subtiltee. What newe lust, what beautee, what science, 1255 What wratthe of iuste cause have ye to me? What gilt of me, what fel experience Hath fro me raft, allas! Thyn advertence? O trust, O feyth, O depe aseuraunce, Who hath me reft ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... but the church which the old houses knew has gone. They pulled it down in the forties—that unhappy decade for anything ancient and quiet in Surrey villages; all they left was the tower, a mighty mass of stone and ivy that stands with its nave reft from it, the forlornest and most meaningless of ruins. If the tower might stand, why not the nave? They pulled the nave down, and left the tower standing, so Mr. C.J. Swete, one of Epsom's historians, tells you, in order that ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... pit and gallery cry "Hats off!" And awed Consumption checks his chided cough, Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love Drops, reft of pin, her play-bill from above; Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap, Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap; But, wiser far than he, combustion fears, And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers; ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... slow! heave-a-ho!— Lower him to the mould below; With the well-known sailor ballad, Lest he grow more cold and pallid At the thought that Ocean's child, From his mother's arms beguiled. Must repose for countless years, Reft of all her briny tears, All the rights he owned by birth, In the dusty ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... written in the handwriting and sealed with the seal of the accused who, when he looked upon them, trembled in every limb, and his tongue was knotted for a while, nor could he find power to speak a word, and he was reft of all his reason and of his knowledge. Wherefor he bowed his brow groundwards and held his peace. But when the King beheld this his condition, he bade them slay him by smiting his neck without the city, and Nadan cried aloud, "O Haykar, O blackavice, what could ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... you, the goddess who glitters With gold on the perch of the falcon, The bride that I trusted, by beauty, From the bield of my hand has been taken. On the boat she makes glad in its gliding She is gone from me, reft from me, ravished! O shame, that we linger to save her, Too sweet for the prey ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... of kingly awe And high disdaine, whenas his soveraine Dame So rudely handled by her foe he sawe, With gaping jawes full greedy at him came, And ramping on his shield, did weene the same 365 Have reft away with his sharpe rending clawes: But he was stout, and lust did now inflame His corage more, that from his griping pawes He hath his shield redeem'd, and foorth his ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... I learnt the names of all that press Of knights and dames, than I beheld a sight Nigh reft my ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... living thing he could not hate Was reft at once—and he deserved his fate, But did not feel it less; the good explore For peace, these realms where guilt can never soar; The proud—the wayward—who have fixed below Their joy, and find this earth enough for woe, Lose in that one their all—perchance ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... almost to its nadir. The command of the sea was lost and, as a consequence of this and of the military genius of the Duke of Guise, Calais, held for over two centuries, was conquered by the French. [Sidenote: 1558] With the subsequent loss of Guines the last English outpost on the continent was reft from her. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... words, tripped over his tongue to meet her. What a lovely vision she had made!—"Una donzella non con uman' volto (a gentle lady not of human look)." Well, what next? Ah, something about "Amor, che ha la mia virtu tolto (Love that has reft me of my manly will)." Then should come amore, and of course cuore, and disio, and anch' io! This was very new; it was also very strange what a fascination he found in his phrenetic exercises. Rhyme, now: he had called it often enough a jingle of endings; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... may handle me concerns me little. The project will as roundly ripe itself Without as with me. Trusty souls remain, Though my far bones bleach white on austral shores!— I thank you for the audience. Long ere this I might have reft your ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Mrs. Beaufort, then! Well, you can understand me. I want my brother. He has been basely reft from me. Tell me where he is, and I will forgive all. Restore him to me, and I will bless you and yours." And Philip fell on his knees and grasped the train of her gown. "I know nothing of your brother, Mr. Morton," cried Mrs. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I went, less conscious of cruelty than when I plied fire and sword with legitimate men of war, for ever in my mind was the picture of real Argile, scorched to the vitals with the invading flame, and a burgh town I cherished reft of its people, and a girl with a child at her neck flying and ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... at the girl, who was kneeling, consoling the dog, who, reft 'tween pride and pain, showed a lamentable countenance. Suddenly she looked up and rose, and ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... island-strength is guarded well,—say, brothers, will ye go? From home and kin for many a year our steps have wander'd wide, And never may our bones be laid our fathers' graves beside. 50 No children have we to lament, no wives to wail our fall; The traitor's and the spoiler's hand have reft our hearths of all. But we have hearts, and we have arms, as strong to will and dare As when our ancient banners flew within the northern air. Come, brothers! let me name a spell shall rouse your souls again, 55 And send the old blood bounding free through pulse ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... (Themselves now but cold imagery) The sculptor to make Beauty by. Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, That babe or mother, one must die; So in mercy left the stock, And cut the branch; to save the shock Of young years widow'd; and the pain, When Single State comes back again To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivell'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... conditions, and it was surely better to try whatever fixed plan the other had in mind than remain in Massowah, a prey to hopeless, purposeless agony. For he knew now what it would mean to him if Irene Fenshawe were reft from his life, and the knowledge made his eyes blaze, and sent the passionate ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... point. He was still before them, but his race was nearly run. Steep, slippery rocks, shelving down to the edges of a small, deep pool of water, the source of the stream, formed an apparently insurmountable barrier in that direction. Rooted—Heaven knows how!—in some reft or fissure of the rock, grew a wild ash, throwing out a few boughs over the solitary pool; this was all the support Luke could hope for, should he attempt to scale the rock. The rock was sheer—the pool deep—yet still he hurried on. He reached the muddy embankment; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that he now so reluctantly witnessed differed from the brutal revels in the convent of Santa Maria—each alike in its motive, though so differing in the manner—equally callous and equally selfish, coining horror into enjoyment. The fair Mariana, whose partner had been reft from her, as the Queen had related, was in no mind to lose the new one she had gained. She pressed upon him from time to time the wine-flask and the fruits; and in those unmeaning courtesies her hand gently lingered upon his. At length, the hour arrived when the companions retired ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thyself to woe, * Thou art slain and worse sorrows my bosom rend! Thou hast reft me of fairest companionship, * Made her home Earth's womb till the world shall end. To Time, who hath wrought me such grief, I say, * 'Allah grant in her stead never show ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton |
