"Rift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in tone, black, dark green, and brown and gray. The mist hangs heavy over everything, and the twinkle of an occasional camp-fire is but the sodden glow of ember whose life is long since burned out. But, see! Through the deep, jagged rift where runs the Potomac, along the rock-bound gorge through which in ages past the torrent burst its way, there creeps a host of tiny shafts of color—the skirmishers, the eclaireurs, of the irresistible array of which ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... millions of dollars. Yet it may be it is all for the best. Our national wound was too deep to be lightly healed. When the President issued his Emancipation Proclamation my heart overflowed with joy, and I said: 'This is the first bright rift ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... day in again searching for some indication that might assist them, but in vain. Dias and Jose both asserted that the tiny rift in the rocky peak looked wider from the middle of the valley than at any other point, and even Harry and his brother admitted that it could scarcely be seen from the foot of the hills on either side, and therefore it was agreed that Dias, Harry, ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... resources have wrought their will upon man. They are to be cherished as the mariner cherishes the guiding star that stands upon the horizon; they are to be cherished as some traveler, lost in a close, dark forest, cherishes the moment when the sun breaks through a rift in the clouds and he takes his bearings out of the swamp and toward his home. Visions are God within the soul. They come to lead man away from sin and sorrow. They come to guide him ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... exclamation, those who stood near seized and held him. Presently he saw the reason. He was standing on the brink of a precipice at the back of and dominating the dim and shadow-clad city, while far beneath him lay a gloomy rift along which ran the trade ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... So here some pick out bullets from the sides, Some drive old oakum through each seam and rift: Their left hand does the calking-iron guide, The rattling mallet ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... a rift in the clouds. One of them happens to mention Beverley Dixon. The other is ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Go-Murakami differed radically in their counsels, but it was finally decided that every effort should be made to widen the rift in the Ashikaga lute, and the Court commissioned Tadayoshi to attack Takauji and recover Kyoto. Thus was presented the spectacle of a father (Takauji) fighting against his son (Tadafuyu), and a brother (Tadayoshi) fighting against a brother ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... they were close by the narrow entrance, and as Fred searched for the exact place he uttered a cry of satisfaction, for there by the gaping rift lay two large bundles, whose ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... balcony. Once he saw a man's figure cross the room, but he could not be sure who it was. The last distant rumblings of thunder had died away and the clouds were breaking. It was not long before the dark mountainous billows broke apart, and a brilliant full moon showed herself sailing in the rift, suddenly flooding everything with light. Parts of the garden were silver white, and the tree shadows were like black velvet. A silvery lance pierced even into the hollow of Marco's evergreen and struck across ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and by going back to what was old has found topics that are really fresh and delightful. The Italy of the ancient Romans is a foreign country to us, and must always continue so; but the Italy of the Middle Ages is nearer, not so much in time, as because there is no impassable rift of religious faith, and consequently of ideas and motives, between us and it. Far enough away in the centuries to be picturesque, it is near enough in the sympathy of belief and thought to be thoroughly intelligible. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... out of which pussy has crept is small and barely furnished; it would be perfectly dark too, but that the holes in the roof and the rift in the door admit light into this most squalid room. There is nothing standing against its rough gray walls but a wooden chest, near this a few earthen bowls stand on the ground with a wooden cup ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... life. That a great deal of domestic dissatisfaction and unhappiness could be obviated if wisdom and experience instructed the husband and wife in the matter I have not the slightest doubt. The first rift in the domestic lute often dates from difficulties in the intimate life of the pair, difficulties that need not exist if there were knowledge. That reason and love may coexist, that the beauty of life is not dependent on a sentimentalized ignorance ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... o' her Hottentot pillow-shams 'n' old Dr. Carter tore a sham with his toothpick. 'N', added to all that, Amelia 's furious 'cause she read in a book 't teaches how to stay married 't a husband's first night out is the first rift in the lute, 'n' she was down town buyin' a dictionary so 's to be sure what a lute is afore she accuses young Dr. Brown. 'N' there's a man over in Meadville down with a sun-stroke, 'n' they want Dr. Carter to hurry, 'n' they can't seem to make him realize nothin'. ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... lay of the land at Skulltree, himself. When he was a young chap the Latisans had operated in a small way as a side-line on the Noda waters. There was a rift in the watershed near Skulltree. There was a canon leading down to the Tomah end, and the waters of the gorge were fed by a chain of ponds whose master source was near the Noda. The Latisans had hauled over to the pond from the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... "In itself it is worth nothing, being but the catspaw to scheming forces." With your denial of any intrinsic beauty in the emotion, with your acceptance of it as an unfortunate incident in human affairs, comes a vague hope that the race will outgrow this force. Here is your rift in the cloud. You picture a scientific Utopia where there are no lovers and no back-harkings to the primitive passion, and you appoint yourself pioneer to the promised land ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... examine closely every rift and crevice in the boundary cliff, it was a most tedious undertaking; and I do remember how my great trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing agony. They say an army goes upon its belly, but an old campaigner will tell you that you can march a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... loth to render up My precontract, and loth by brainless war To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet; Till one of those two brothers, half aside And fingering at the hair about his lip, To prick us on to combat 'Like to like! The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow! For fiery-short ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Devar's description, it was not easy to comprehend the distinction that forbade friendship with Fitzroy while offering it with Millicent, Countess of Porthcawl. But the girl was resolved not to open a new rift. In her heart she longed for the day that would reunite her to her father; meanwhile, Mrs. Devar must be dealt ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... bed, had, by means of a fortunate rift in the blankets, a complete view of the whole party, and he could mark with accuracy, in consequence of their black faces, every grin now made distinctly visible ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... tropical clouds added obscurity to the darkness of the sky, so that the night fell with even more startling quickness than usual. The blackness was very dense. Now and then a group of drifting stars swam out of a rift in the vapors, but the night was curiously silent and of a ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... each other at Monticello, but there was nothing else to mar the peace of that happy home. Between husband and wife there was no strife or discord, not a jar nor a rift in that unity of life and purpose which welds ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends. The rift in friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the marriage of either of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no less invariably does, into the great gulf which is fixed between the married and the unmarried, and I was beginning to leave my protege to a fate ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, The little rift within the lover's lute Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit That rotting inward ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... as I watch thee, all unfettered sweeping High o'er the rift that weighs my pinion here, I yearn like thee my plume in ether steeping, To soar away ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Presently through a rift in the sky an early star stole out, and she made a wish on it. That was one of the things Belle had taught her. She started to wish that Barby might be happy. But before the whispered verse had entirely ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... mist. It seemed to him they were wide-yawning caverns that he saw there leading into that mist. It seemed to him it was all-white, flaxy sheets of linen, or sifted snow a-falling that he saw there through a rift in the mist. It seemed to him it was a flight of many, varied, wonderful, numerous birds [1]that he[a] saw in the same mist,[1] or the constant sparkling of shining stars [LL.fo.96a.] on a bright, clear night ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... descended into another valley. Here they came upon Pendle Water, and while skirting its banks, could see at a great depth below, the river rushing over its rocky bed like an Alpine torrent. The scenery had now begun to assume a savage and sombre character. The deep rift through which the river ran was evidently the result of some terrible convulsion of the earth, and the rocky strata were strangely and fantastically displayed. On the further side the banks rose up precipitously, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... abate. The vault of clouds seemed to rise and heighten and suddenly, through a rift, a long ray of sunshine fell upon the fields, and presently the clouds separated, showing the blue firmament, and then, like the tearing of a veil, the opening grew larger and the beautiful azure sky, clear and fathomless, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to my Lord, The Ioue of power make me most weake, most weake, Your reconciler: Warres 'twixt you twaine would be, As if the world should cleaue, and that slaine men Should soalder vp the Rift ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... beaten a prudent retreat through the back of the tent. The canvas was ripped open, letting in a streak of light. They left their prisoner upon the ground, and cautiously drew near the rift. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... foothold, he cast about vainly for a clue to the other's whereabouts; for if the night was thick in the open, here in the trench its density was as that of the pit; the man could distinguish positively nothing more than a pallid rift where ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... faces the finely wrought figures of the Saviour and the malefactors uplifted upon their crosses behind the altar, and bright with a metallic lustre of many colors. He turns next to the figures close to them of the Virgin and Mary Magdalen; next to the rift in the living rock made by the earthquake at the time of the Crucifixion, and an extension of which he had seen before in the wall of one of the grottoes below; he looks next at the show-case with a figure of the Virgin in it, and is amazed at the princely fortune in precious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... quantities of red-hot ashes, mingled with huge masses of glowing incandescent rock, were projected far into the air; a terrific storm of thunder and lightning suddenly burst forth to add new terrors to the scene; and to crown all, a new rift suddenly burst open in the side of the hill, out of which there immediately poured a perfect ocean ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... and soon they mounted into total darkness, so that the Wizard was obliged to get out his lanterns to light the way. But this enabled them to proceed steadily until they came to a landing where there was a rift in the side of the mountain that let in both light and air. Looking through this opening they could see the Valley of Voe lying far below them, the cottages seeming like toy ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... a spectacle to watch, those thunder-clouds come through the glack, or rift, dividing the falling hill on which I stood, from the rising one beyond. Down in the valley ran a stream and a track used by cattle-drovers, and, as my eye went there, I thought I saw a tall figure. Certainly, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... lake and plain The stork, the heron, and the crane Through the clear realms of azure drift, And on the hillside I can see The villages of Imari, Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift Their twisted columns of smoke on high, Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie, With sunshine streaming through each rift, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... driving down the slopes from Sant' Angelo comfortably sheltered against the storm, while the generous mountain wine sped through my veins, warming my fancy. Then, at last, the sun came out in a sudden burst of light, opening a rift in the vapours and revealing the whole chain of the Apennines, together with the peaked crater ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... in the canon, filling it with gloom. Sometimes they hung above from wall to wall and formed a roof: then a gust of wind from a side-canon made a rift in them and the blue heavens were revealed, or they dispersed in patches which settled on the crags, while puffs of vapor issued out of the smaller gulches, and occasionally formed bars across the canon, one above another, each opening a different vista. When they discharged their rains little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... that took it from his lips heard the Tall One's answer; for at that moment his horse reared and sheered away before a spear-prick, and into the rift a handful of English rushed with shouts ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... these armies. But the book closes with a note of hope, with the unspoken oath of international brotherhood, what time a rift forms in the black skies and a calm ray of light falls upon the ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... had in her heart love and pity for the innumerable pitiful and pitiable things. She was a quenchless mother in her gift for solace and she was lover to the immeasurable love. Like all aristocrats she hated mediocrity, and like all first rate jewels, she had no rift to hide. She was not a maker of poetry, she was a thinker of poetry. She was not a conjurer of words so much as a magician in sensibility. She has only to see and feel and hear to be in touch with all things with a name or with ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... man has been ruined into salvation. The lightning which smote his dearest hopes opened up a new rift in his dark life, and gave him glimpses of himself which, until then, he had never seen. The grave buried his dearest hopes, but uncovered in his nature possibilities of patience, endurance, and hope which he never before dreamed ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... unusually early to bed and to sleep. I remember looking from the window after the light was out, and seeing, through a rift in the clouds, the new moon just touching the peak of the opposite mountain. A whippoorwill sang in the great chestnut-tree at the farther corner of the yard; tree-toads trilled, and frogs peeped, and through all could just be heard the rapids ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... side and ahead. The gloomy woods on the vast slopes threw a marked shadow over the prospect. Ahead lay a wide vista of tremendous mountains, with their crowning, snow-bound peaks lost in a world of gray, fleecy cloud. In the heart of one distant rift lay the steely bed of a glacier, hoary with age and immovable as the very bedrocks of the mountains themselves. It sloped away into the distance, and lost itself in the heart of a mighty canyon. Even to these men on their trail of death, living, as they did, so adjacent ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... almost overpowered him; then the old Psalm whispered, "He that keepeth thee will not slumber nor sleep." A sweet consciousness of the absolute safety of God's children stole over the youth; and catching, from a rift in the roof, one glimpse of the stars struggling through the tree tops, he turned over and fell asleep as peacefully as if ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... out magnificently. Their huge sides tower up nearly a thousand feet from the river, until they are within reach of the lowering clouds that every moment threaten to envelop them in their indigo embrace. There is a curious rift in the dark cumulus revealing a thin line of dull carmine that frequently changes its shape and becomes nearly obliterated, but its presence in no way weakens the awesomeness of the picture. The dale appears to become huger and steeper as the clouds thicken, and what ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... showed admirable sang-froid and energy. At the most critical moment, the decisive hour of the battle, he accomplished a magnificent maneuver, which is known under the name of the maneuver of Fere Champenoise. Foch noted a rift between the German army of Von Buelow and that of Von Hausen. The German Guard was engaged with the Tenth Division of the reserve in the region of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... laughed, and the little rift was closed. But the Squire's words had not been unheeded and two hearts were busily thinking and wondering if he had really ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... temperaments, these sudden storms that spring up out of a clear sky, it is possible sometimes to repair the damage, if the psychological moment is resolutely seized, by talking rapidly and with detachment on neutral topics. Words have made the rift, and words alone can bridge it. But neither Jill nor her companion could find words, and the silence lengthened grimly. When Wally spoke, it was in the level tones of a ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... in east, highland area in west; Great Rift Valley separates East and West Banks of the ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... across the river, rose the buttes that met her eyes always when she came to the cabin door. This hill upon which she sat was one that she saw often, when in the evening, watching the setting sun, she followed its golden rays with her eyes. Many times, as the sun had gone slowly down into a rift of the mountains, she had seen the crest of this hill shimmering in a saffron light; the only spot in the flat that rose above the somber, oncoming ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... are beautiful, Mademoiselle. No nation has such hills and lakes and flowers as the Iroquois. The Hurons boast of their lake country,—and the Sacs and Foxes, too, though they have a duller eye for the picturesque. See—the valley yonder—" He pointed through a rift in the foliage to the league-long glimpse of green, bound in by the gentle hills that rose beyond—"even to the tired old soldier there is ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... sufficient light for keen eyes to make out the road ahead. Harry Peyton was inwardly deploring the loss of time at Philipse Manor-house, and fearing that the prey would reach its covert, when suddenly the moon appeared in a cloud-rift, the troops passed a turn in the road, and there stood a line of Hessians barring ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... we entered I had three distinct shocks in quick succession. Flashy, painted and rouged as I was I dreaded Orontides' eyes. There he was behind his counter, visible through a rift in the press of handsomely dressed customers of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... our water-way being blocked for nearly a mile. It is a charming walk to Les Vignes: to the left we have a continuation of the rocky chaos just described, to the right a path under the shadow of the cliffs, every rift showing maidenhair fern and wild-flowers in abundance, the fragrant evening primrose and lavender, the fringed gentian. The weather is warm as in July, and of deepest blue the sky above the glittering white peaks. Half-way we meet the rural postman, whose presence reminds us ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the Emperor's natural daughter. Francesco Guicciardini, the first statesman and historian of his age, had undertaken his defence, and was ready to support him by advice and countenance in the conduct of his government. Within the lute of this prosperity, however, there was one little rift. For some months past he had closely attached to his person a certain kinsman, Lorenzo de' Medici, who was descended in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo Pater Patriae. This Lorenzo, or Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio, as his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... is finished for good and all. There is the steaming hot low coast belt, and the hot dry thorn desert belt, and the varied immense plains, and the high mountain belt of the forests, and again the variegated wide country of the Rift Valley and the high plateau. To attempt to tell you seriatim and in detail just what they are like is the task of an encyclopaedist. Perhaps more indirectly you may be able to fill in the picture of the country, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... had made in the course of our explorations which enabled us to understand how the fate that had overtaken the drowned city had fallen upon it. Close by the northern border of the valley we saw, high up above us, a vast rift more than a thousand feet wide in the face of the cliff; and below this the ground was torn into a deep wild channel, and everywhere huge fragments of rock were scattered over the ground. Here it was, then, that the water ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... on Tuttle and Ellhorn rode up. The rain had stopped, and through a rift in the eastern clouds the level, red rays of the sun were shining. Mead met their eager, anxious faces with ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... leading to war would be established. This was the ultimate ulterior purpose in Seward's mind; the negotiation was but a method of fixing a quarrel on some foreign Power in case the United States should seek, as Seward desired, a cementing of the rift at ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... my servant," said Chaka, and the dreadful light came into his eyes that never shone in the eyes of any other man. Then I grew sick at heart, my father—ay, though I loved my people little, and they had driven me away, I grew sick at heart. Now we had come to a spot where there is a great rift of black rock, and the name of that rift is U'Donga-lu-ka-Tatiyana. On either side of this donga the ground slopes steeply down towards its yawning lips, and from its end a man may see the open country. Here Chaka sat down at the end of the rift, pondering. Presently he looked up and ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift—a tall chink of beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise, remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed he —or was it Soames?—moved on, and there was the chink ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lived half the year up here in the wild Peak country, caring for a few sheep, and going down to the village not more than once or twice a week. There was a little spring welling up in a hollow not fifty yards away from the hut, which itself stood in a deep, natural rift among the high hills, so that men might search for it a lifetime and not ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... were activity itself, and they slashed and trampled down and hauled and lowered till the whole party found themselves upon a broad stony shelf at the very edge of a sharply-cut rift, whose sides showed that it must have been split from the opposite side by some convulsion of Nature, so exactly was ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... and romance knows no limits when dealing with the subject. The lives of the Man and the Dog are found to be ever intertwined. Yet is there always this besides—the rift in the lute and the familiar refrain, that the life of the dog shall be short, and that Man shall go on his way with his head bent, till such time as he shall become rich once more in the love of a new-found ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... have it!" cried the girl suddenly at her end of the wall. The other three ran over, and saw, just above her head, a narrow rift in the rock, barely wide enough to squirm through. "Into it!" Phil ordered tersely. He grasped her, raised her high, and she wormed through. Quade scrambled to get in next, but Holmes shoved him aside and boosted the old man through. Then ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... poets, and is therefore all the more welcome to us—I mean the romantic temper. He is essentially Celtic, and his verse, at its best, is Celtic also. Strongly influenced by Keats, he seems to study how to 'load every rift with ore,' yet is more fascinated by the beauty of words than by the beauty of metrical music. The spirit that dominates the whole book is perhaps more valuable than any individual poem or particular passage, but this from The Wanderings of Oisin is worth quoting. It describes the ride ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... tell you more about the Miss Murgatroyds—Amelia, Eliza, and Susannah. When quite at peace among themselves, which is not often, they are Milly, Lizzie, and Susie; but a little rift within the lute is marked by the immediate use of their full baptismal names. Poor Susannah being the youngest—the youthful side of sixty—and inclined to be kittenish and giddy, is very rarely "Susie." Miss Murgatroyd—Amelia—is stern and unbending. ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... innermost depths of this colossal chasm runs the Colorado River. Descending the stupendous crags and terraces by one of the two or three "trails," the traveller at last stands upon a sandy rift confronted by nearly vertical walls many hundred feet high, at whose base a black torrent pitches in a giddying onward slide that gives him momentarily the sensation of slipping ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... it through the snow, following it upon snow-shoes. These give them the advantage of skimming along the surface, while the moose plunges through the deep rift, and is therefore impeded in its flight. Notwithstanding, it will frequently escape from the hunter, after a chase of several days' duration! Sometimes, in deep snow, a dozen or more of these animals will be found in one place, where ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... sent for his brother John's medical education in Germany; loans to Alexander, and a frustrate scheme for starting a new Annual Register, designed to be a literary resume of the year, make up the record. The "rift in the lute," Carlyle's incapacity for domestic life, was already showing itself. Within the course of an orthodox honeymoon he had begun to shut himself up in interior solitude, seldom saw his wife from breakfast till 4 P.M., when they dined ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... he her takes To be the fairest wight that lived yit; 265 Which to expresse he bends his gentle wit, And thinking of those braunches greene to frame A girlond for her dainty forehead fit, He pluckt a bough;[*] out of whose rift there came Small drops of gory bloud, that trickled down the ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... spoke, the clouds immediately above their heads were torn asunder by the vehemence of the wind. The gray mass was rent and scattered east and west with ominous speed, a dim uncertain light from the rift in the sky fell full upon the boat, and the travelers beheld each other's faces. All of them, the noble and the wealthy, the sailors and the poor passengers alike, were amazed for a moment by the appearance of the last comer. His golden hair, ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... but it served after a while to keep the house empty, while its reputation for mystery did not lie idle. Sounds were heard to issue from it. At times lights were seen glimmering through this or that chink or rift in the window curtain, but by the time the door was unlocked and people were able to rush in, the interior was still and dark and seemingly untouched. Finally the police took a hand in the matter. They were on ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... accustomed to the dim light of candles in passages where absolute darkness, unrelieved by the stars of midnight, always reigns, the great Auditorium appeared before us softly flooded with daylight diffused from a broad white beam slanting down in long straight lines from the entrance as from a rift in heavy clouds; only this rift displayed around its edges a brilliant border of vegetation that the rough rocks ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... bless you, yours truly," at the end. They were all there, aridly complete, the limitations of the lady to whom she was helping Lindsay to bind himself without a gleam of possibility of escape or a rift through which tiniest hope could creep, to emerge smiling upon the other side. When she saw him, in fatalistic reverie, going about ten years hence attached to the body of this petrification, she ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... in hopes Miss Rasmith might have told you. Well, it is simply this, and you will see that I'm not quite the universal favorite she's been making you fancy me. There is a rift in my lute, a schism in my little society, which is so little that I could not have supposed there was enough of it to break in two. There are some who think their lecturer—for that's what I amount to—ought to be an older, if not a graver man. They are in the minority, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky—as clear as I ever saw, and of a deep bright blue—and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a luster that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... respecting the army or navy of the Empire, or the prerogatives of the parliament or Crown.' But the emphasis was different. Howe insisted on the greatness of the change in local administration; Johnston on the amount of still surviving control by the mother country. The little rift in the lute was already apparent, and was increased by the natural tendency of the governor to consult the courtly Johnston, and to show impatience at the brusque ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... he protested. "Everything was all right until this political business came up between us. But that opened the rift. I couldn't do as he wanted me to, and my sympathies were with the corporations which I thought he was fighting unjustly. So when Mr. McVickar made me an offer, I accepted in good faith, believing that I ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... encirclement of clouds like a silver gleam of moonlight, and for a moment, where they parted, Noodle saw a rift of blue sky, and the light of the outer world ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... Point, a lofty eminence jutting upon a lake apparently without any outlet. The spurs of mountain ranges which meet here project in precipices from five to fifteen hundred feet in height; trees find a place for their roots in every rift among the rocks; festoons of clematis and wild-vine hang in graceful drapery from base to summit, and the dark mountain shadows loom over the lake-like expanse below. The hand wearies of writing of the loveliness of this river. I saw it on a perfect day. The Indian summer lingered, as ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... droughts in south; Congo River floods (seasonal); in the east, in the Great Rift Valley, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... not a dawn in eastern skies To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes; But there where western glooms are gathering, The dark will end the dark, if anything: God slays Himself with every leaf that flies, And hell is more than half of paradise. No, there is not a dawn in ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... this little rift in her perfect harmony, Audrey thoroughly enjoyed the next month; she was almost sorry that the vacation was so near. It had been a very gay month. Relays of visitors—distant relations or mere friends—had been invited to Woodcote and Hillside. Mrs. Ross's garden-party had rivalled Mrs. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... had passed evolved itself an instant later, and just as they entered the door—through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a few instants before—her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and, without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from a rift in a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes that are simultaneous—however foreign in essence these scenes may be—as chemical waters will crystallize on twigs and wires. Even after that time any mental agony brought less vividly to Cytherea's ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... territorial dispute with Somalia over the Ogaden Climate: tropical monsoon with wide topographic-induced variation; some areas prone to extended droughts Terrain: high plateau with central mountain range divided by Great Rift Valley Natural resources: small reserves of gold, platinum, copper, potash Land use: arable land: 12% permanent crops: 1% meadows and pastures: 41% forest and woodland: 24% other: 22% Irrigated land: 1,620 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: geologically active Great Rift Valley susceptible ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of that night the gale continued to blow with unabated fury; but about three o'clock on the following morning a rapid rise of the barometer commenced, and some two hours later a single star twinkling brightly for a moment through a small rift in the hitherto unbroken cloud-rack overhead gave welcome assurance that the worst of the weather was now over—an assurance which was shortly afterward strengthened by a slight but unmistakable decrease in the violence of the wind. Then a few more stars beamed mildly ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... day, to the beating of drums, a bevy of priests came from afar; they made for the market-place and there sold indulgences. The Pragers, distracted by the dissensions that rent the country, took to arms repeatedly. Now and then a rift in the clouds would hold out promise of a serener atmosphere; after two Habsburgs, Albert and his posthumous son, Ladislaus, came a King of their own choosing, of their own race and faith, George Podiebrad. But much as the Pragers venerated this native King of theirs, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the Sheikh, and through the rift I now beheld Baji Lal, standing with his hands tied behind him at a little distance from his burning home. But to my surprise ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... revolver remained motionless. Through a rift in the leafy curtain I caught a glimpse of a bulk that was within a yard of our hiding place, and I knew that the youngster was waiting for the brute to speak to make certain that he was covering the right man. The silence ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... prospect of food and rest, and the poor travellers brisked up again. But alas! between them and the tents lay a formidable obstacle. Nothing less than a birch-twig bridge over a rushing stream which filled up the bottom of a wide rift or chasm in the upland. This chasm stretched right across the upland from a steep rock which blocked up the head of the little valley, and out of which the stream gushed, and there was no way of crossing it, so the ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... gorgeousness of her material fabric. The religious ideals taught him by his good mother took deep root. But the day arrived when the expansion of his intellect reached such a point as to enable him to detect a flaw in her reasoning. It was but a little rift, yet the sharp edge of doubt slipped in. Alas! from that hour he ceased to drift with the current of popular theological belief; his frail bark turned, and launched out upon the storm-tossed sea, where only the outstretched hand of the Master, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... web. I don't like this inspection, and I fear that foxy old Bhme who prompted it. The mere fact of their inviting us shows that we stand badly; for it runs in the teeth of Brning's warning at Bensersiel, and smells uncommonly like arrest. There's a rift between Dollmann and the others, but it's a ticklish matter to drive our wedge in; as to to-night, hopeless; they're on the watch, and won't give us a chance. And after all, do we know enough? We don't know why he ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... freely as I drove down to Brinkley in the old two-seater that afternoon. The news of this rift or rupture of Angela's and Tuppy's had ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... goats, as it were, one dinner to the Allied representatives, the next to the representatives of the Central powers. Much nice sorting is required, and they tell us that in consequence of the war Peking society is rift in twain. This is all very well when it happens in a big community, but when it happens in such a limited little society as Peking, all walled in together within the narrow inclosure of the legation quarter,—walled in literally, also, in the fullest sense, with soldiers from the guards ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... until the road turned toward the range and an opening which he followed into a steeper and narrower rift beyond. Here there were no clearings in the rocky underbrush until he reached Richmond Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without decreasing his gait he passed ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... knew what, something good, no doubt. Another thing that impressed him was the good order that prevailed in the artillery, which had its camp above him, on the hillside. The setting sun peeped out from a rift in the clouds and his rays were reflected from the burnished guns, from which the men had cleansed the coat of mud that they had picked ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... house's form within was rude and strong, Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung, Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift, And with rich metal loaded every rift. That heavy ruin they did seem to threat: And over them Arachne high did lift Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... together the two lads made their way to the edge of the slaty cliffs, and then a long way by the edge, before they could find a rift of a sufficient slope to warrant ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... palace is encircled with a charming little garden, a bit of colour and greenery squeezed in, as it were, between cliff and fortress, from which one looks down over precipices of red rock with the prickly pear clinging to their clefts and ledges, or across a rift of sea to the huge bare front of the Testa del Cane with gigantic euphorbias, cactus, and orange-gardens fringing its base. A bribe administered to Talleyrand is said to have saved the political existence of Monaco at the Congress of Vienna: but it is far ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... the gray rift in the clouds narrowed and closed, a few great drops of rain fell heavily. Around us the air blew chill, the trees, whose points stood out jet black among the sweeping line of the still shrouded Embankment ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... ardent She Aunty, and Maud Genevieve takes after her. Royal Gray, his handsome attractive personality, and his millions, had long been the goal of Maud's ambition. And how ardently did she hail the coolness growing between him and Polly, the little rift in the lute, and how zealously did she labor to ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... from a rift in the dark clouds seemed sent as a heavenly messenger to guide them. By it the Eskimos as well as the sailor were enabled to judge of the position of land, and to steer, accordingly, in what western hunters would call "a bee-line." The great danger, of course, ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... defeat of the Whigs, in 1836, left a single rift in the dark cloud through which gleamed a ray of substantial hope. It was plain to the most cautious business man that if banking had been highly remunerative, with the United States Bank controlling government deposits, it must become more productive after Jackson had transferred these deposits ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... then, after coursing in distracted filaments about the "corbeille," join their waters and speed downhill towards the oasis, a narrow belt of trees running along either side. This marvellous palm-embroidered rift sunders Nefta, seated on the arid sand-hills overhead, into two distinct towns or settlements. The eye follows the stream as far as the low-lying plantations and into the Chott beyond, resting at last upon the violet haze ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... spirit that breathes through Tegner's speeches and poems, during his most vigorous manhood; and even, when the rift in his lute made its music harsh and uncertain, the strain was yet essentially the same, though transposed into an alien key. It is very tempting to quote the many noble sayings of this master of the commanding phrase, but one or ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... fellow's story, and it has made me believe that I have more heart than I supposed. Sometimes, especially when I hear or read of some such noble deed, I catch glimpses of a life infinitely better than the one I know, like the sun shining through a rift in the clouds; then they shut down again, and father's practical wisdom ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... on a thousand wings it came rushing and surging and pushed angrily against the houses that would retard it; whistling and shrieking, it drove through every crevice that it met, and blustered about the house until it found another rift to drive out of again; it tore shutters open and slammed them furiously, it squeezed its way groaningly between adjacent walls, whistled madly round street corners, lost itself in a thousand currents, found itself again and rushed headlong into a raging stream, careered up and down with savage ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... night the moments throbbed away as I lay on my flea-ridden couch—moments which seemed long as hours, and no gleaming rift broke the settled and deepening blackness of my hateful environs. Every thing and every place was full of the wearisome, depressing, beauty-blasting commonplace of Interior China. Stenches rose up ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... you, on every side, is a screen of secrecy. Once in a while it parts for a moment, and through the rift you catch a glimpse of the movement of armies and the swing and sweep of campaigns. Then the curtain closes and again you ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... lord. The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak, Your reconciler! Wars 'twixt you twain would be As if the world should cleave, and that slain men Should solder up the rift. ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... noon before they reached the big cemetery on the edge of Lexington. Through a rift in the trees the Major pointed out the grave of Henry Clay, and told him about the big monument that was to be reared above his remains. The grave of Henry Clay! Chad knew all about him. He had heard Caleb Hazel read the great man's speeches aloud ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... for such a passionate outburst. It was like a rift in a cloud, through which he had a glimpse of her real life. Words of eager protest sprang to his lips, but, before they could be uttered, either her mood had changed or pride had come to the rescue, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of these tribunals the former was unsatisfactory, as its decisions were of merely local validity and might be overruled by the voice of the universal Church. The general council was hard to convene, particularly after a rift had opened between the Eastern and the Western Churches. It was easier to select as the final arbiter a bishop whose knowledge of tradition was derived from an apostolic predecessor. In the East there were three such sees ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... was deserted, a dry wind stirred the dust here and there; the moon shone through a rift in the clouds and lighted the spot where the man slept. So I found myself tete-a-tete with this boor, who, not suspecting my presence, was sleeping on that stone bench as peacefully as if ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a concept of teeming universes of space-time, of an immense spiral of lives and civilizations, races and cultures, covering an infinite cosmos. And yet—what had happened? Very little, in that inconceivable infinity. A rift in time, a dimensional slip—and a sector of land and three beings on it had been wrenched from their place in time and transported ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... vivacious, healthy nature—but he was over- sensitively organised,—his nerves did not resemble iron so much as finely-tempered steel, which could not but suffer from the damp and rust in the world's conventionalities. And some "little rift within the lute" chanced to him, as it often chances to many, so that the subtle music of his soul jarred into discord with the things of life, making harsh sounds in place of melody. There was no adequate ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... stars Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light In the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon, Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay 55 All meek and silent, save that through a rift— Not distant from the shore whereon we stood, A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place— Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams Innumerable, roaring with one voice! 60 Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour, For so it seemed, felt ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the south, across the plain, lies the town of Talbot; and beyond it the forest seems to extend to the foot of the Pyrenees, standing up blue in the distance some forty miles away. The clouds hang over the mountain summits, and slowly the monarch of day descends seemingly into a dark rift, leaving a track of golden light behind him. The greeny-blue sky above shines and glows for a few minutes longer, and then all is suffused in a soft and mournful grey. The change is almost sudden. The ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... a card was brought to her rooms. For the next two weeks she had a true and unavoidable friend in Lucerne. It would appear that Mrs. Rowe-Martin had not been apprised of the rift in the Wrandall lute. She had no reason to consider the exclusive Miss Castleton as anything but the most desirable of companions. Mrs. Rowe-Martin was not long in finding out (though how she did it, heaven ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... tried the right-hand side, but with no better luck, for here he was stopped by a yawning rift in the rock. Now Otter sat down ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... line of moving horses, white against dark shadows. He could not see the head of that column; he scarcely heard a soft hoofbeat. A single star shone out of a rift in thin clouds. There was no wind. The air was cold. The dark space of desert seemed to yawn. To the left across the river flickered a few campfires. The chill night, silent and mystical, seemed to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of the penumbra. The mind, too long obscured like a sun eclipsed by clouds, searches out some rift. Suddenly reason comes into the clear. God rises like an untroubled sun upon the soul's horizon. How crystalline life looks! The mind literally exhales fancies and pictures, and each stick and stone is as ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... over the precipitous side of the gorge Tarzan half clambered and half slid to the sandy floor beneath. He had come upon the rift at almost the exact spot at which he had clambered from it weeks before, and there he saw, just as he had left it, just, doubtless, as it had lain for centuries, the mighty ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Infantry 18th Company, 5th Battalion, 299th Regiment of Infantry, Postal Sector No. 121." by which you will know the rural free delivery methods along the French front. This address is the one rift in the blank wall of anonymity which hides the individuality of the millions under Joffre. Only the army knows the sector and the numbers of the regiment in that sector. By the same kind of a card-index system ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the small blue rift of sky above. Even the sun seems slow to peep in, as if his brightness were not needed by those who walk in the light of their own hearts. And the little birds warble and the little burnie runs, as if neither knew there was a weary world outside, where many ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When day-light came they were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the night: they then found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their houses, and torn them, as it were, in two; and that one end of the barn had suffered in a similar manner; that a pond near the cottage had undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so vice versa; that many large ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... four feet wide—appeared on the wall; widened, and as the sinking slab that made it dropped to the level of our eyes, we looked through a hundred-feet-long rift in the living rock! The stone fell steadily—and we saw that it was a Cyclopean wedge set within the slit of the passageway. It reached the level of our feet and stopped. At the far end of this tunnel, whose floor was the polished rock that had, a moment before, fitted hermetically ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... had a huge fire and a savory repast of coffee, turtles' eggs, and yams. At midnight it was extinguished, and a watch stationed on top of the plateau. Toward morning I clambered grumblingly up the narrow, almost perpendicular sides of the rift that cut into the rocky watch-tower. I did not believe in pirates and was willing to take my chances in sleep. I paced back and forth, inhaling deep breaths of the rich tropical air; below me the waves beat in ripples against ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... 'Gan thunder, and both ends of heav'n: the clouds From many a horrid rift abortive poured Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with fire In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds Within their stoney caves, but rush'd abroad From the four hinges of the world, and ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... speech Faster than light, farther than ocean sounds; And whirls the clattering car through crowded streets, And floods with light the haunts of prowling thieves— That inner world, whose very life is love, Pure love, and perfect, infinite, intense, That world is now astir. A rift appears In those dark clouds that rise from sinful souls And hide from us its clear celestial light, And clouds of messengers from that bright world, Whom they called devas and we angels call, Rush to that rift to rescue and to save. The wind from their bright wings fanned Buddha's ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... close as he could to his general, who was now in the very heart of the conflict. But it was a difficult task. His clothing was torn by bushes and briars, and boughs whipped him across the face. Now and then in a rift in the smoke he beheld a terrible sight. The ground was covered with the arms and blankets and tents of the Union army. Ahead of them were great masses of men, retreating and jammed among the wagons. The horses, many of them wounded, were running ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the quest because there was no excuse), he discovered that Ruth was being honored with a thrilling account of aviation. The talking-man, it appeared, knew a great deal about the subject. Carl heard through a rift in the cloud of words that the man had once actually flown, as a passenger with Henry Odell! For five minutes on end, judging by the motions with which he steered a monoplane through perilous abysses, the reckless spirit kept ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... You see that little rift? But first permit me! [Lights his torch at ORDONIO'S, and while lighting it. (A lighted torch in the hand Is no unpleasant object here—one's breath Floats round the flame, and makes as many colours As the thin clouds that travel near ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pioneer netted in the rift, Leaning over Maori Hill, dreaming in the lift, Dropped her starry memories through ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... out of the window. A mild fresh air which seemed to be pouring over the earth through that rift in heaven which the sunset had made, breathed freshly on her face and the yellow light shone on her amber hair, which lay on her shoulders about the length of the hair of an angel in some ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... affinity, or what you will, they love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold. This includes home sympathies and household wisdom. Such fellowship makes of home a joy, and of toil a delight. When first the joy is reached, a foretaste of heaven is enjoyed. "For it is the one rift of heaven which makes all heaven appear possible; the ecstasy of hope and faith, out of which grows the love which is our strongest mortal ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... old. James Antony agonized his wife by portentous nods and winks behind their backs, indicative of the complete and final understanding now in course of accomplishment, but Mrs Antony was not so well satisfied, though she was unaware of the exact nature of the rift in Gerrard's lute. One day Honour broke into a deep discussion of the social and educational topics touched on in the Princess with a question which had no relation to them whatever. It was clear that her thoughts were far from Gerrard's exposition of his views, or ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... imagination, a place where spontaneous feeling and primitive imagination had not been repressed by the outside world's customs and discipline, and where the constant voice of the ocean, the touch of the mysterious, all-embracing mist, and the gleam of the star through a rift in the clouds banished all sense of difference between the natural and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Campus Martius, upon the Via Flaminia. It was rapidly darkening. The houses grew fewer and fewer. At a little distance the dim structures of the Portico and Theatre of Pompeius could be seen, looming up to an exaggerated size in the evening haze. A grey fog was drifting up from the Tiber, and out of a rift in a heavy cloud-bank a beam of the imprisoned moon was struggling. Along the road were peasants with their carts and asses hastening home. Over on the Pincian Mount the dark green masses of the splendid gardens of Pompeius and of Lucullus were ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... saw the message-torp. It wasn't to be expected. It came in on a course that extended backward to somewhere near the Rift—where there used to be Huks—and for a very, very long way it had traveled as only message-torps do travel. It hopped half a light-year in overdrive, and came back to normality long enough for its photocells ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... glittered resplendent, lying close upon an irradiated earth, and ever brightening toward the horizon, and it seemed as if the sun in sinking might hope to fall in fairer spheres than the skies he had left, for they were of a dun-color and an opaque consistency. Only one horizontal rift gave glimpses of a dazzling ochreous tint of indescribable brilliancy, from the focus of which the divergent light was shed upon the western limits of the land. Chilhowee, near at hand, was dark enough—a purplish garnet hue; but the scarlet ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... rise The purple hills of Paradise. Oh, softly on yon banks of haze Her rosy face the Summer lays! Becalmed along the azure sky, The argosies of cloudland lie, Whose shores, with many a shining rift, Far off their ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Holmes, "it is the brightest rift which I can at present see in the clouds. However innocent he might be, he could not be such an absolute imbecile as not to see that the circumstances were very black against him. Had he appeared surprised at his own arrest, or feigned indignation ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sky, week after week until near December. Then comes a sudden change. Clouds of a peculiar aspect with a slow, crawling gait gather and grow in the azure, throwing out satiny fringes, and becoming gradually darker until every lake-like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament is obscured in equal structureless gloom. Then comes the snow, for the clouds are ripe, the meadows of the sky are in bloom, and shed their radiant blossoms like an orchard in the spring. Lightly, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... spoke, while still his greeting kiss Ached in her hair. She did not dare to lift Her eyes to his—her anguished eyes to his, While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift Of weakness humored might set ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... there comes a time supreme; One day, one night, one morning, or one noon, One freighted hour, one moment opportune, One rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam, One space when fate goes tiding with the stream, One Once, in balance 'twixt Too Late, Too Soon, And ready for the passing instant's boon To tip in favor the uncertain beam. Ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait, Knows also how to watch and work and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... time there was a rift between the two friends. Paul did not tell Stanley what had happened at the meeting, but left him to find out. He heard all about it from Waterman—the ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... by a river, now frozen to its bed. But, from the hut door, the rift which marks its course in the dark carpet cannot ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... his clothes, was a problematical place of abode. The light came from a round port-hole of heavy glass. When the wall with the port-hole in it rose and turned inward like a slanting roof, the sunlight from a rift between the clouds in the sky fell upon the mahogany berth opposite. Sitting on the edge of the lower berth, Frederick tried to steady himself, holding his head bent to keep from striking against his upper berth, and frantically endeavouring ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... neared the breakwater the path became drier and firmer, and the light of the moon, falling through a ragged rift in the scurrying clouds, showed a line of sand banks and strips of tussock-land emerging from the marshes as ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... figs are of the black kind having a white rift or Chanifre, and are surnamed Delicate. . . . Certain figs there be, which are both early and also lateward; . . . . they are ripe first in harvest, and afterwards in time of vintage; . . . . also some there be which beare thrice a year" (Pliny, Nat. ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... had no desire to deny him. He seemed to have robbed her of all will of her own. His will had become wholly her desire. She took her seat on the tree-trunk, just removed from his side by a rift in the great log which was hidden ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... evening there had been a brief but violent thunderstorm, with a tropical downpour of rain, and now clouds were scudding across the blue of the sky. Through a temporary rift in the veiling the crescent of the moon looked down upon us. It had a greenish tint, and it set me thinking of the filmed, green ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... It was a crack, a fissure. Now it was a yard in width, now three, and blackness seemed to well up from within it, blackness that was the very essence of the depths. Steadily the ebon rift expanded; spread suddenly wide open ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... precedence to be assigned to his works. No, on such matters they are apparently at one; but in other matters they are at one another. Thus the unity appears to be only superficial, a decent plaster hiding the rift occasioned by one of their number having literally translated into English IBSEN's latest Norwegian drama, of which translation the verbal correctness is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... Gettysburg and Vicksburg had pierced the spirit of the South, Cumberland Gap had liberated East Tennessee, Fort Smith and Little Rock supplied a firm footing for the army beyond the Mississippi, and the surrender of Port Hudson permitted Federal gunboats to pass unvexed to the sea. The rift in the war cloud had, indeed, let in a flood of sunlight, and, while it lasted, gave fresh ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... few minutes, during which I lay as close as I could, there was a rift in the cloud. I looked out again. I stood alone on the point of the peak with the snow ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... thronging from every part of the city, they united in single column into an endless host that appeared to stretch from the rising to the setting of the sun. They seemed making for the Tiber, which they would have speedily choked; but ere they could arrive there a huge rift opened in the earth, down which they madly precipitated themselves. Their descent, it is affirmed, lasted as many hours as Vulcan occupied in falling from Heaven to Lemnos; but when the last tail ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... which the seven Companies worked together, and the success they attained was, I think, something to be proud of. Sir William Goulding was an excellent Chairman. There was just one little rift in the lute. One of the seven Companies showed a disposition, at times, to play off its own bat, but this was, after all, only a small matter, and the general harmony, cohesion and unanimity that prevailed were admirable, ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... was enough for him at the moment. He threw himself from the pinnacle of the cliff once more into the arms of the projecting oak-tree, whose boughs waved in middle air, anchored by the roots in a huge rift or chasm of the rock. Catching at the branch which was nearest to him, he dropped himself from that height upon the ground; and such was the athletic springiness of his youthful sinews, that he pitched there as lightly, and with as little injury, as the falcon stooping ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... leave home. He had said very little on the subject. And Roy—with the instinct of sensitive natures to take their tone from others—had also said little: too little, perhaps. Least said may be soonest mended; but there are times when it may widen a rift ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... screech-owl shrieks: ungracious sound! I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill. Quite round the pile, a row of reverend elms, Coeval near with that, all ragged show, Long lash'd by the rude winds: some rift half down Their branchless trunks; others so thin at top, That scarce two crows could lodge in the same tree. Strange things, the neighbours say, have happen'd here: 50 Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs; Dead men have come again, and walk'd about; And the great bell has toll'd, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... till thou come unto her, from her palms she will not lift The dark face hidden deep within them like the moon in cloudy rift. ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... seats which the principal legislators and judges occupied during their deliberations. Not far from here lies also the 'Logberg,' or 'law rock,' a large mound from whence the laws were proclaimed or judgments given to the people who assembled on the outside slope of the eastern wall of the rift, in view of the proceedings below. Our notice was likewise directed to the 'blood stone,' on which, for certain offences, the criminals were condemned to have their backs broken, after which barbarous punishment they were hurled backwards, and fell ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... as if the sea, tired of its endless task, were doing dispiritedly as little as it dared, and murmuring at that. The curving cliffs on the left looked like white curtains, closely drawn. The low grey sky was unbroken by cloud or rift except low down on the horizon, where it had risen like a blind drawn up a little to admit the light. It was a melancholy prospect, and Beth shivered and sighed in sympathy. Then a sparrow cheeped somewhere behind her, and another bird in the hedge softly fluted a little roulade. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand |
