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Waft   Listen
verb
Waft  v. t.  (past & past part. wafted; pres. part. wafting)  
1.
To give notice to by waving something; to wave the hand to; to beckon. (Obs.) "But soft: who wafts us yonder?"
2.
To cause to move or go in a wavy manner, or by the impulse of waves, as of water or air; to bear along on a buoyant medium; as, a balloon was wafted over the channel. "A gentle wafting to immortal life." "Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole."
3.
To cause to float; to keep from sinking; to buoy. (Obs.) Note: This verb is regular; but waft was formerly sometimes used, as by Shakespeare, instead of wafted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Waft" Quotes from Famous Books



... to write to you; my thoughts run away with me, my pen flies like a bird over the paper. You need not remind me of the fact that my handwriting is execrable. I know it, therefore don't waft it across America. Spare me this mortification. Tear the letters up after reading them, or before, if you like. When I see the stacks of never-looked-through letters being dragged from one place to the other, tied up in their old faded ribbons, I feel that I do not wish mine to ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... to accept the offer, you know," he assured her. "I only made it to be offensive. And as I've apparently been successful beyond my fondest hopes, I will now waft ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... on distant cattle Waft across the range; Through the golden-tufted wattle, Music low and strange; Like the marriage peal of fairies Comes the tinkling sound, Or like chimes of sweet St. Mary's On far English ground. How my courser champs the snaffle, And with nostril spread, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... 2,437 feet, and still rising. Tachometers gave from 2,750 to 2,875 r.p.m. for the various propellers. Speed had gone above 190 miles per hour. No sign of man remained, save, very far below through a rift in the pale, moonlit waft of cloud, a tiny light against a coal-black plain of sea—the light of a slow, crawling steamer—a light which almost at ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... there was nobody to show her in. From the sidewalk she stepped under a queer little portico, which seemed to waft one back to a previous century. Here, at the vestibule step, she was obliged to move carefully to avoid treading on two dirty little denizens of the neighborhood, who knew no better than to block the way of the quality. They were little Jew girls,—little ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... century is closing I am going to my rest, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant go in peace. But loud through all the bugles rings a cadence in mine ear, And on the winds my hopes of peace are strowed. Those winds that waft the voices that already I can hear Of the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... In such a night Stood Dido with a Willow in her hand Vpon the wilde sea bankes, and waft her Loue To come againe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... oft behold far future hours and days, But ne'er live o'er the past, the happiest, How oft will fancy's wild imaginings Bear us in sleep to times and worlds unseen! But ah! not e'en unfettered fancy's wings Can lead us back to aught that we have been, Or waft us to that smiling, sunny shore, Which e'en in slumber we may ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... now waiting here only for a wind to waft me to America; but cannot leave this happy island and my friends in it without extreme regret, though I am going to a country and a people that I love. I am going from the old world to the new; and I fancy I feel like those who are leaving this ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... to the grave where his father and mother lay buried and seated himself near it. Just then, a gentle breeze caused the stately trees surrounding the graveyard to waft their leafy tops to and fro. Nature was ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... most equal to submit unto the principle of putrefaction, and conclude in a moist relentment. Others conceived it most natural to end in fire, as due unto the master principle in the composition, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus; and therefore heaped up large piles, more actively to waft them toward that element, whereby they also declined a visible degeneration into worms, and left a lasting parcel of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... hid beneath the bank By the willowy river-side, Where Narcissus gently sank, Where unmarried Echo died, Unto thy serene repose Waft the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... banks of the River Cyane, where Pluto made himself a passage with his prize to his own dominions. The river nymph would have told the goddess all she had witnessed, but dared not, for fear of Pluto; so she only ventured to take up the girdle which Proserpine had dropped in her flight, and waft it to the feet of the mother. Ceres, seeing this, was no longer in doubt of her loss, but she did not yet know the cause, and laid the blame on the innocent land. "Ungrateful soil," said she, "which I have endowed with fertility ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... fire, where the ship saileth, where shields blink, sun shineth, snow lieth, Finn glideth, fir-tree groweth, falcon flieth the live-long day and the fair wind bloweth straight under both her wings, where Heaven rolleth and earth is tilled, where the breezes waft mists to the sea, where corn is sown. Far shall he dwell from church and Christian men, from the sons of the heathen, from house and cave and from every home, in the torments of Hel. At PEACE we shall be, in concord together, each with other ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... the river bluff he fled for perhaps a mile. Then he stopped suddenly and listened, his sensitive ears and dilating nostrils held high to catch the faintest waft of air. Not a sound came to him, except the calling of the waters; not a scent, save the raw freshness of melting snow and the balsamic tang of buds just beginning to thrill to the first of the rising sap. He bounded on again for perhaps a hundred yards, then ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... shake out his dinner coat, try the pockets, heard the stealthy opening and closing of the drawers in his wardrobe. Presently the footsteps drew near to his bed. For a moment he was obliged to set his teeth. A little waft of peculiar, unanalysable perfume, half-fascinating, half-repellent, came to him with a sense of disturbing familiarity. She paused by his bedside. He felt her hand steal under the pillow, which his head scarcely touched; search the pockets of his dressing gown, search even the bed. He listened ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... words, turning pale with his own mortal resolution, Prasildo drew his sword, and pronouncing the name of Tisbina more than once with a loving voice, as though its very sound would be sufficient to waft him to Paradise, was about to plunge the steel into his bosom, when the lady herself, by leave of her husband, whose manly visage was all in tears for pity, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... the quagmires and the windy coach. Oh, my lord, if you ever loved me let us set out to-morrow. I languish for Fareham House—my basset-table, my friends, my watermen to waft me to and fro between Blackfriars and Westminster, the mercers in St. Paul's Churchyard, the Middle Exchange. I have not bought myself anything pretty since Christmas. Let us ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... him whom sweet Favonian airs Will waft next spring, Asteria, back to you, Rich with Bithynia's wares, A lover fond and true, Your Gyges? He, detain'd by stormy stress At Oricum, about the Goat-star's rise, Cold, wakeful, comfortless, The long night weeping lies. Meantime his ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... untempered belief. It tells us the beauty of picturesque untruth; the grotesqueness of unmannerly conviction; truth and error have kissed each other in a sweet, serener sphere; this becomes that, and that is something else. The harmonious, the suave, the well bred waft the bright particular being into a peculiar and reserved parterre of paradise, where bloom at once the graces of Panthism, the simplicity of Deism, and the pathos of Catholicism; where he can sip elegances and spiritualities from flowerets of every faith!' Fancy my crass ignorance, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... winged hours, too swift, too sweet, And waft this message o'er To all we miss, from all we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in Eros name to-night, O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight. Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break; While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake, Lo where Love walks, ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti

... fellow-countrywoman. She is represented as a mere ornament, or a soulless, listless machine—something on which the sensual eye of her opium-smoking lord may rest with pleasure while she prepares the fumes which will waft him to another hour or so of tipsy forgetfulness. She knows nothing, she is taught nothing, never leaves the house, never sees friends, or hears the news; she is, consequently, devoid of the slightest intellectual effort, and no more a companion to her husband than ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... place where he speaks of his, passage over the Rhine to Germany, he says that, thinking it unworthy of the honour of the Roman people to waft over his army in vessels, he built a bridge that they might pass over dry-foot. There it was that he built that wonderful bridge of which he gives so particular a description; for he nowhere so willingly dwells upon ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... to approve of my laying up treasure. I breathe delight with every waft of fragrance, and though you may not believe it, the natural has a charm for me. I have been slowly studying it for a year. Is it a symptom of second childhood,—this love of olden pleasures, this longing to retrace?" ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Waft, waft, ye winds, his story, And you, ye oceans, roll, Till, like a sea of glory, It spreads from ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... strength, heaved the boat upon the beach, so high that the tide would not float her off at high-water mark; and besides, had broken a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were sat down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun, and make a waft with her ancient, as a signal for the boat to come on board; but no boat stirred; and they fired several times, making other signals for the boat. At last, when all their signals and firing proved fruitless, and they found the boat ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Biography," refers to Braham's appearance at the National Theatre, Philadelphia: "Who that heard 'Jephthall's Rash Vow' could ever forget the volume of voice which issued from that diminutive frame, or the ecstasy with which 'Waft her, angels, through the skies' thrilled every nerve of the attentive listener? He ought to have visited the United States twenty years sooner, or not have risked his reputation by coming at all. Like Incledon, he was only heard by Americans ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... —, with hope, farewell Fearfully and wonderfully made Fears, saucy doubts and —, our hopes belied our Feast, bare imagination of a —of nectared sweets —of reason Feather, of his own, espied a —, a wit 's a —, to waft a Feature, cheated of Feel, would make us, must feel themselves Feelings, great, came to them Feels, meanest thing that Feet beneath her petticoat —like snails did creep Feet, standing with, reluctant Felicity, we make or find our own Fell, I do not like thee, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... and a thousand others, which (without a waft of knowledge or of thought on our part) enter into and become our sweetest recollections, for the gay young lord possessed no charm, nor even interest. "Dull, dull, how dull it is!" was all he thought when he thought at all; and he vexed his host by asking how he could live ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... me, and be flung To dogs and vultures for an outcast prey. So far I entreat thee, Lord of Heaven. And thou, Hermes, conductor of the shadowy dead, Speed me to rest, and when with this sharp steel I have cleft a sudden passage to my heart, At one swift bound waft me to painless slumber! But most be ye my helpers, awful Powers, Who know no blandishments, but still perceive All wicked deeds i' the world—strong, swift, and sure, Avenging Furies, understand my wrong, See how my life is ruined, and by whom. Come, ravin on Achaean flesh—spare none; ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... a boy, carried along in the waft of my grandmother's skirt, I knew nothing about ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... me not of the budding bay, Nor the yew by the new-made grave, And waft me not in spirit away, Where the sorrowing willows wave; Let the shag-bark walnut blend its shade With the elm on the verdant lea— But let us his to the distant glade, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... of the sleepers in the various rooms he passed. The whole place was so still, he could almost hear his heart thumping. The only thing besides that stirred the silence was the subdued monotonous snoring from the rooms. A waft of fresh summer night-air made his heart leap with delight and eagerness. The window was open. ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly

... frankly as she answered, "I can't fancy you tramping behind the plow in a jacket patched with flour-bags, Geoffrey;" while, feeling myself overlooked, and not knowing what to say, I raised my cap and awkwardly turned away. Still, looking back, I caught the waft of a light dress among the fern, and frowned as the sound of laughter came down the wind. These people had been making merry, I thought, at my expense, though I had fancied Miss Carrington ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... had closed something in the nature of flight had been accomplished. It is exceedingly hard to arrive at actual fact, but it seems pretty clear that more than one individual, by starting from some eminence, could let himself fall into space and waft himself away for some distance with fair success and safety, It is stated that an English Monk, Elmerus, flew the space of a furlong from a tower in Spain, a feat of the same kind having been accomplished by another adventurer from the top of St. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... found there were two of them, both thronged with people, and deep in the water. We perceived they rowed, the wind being against them; that they saw our ship, and did their utmost to make us see them. We immediately spread our ancient, to let them know we saw them, and hung a waft out, as a signal for them to come on board, and then made more sail, standing directly to them. In little more than half-an-hour we came up with them; and took them all in, being no less than sixty-four men, women, and children; for there were ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... aspect, with their background of low, monotonous hills, and both before and behind were more lonesome hills, more dreary fields, and black masses of woodland. Not one homely roof was visible in the hard, white moonlight, nor the glimmer of a lamp, nor a waft of chimney-smoke; not even the tinkle of a sleigh-bell or a foot-step was to be heard. The silence seemed whispering to the hills. One star glimmered in the orange after-glow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... an humble place in the sanctuary, near the door. Behind the pew in which Grandma, Grandpa, and I were sitting there was one more vacant. Presently the door opened, admitting a delightful waft of fresh air, and some one entered that pew, and bowed his head forward on the desk in ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... and brave, This last farewell to Guha gave, And then, with Lakshman and his bride, Determined, on his way he hied. Soon as he viewed, upon the shore, The bark prepared to waft them o'er Impetuous Ganga's rolling tide, To Lakshman thus the chieftain cried: "Brother, embark; thy hand extend, Thy gentle aid to Sita lend: With care her trembling footsteps guide, And place the lady by thy side." When Lakshman heard, prepared to aid, His brother's words he ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... luxury, the voluptuous pleasure. The objects of his ambition appeared then how easy of attainment! To accomplish seemed no more difficult than to desire. The stream was running his way, and the wind was blowing his way. As surely as the Mississippi goes to the Mexican Gulf, would destiny waft Burr to the ocean of his desire. Imaginations so extravagant, courted in solitude and fed by indolence, served to beguile the days of the long voyage from Fort Massac to ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... Homeric description of the great battle at the islet, and our heroic defence of the banyan tree. He declares it to be his intention to enclose the manuscript in the hold of the vessel and launch her when half-way to Tewa, in the assured confidence that the winds and waves will waft it to its destination, or to use his own phrase,—"that we shall yet be heard of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... Henry. It is sweet. A thousand different odors meet And mingle in its rare perfume, Such as the winds of summer waft At open windows ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... may be set (in his late walk O'ertaken with deep thought) beneath the boughs Of honeysuckle, when the sun is gone, And with fix'd eye, and wistful, he surveys The solemn shadows of the Heavens sail, And thinks the season yet shall come, when Time Will waft him to repose, to deep repose, Far from the unquietness of life—from noise And tumult far—beyond the flying clouds, Beyond the stars, and all this passing scene, Where change shall cease, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... instant of its closing a vast, calm peace descended, blanket-like. For, fortunately, the Berg still worked; the flitter and all her contents and appurtenances were inertialess. Nothing material could buffet her or hurt her now; she would waft effortlessly away from a feather's lightest ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... as fierce and free As the waves o'er which we roam, But let not landsmen think that we Forget our native home; And when the winds shall waft us back To the shores from which they bore us, Amid the throng of mirth and song, We'll join the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... is the rarest one, Simple shepherds all - My trade is a sight to see; For my customers I tie, and take 'em up on high, And waft 'em to a ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... dream-born,—their fiery infant clime, Their teeming life, their epochs gray and cold, Peace kiss and blot their tarnished light and close Their leaden urns with gentleness. I shed The ashes of my silence on their snows,— Then waft them to ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer

... sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for the celebrated "Oceanic Miscellany" misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse. "Waft us HOME the MESSAGE" of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... look upon. Their snow-white sails upon the deep sea shone like stars upon the blue of the firmament; and now they all followed close upon the leader's ship, and their little boats danced lightly and joyfully over the trackless waves, which lifted up their breasts to waft them over: and so they started. But I looked again in a little while, and they were beginning to be scattered very widely asunder: here and there three or four of the boats kept well together, and followed steadily in the track of the leader's vessel; then ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... the high ancestral spaces. If there be airy spirits near, 'Twixt Heaven and Earth on potent errands fleeing, Let them drop down the golden atmosphere, And bear me forth to new and varied being! Yea, if a magic mantle once were mine, To waft me o'er the world at pleasure, I would not for the costliest stores of treasure— Not for a monarch's ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... is a theme upon which we love to linger. In our natural state, when flesh and spirit are both models of meekness, two objects are wont to throw us into a kind of ecstasy: a row of nicely painted white railings, and a bunch of fresh daisies. These waft us back along a vista of years, peopled with scenes the most entrancing, and fancies the most pleasing. They call up at once the old country home: the honeysuckle clasping the thatched cottage, contrasting so prettily with the white fence in front: the sloping fields of green painted with daisies, ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... Brother of my soul, When my release shall come; Thy gentle arms shall lift me then, Thy wings shall waft me home. ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... agencies of friction and water. I have not heard the peculiarity described as a characteristic of the arenaceous deserts; but though it seems to have escaped notice, it will, I doubt not, be found to obtain wherever there are sands for the winds to waft along, and hard pebbles against which the grains may be propelled. In examining, many years after, a few specimens of silicified wood brought from the Egyptian desert, I at once recognised on their flinty surfaces the resinous-like gloss of the pebbles of Culbin; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... Its peculiar scent mingled with a dozen varieties of the strong perfumes in vogue, and the combination was punctuated by a dash of oil from a smoky lamp or two in the vestibule and an occasional waft of burnt tallow and pitch from the torches of the link ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... in the flesh, silkengowned, gray-haired and grown old, but Becky Thatcher just the same, seated in a chair which once was Mark Twain's and pouring tea at a table on which the author once wrote. And if the aroma of the cup she hands out to each visitor doesn't waft before his mind a vision of a curly-headed boy and a little girl with golden long-tails at play on the wharf of old Hannibal while the ancient packets ply up and down the rolling blue Mississippi, there is nothing whatever in the white magic ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... and Cape Verd the bays are immaterial; but from Cape Verd, sailing north, we pass four tolerable-sized indentations—Tindal, Greyhound, Cintra, and Garnet Bays. Then a brisk wind will speedily waft us to the point from whence we started, viz. the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... reverently with a splendid person who proved to be a footman. Of course I took him for the Commander of the Queen's Guards, or the Keeper of the Dungeon Keys, or the Most Noble Custodian of the Royal Moats, Drawbridges, and Portcullises. When he put out his hand I had no idea it was simply to waft me onward, and so naturally I shook it,—it's a mercy that I didn't kiss it! Then I curtsied to the Royal Usher, and overlooked the Lord High Commissioner altogether, having no eyes for any one but the beautiful scarlet Marchioness. I only hope they were too busy to ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... modesty never meant by the sculptor, but not displeasing. There was an old fountain near, its stone rim and centre of rock-work green with immemorial mould, and its basin quivering between its water-plants under the soft fall of spray. At a waft of fitful breeze some leaves of early autumn fell from the trees overhead upon the elderly pair where they sat, and a little company of sparrows came and hopped about their feet. Though the square without was so all astir with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... in a hapless world, One more wreck where the tide is swirled, One more heap in a waste of sand, One more clasp of a palsied hand, One more cry to a soundless Word, One more flight of a wingless bird; The ceaseless falling, the countless groan, The waft of a leaf and the fall of a stone; Ever the cry that a Hand will save, Ever the end in a fast-closed grave; Ever and ever the useless prayer, Beating the walls of a mute despair. Doom, all doom—nay then, not all doom! Rises a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and raised his rifle. With single movement the two boatmen swung the canoe broadside and held it. The Fremonter sent eagle glance adown his leveled barrel—the rifle cracked and puffed a little waft of smoke. "Spat!" sounded the bullet. The huge snake began to writhe and twist, fairly shaking the tree; then fold by fold it issued, in a horrid mazy line of yellow and black (would it never end?), until with a plash the last of it fell into the water and swirling ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot street, Fell's Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave ships in the basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... opprest, Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast. He summons strait his Denizens of air; 55 The lucid squadrons round the sails repair: Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, That seem'd but Zephyrs to the train beneath. Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold, Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold; 60 Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, Their fluid bodies half dissolv'd in light, Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew, Dipt ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... the same banner; we shall meet in the same celestial city—the city whose builder is God. The dayspring will glint its glory over thy pathway, and the lustre of morning will bathe thee in heaven. The wings of thy spirit, now folded beside thee, shall spread out their pinions and waft thee o'er oceans of splendour illimitable, urging thee onward from brightness to brightness, raising thee higher and upward and higher till thou standest a messenger swift for the Deity, holding communion with God the Eternal. This ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... golden gates, O poet-landed month of June, And waft me, on your spicy breath, The ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... to you, Ye prams and boats, which, o'er the wave, Were doom'd to waft to England's shore Our hero chiefs, our soldiers brave. To you, good gentlemen of Thames, Soon, soon our visit shall be paid, Soon, soon your merriment be o'er 'T is but a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... itself round her like a grave cloth. The written law had not interdicted crinoline, and she loomed as large with weeds, which with her were not sombre, as she would do with her silks when the period of her probation should be over. Her weepers were bright with newness, and she would waft them aside from her shoulder with an air which turned even them into auxiliaries. Her kerchief was fastened close round her neck and close over her bosom; but Jeannette well knew what she was doing as she fastened it,—and ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... and torn beneath his paws the princely hunters lay. Ho! strike the flag-staff deep, Sir Knight; ho! scatter flowers, fair maids: Ho! gunners fire a loud salute: ho! gallants, draw your blades; Thou sun, shine on her joyously; ye breezes waft her wide; Our glorious SEMPER EADEM, the banner of our pride. The freshening breeze of eve unfurled that banner's massy fold, The parting gleam of sunshine kissed that haughty scroll of gold; Night sank upon the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... of the veil on the glowing embers: they waft to ashes with a brief high flare. She goes ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... great Duchess of Portsmouth!" she said. "Perish the thought! It is with trepidation I look upon your glorious face, madame; a figure that would tempt St. Anthony; a foot so small it makes us swear the gods have lent invisible wings to waft you to your conquest. Nay, do not turn your rosy lip in scorn; I am in earnest, so in earnest, that, were I but a man, I would bow me down your constant slave—unless ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... visions blest! Though worthless our conceptions all of Thee, Yet shall Thy shadowed image fill our breast, And waft its homage to Thy Deity. God! Thus alone my lowly thoughts can soar; Thus seek Thy presence—Being wise and good! Midst Thy vast works admire, obey, adore; And when the tongue is eloquent no more, The soul shall ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... thin, pink curl of leisurely smoke; through the forest white and bare The woodcutter follows his narrow trail, and the morning rings and cracks With the rhythmic jet of his sharp-blown breath and the echoing shout of his axe. Only the waft of the wind besides, or the stir of some hardy bird— The call of the friendly chickadee, or the pat of the nuthatch—is heard; Or a rustle comes from a dusky clump, where the busy siskins feed, And scatter the dimpled sheet of the snow with the shells ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... slender, emaciated little girl wriggled dexterously, though with much difficulty, through the narrow aperture, and the child dropped down upon the floor as lightly and noiselessly as a feather, a snow-flake, or a waft of thistle-down. She had been deceived by Isabelle's remaining so long perfectly quiet, and believed her asleep; but when she softly approached the bed, to make sure that her victim's slumber had not been disturbed by her own advent, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... because, if I live thirty years, in thirty years not a denir of it will remain in my hands; because, with that gold, I will build granaries, castles, cities, and harbors; because I will create a marine, I will equip navies that shall waft the name of France to the most distant people; because I will create libraries and academies; because I will make France the first country in the world, and the wealthiest. These are the motives for my animosity against M. Fouquet, who prevented my acting. And then, when I shall ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... men are never stationary; a thousand chances waft them to and fro, and their life is always the sport of unforeseen or (so to speak) extemporaneous circumstances. Thus they are often obliged to do things which they have imperfectly learned, to say things they imperfectly understand, and to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles, On Bhering's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles; Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow, From wastes that slumber in eternal snow, And waft across the waves' tumultuous roar, The wolf's long ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... quit me I am overpowered with melancholy forebodings. Scarcely are you out of my sight, before I dread, that I shall never see you more, or that some fatality should deprive me of your love. When shall the sails of love waft us from this dangerous shore? Oh! when shall I dare to call you mine? Heavens! how many things may intervene...! Let nothing detain you from Richmond this evening; but come not at all—come no more, unless to reassure my trembling heart, and to convince me that ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... Waft of soul's wing! What lies above? Sunshine and Love, Skyblue and Spring! 20 Body hides—where? Ferns of all feather, Mosses and heather. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Argyle met his doom with firmness; when laying his head on the grim instrument of death, he said it was "a sweet Maiden, whose embrace would waft his soul into heaven." The tragic story of the Earl of Argyle has been ably told by Mr. David Maxwell, C.E., and his iniquitous death is one of many dark passages in the life of ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of all its sorrows, crimes and cares To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... sit nigh— You waft their praises to the sky, And when you think you're stirring Their gratitude, they bite you. (That's The reason I object to cats— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... an affecting thought, that so thick a mist surrounds us, we are not only unacquainted with the events of YEARS to come, we do not know what a DAY may bring forth. It may produce a change in our circumstances—our faculties—our friendships—our hopes.—An hour—a moment, may waft us from time into eternity! "Now," then, "is the accepted time, behold, NOW is the day of salvation."—"Seek the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... a line and hook it had swallowed; and the action of the fish-hawk in attempting to tear the fish away was wonderfully fine, the feathers were raised about the head, the eye was fierce, and the sidelong waft of the wings was most natural. The study was all the more interesting from the fact that both bird and fish were poised in air without any visible means of support, the case enclosing them being of glass all around. How it was managed was easy for the professional eye to discover, but I ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... this instant acquaints me that he is just setting off for New-York. I run from court to waft you a memorandum of affection. I have been remarkably well; was fortunate in my journey. The trial of Livingston and Hoffman is now arguing. It began on Thursday of last week, and will not conclude till to-night. No other business has been or will be done this term. All this ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... Welsh tell you that this flower is sacred to the fairies, and that it has the power of recognising them, and all spiritual beings who pass by, and that it bows in deference to them as they waft along. Its Welsh name is Maneg Ellyllyn—the good people's glove; and hence, I imagine, our folk's-glove ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... torn, beneath his claws, the princely hunters lay. Ho! strike the flagstaff deep, Sir Knight! ho! scatter flowers, fair maids! Ho! gunners! fire a loud salute! ho! gallants! draw your blades! Thou, sun, shine on her joyously! ye breezes, waft her wide! Our glorious semper eadem! ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... climbed a hill path strange and new With slow feet, pausing at each turn; A sudden waft of west wind blew The breath ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... allures not diffidently to the song, Paternal muse with thy patriot valor reign Supreme, and the brightness of ages regain, In the deep recess of the past Lower me, to where the battle's blast Has been given to oblivion, the sigh Of dying patriots let greet me nigh. And my thoughts waft on memory's wing, To where their ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... white flag at the main-topgallant masthead of the Ville de Paris, gracefully floating above the immense volumes of smoke that enveloped them, or the pennants of those ships which were occasionally perceptible, when an increase of breeze would waft ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... of the prime, the pterodactyl, did even better. Stretching on each little finger a lateen sail that would have served to waft a skiff across the Thames, it kept the rest of its hands for other uses. But what bearing has all this on the case of birds? Here is a whole sub-kingdom, as they call it, of the animal world which ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... balm? That portrait leaning half-startled from the frame, was it his mother? These books, were they the very ones that had fed his youth? How everything was yet warm from his touch! how his presence yet lingered! how much of his life had passed into the dim beauty of the place! How each fresh waft from the blooms without came drowned in fine perfume, laden with delicious languor! What heaven was there! and, ah! what ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... would be to treat the creatures by a law not germane to their nature. It is, indeed, a radical vice in Calvinistic reasoning that, because God is omnipotent, He can as easily therefore create virtue in a free being as He can waft the down of the thistle on the breeze. It is quite true that "whatsoever the Lord pleased that did He in heaven and in earth" (Ps. cxxxv. 6). But the question is—What is His pleasure in regard to the production ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... and more durable. When this is done you can tell the rich from the poor man by the smell of his money. Now-a-days many of us do not even get a smell of money, but in the good days which are coming the gentle zephyr will waft to us the able-bodied Limburger, and we shall ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... hawthorn-bough's in blossom, When we have the glorious sun, Murmur the silver fountains, The breezes of the evening Waft fragrant balsams To the world and its sorrow. Shall we await ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

... day with a gorgeous sunshine and a crisp air that seemed to bring refreshment in every waft. The leafless trees were penciled against the blue sky like the lines of a fine engraving. The church bells rang out their reverent inspiration, they were harmoniously toned and there was no jangling. Lilian ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... weather this, Mr Hurry," said Andrew Macallan, our surgeon's mate, who had come to sea for the first time. "Just a wee bit more wind to waft us on our way to the scene of action, and we ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... catch woodcock!'" And he shook his head at her and said, "You all-knowing imp! isn't even Shakespeare hidden from you?" But now the voice didn't sound sweet to me at all, because I wanted to get away. We rose at the same minute, Mr. Dane and I, and Lorraine seemed to waft us from the house on a kind little wind. At the foot of the steps we stopped for fear the gravel should crunch, and while we waited for Aunt Elizabeth to go in the other way I looked at Mr. Dane to see if he wanted ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... waft her a joyous greeting from the realm of liberty and happiness, and the timid woman, amid all the perils which surrounded her, regained sufficient presence of mind to tell her friend what Alexas's slave had whispered—that Aisopion might remind him of it the same evening, and thus strengthen ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... over at the new mill, listening to the slight stir within it, apparently the setting to rights by some lingering workman of such odds and ends as remain after finishing the great whole of such a building, suddenly the cool wind, which had shifted to the north, brought on its waft a most portentous roar. We stood still to listen. Nearer and nearer it swelled, crashing and hissing as it approached. Josephine grasped my arm with convulsive energy, and at that instant we perceived Mr. Waring's plaid cap pass an open casement. She turned upon me like a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... every bit of west-looking rock, and every sail, and every combing billow was touched with warm hues or gilded with a sharp reflection. The air was like the air nowhere but at the Isles of Shoals; with the sea's salt strength and freshness, and at times a waft of perfumes from the land side. Lois drank it with an inexpressible sense of exhilaration; while her eye went joyously roving from the lovely light on a sail, to the dancing foam of the breakers, to the colours of driftwood or seaweed or moss ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner



Words linked to "Waft" :   float, flag, pennon, drift, streamer, be adrift, blow, penoncel, pennoncelle, pennoncel



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