"Sprawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pattern. Caliban is much exercised by the government of the world, and by the probable nature of its ruler; and he has niched an hour from his tasks, on a summer noon, when Prospero and Miranda are taking his diligence upon trust, to go and sprawl full length in the mud of some cave, and talk the problem out. The attitude is described, as his reflections are carried on, in his own words; but he speaks as children do, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... find as my fist runs to size, set it down to that quill, dear old pal; Correspondents is on to me lately, complains as I write like a gal. Sixteen words to the page, and slopscrawly, all dashes and blobs. Well, it's true; But a quill and big sprawl is the fashion, so wot is a feller ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... furtively. When, at last, Hodges stirred from his indolent sprawl, knocked the dottle from his pipe, and looked up at her, she shrank visibly. The blood rushed back to her heart in a flood, leaving her pallid, and she was trembling. Even in the feeble light from ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... finished, for with a sprawl, the "Parson" stumbled over the blade of grass and came down on the other side with ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... The ragged peoples storm the palaces, They rave, they laugh, they thirst, they lap the stream That trickles from the regal vestments down, And, lapping, smack their heated chaps for more, And ply their daggers for it, till the kings All die and lie in a crooked sprawl of death, Ungainly, foul, and stiff as any heap Of villeins rotting on a battle-field. 'Tis true, that when these things have come to pass Then never a king shall rule again in France, For every villein shall be king in France: And who hath lordship in him, whether born In hedge ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the carbines again, and in the instant the leader collapsed in the road, a sprawl of clothes, hit by half a dozen bullets. It was an extraordinary effect. As though the figure had been deflated. It was incredible that a moment before this thing had been a man, an individual, a ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... he hurtled upon Caltis, tangled with him. It was absurd, insane. Man and moondog went down together in a silly sprawl. Sparks flew, became a confused tesseract of luminous motion. Radiance blazed up and danced and flickered and no exact definition of the intertwined bodies was possible. Glowing lines wove fat webs of living color. It was too swift, too involved ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... rocky valley looking south. The grounds are laid out in a succession of terraces, and from every nook and crevice rare specimens of cacti, sedums, and mesembryanthemums with their orange and purple bloom sprawl over the rocks and run riot among the borders. In the gardens South American aloes throw up their flowering stalks heavy with aromatic fragrance, 20 feet high, and giant dracaenas wave their feathery heads in the balmy breeze. Exotic palms, the bamboo, the sugar-cane, and the cotton plant ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... extremely merry, and never were four hard-worked old ladies who deserved it better. All a woman can do in war-time they do daily and cheerfully. Just as their men-folk are doing it at the Front; and now, with the mops and pails laid aside, they sprawl gracefully at ease. There is no intention on their part to consider peace terms until a decisive victory has been gained in the field (Sarah Ann Dowey), until the Kaiser is put to the right-about (Emma Mickleham), and singing ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... calms, so it seemed as if the masses of rock that hung poised on the canyon rim through countless storms, chose the stillest hour of the stillest night to ride like avalanches the headlong slopes, plunge over dizzy cliffs and crash and sprawl in dying thunders from ledge to ledge into the river below. All these noises, big and little, were familiar to Laramie's ears. He could hear them in his sleep without losing the thread of a dream; but the echo of a single footstep ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... widened the interval between the two ranks, and founded a wholesome repulsion between them. In our own times, we have read descriptions of West India planters admitting the infant children of their slaves to play and sprawl about their saloons: but now, since the slave has acquired the station of a free man, and (from the fact of not having won this station meritoriously, but passively received it as a boon) is too generally disposed to use it in a spirit of defiance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... around. When we left Bolivar we were in considerable of a hurry, with no time to primp or comb our hair, and neither did we bring our tents along, so we are just living out of doors now, and "boarding at Sprawl's." There is plenty of wood, though, to make fires, and we have jayhawked enough planks and boards to lie on to keep us out of the mud, so we just curl up at night in our blankets with all our clothes on, and manage to get along fairly well. Our worst trouble now is the lack of ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... in the shadows. I ask, where am I? Go way, then, Mallare. Leave me. I persist without Mallare. I remain. Let me dissolve into this. Let me sprawl before the door of enchantments. It is illusion. Let it be. She will come out. Rita, my vanished one, come back to me. It is I who ask. Not the Cold One, not the Indifferent One, not Mallare. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... O what a world it is— Where full-grown men cut capers in the German, Cotillion, waltz, or what you will, and whizz And spin and hop and sprawl about like mermen! I wonder if our future Grant or Sherman, As these youths pass their time, is passing his— If eagles ever come from painted eggs, Or deeds of arms succeed ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... moment—professed to see in the distance, when he suddenly lurched against me, as if he had slipped and lost his footing. That was what I believed in that startling moment—but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was confined to a sprawl into the scuppers. Overboard I went!—but he remained where he was. And my weight—I was weighing a good thirteen stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster—carried me down and down into the green water, for I had been shot ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... glad life: the plea Were like a wrangling babe's that fain would be Free from the help its hardy heart contemns, Free from the hand that guides and guards it, free To take its way and sprawl and stumble. See! Have we not here enough of diadems Hung high round portals pillared smooth with stems More ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was comfortable; he had ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... after breakfast, light candles, place the flask of Green Chartreuse and a liqueur-glass on the table, drop one drip of the liquid into the glass, burn a stinking pastille of incense, place a Birmingham "god" or an opening lily before him, ruffle his hair, and sprawl on the sofa with a wicked French novel he could not read—hoping ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... grated, one golden noon, on the happiest isle of the Happy Islands, An isle of Paradise, fair as a gem, on the sparkling breast of the wine-dark deep, An isle of blossom and yellow sand, and enchanted vines on the purple highlands, Wi' grapes like melons, nay clustering suns, a-sprawl over ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... chance for them, and that they must get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again. They galloped down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel galloping over broken ground. The beast's own terror, his ungainly bounds, the sprawl of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous cries, and the yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle with every spring, make a picture which is not to be forgotten. The women screamed as this mad torrent of frenzied creatures ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... certain grim Titanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: "Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... it is repair day, rips are sewed up, buttons sewed on clothing, and for the initiated, the darning of socks. In camps with permanent buildings a big log fire roars in the fireplace, the boys sprawl on the floor with their faces toward the fire, and while the rain plays a tattoo[1] upon the roof some one reads aloud an interesting story, such as "Treasure Island," "The Shadowless Man," "The Bishop's Shadow," or the chapters on "The Beneficent Rain" and "When the Dew Falls," ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... two in the outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl to them; and they are old Tom their bunged-up ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... of her sailor son As clutched in the arms of war, But mother should listen, as I have done, To this same little, innocent sailor son Sprawl ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... the summer of 1921 made it the first impulse of travelers to plunge straight into the cool, kindly ocean, where they could wade and bathe in the surf, sprawl for hours in the sand, or indulge in races and various games ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... say, just cornflowers, gemming the golden grain; Ah no! You can't deceive me. Can't I believe my eyes? Look! It's the dead, my comrades, stark on the dreadful plain, All in their dark-blue blouses, staring up at the skies. Comrades of canteen laughter, dumb in the yellow wheat. See how they sprawl and huddle! See how their brows are white! Goaded on to the shambles, there in death and defeat. . . . Father of Pity, hide them! Hasten, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... in the saw-pit, Bird said: "Now, Compton, thou shalt not escape me," and brandished his sword above his head. While he was doing this, Compton "in a moment run him through the Body; so that his Pride fell to the ground, and there did sprawl out ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... "one" for your numerous nobs. Many have menaced you, some had a shy at you; SALISBURY stout, and bespectacled CROSS, Each in his season has joined in the cry at you, Little, 'twould seem, to your damage or loss. Still you eight-headed and lanky-limbed monster, you Sprawl and monopolise, spread and devour. Many assail you, but hitherto, none stir you. Say, has the hero arrived, and the hour? No Infant Hercules, surely, can tackle you, Ancient abortion, with hope of success. It needeth a true full-grown ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... brandreth, oor which a seety rattencreak hung dangling fra a black randletree. The walls were plaister'd with dirt, and a stee, with hardly a rung, was rear'd into a loft. Araund the woman her lile ans sprawl'd on the hearth, some whiting speals, some snottering and crying, and ya ruddy-cheek'd lad threw on a bullen to make a loww, for its mother to find her loup. By this sweal ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... holding Watts in a sitting posture by a firm grip on his collar, allowed the limp figure to sprawl headlong again. He wanted to plunge both hands deeply into his trousers pockets, because men of his type associate attitude so closely with thought that the one is apt to become almost dependent on the other. And so, for the moment, the safeguarding ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... suddenly they weep. Always they cry, jangle, and jape; that unneth they be still while they sleep. When they be washed of filth, anon they defile themselves again. When their mother washeth and combeth them, they kick and sprawl, and put with feet and with hands, and withstand with all their might. They desire to drink always, unneth they are out of bed, when ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... remember who I am," and he spoke a name in the Swede's ear—a name that more effectually subdued the scoundrel than many beatings—then he gave him a push that carried him bodily through the tent doorway to sprawl ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "Big Dick," "Big Nick," and "Little Joe." When they were not on drill the men would infest the barracks for hours at a time, gathered in crouching groups about the dice, the air thick and blue with cigarette smoke; while others had nothing better to do than to sprawl on their cots and talk; and from their talk Cameron often turned away nauseated. The low ideals, the open boasting of shame, the matter-of-course conviction that all men and most women were as bad as themselves, ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... great beast roared with pain, and, effectually roused, followed his adversary about the place in order to punish him for his insolence. In his awkward evolutions he caught one of his legs in a heap of straw, and fell full sprawl over poor Herr Schwein. A small grunt, like a sigh with a bad cold, escaped the learned Pig: it was his last! for, when Bruin raised himself up, he found his late employer perfectly motionless; nor did all his efforts, such as pulling his snout, and ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... and a sure taste gave her that ultra-smart appearance which does everything for a type that is less attractive in a dinner gown, and still less in negligee. And which, after marriage, usually lets a straight strand of hair sprawl across one ear. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... like the sire for ever being good.— First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl,— A sight to vex the father's soul withal. Get me a ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... know them; 'Tis needless, therefore, that I show them." At length God gives the owl a set of heirs, And while at early eve abroad he fares, In quest of birds and mice for food, Our eagle haply spies the brood, As on some craggy rock they sprawl, Or nestle in some ruined wall, (But which it matters not at all,) And thinks them ugly little frights, Grim, sad, with voice like shrieking sprites. "These chicks," says he, "with looks almost infernal, Can't be the darlings of our friend nocturnal. I'll sup of them." ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... gave a quick glance, pointed with driest humor, from under his bent brows at Simon Basset's great jumble of gray hair and Doctor Prescott's spidery sprawl of red wig. A subdued and half-alarmed chuckle ran through the company. Simon Basset chewed imperturbably, but Doctor Seth Prescott's handsome face was pale with ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... moment Walden had been so taken aback by the suddenness of Leveson's unexpected overthrow that he could scarcely realise what had happened,—but presently when the Reverend 'Putty's' cobby legs began to sprawl uneasily on the ground, and the Eeverend 'Putty' himself gave vent to sundry blasphemous oaths and curses, he grasped the full humour of the situation. A broad smile lit up ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... and feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach. Mr. Tinnnan's house was inquired for. Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it." He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout. Who's that for Tinman, I wonder?" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... back from Paris some day, stop a night at Amiens and take the Cathedral seriously. Half the stately interior of that glorious thirteenth century pile is encrusted and overlaid by hideous gewgaw monstrosities of the flashiest Bernini and baroque period. There they sprawl their obtrusive legs and wave their flaunting theatrical wings to the utter destruction of all repose and consistency in one of the noblest and most perfect buildings of Europe. Nowadays, any child, any workman can see at a glance how ugly and how disfiguring those floppy creatures ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... beheld; And both prepar'd the haunted place to fly. Escape the fury hinders: fierce she stands, Blocking the entrance: wide her arms she spreads, With viperous twistings bound; and threatening shakes Her tresses: loud the serpents noise, disturb'd; Sprawl o'er her shoulders some; some, lower fall'n, Twine hissing round her breasts, with brandish'd tongue, Black poison vomiting. With furious gripe, Two from her locks she tore;—her deadly hand Hurl'd them straight on; the breasts of Athamas, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... reflection. It not only justified a slow progress up the hill, but at the crest a sprawl on the turf beside the road, to contemplate the Weald from the south. In a matter of two days he had crossed that spacious valley, with its frozen surge of green hills, its little villages and townships here and there, its copses and cornfields, its ponds and streams like jewelery ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... do. Don't sprawl in that way. Sit up. Try and remember where you are. Look at your cousin," and the mother indicated Ethel. Peg sat up demurely and looked at Ethel. She chuckled to herself as she ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... to their haunts. The willow and brown birch, long ago cut off by the Indians for wattles, have come back to the streamside, slender and virginal in their spring greenness, and leaving long stretches of the brown water open to the sky. In stony places where no grass grows, wild olives sprawl; close-twigged, blue-gray patches in winter, more translucent greenish gold in spring than any aureole. Along with willow and birch and brier, the clematis, that shyest plant of water borders, slips down season by season to within a hundred ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... about blouses... perhaps they were "slommucky." She remembered phrases she had heard about people's figures... "falling abroad"... "the middle-aged sprawl"... that would come early to her as she was so old and worried... perhaps that was why one had to wear boned bodices... and never breathe in gulps of air like this?... It was as if all the worry were being taken ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... brutes. They felt nor inspired but little affection. The younger apes Tarzan still played with occasionally. In his savage way he loved them; but they were far from satisfying or restful companions. Tantor was a great mountain of calm, of poise, of stability. It was restful and satisfying to sprawl upon his rough pate and pour one's vague hopes and aspirations into the great ears which flapped ponderously to and fro in apparent understanding. Of all the jungle folk, Tantor commanded Tarzan's greatest love since Kala had been taken ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it not, by faithfully copying the various muscular contractions of the body in obedience to the play of gesture and poise, the wrinklings of flesh and the sprawl of limbs, the tensions and the relaxations, that you succeed in making your statues like real beings—make them "breathe" ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... mass of men quite plainly. He could see them as separate human figures; but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they moved as one man. They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain hats, like any common crowd out of the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl and trail by various lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved with a sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... world in the forms and fires of these colossal aggregations of matter. Like the chance crowd on which you may look down in the square of a great city, they range from the infant to the worn and sinking aged. There is this difference, however, that the embryos of worlds sprawl, gigantic and luminous, across the expanse; that the dark and mighty bodies of the dead rush, like the rest, at twenty or fifty miles a second; and that at intervals some appalling blaze, that dims even the fearful furnaces ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... ground, however, touching mother earth again with a jerk that nearly dislocated my ankles, besides making me fall sideways all a-sprawl, than the baboon, giving vent to a vicious snarl, caught hold of my left leg with both his paws, just as a dog might seize a bone, and bit me savagely with ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... have also sent me a present—the last contribution of two hundred and fifty-one pupils to my happiest memories of Matsue: a Japanese sword of the time of the daimyo. Silver karashishi with eyes of gold—in Izumo, the Lions of Shinto—swarm over the crimson lacquer of the sheath, and sprawl about the exquisite hilt. And the committee who brought the beautiful thing to my house requested me to accompany them forthwith to the college assembly-room, where the students were all waiting to bid me good-bye, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the couple with such amazing velocity it was invisible; but, ere the crouching convict could press the trigger of his rifle, he was seen to sprawl forward, his gun flying from his grasp. The terrible javelin had gone entirely through his body as though it were tissue paper, and pinned him like an impaled insect ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... how I sprawl between my native land and this New France, as it was termed until the other month. A man's heart can be in many places, a woman's only in one, and my affections, I confess, have mostly been a divided allegiance. They have gone out ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... other slip under the swinging weapon to grasp the giant's hip. Jones's heard the rend of cloth, and then he pounced like a cat, to drive his knife into the body of the beast. Another nimble foe lunged at Rea, to sprawl broken and limp from the iron. It was a silent fight. The giant shut the way to his comrade and the calves; he made no outcry; he needed but one blow for every beast; magnificent, he wielded death and faced it—silent. He brought the white wild dogs of the north ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... ash-tree in which he found his first goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when writing to his brother, he was to recall the good days of still careless life, when "he would sprawl, the sun on his belly, on the mosses of the wood of Vezins, eating his black bread and cream" or "ring the bells of Saint-Lons" and "pull the tails of the bulls ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along the street and snarling ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... man down, bullies, blow the man down! Way-ay, blow the man down. O blow the man down in Liverpool town! Give me some time to blow the man down. 'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time, And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime. 'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball. So, it's blow the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... a shoulder, legs uncouthly a-sprawl, quite without movement of any perceptible sort; his face more than half-turned to the floor, and masked ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... of course. There is a friend of mine—Billy Boynton, up there this evening. He is not feeling very fit, and phoned to ask if he could go up and sprawl before my fire, so, of course, ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... right, child," returned the giant placidly; and then Verity put down Babs on the grass to sprawl among the daisies. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I made a little more out of my work than I have made for a long while back; though even now I cannot make things fall into sentences - they only sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses. Then I was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a good deal of fun, first rhyming on the names of all the shops we passed, and afterwards buying needles and quack drugs from open-air vendors, and taking much pleasure ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... favourite passages, but they evidently represent rather afterthought than forethought. He is not good at generalities, and when he tries them is apt, instead of flying (as an Ariel of criticism should do), to sprawl. Yet it was impossible for a man who was so almost invariably right in particulars, to go very wrong in general; and the worst that can be said of Leigh Hunt's general critical axioms and conclusions is that they are much better than the reasons that support them. For instance, he is probably ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see—yes, here it ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the grimy-faced workers, their sagging, shapeless women and their litters of children. Their windows open upon broken little streets and bubbling alleys. Idiot-faced wooden houses sprawl over one another with their rumps in the mud. The years hammer away—digesting the paint from houses. The years grind away, yet life persists. Beneath the grinding of the years, life gropes, shrieks, sweats. And in the evening men light ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... I'd ruther be— Needn't fence it in fer me! Jes' the whole sky overhead, And the whole airth underneath— Sorto' so's a man kin breathe Like he ort, and kind o' has Elbow-room to keerlessly Sprawl out len'thways on the grass Where the shadders thick and soft As the kivvers on the bed Mother fixes in the loft ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... hauffet squattle; There ye may creep and sprawl and sprattle Wi' ither kindred jumping cattle, In shoals and nations, Whare horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle Your ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... makes the trip to Cui-kau at the beginning of the rapids, but it leaves at two o'clock in the morning and is literally crowded to overflowing with evil-smelling Chinese who sprawl over every available inch of deck space, so that even the missionaries strongly advised us against taking it. The passengers not infrequently are pushed off into the water. One of the missionaries witnessed an incident which illustrates ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... into the wide hall; Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide; Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl, With a huge empty flaggon by his side: The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:— The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;— The key turns, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... having missed the excitement at Bogova, he fairly writhed with envy of Stubbs and Wilson. As he listened he hitched back and forth in his chair, leaned over the table until he threatened to sprawl among the glasses, and groaned jealously at every crisis. Wilson told his story as simply as possible from its beginning; the scenes at the house, his finding the map, his adventures in Bogova, the long trip to the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... along the front and two ends of the house. It was twelve feet broad, and, of course, of great length. Here was clustered the rocking-chairs, and sofas, and work-tables, and very often the cradle of the family. Here stood Mrs. Heathcote's sewing-machine, and here the master would sprawl at his length, while his wife, or his wife's sister, read to him. It was here, in fact, that they lived, having a parlor simply for their meals. Behind the main edifice there stood, each apart, various ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... lapses—not driven by hate or love, but by pique or boredom, lowering our flag to salute a pleasure boat, not a battleship. Pouf," she made a little gesture of disgust that he was beginning to know. "We occupy the places that other people make for us. We curl on their divans, we sprawl in their gutters, we sit proudly on the pedestals they put for us, we occupy their altars, and when we are alone, what happens to us? We dissolve ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... astronomical unit, AU, light-year, parsec. [metric units of length] nanometer, nm, micron, micrometer, millimicron, millimeter, mm, centimeter, cm, meter, kilometer, km. pedometer, perambulator; scale &c. (measurement) 466. V. be long &c. adj.; stretch out, sprawl; extend to, reach to, stretch to; make a long arm, "drag its slow length along." render long &c. adj.; lengthen, extend, elongate; stretch; prolong, produce, protract; let out, draw out, spin out|!; drawl. enfilade, look along, view in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... over and gave her a shove at the same time. She went bottom over appetite in a sprawl that would have jarred the teeth loose in a normal body and might have cracked a few bones. But she landed on the back of her neck, rolled and came to her feet ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... any male thing hereabouts has sprawl enough to go courtin' I'm willin' to encourage 'em. She'll miss her clean house and good food, I guess, but I ain't sure. She's 'women-folks' after all, and I shouldn't wonder a mite but she'd take real comfort in makin' things pleasanter up ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... its due place. Books in the living room I rearrange, Then in the dining room my pewter mugs, And put her little brown nasturtium bowl Where she can see it when she telephones. Up in my den the papers are a-sprawl And litter up my desk: these too I sort Thinking, to-morrow I will rise betimes And do my work neglected.... Tiptoe then I pass into the Shrine. She is asleep, Dark hair across the moon-blanched pillow slip. Her eyes are sealed with peace, but as I touch The girlish ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... space of which he had no recollection at all. The movement had stopped, and he was allowed to sprawl on the ground. He thought that his head had got another whack from a bough, and that the pain put him into a stupor. When he awoke ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the boudoir. This was good news because it meant sitting on the floor and lovers all the world over are at their happiest when they sit on the floor. There is something soothing and familiar about it. A man loves to sprawl and a woman is always at her best curled up among cushions. It is impossible to be disagreeable when you are sitting on the floor. You couldn't conceivably have a row in that position. Perhaps a little sulking might be done but very little and only of the kind that provokes pleasant ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... men haven't abused! But I tell you, gentlemen, even Tom Willy isn't as cheap as the men who have sneaked behind him and prodded him on to do this. There's some one behind him, for Tom Willy hasn't got brains enough nor sprawl enough to do ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... in drydock here till I'm pretty nearly crazy. I want to go on a cruise, even if it isn't but a half mile one. Don't you want to cart me down to your anchorage and let me see how you and General Minot and the gilt whisk broom get along? I can sprawl on that seaweed and be as comfortable as a gull on a clam flat. Come on now! Heave ahead! Give ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and finishing his tea went on deck with the cook, and gave himself up to all the delights of a quiet sprawl. Fatigued with their exertions, neither of them moved until nine o'clock, and then, with a farewell glance in the direction in which Dick might be expected to come, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... ever taken on such a journey. It is a strongly bound quarto volume of more then 800 pages, with a lock and key. The writing is so neat and clear that it might almost be taken for lithograph. Occasionally there is a page with letters beginning to sprawl, as if one of those times had come when he tells us that he-could neither think nor speak, nor tell any one's name—possibly not even his own, if he had been asked it. He used to jot his observations on little note-books, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... passed through the place, went on—all the offices of life, the whole bustle of the market, and withal, surprisingly, scarce less that of the nursery and the playground; the whole sprawl in especial of the great gregarious fireside: it was a complete social scene in itself, on which types might figure and passions rage and plots thicken and dramas develop, without reference to any other sphere, or perhaps even to anything at all outside. The signs of this met him ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... little more out of my work than I have made for a long while back; though even now I cannot make things fall into sentences—they only sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses. Then I was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a good deal of fun, first rhyming on the names of all the shops we passed, and afterwards buying needles and quack drugs from open-air vendors, and taking much pleasure ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dangle from the fire escapes Or sprawl over the stoops... Upturned faces glimmer pallidly— Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, And moist faces of girls Like dank white lilies, And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air as at ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... Hubert Pine," retorted the millionaire, slipping off the stone to sprawl full-length on the grass. "I am truly and really one of the lot in ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... as clear as mud. Let's sit down here just as if we were going to take a rest; let's sprawl on the ground just as if we weren't thinking about that shack at all. Then we can talk about ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... but the fleetest no more than just touched the flying cutter, though a hundred soggy mittens grasped for it, then reeled and whirled till sometimes the wearers of those daring mittens plunged flat in the snow and lay a-sprawl, reflecting. For this was the holiday time, and all the boys and girls in town were out, most of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... triumphantly effaced by an arrow, Cupid's arrow, in favour of "Snooks." Degrading confession of feminine weakness! She imagined the terrible rejoicings of certain girl friends, of certain grocer cousins from whom her growing refinement had long since estranged her. How they would make it sprawl across the envelope that would bring their sarcastic congratulations. Would even his pleasant company compensate her for that? "It is impossible," ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... on a reconnoitering expedition to the end of the passage, and reported that the jump-off there was higher than himself but he could get down. I now crawled through the hole and found the passage to be a "crawl" or rather a "sprawl," from fifteen to eighteen inches high, but having an ample width varying from three to six feet. The smooth, straight floor has a steep downward inclination and is ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... the shrunken baseless sky, Sullen vapours crawl Climbing to masses, tumbled heavily Grim in giant sprawl, That smother up domed heaven's scud-fleckered height And form like mortal armies ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... ideas; most of whatever artist there is in me has been given to turbine machines and boat building and the problem of flying, and do what I will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax, undisciplined story-teller. I must sprawl and flounder, comment and theorise, if I am to get the thing out I have in mind. And it isn't a constructed tale I have to tell, but unmanageable realities. My love-story—and if only I can keep up the spirit of truth-telling all through as strongly as I have now, you shall have it all—falls ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... let him be put on his feet early; but allow him to crawl, and sprawl, and kick about the floor, until his body ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... friend, his confidante, his champion now! Not even Sirius could be more fiercely devoted than she, who had to atone for her past injustice. She was angry that blind Brian should be thus coldly stared at, and that a man in better health than he should calmly sprawl in the ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he is greedier than I," retorted Papillon. "He will eat till he won't be able to run about with us after dinner; and then he will sprawl upon mother's satin train by the fire, with Ganymede and Phosphor, and she will tell everybody how good and gentle he is, and how much better bred than his sister. And now, if people are ever going to leave off eating, we may as well begin our games before it is quite dark. Perhaps you are ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer; Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite. But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call; A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall: The ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... began to cling and crawl Straight up, with strong endeavor; But down it came with a slippery sprawl, As near to the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... an inner beauty than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the power of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches sometimes have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in sculpture, in architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the roof, and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others. Marvels of riches are lavished upon chapels and altars, which again are so burdened with bronze gilded or silver plated, and precious stones wrought and unwrought, that ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... nursed like children—a staff of trained attendants waited on them. I'm not sure they didn't have a doctor to take their temperature—at any rate the place was full of thermometers. And they didn't sprawl on the ground like ordinary melons; they were trained against the glass like nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which sustained its weight and left it free on all sides to ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... out in much better spirits. But they make not many steps—if steps they can be called—before discovering the difficulties at which the old sealer has hinted, saying, "ye'll see." Steps, indeed! Their progress is more a sprawl than a walk; a continuous climb and scramble over trunks of fallen trees, many so decayed as to give way under their weight, letting them down to their armpits in a mass of sodden stuff, as soft as mud, and equally bedaubing. Even if disposed, they ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... hysterical tendency which ever accompanies them, and which, just as soon as the stress and strain of life reaches a certain degree of intensity, unfailingly produces its characteristic breakdown; the patient is seized with confusion, is overcome by feeling, indulges in an emotional sprawl, is flooded with terrible apprehensions and distracting sensations, may even go into a convulsive fit, and, in extreme cases, even become unconscious and ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... children, overcome with fatigue, went to sleep with their heads resting on the table. Thus Macquart passed his days in lazy enjoyment. It seemed to him quite natural that he should be kept in idleness like a girl, to sprawl about on the benches of some tavern, or stroll in the cool of the day along the Cours or the Mail. At last he went so far as to relate his amorous escapades in the presence of his son, who listened with glistening eyes. The ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... anybody who chose could walk into the palace and see the king playing with his children, or paring his nails. The people possessed the monarch, as the people possess Primrose Hill; that is, they cannot move it, but they can sprawl all over it. The old French monarchy was founded on the excellent principle that a cat may look at a king. But nowadays a cat may not look at a king; unless it is a very tame cat. Even where the press is free for criticism it is only used for adulation. The substantial difference ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Anything rather than that fetid huddling, that shameless communal sprawl. And yet, was this so much better? The nearness to the surface was meaningless; it only tantalized. And the ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... diverting suspicion from him. Suddenly, after twisting round a corner, he darted through a swing door into a stone-paved court, surrounded by brick walls. I was at his heels at the moment or I should have lost him there. I darted through the swing door after him. I went full sprawl over his body on the other side. He had, quite used ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... constituted almost the sole joy of Desmond's life. When he was only a little fellow he would sprawl on the bank near Tyrley Castle and weave romances about the Norman barons whose home it had been—romances in which he bore a strenuous part. He knew every interesting spot in the neighborhood: Salisbury ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... suggestion of past and of coming voyages. Under the white awnings long lounge-chairs sprawl here and there,—each with an occupant, smoking in silence, or dozing with head drooping to one side. A young man, awaking as I pass to my cabin, turns upon me a pair of peculiarly luminous black eyes,—creole ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... steeply sloping banks of a river, is singularly irregular. The cloister is duly placed on the south side of the church, and the chief buildings occupy their usual positions round it. But the cloister garth, as at Chichester, is not rectangular, and all the surrounding buildings are thus made to sprawl in a very awkward fashion. The church follows the plan adopted by the Austin canons in their northern abbeys, and has only one aisle to the nave—that to the north; while the choir is long, narrow and aisleless. Each transept has ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his back. So within that ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various |
