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Rend   Listen
verb
Rend  v. t.  (past & past part. rent; pres. part. rending)  
1.
To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to tear asunder; to split; to burst; as, powder rends a rock in blasting; lightning rends an oak. "The dreadful thunder Doth rend the region."
2.
To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force. "An empire from its old foundations rent." "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee."
To rap and rend. See under Rap, v. t., to snatch.
Synonyms: To tear; burst; break; rupture; lacerate; fracture; crack; split.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rend" Quotes from Famous Books



... their trusty swords the warriors go To fill the ranks; hoarse bugles rend the air; These seize their massy javelins, these prepare The death-winged arrow ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... he was being bled, and that the stream from his veins was so copious that it rose to the sky, obscuring the sun. The daylight also brought other omens: a foreign monk at the court had been dreaming, and saw the king enter a church, seize the rood, and rend it with his teeth; the holy image at first submitted to the insult, then struck down the king, who, while prostrate, vomited fire and smoke which masked the stars. The king, whose courage had returned with daylight, made light of the monk's ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... minutes, news of the accident spread through the neighbourhood, and mothers came rushing to the scene by scores. Occasionally, a mother would recognise the lifeless form of a child as it was lifted from the mass, and then the piercing cry of agony that would rend the air! One after another, the bodies of the dead were removed; and at length litters were provided, and the wounded were carried away also. Nearly one hundred families either mourned the loss of children, or watched anxiously over the forms ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... en coute a se determiner ne me le rend que plus estimable: il pense qu'il chagrinera son pere en m'epousant; il croit trahir sa fortune et sa naissance. Voila de grands sujets de reflexion: je serai charmee de triompher. Mais il faut que j'arrache ma victoire, et non pas qu'il ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... and he was too proud to ask it. So they lived together a few short weeks after marriage, on outward terms of courtesy and cordiality, but with this little rift of dissatisfaction gradually yet surely widening into a fissure that should rend each of these proud unbending hearts ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... and when she saw the dominie do on this wise, she said to herself, "Doubtless my husband is dead, and this learned doctor of law and religion is ashamed to tell me so." So she said to him, "O my lord, if he be dead, tell me;" but he shook his head and held his peace. Then said she, "Shall I rend my raiment?" "Rend!" replied he. "Shall I beat my face?" asked she; and he answered, "Beat!" So she took the letter from his hand and returned home fell a-weeping, she and her children. Presently, one of her neighbours ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... man's free will, that he thought not the grace of God necessary to aid it in every particular good act? Who ever before his monstrous disciple Celestius denied all mankind to be bound with the guilt of Adam's transgression? Who ever before sacrilegious Arius durst rend in pieces the Unity of Trinity? Who ever before wicked Sabellius durst confound the Trinity of Unity? Who ever before cruel Novatian affirmed God to be merciless, in that He had rather the death ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... drawn upon to describe the fair maiden; her eyes are compared to stars, her colour to lilies and snow, her mouth to a rose, her kiss 'doth rend in sunder all the clouds ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... avec tendresse, Je vous les rends avec douleur; C'est ainsi qu'un amant, dans sou extreme fureur, Rend le ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... moment more Afford me to my sorrows—Oh, look there! Could bitter anguish pierce your heart, like mine, You'd pity now the mortal pangs I feel, The throbs that tear my vital strings away, And rend my agonizing soul. ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... that wakes in light, There is a hand of peerless might; Which, soon or late, shall yet assail And rend dissimulation's veil: Which will unfold the masquerade Which justifies our own ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... mine enemy," she cried. "I'm awfully glad to see you, Frank. I was much minded to tell how you helped me get my dove bill through, but I feared they might hold you responsible for the defeat of the eight-hour law and turn and rend you." ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... who know—at night the earth rises up to the heavens on the voices of the wild and the ears of the gods are offended. Creatures go out on their own paths—as the men-things go on theirs by day. They rend and contend, they kill and are killed; but they do ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... with me, something that would rend rocks asunder: it is called MY WILL. Silently doth it proceed, and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... warm shine and soothing shade, Nor the great sun's far-reaching rays which crown the day with light, Nor yet the star-lit purple haze that comes before the night; She breathes the tender tale to me, in accents clear and plain, Until I nearly rend the veil and see it all again. And though I'm blind, I know quite well, when to the woods we go, The place to find the wild bluebell, and where the lilies blow; Shy violets tell me, as I pass, their ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... childhood's joyous voice Are heard no more, and never shall rejoice Thy lonely echoes; savage beasts shall come And find among thy palaces a home. The dragon there shall rear her scaly brood, And satyrs dance where once thy temples stood; The lion, roaming on his angry way, Shall on thy sacred altars rend his prey; The distant isles at midnight gloom shall hear Their frightful ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... 1846. O'Connell had taught the people habits of political organisation, and while he had so wielded the masses thus organised as to prevent insurrection, he kept the government in continual alarm, lest some sudden outbreak should rend society and deluge the country with blood. The "agitator" professed to hold the doctrine of moral force in opposition to physical force; but while he proclaimed that the liberties of Ireland were "not worth the shedding of one drop of blood," and in long letters ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... they go tearing in mad fury through the forests with their enormous ears, and tails, and trunks erect, their ponderous tusks glistening in the sunshine, and their wicked little eyes flashing like balls of fire as they knock down, rend asunder, and overturn all that comes in ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... ye not, great god of wars, And ye, Britannia's king, The day when these black birds shall fly On fierce unshackled wing? When they shall meet 'twixt sea and sky, Rend flesh and break the bone, And blood shall trickle through the waves To gray ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... the clouds of fire which laid Sodom waste? When wilt Thou let loose the floods which lifted the ark to Ararat's top? Are not the cups of Thy patience emptied and the vials of Thy grace exhausted? Oh Lord, when wilt Thou rend ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... I no heart to raise That mighty sorrow laid asleep, That love so sweet, so strong and deep, That as ye hear the wonder told In those few strenuous words of old, The whole world seems to rend apart When heart is torn away ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... god of silence, Vidar, has some resemblance to Hercules, for while the latter has nothing but a club with which to defend himself against the Nemean lion, whom he tears asunder, the former is enabled to rend the Fenris wolf at Ragnarok by the possession of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... they were ready to spring, to rend flesh, to tear life out of him who threatened the desecration of all that was good and pure and beautiful to them; and yet, dumb in their devotion and faith, they waited and watched for a sign from the woman. The blue eyes of Cummins' wife, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... top bewildered stand! Oh, glorious sound to every ransomed soul, From sea to sea, from spreading pole to pole In every age, oh, tell the tidings o'er— "That very Jesus shall return once more!" Hark! angel-voices rend the vaulted sky, In thrilling tones those shining angels cry, "Why stand ye gazing on yon glistening dome? Heaven has received your risen Master home! The time will come, when, as ye saw him rise, He shall descend ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... silver-mines of Siberia. Crack! thug! The smoke clears away. By Jove! his imperial majesty has done it cleverly; hit the brute plumb on the os frontis, or through the heart, it makes no difference which. Down drops Bruin, kicking and tearing up the earth at a dreadful rate; cheers rend the welkin; pots, pans, and kettles are banged. High above all rises the stern voice of the autocrat, calling for another rifle, which is immediately handed to him. Humanity requires that he should at once put an end to the poor ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... their choice, and think they might have done better, the world is none the wiser. Burd Alane looks in good condition, but Phoebe thinks he is not quite himself, and that some day when he is in greater strength he will turn on his foes and rend them, regaining thus his lost prestige, for formerly he was king of ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... my house on sands, Tho' golden sands there be; I have not built with greedy hands A building fair to see; But my house on a solid Rock, And not the Builder I, But guest in house to stand the shock When tempests rend the sky. Lo, Christ! the Builder of my house, He laid foundation stone, So reck I not if storms carouse, For He ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... Delay no longer, then, but to the senate, And tell the dismal'st story ever uttered; Tell them what bloodshed, rapines, desolations, Have been prepared;—how near's the fatal hour. Save thy poor country, save the rev'rend blood Of all its nobles, which to-morrow's dawn Must else ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... the moment raised to the level of the most powerful states which then existed on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. He was by nature of a violent and uncontrolled temper, and during his earlier years he gave way to fits of anger, in which he would rend the clothes of those who came in his way or would spit in their faces, but with advancing years his character became more softened, and he finally earned the reputation of being a just and moderate sovereign. The little that we know of his life reveals ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... directment en Palestine, et de la il s'etoit embarque une seconde fois pour voir Alexandrie. Bernard, au contraire, va d'abord debarquer a Alexandrie. Il remonte le Nil jusqu'a Babylone, redescend a Damiette, et, traversant le desert sur des chameaux, il se rend par Gaza ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... has its temptations, and capabilities of abuse. For the simplest means are always enough for a great man; and when once he has obtained a few ordinary colors, which he is sure will stand, and a white surface that will not darken nor moulder, nor rend, he is master of the world, and of his fellow-men. And, indeed, as if in these times we were bent on furnishing examples of every species of opposite error, while we have suffered the traditions to escape us of the simple methods of doing simple ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... Morgan as he started toward the steps of the schoolhouse, and by not a half inch did it miss drunken, useless Mike Burns as it fell beside him. Then I covered my eyes as the cloud and the wind passed over me and I only heard it strike and rend and crash and tear the schoolhouse, beam from beam and stone from stone. An eerie wail of the voices of little children was mixed with the roar of the monster which crashed on up through the Town, laying low the homes of our pride and prosperity, leaving us with our faces to the ground while upon ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... on fire, and points to Emilia as a representation of passion. She asks for what she thinks she may have; she claims what she imagines to be her own. She has no shame, and thus, believing in, she never violates, nature, and offends no law, wild as she may seem. Passion does not turn on her and rend her when it is thwarted. She was never carried out of the limit of her own intelligent force, seeing that it directed her always, with the simple mandate to seek that which belonged to her. She was perfectly sane, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... forgiveness—in no common phrase, or show of sorrow; but with earnestness and sincerity. In the same spirit, I acknowledge to you both that the time has been when I connived at treachery and falsehood—which if I did not perpetrate myself, I still permitted—to rend you ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... their human form, and to put on the appearance of wolves. Several thousands thus assemble. The leader walks before with his iron scourge; the crowd of those who, in their delusion, imagine that they have become wolves, follow after. Wherever they meet with cattle they rush upon them and rend them; they carry off such portions as they can, and do much destruction; but to touch or injure mankind is not permitted to them. When they come to rivers, the leader with a stroke of his whip divides the waters, which stand apart, leaving a dry channel by which they ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... bear it up into the air, to rise with it into the serenity of space!... For that you need talons, great wings, and a strong heart. But you are nothing but sparrows who, when they find a piece of carrion, rend it here and there, squabbling for it, and twittering ... Art for art's sake!... Oh! wretched men! Art is no common ground for the feet of all who pass it by. Why, it is a pleasure, it is the most intoxicating of all. But ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... again, he whispered just these words, clinching tight his boy-hands to keep down the agony of the sacrifice; while in the very centre of his heart throbbed a hard, dull pain, that seemed as if it would rend it asunder. ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... you have been to me a thing of light and a beacon, like those stars that shine for a moment and disappear. May nothing ever tarnish this episode of our lives. Were we to continue it I might love you; I might conceive one of those mad passions which rend all obstacles, which light fires in the heart whose violence is greater than their duration. And suppose I succeeded in pleasing you? we should end our tale in the common vulgar way,—marriage, a household, children, Belise ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... go after other gods: but he kept not that which the Lord commanded. 11. Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant. 12. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. 13. Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one tribe to thy son for David ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... not yet mastered the French language. In short, everything began to go wrong, to turn to unhappiness; and for that circumstance, my father took vengeance upon myself and my mother. How he could treat my poor mother so I cannot understand. It used to rend my heart to see her, so hollow were her cheeks becoming, so sunken her eyes, so hectic her face. But it was chiefly around myself that the disputes raged. Though beginning only with some trifle, they would soon go on to God knows what. Frequently, even ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... showed the progress of the strange sight. Soon noises were heard, like those of the mountains when the evil spirits are shaking them; the sounds were awful, solemn, and regular, like the throbs of a warrior's heart; and now and then a sharp, shrill scream would rend the air and awake other terrible voices in ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... Prometheus, forewarned me. Make ready, therefore, the ark which I have built, and place in it all that we may need for food while the flood of waters is out upon the earth. Far away on the crags of Caucasus the iron nails rend the flesh of Prometheus, and the vulture gnaws his heart, but the words which he spake are being fulfilled, that for the wickedness of men the flood of waters would come upon the earth, for Zeus himself is but the servant of one that is mightier than he, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... place in the flawless work of this second stage. That which has to be said is not yet too great for perfection of utterance; passion has not yet grappled with thought in so close and fierce an embrace as to strain and rend the garment of words, though stronger and subtler than ever was woven of human speech. Neither in his first nor in his last stage would the style of Shakespeare, even were it possible by study to reproduce it, be of itself a perfect and blameless model; but his middle style, that in which the typical ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... demolishers base their erroneous philosophy is a seeming belief that the men of to-day work harder for a living than the men of olden times. Now I will lay hold of this pillar, and, although I be not Samson, I may yet hope to rend an ill-constructed edifice. With the aid of a few figures and a little history the mind may possibly discern, through the centuries behind us, some evidence of that progress which Victor Hugo has ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... Now wouldst thou rend our nearness, and again Bring distance back, and place Poles and equators, mountain range and plain, Between me and thy face, Undoing what the gods divinely planned; Heart, canst thou part? hand, loose me from thy hand? Not twice the gods their slighted gifts bestow; Bethink thee ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... Sabbath proved the thin edge of differences and dissensions, which, as they went deeper and deeper, were finally to rend asunder the erstwhile united Abolition movement. The period was remarkable for the variety and force of new ideas, which were coming into being, or passing into general circulation. And to all of them it seems that Garrison was peculiarly ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... perjuries, murders, robberies, debaucheries and ruthless cruelties. I have been deaf to all considerations of decency, pity and mercy; as unmoved by such feelings as will be the savage beasts which spared you but will rend me to shreds. I am at the end of my crimes; let me hide them. My doom is at hand. Why should I defile your ears with the tale of my ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... chains may feel light as a thread, Russian Bear! As light and as slight as a thread; But though light be the chain. Will his might and his main Again rend it in twain? Fear is fled! Quite fled! And old animosity dead. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various

... Alarcos, dear Alarcos, Thy look is terrible! What mean these words? Why should'st thou spare me? Why should Oran die? The veil that clouds thy mind—I'll rend it. Tell me— Yea! I'll know all. A power supports me now— ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... desear desire, covet. desembozar unmuffle. desengao m. disillusion. deseo m. desire, longing. desesperacin f. despair. desesperado, -a desperate, despairing, hopeless. desfallecer weaken, swoon, fail, give way. desgarrar rend. desgracia f. misfortune, sorrow, unhappiness. desgraciado, -a unfortunate, hapless, miserable. deshacer undo, break. deshojado, -a leafless, petalless, blighted. desierto, -a deserted, lonely. desierto m. desert. desigual adj. uneven, dissimilar. deslizarse glide along, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... poltroon or a palterer, cruel, dull, envious, full of hate? Then Nature, the mother of the strong and generous, will have no pity, but will turn and rend you with claws. 'Trust her with your whole heart,' says Mr. Meredith, 'and go forward ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... think on the miseries that must rend the heart of a doating parent, when he sees the darling of his age at first seduced from his protection, and afterwards abandoned, by the very wretch whose promises of love decoyed her from the paternal roof—when ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... than yours. Even as your heart yearns over and loves with unspeakable tenderness your offspring, does the mother, no matter how poor her condition, yearn over and love her children—and when they are removed from under her protecting wing, she feels as keen a sorrow as would rend your heart, were the children of your tenderest care and fondest love, taken from you and ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... awakened He bethought him of his sinful deed, And he gave me a sign to come with speed. I was in Spain when the morning rose, But I stood by his bed ere evening close. The words may not again be said That he spoke to me, on death-bed laid; They would rend this Abbaye's massy nave, And pile it in heaps above ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... in our hands. The famous General Cambronne was taken prisoner fighting hand to hand with the gallant Sir Colin Halkett, who was shortly after shot through the cheeks by a grape-shot. Cambronne's supposed answer of "La Garde ne se rend pas" was an invention of after-times, and he himself always denied having used such ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... into the body of the careening plane. In that instant, the great power storage tank split open with an impact like the bursting of a world. The Solarite was hurled back by an explosion that seemed to rend the very atoms of the air, and all about them was a torrid blaze of heat and light that seemed to sear their faces ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... this Hindu girl's case is worse than that, a million times worse. Think of the life, and then, if you can, tell her she must be quite satisfied with it, that it is the will of God. You could not say that it is His will! It is the will of the Terrible, who holds on to his prey, and would rather rend it limb from limb than ever ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... rush; but how shall they do so? The gunsmen have only a little powder in scraps of paper or bags, and their balls are few and rarely fit. They have no potatoes ripe, and they have no bread—their food is the worn cattle they have crowded there, and which the first skirmish may rend from them. There are women and children seeking shelter, seeking those they love; and there are leaders busier, feebler, less knowing, less resolved than the women and ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... spirit-gladdening notes, Whilst mimic thunders bellow out From cannons' brazen throats: "Tyrant! awake ye, tremblingly; The advent has begun: Hark! to the mighty jubilant cry— "Sebastopol is won!" Ring out, rejoice, and clap your hands, Shout, patriots, everyone! A burst of joy let rend the sky: Sebastopol ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... say 'twas I."[1] Dear Cassy, thou must purge and bleed; I fear thou wilt be mad indeed. But now, by friendship's sacred laws, I here conjure thee, tell the cause; And Celia's horrid fact relate: Thy friend would gladly share thy fate. To force it out, my heart must rend; Yet when conjured by such a friend— Think, Peter, how my soul is rack'd! These eyes, these eyes, beheld the fact. Now bend thine ear, since out it must; But, when thou seest me laid in dust, The secret thou shalt ne'er ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... whose presence on my wintry heart Fell like bright Spring upon some herbless plain; How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain Of Custom thou did'st burst and rend in twain, And walked as free as ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen

... adversity with high proficiency in art is indeed a rare phenomenon. Carlyle says of such minds: "In a word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were subordinate, and made subservient, and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks, but its edge must be sharp and single; if it be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces, and will rend nothing." It may, therefore, be affirmed that the greatest luminaries of the art world have shone most brightly under circumstances in keeping ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... the mad tornado flies, And sounding mingles earth and skies, And wild confusion 'fore the eyes In terrors dressed. So passions fell in whirlwinds rise, And rend the breast! ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte

... just one mind. Then there arose in this one mind a desire, and the desire grew till it created a disturbance, and it kept increasing and growing more powerful till it burst into a storm of passion, and the storm became furious within; for it seemed at times as if it would rend and tear me to pieces, and I was about to be conquered by it. I felt like saying, 'Must I yield? Is yielding the only way out of this? Must I give way and let it have full sway over me?' I said, 'Must I let it die out by consuming ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... "dressing-up" amusement that the children might take into their minds. But the young savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty the King swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw his head crowned with the staring horror of a fool's cap—a thing which his father would rend to pieces if it ever came into his office. He plucked it off, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... wife's room. She was still sleeping. Then it was that spasms of mortal agony began literally to rend the man. He left her side and seated himself on the bed in his dressing-room. He sat with his arms folded across his chest. His shoulders heaved. Deep dry sobs shook his huge frame. He would not let a groan escape from between his clenched teeth, but there was blood on his lower lip where ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... fell Roa creep, When moaning winds rend back her vapourous veil; Wild Orinoco wedge-like split ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... it as a general principle that every country has the Jews it deserves. If you oppress them, trample them in the mud as was customary in pre-war Russia, they will turn and rend you when their turn comes round; this is happening in Russia at present. If you despoil a Jew by violence, he will do the same to you by guile, and you may or may not be left with your full complement ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... lion, they thee tear, And rend in pieces small; While there is none to succour thee, And rid ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the mourning pomp displayed, Nor plumes nor hangings of gloomy shade, But rev'rend prelates and priests are there, With crowds of mourners joining in prayer; Each sister's heart is filled with grief, To which faith alone can bring relief, Deploring the loss of that sainted nun, Friend, mother and abbess, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... shade! Where is thy place of heavenly rest? Seest thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?" ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... amid the green of Northern England, had never become hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs; the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the cabman's whip—that sceptre of the Roman ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... time may rend the tie; The fealty that holds the captive will In potent thrall, if sever'd soon, Poor human faith a-blight and chill must die. O birdlings, blossoms, leaflets, flow'rs, Give forth chaste spirits to enchant the air; Let silver'd mem'ries ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... Jefferson and James Madison, founders of the Democratic party, rend the air with cries of State's rights against Federal usurpation when the Federalists chartered the first United States bank in 1791, and when the Federalist Court, under the leadership of John Marshall, rendered one ringing ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... the trees were made of water growing up high and spreading out like branches and leaves, and that this forest was filled with sea wolves and serpents and strange beasts all made of sea water, but they could sting and rend a man very ghastly. After that you came to sirens that you could not help leaping to meet, but they put lips to men's breasts and sucked out the life. Then if the wind drove you south, you smelled smoke and at night saw flames, and if you could ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... our Helicon—nay, with what scorn she would traverse the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a will in spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could be no prescribing to her the time when she should roar—no teaching her to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue, would speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when Mrs. Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems—her new versions of the Psalms and Scriptures—her blank verse elegiacs—oh! ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... were his boding fears: new shouts ascend Of loud acclaim; and wide the welkin rend. A female form the wondering peers behold, Too bright for mixture of earth's mortal mould: The gridelin pall that down her shoulders flow'd Half veil'd her snow-white courser as she rode; On her fair hand a sparrow-hawk was plac'd, Her steed's sure steps a following ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... changed from southerly to south-easterly, which was the general course through the day, though with some occasional changes. The condition of the boat was now truly alarming; it bent and twisted, when struck by a sea, as if the next would rend it asunder: the panels of the ceiling were falling from their places; and the hull, as if united by hinges, was bending against the feet of the braces. Throughout the day, the rolling and pitching were so great, that no cooking could be done ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself—me—that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief,— Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart ...
— Sonnets from the Portuguese • Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

... noticed sometimes, when a man hopelessly in the wrong, he is inclined to turn on his best friend and rend him. This Clongorey business, truly, a bad one. When, just now, SEXTON moved adjournment of House, in order to call attention to it, Conservatives rose with one accord and went forth. They know WINDBAG SEXTON of old, and thought he was probably going to favour ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... Fierce is the whirlwind howling 15 O'er Afric's sandy plain, And fierce the tempest rolling Along the furrow'd main: But storms that fly, To rend the sky, 20 Every ill presaging, Less dreadful show To worlds ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... none the less bitter for that," he complained; and then, all at once, he turned fiercely to rend her. "What! When I throb for your footfall, or when I lean swooning to the wall for the scent of your hair as you pass; when I urge against your chamber door that I may feed upon the sound of your breath, or hunt for broken bread under your table that I may grow drunk on what your fingers ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... channel they little dream of; and I am wandering from one friend's house to another, and, like a true son of the Gospel, "have nowhere to lay my head." I know you will pour an execration on her head, but spare the poor, ill-advised girl, for my sake; though may all the furies that rend the injured, enraged lover's bosom await her mother until her latest hour! I write in a moment of rage, reflecting on my miserable situation—exiled, abandoned, forlorn. I can write no more—let me hear from you by the return of the coach. I ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things might be realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that a second schism in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also but too possible that Puseyism nay yet rend the English establishment by a similar convulsion. But in such contingencies, we should see a very large proportion of the spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to the public eye, and rehearsing something very like the treacherous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... again for ever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... fracture, sever, rend, burst, smash, shatter, shiver, splinter, sunder, rive, crush, batter, demolish, rupture>. (After discriminating these terms for yourself, see the treatment of break, fracture under ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... thou joy of Earth! That like the Star of Bethlehem dost rest Above the cradle of a Poet's soul, The witness and the seal of holy birth; Before whose brightness all earth's shadows fade Like fiends before the angel of the Lord; That rend'st in twain the veil of doubt and fear Shrouding the perfectness of heaven's pure bliss, Till man may worship with unsmitten soul Before the glory of the inner shrine; O Love! the Quenchless! Pure! and Beautiful! Be to me as the Prophet's ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... contracting, with infinite slowness, but with infinite force. This pressure must result in mechanical strain somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of the rocks surrounding them; and we can form no conception of the result of irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and raise, with imperceptible slowness of gradation, masses thousands of feet in thickness. We want some experiments tried on masses of iron and stone; and we can't get them tried, because Christian creatures never will seriously and sufficiently spend ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... mist and snowstorms girt around, Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,— Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath: Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free, And held ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... the foreign moon Saddens his lonely heart; And a sound of a bell in the evening rain Doth rend his ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng

... the waves as it did so. He sat up in his berth with a startled consciousness of danger, and at the same instant something struck the steamer with a terrific crash which seemed powerful enough to rend every timber apart. A tumult of sound broke forth, amid which a piercing human shriek rang out with awful sharpness. Fenton was thrown from his berth by the shock, and landed on the floor, bruised and half- stunned, but otherwise unhurt. His valise was dashed against him, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... hands and feet, and the same to be thrust into other most tender parts, and drawn out again, and this to be frequently repeated with violence. He lastly ordered a knotty stake to be thrust into his bowels to rend and tear them, in which torment he expired in the year 424. The Roman Martyrology places his name on the 31st ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... the very name of the Church, and avow that what the Lord wanted was not a body, but a number of individuals each seeking light and salvation in his own fashion. That would be a fearful evil—an evil which would rend the body into a thousand schisms, and bring down at last the heavy wrath of God, who has from the beginning taught men that the body must be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing before it can be fit to be ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... view of the wild chaos of metamorphosed rocks of Pipe Creek. It is a veritable Pluto's workshop, where the rocks are twisted, burned, and tortured out of all semblance to their original condition. They are made into cruel and black jagged ridges, which seem eager to tear and rend you. ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... republic, we have comparatively little cause to exult in the conceit of being freer or happier than other communities; much more in the chance, having broken the fetters of superstition and tyranny, next to rend those of false habit and fashion—to enthrone reason over the authority of one another's eyes and ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... spoke, half-a-dozen men in a north-country tartan got on the top of our low rear wall that we thought impregnable on the lip of the hill, and came on us with a most ferocious uproar. "Badenoch!" they cried in a fashion to rend the hills, and the signal (for such it was more than slogan) brought on our ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... the picture is full of dignity and pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered; tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at any peril of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... are the words spoken before Phedre rushes into the room to commence tremblingly and nervously, with struggles which rend and tear and convulse the system, the secret of her shameful love. As her passion mastered what remained of modesty or reserve in her nature, the woman sprang forward and recoiled again, with the movements of a panther, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... Sur ses vieux pierriers morts vient becqueter les mures; L'epine sur son deuil prospere insolemment; Mais, l'hiver, il se venge; alors, le burg dormant S'eveille, et, quand il pleut pendant des nuits entieres, Quand l'eau glisse des toits et s'engouffre aux gouttieres, Il rend grace a l'ondee, aux vents, et, content d'eux, Profite, pour cracher sur le lierre hideux Des bouches de ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... "Let's rend the bread. I'll light the fire for company for you; You'll not have any other company Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday To look us over and give us his idea Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up. He'll know what he would do if he were we, And all at ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost

... knew that when this dull quiet had passed away, when little by little, and one by one, each horrible feature of the sufferer's sorrow became first dimly apparent and then terribly familiar to him, the storm would burst in fatal fury, and tempests of tears and cruel thunder-claps of agony would rend that generous heart. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... unfeeling," said the Angel. Turning a little to the left, where there was a cell lighter than any I had so far seen, I asked what place it was: "The abode of the Infernal Dragons," said he, "which growl and rage, rush about and rend one another every instant." I drew near and oh! what an indescribable sight they were! It was the glowing fire of their eyes that gave all that light. "These are the descendants of Adam," said my Guide, "scolds and raving, wrathful ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... she hath left my youth— {417} My mother, my loved mother is no more— Left me my sufferings to deplore, Left me a heritage of woe: Who shall my sorrows soothe? Thou too, my sister, thy full share shalt know Of grief, thy heart to rend. Vain, O my father, vain thy nuptial vows, Brought to this speedy end: For when my mother died in ruin sank our ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... wallow where he lay, and with his strong hands felt along the walls, and found a crack between two great stones, and set his strength to rend them apart; but they clung together like the lips of Death. Long he struggled, yet could not stir them; and ever the doleful voice beat like a bell in his ears, till it seemed to him that he must give his life, so but that ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards

... over Trachonitis, and slew their relations; whereupon these robbers were more angry than before, it being a law among them to be avenged on the murderers of their relations by all possible means; so they continued to tear and rend every thing under Herod's dominion with impunity. Then did he discourse about these robberies to Saturninus and Volumnius, and required that they should be punished; upon which occasion they still the more confirmed themselves in their robberies, and became ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... howling to issue forth again; of its stalking through the aisles and gliding round and round the pillars, and "tempting the deep organ;" of its soaring up to the roof, and after striving vainly to rend the rafters, flinging itself despairingly upon the stones below, and passing mutteringly into the vaults! Anon, coming up stealthily—the Christmas book goes on to say—"It has a ghostly sound, lingering within the Altar, where it seems to chant in its wild way of Wrong and Murder done, and ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... charges of solidified oxygen and hydrogen. The charges are placed at the bottom of a 40 foot bore and exploded by a powerful electric spark. The effect is very different from that of other explosives which usually rend the rock into large fragments that have to be blasted again in detail before a clearance is made, for the oxyhydrogen charge has such terrible force that it completely pulverizes the rock, scooping out, even in granite, a deep wide pit of parabolic section of which the spot ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... unreal, that sight—unreal like the slow, grinding movement of the avalanche under him. Wildfire's head seemed a demon head of hate. It reached out, mouth agape, to bite, to rend. That horrible scream could not be the scream ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd. O, I'll leap up to heaven!—Who pulls me down?— See, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! [257] One drop of blood will save me: O my Christ!— Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ; Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!— Where is it now? 'tis gone: And, see, a threatening arm, an [258] angry brow! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven! No! Then will I headlong ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... present Seeming-of- things! Come forth and cling to me! Cling!—for the whole forces of a million universes shall not separate us! O Eternal Spirits of the Dead!" and she lifted her ghostly white arms with a wild gesture. "Rend ye the veil! Declare to the infidel and unbeliever the truth of the life beyond death; the life wherein ye and I dwell and work, clamoring for ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... at his taste, when he could have Irma's company, not to speak of Agnes Anne's. But I resolved that I should keep a bright look-out and make the little villains behave. For at an early age our Eden Valley boys were just savages, ready to mock and rend any one of themselves who was a little better dressed, who wore boots instead of clogs with birch-wood soles, or dared to speak without battering the King's English ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... us; and nothing made thee oblivious save that the charms of the bride have disordered thy wit and taken thy reason, Allah help thee! We give thee joy, we give thee joy." And they mocked at him whilst he kept silence before them, being like to rend his raiment and shed tears for rage. Then they went away from him, and when it was the hour of noon, up came his mistress, the crafty girl, trailing her skirts and swaying to and fro in her gait, as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... are animate, they are necessarily sensitive and the cutting of them down becomes a delicate surgical operation, which must be performed with as tender a regard as possible for the feelings of the sufferers, who otherwise may turn and rend the careless or bungling operator. When an oak is being felled "it gives a kind of shriekes or groanes, that may be heard a mile off, as if it were the genius of the oake lamenting. E. Wyld, Esq., hath heard it severall times." The Ojebways ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... drive the peopled snow, And move the haunted arras to and fro, And moan of things I fear to know Yet would rend from thee, Wind, before I go On the blind pilgrimage. Cease, ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... why my ravens fly to thee, carrying in their beaks scraps of leather. It is that thou mayst make for thyself a sandal; with that sandal on thou mayst put thy foot on the lower jaw of a mighty wolf and rend him. All the shoemakers of the earth throw on the ground scraps of the leather they use so that thou mayst be able to make the sandal for thy ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... the terrible event reaches them. At first, they scarcely credit its extent; but when they advance, and behold the vines and the fields desolated, then they tremble and are seized with despair, and cries of "Misery!" and "Misfortune!" rend ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello



Words linked to "Rend" :   bust, rupture, pull, snap, tear



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