"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... descendest on thy nest in the cleft of the inaccessible rock, who makest the mountain pinnacle thy perch and halting-place, and, scanning with steady eye the orb of glory right above thee, imprintest thy lordly talons in the stainless snows, that shoot back and scatter round his glittering shafts,—I pay thee homage. Thou art ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... conceal. It was Wogan who had conceived the idea of her rescue—in the King's place. In the King's place, Wogan had come to Innspruck and effected it. In the King's place, he had taken her by the hand and cleft a way for her through her enemies. He was the man, the rescuer; she was the woman, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... worth looking at. Some old-time convulsion of nature had cleft the mountain barrier at that place so that giant walls of rock arose on either side of him for hundreds of feet, almost perpendicularly. For some distance ahead the cleft was nearly straight, and its gravelly bottom was ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... Rock of ages, cleft for me! Let me hide myself in thee: Let the water and the blood, From thy side a healing flood, Be of sin the double cure; Save from wrath and ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... fiery horses and the fiery chariots of the angels who would defend him, and the dark array of spiritual foes who throng around his bed. Point a pitying finger to the yawning abyss of shame, ruin, and despair that even now perhaps is being cleft under his feet. Show him the garlands of the present and the past, withering at the touch of the Erinnys in the future. In pity, in pity show him the canker which he is introducing into the sap of the tree of life, which ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... and at last saw something dim that thrust out of the dark on the ground, and then it got brighter, and he marked low down, no higher than his knee, a blue ghost of light shooting through some cleft among the stones. It waxed until he could put down his watch and read the hands by it. And he found it was ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... cleft between two walls of rock, following a path worn by a torrent, and which, in all human probability, human foot had never before trod, Dantes approached the spot where he supposed the grottos must have existed. Keeping along the shore, and examining the smallest object with serious attention, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of those sunny and windy flats, he came upon a sort of cleft almost narrow enough to be called a crack in the land. It was just large enough to be the water-course for a small stream which vanished at intervals under green tunnels of undergrowth, as if in a dwarfish forest. Indeed, he had an odd feeling ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... whisper, as of wind among pine branches, then of a muffled murmur that grew to a sullen diapason. The current quickened beneath them, the river- banks closed in, and finally beetling cliffs arose, between which was a cleft ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... fashioned it out of water-worn stones and sea shells, with mosses and ferns in the chinks. Well, as we came in through the gates my eyes fell upon this stone heap, and there was a letter stuck in a cleft stick upon the top of it. I took a step forward to see what it was, but Edie sprang in front of me, and plucking it off she ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Skarphedinn gave the shield such a quick twist, that Sigmund let go his sword. Then Skarphedinn hews at Sigmund with his axe, the "Ogress of war". Sigmund had on a corselet, the axe came on his shoulder. Skarphedinn cleft the shoulder-blade right through, and at the same time pulled the axe towards him, Sigmund fell down on both knees, but sprang ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... cleft of the rock cowered a poor sinner, and burrowed in the earth with his lean fingers as if he would dig himself a grave in its depths. He gazed at the cave where the child was with glassy, staring eyes. A prayer for mercy surged up in his heart like a stream of blood. Those who saw him turned ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... of a June day when the cat made his entrance into that hidden life of the summers from which his exits had been as sudden, though less dramatic. In the heart of the hills, where a mountain torrent has fretted its way for miles through a rocky gorge, there is a place where the cleft widens into a miniature valley, and the stream slips along quietly between banks of moss before it plunges again on its riotous path down the mountain. Here the charcoal-burners, half a century ago, had made a clearing, and left their dome-shaped stone kiln to cover itself with the green ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... last delightful weather, and we enjoy it. Yesterday we went to Pool-a-Phooka, the Leap of the Goblin Horse. What is that, do you suppose? Why, a cleft in the mountains down and through which the river Liffey (not very long born from the earth) comes leaping and roaring. Cold veal pies, champagne, etc., make up the enchantment. We dabbled in the water, splashed each other, forded the river, climbed the rocks, laughed, sang, eat, drank, and were ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... "Peasant's Nest" described by Cowper in his Task, pays one natural penalty for the rare beauty of its site. It pants on a rock whose gorges of lime are the seat of a perpetual thirst. In vain have the suffering natives sunk seven basins in one alley of the town, the cleft separating the quarter of the Son of David from that of the children of Jesus (Aissa). The water only trickles by drops, and, though plentiful in winter, deserts them altogether in the season when their air-hung gardens, planted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... left her lips the heavens were cleft in twain by a fearful flash of lightning, and in it the people saw that once again the palm-trees bowed themselves, this time almost to the ground. Then with a roar the winds were loosed, and beneath their feet the solid earth began to heave as though ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... hilles, among the which were seene certaine smal cabbans, which we in the countrey call Granges, and therefore we named them The hilles of the Granges. The other lands and mountaines are all craggie, cleft and cut, and betwixt them and the Sea, there are other Ilands, but low. The day before through the darke mists and fogges of the weather, we could not haue sight of any land, but in the euening we spied an entrance into ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... blue peaks. Then we entered the portals of a solemn wood, with gray trunks of trees everywhere around us and impenetrable foliage above our heads, the deep silence only broken by fitful songs of birds. To this succeeded a blank district of barren shale cleft into great gullies by many a wintry torrent. Presently we found ourselves at an enormous height above the river, on the ledge of a precipice which shot down almost perpendicularly on one side to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... crags of the Bulldog and lighted up the square summit of Red Butte across the river, throwing mysterious shadows into the black gorge which split it from crown to base. Between that high cliff and the cleft red butte flowed the Salagua, squirming through its tortuous canyon, and beyond them lay Hidden Water, the unknown, whither a single man was sent to turn back the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... time when burst this frightful war, a terrific earthquake occurred, so that mountains were cleft asunder and showers of great stones poured down from heaven. But they, fighting vigorously, perceived none of these things. At last so great a multitude of Roman warriors fell that Hannibal, the general, in sending to Sicily the finger-rings of the generals and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... wild shriek, for at that moment the waves were cleft alongside, and Rooney Machowl came up from the bottom, feet foremost, with a bounce that covered the sea with foam. He had literally been blown up from the bottom—his dress being filled with so much compressed air that he had become ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... willow, To the bower of the twilight it led her at last, There lay the bosom so often her pillow, But the dagger was in it, its beating was past. Round the neck of the youth a light chain was entwining, The dagger had cleft it, she joined it again. One dark curl of his, one of her's like gold shining, 'They hoped this would part us, they hoped it in vain. Race of dark hatred, the stern unforgiving. Whose hearts are as cold as the steel which they wear. By the blood of the dead, the despair of the living, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... into the middle of the earth army, saw it strike the breastplate of a gigantic and fierce-looking warrior. Immediately on feeling the blow, he seemed to take it for granted that somebody had struck him; and, uplifting his weapon, he smote his next neighbor a blow that cleft his helmet asunder, and stretched him on the ground. In an instant, those nearest the fallen warrior began to strike at one another with their swords, and stab with their spears. The confusion spread ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... barbarously murdered by two Indian chiefs sent for her protection. The two chiefs having disputed which of them should be her principal guard and obtain a larger reward, he, from whose hands she was snatched, raised his tomahawk, and in a fit of rage cleft her head asunder. Such stories as these, founded in fact, were well calculated to produce excitement, especially as the murderer was left unscathed. Burke argued that these savage allies were too powerful, or their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... d'Ochtes led his cousin to a higher point of the hill overlooking the chateau where he could show her the whole estate of Roche Craie. It was a beautiful sight. The gentle hills sloped to the Seine with here and there a sharp cleft showing a cliff of chalk, standing out very white against the green of ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... furiously while we were scrambling on the rocks, and the latter were warm to the touch, although, thousands of feet below, the immense cleft in the mountain side was choked with masses ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... true to him as their leader. He had not, says Gindely, a single trace of personal ambition in his nature; and, though he might have become a Bishop, he remained a layman to the end. Full of years he died, and his bones repose in a cleft where tufts of forget-me-not grow, at Brandeis-on-the-Adler, hard by ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... window, nothing rewarded his curiosity, and after half an hour of diligent endeavor he was compelled to return home no wiser than when he had first stood on the summit of the path and looked down into the rocky cleft. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... dip of the grass; the slates of a roof glistened from a group of sycamores like a mirror in a dark frame; the whole island lay bared to the moonlight. Towards the edge of it the land rose upwards to a ridge, but there was a cleft in the ridge opposite to where they stood, and through the cleft they looked downwards to ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the stillness of the holy wilderness was broken here by the clatter of men's voices, there by a blast of trumpets, and there again by stifled cries. It was as if a charm had given life to the rocks and lent their voices; as if noise and clamor were rushing like wild torrents down every gorge and cleft ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... orange? yes, But not so red, Count. Then it has no stem. Now, as 'tis hidden by those drifts of cloud, With one thin edge just glimmering through the dark, 'Tis like some strange, rich jewel of the east, In the cleft side of a mountain. And that reminds me—speaking of jewels—love, There is a set of turquoise at Malan's, Ear-drops and bracelets and a necklace—ah! If they ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... speaker and looked full upon the beak nose, cleft cheek and bristling red moustache of an old friend. "Good Lord, The Beachcomber!" I breathed. He started, peered at me and growled, "Captain Dawnay-Devenish, if it's all the same to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... in the ceremonies of consecration and absolution, and by means of fire a man may break through a taboo, or permantang. Should a man have a fruit-tree, for instance, which he wishes to protect, he places about it several cleft sticks with stones thrust in the clefts, and the stones are told to guard the tree and afflict with dire diseases any pilferer of the fruit. Now, should a friend of the owner see this sign of permantang and yet wish some of the fruit, ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in boundless fields—a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone, perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender beauty of the parks which dotted these wild hills ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... sort of cleft in his chin, though it's a good, square chin," he suggested. "And that ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... far as Massa Lubrense, a little town on the steep shore; over against it the giant cliffs of Capri, every cleft and scar and jutting rock discernible through the pellucid air, every minutest ruggedness casting its clear-cut shadow. But the surpassing glory was the prospect at the Cape of Sorrento when they reached it on their walk back. Before ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... stands for these same Ishmaelites; and Mem, for the Midianites that obtained him from the merchantmen, and then disposed of him to Potiphar. But Passim. has yet another meaning, "clefts." His brethren knew that the Red Sea would be cleft in twain in days to come for Joseph's sake, and they were jealous of the glory to be conferred upon him. Although they were filled with hatred of him, it must be said in their favor that they were not of a sullen, spiteful nature. They did not ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... and all around her navel. Then she came up out of the cistern and throwing herself on the Porter's lap said, "O my lord, O my love, what callest thou this article?" pointing to her slit, her solution of continuity. "I call that thy cleft," quoth the Porter, and she rejoined, Wah! wah, art thou not ashamed to use such a word?" and she caught him by the collar and soundly cuffed him. Said he again, Thy womb, thy vulva;" and she struck him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... he pull'd up—as I judg'd, about twelve paces' distance from the edge—and after considering for a second, began to move again; only now he worked a little to the right. And soon I saw the intention of this: for just here the cliff's lip was cleft by a fissure—very like that in Scawfell which we were used to call the Lord's Rake, only narrower—that ran back into the field and shelved out gently at the top, so that a man might easily scramble some way down it, tho' how far I could not then tell. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... he made the wrong one first, urging his mustang toward the canyon trail. A stumbling half-mile up the narrow cleft of the river's path revealing nothing, he began to reconsider. Drawing a second blank of the same dimensions, he turned back to the ford and tried the hill trail. At the end of the first hundred yards on the new scent he came again upon ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... linings, sweeping shadowy ripples through the long grass, and lifting the locks from Sylvia's forehead with a grateful touch, as she sat softly swaying with the swaying of the boat. Slowly they drifted out into the current, slowly Warwick cleft the water with reluctant stroke, and slowly Sylvia's mind woke from its trance of dreamy delight, as with a gesture ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... on the right, is one of the most charming places in Surrey. Box Hill (590 feet), which may easily be ascended from the well-placed Burford Bridge Hotel, is on the left. The road, river and rail run through a deep cleft in the North Downs forming the Mole valley and facing the sandstone hills of the Weald. In the shallow depression between the two ranges lies Dorking (23-1/4 m.). The town is pleasant but has nothing of much interest for the visitor. It is for its fine situation ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... all over the forest, alternately fainting and raving, calling upon peacock and cuckoo, bee, swan, and elephant, antelope, mountain, and river to give him tidings of his beloved, her with the antelope eyes and the big breasts, and the hips so broad that she can only walk slowly. At last he sees in a cleft a large red jewel and picks it up. It is the stone of union which enables lovers to find one another. An impulse leads him to embrace the vine before him and it changes to Urvasi. A son is afterward born to her, but she sends him away before the king knows about it, and ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... back as far as the Arch Rock which springs high over the trail by which the men of Taku's village went out to the hunting. There was a cleft under the wing of the Arch, close to the cliff, and every man going out to the hunt threw a dart at it, as an omen. If it stuck, the omen was good, but if the point of the dart broke against the face of the cliff and fell back, the hunter returned to his hut, and if he hunted at ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin—the first of the dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, and backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of buildings in a cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown habit is this, and these are the sandals, that come and go by hills of finer, sharper, and loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an Umbrian sky. Just such a Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... sword against the admiral in this rebellion. The Adelantado with his usual vigor and courage was dealing his blows about him in the thickest of the affray, where several lay killed and wounded, when he was assailed by Francisco de Porras. The rebel with a blow of his sword cleft the buckler of Don Bartholomew, and wounded the hand which grasped it. The sword remained wedged in the shield, and before Porras could withdraw it, the Adelantado closed upon him, grappled him, and, being assisted by ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the earl turned, brained one of his foes with a sweep of his heavy axe, and, followed by Cuthbert, dashed to the assistance of the king. The weight of his horse and armour cleft through the crowd, and in a brief space he penetrated to the side of King Richard, who was borne upon by a host of foes. Just as they reached them a Bedouin who had been struck from his horse crawled beneath the noble charger of King Richard, ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... The little ship cleft the seas, smothering herself with foam, and bluish fumes poured out of the engine-room ventilators. The first half-hour seemed interminably long, and the horizon was continually searched with the aid of powerful glasses for a sign of the wrecked ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... said the staff-captain. "Look! There's nothing to be seen all round but mist and snow. At any moment we may tumble into an abyss or stick fast in a cleft; and a little lower down, I dare say, the Baidara has risen so high that there is no getting across it. Oh, this Asia, I know it! Like people, like rivers! There's ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... now risen, and through a deep cleft in the hills it sent a strong shaft of light straight at the island. The yellow light, almost level, struck through the stems of the trees and dazzled the children's eyes. This, with the fact that he was not looking where he was going, as ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... and amendment of life? Behold the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the places of the earth, and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place. But what is the cause of all this?—For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the other bank, above a fount that boils and pours down through a cleft that proceeds from it. The water was far darker than perse;[1] and we, in company with the dusky waves, entered down through a strange way. A marsh it makes, that is named Styx, this dismal little ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... the vast veil of snow parted before the wind, as if cleft down the centre by a sword-blade, and Harley and Sylvia beheld a grand and awful sight. Before them were all the peaks and ridges, rising in white cones and pillars against the cloudy sky, and ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... broad cleft in the rocks, the water hurled itself out of its hiding-place, and, dashing down over its rocky bed, rushed impetuous over the sloping country, till, its force being spent, it waded tediously through the slushing reeds of the hill-land ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Leigh's will catch it now, the Popish villain!" said Lucy Passmore, aloud. "You lie still there, dear life, and settle your sperrits; you'm so safe as ever was rabbit to burrow. I'll see what happens, if I die for it!" And so saying, she squeezed herself up through a cleft to a higher ledge, from whence she could see ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... by the French. Its summit is in latitude 16 degrees 2 minutes 25 seconds, and longitude 123 degrees 18 minutes 35 seconds. It is the north-westernmost of a range of islands, extending in the direction of North 60 degrees West; among which Cleft Island, so named from a remarkable cleft or chasm near its north end, and DAMPIER'S MONUMENT, are conspicuous: the latter is a high lump. This range is separated from one of a similar nature, and extending in a like direction to the eastward, by a strait from three to four miles wide, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... of a man who knows exactly where he is and whither he is going, the man-at-arms began to clamber up a narrow fern-lined cleft among the rocks. It was no easy ascent in the darkness, but Simon climbed on like an old dog hot upon a scent, and the panting Aylward struggled after as best he might. At last they were at the summit and the archer threw himself down ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... marching in the pride of their strength to hold the Alpine passes and bar Austria from Italy while the fight went on below, were struck by a sudden paralysis. They hung aloft there like an arm cleft from the body. Weapons, clothes, provisions, money, the implements of war, were withheld from them. The Piedmontese officers despatched to watch their proceedings laughed at them like exasperating senior scholars examining the accomplishments of a lower form. It was manifest that Count Medole and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rend sound doctrines, as heretics do. Again, the dove has no gall. This refers to the gift of piety, by reason of which the saints are free from unreasonable anger. Again, the dove builds its nest in the cleft of a rock. This refers to the gift of fortitude, wherewith the saints build their nest, i.e. take refuge and hope, in the death wounds of Christ, who is the Rock of strength. Lastly, the dove has a plaintive song. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... chiefly the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that Language is but the instrument conveying to us Things worthy to be known. And, though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... saw, or fancied he saw, with the imperfect telescopes of that day, was one of the remarkable and enigmatical furrows termed clefts or rills, first detected by the Hanoverian selenographer Schroter; who, on October 7, 1787, discovered the very curious serpentine cleft near Herodotus, having a few nights before noted for the first time the great Alpine valley west of Plato, once classed with the clefts, though it is an object of a very different kind. Between ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... doubt that the fight was going against T'ung-t'ien Chiao-chu; to complete his discomfiture Jan-teng Tao-jen cleft the air and fell upon him unexpectedly. With a violent blow of his 'Fix-sea' staff he cast him down and compelled him ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... large proportion of the long barrows I have opened, the skulls exhumed have been found to be cleft apparently with a blunt weapon, such as a club or stone axe." — ARCHAEOLOGIA, vol. xlii., p. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... crest of the Portillo, we were enveloped in a falling cloud of minute frozen spicula. This was very unfortunate, as it continued the whole day, and quite intercepted our view. The pass takes its name of Portillo from a narrow cleft or doorway on the highest ridge, through which the road passes. From this point, on a clear day, those vast plains which uninterruptedly extend to the Atlantic Ocean can be seen. We descended to the upper ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... leave the body where it dies, closing up the house or hogan or covering the body with stones or brush. In case the body is removed, it is taken to a cleft in the rocks and thrown in, and stones piled over. The person touching or carrying the body, first takes off all his clothes and afterwards washes his body with water before putting them on or mingling ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... cliff was hollowed here and there into fanciful grottos, draped with every varied hue and form of vegetable beauty. Here a crevice high in air was all abloom with purple gillyflower, and depending in festoons above it the golden blossoms of the broom; here a cleft seemed to be a nestling-place for a colony of gladiolus, with its crimson flowers and blade-like leaves; here the silver-frosted foliage of the miller-geranium, or of the wormwood, toned down the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Olympia we learn[130] that she had a precinct within the enclosure of the later Olympieum. Pausanias by his mention of the cleft in the earth through which the waters of the flood disappeared and of the yearly offerings of the honey-cake in connection with this, shows the high antiquity of certain rites here celebrated. It is indeed most ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... by no means so impressive as it ought to be, considering what peculiar advantages are offered for the display of grand and stately architecture by the passage of a river through the midst of a great city. It seems, indeed, as if the heart of London had been cleft open for the mere purpose of showing how rotten and drearily mean it had become. The shore is lined with the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest buildings that can be imagined, decayed warehouses with blind windows, and wharves that look ruinous; insomuch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... every fold of these valleys. She became infatuated with sea bathing. When she was well out from shore, she would float on her back, her arms crossed, her eyes lost in the profound blue of the sky which was cleft by the flight of a swallow, or the white silhouette of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Hardily I shall win that wealth, or war shall seize, cruel killing, your king and lord!" Up stood then with shield the sturdy champion, stayed by the strength of his single manhood, and hardy 'neath helmet his harness bore under cleft of the cliffs: no coward's path! Soon spied by the wall that warrior chief, survivor of many a victory-field where foemen fought with furious clashings, an arch of stone; and within, a stream that broke from the barrow. The brooklet's ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... concerned most of the time to get entertainment as well as information; and he was, therefore, amused by exposing your ignorance when he was not informed by uncovering your knowledge. Indeed, nothing put him in such good humor as to discover a cleft in your intellectual armor, provided that you really possessed some talent, faculty, or resource ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... gorges in a most frightful manner. To add to the horrors of the scene and position, the rain fell in floods, accompanied with groaning thunders, while lightnings flashed from cloud to cloud over our heads, and cleft the darkness only to leave friend and foe enveloped in greater darkness in the intervals of light. By these flashes, however, we gained a momentary glimpse of each other's position, and as we dashed forward in the gloom, we were further directed by the fire of the artillery ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... strokes Deschamps paddled down the St. Lawrence, through the rocky entrance to the Saguenay, and over its dark waters till a harbor was reached in a cleft of the coast. Here the madman landed, climbed to the summit of the rock, and laying down the boy, kindled a fire of driftwood. "I may see his face," he muttered. "The last of my line! The English cross shows! The strain shows! I must wash it out! Hush, my little one, thy grandfather ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... Hamlet gives to his mother 'to throw away the worser part of her cleft heart,' Pietro ridicules in act ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... join'st us well, my love! Suppose me come from the Phlegraean plains, Where gasping giants lay, cleft by my sword, And mountain-tops paired off each other blow, To bury those I slew. Receive me, goddess! Let Caesar spread his subtle nets; like Vulcan, In thy embraces I would be beheld By heaven ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... he reached a point of vantage, partly hidden by a cleft rock, from which he could look fully into the interior of the shack. It was obviously not a habitation, although a fire was burning briskly within it. Near by stood a small keg or two, what appeared to be a large tub or vat, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... and tenderness; but her glance commanded less respect than that of the noblest Agrippina that ever trod the French stage since the days of Racine: on the contrary, it evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and fell in love with him at first sight. Her heart was cleft by the mythological arrow,—admirable description of an effect of nature which the Greeks, unable to conceive the chivalric, ideal, and melancholy love begotten of Christianity, could represent in no ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... everywhere, lighting up the atmosphere with their soft silvery colours. The pendants of hard ice hanging down along the rocks on each side looked like enormous jewels. I was sorry to leave this balcony. We went down in narrow cages which glided gently into a tube arranged in the cleft of the enormous rock. We arrived in this way under the American Falls. They were there almost over our heads, sprinkling us with their blue, pink, and mauve drops. In front of us, protecting us from the Falls, was a heap of icicles forming quite a little mountain. We ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... and terrible. If gallantry and strength sat with the twelve peers and their followers, they were with their opponents as well. No sooner had Roland, or Olivier, or Turpin, or Engelier cleft the body of a Moorish knight down to the saddle, than down fell a Christian, his helmet broken, his hauberk torn by the lance of his dreaded foe. The nephew of Marsile fell by the hand of Roland, who taunted him ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Hidden in a cleft of the hills of Jamaica, fifteen hundred feet above that blue tropical sea below, on the brow of a cool valley, where that bounding stream of white water rushes from the tall peak in the sky in tiny cataracts, till it ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... dandelion in the cleft A broken pavement may have left, Is like the star that, still and sweet, Shines where the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... directed to a spur of the Coast Range which had been sharply silhouetted against the cloudless western sky. Something intensely white, something so small that it was scarcely larger than the silver coin in his hand, was appearing in a slight cleft ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... whom a shade return'd: "Come after us, and thou shalt find the cleft. We may not linger: such resistless will Speeds our unwearied course. Vouchsafe us then Thy pardon, if our duty seem to thee Discourteous rudeness. In Verona I Was abbot of San Zeno, when the hand Of Barbarossa grasp'd Imperial sway, That name, ne'er utter'd without tears in Milan. And there is he, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... blocks and boulders piled one upon the other in rugged steps, apparently impossible to a laden camel. This ravine, the Splugen of Somaliland, led us, after an hour's ride, to the Wady Duntu, a gigantic mountain-cleft formed by the violent action of torrents. The chasm winds abruptly between lofty walls of syenite and pink granite, glittering with flaky mica, and streaked with dykes and veins of snowy quartz: the strata of the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Panes lay apart. The other three were close together, just as they had fallen, the chief impaled by the Pane spear, while his slayer lay behind him still grasping the weapon! The red tomahawk was clutched firmly in the hands of the chief, and the cleft skull of the second Pane showed where it ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... without hesitating, he plunged into the sea, and swam noiselessly in the direction of the ship, in which a few lights had recently appeared, showing her exact situation. As to Pencroft, he crouched down in a cleft of the rock, and awaited ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... beam hath cleft The damp and fragrant-smelling earth, A handful of snow-drops peeping forth; As if King Winter had dropped and left— Stumbling and tripping the steep hills down— Had clutched his robe and dropped his crown: Or as if the very snow had power, Out of itself to fashion a flower; So vase-like, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... his back:—Absenpresentini fell without a groan, and Phosphorini, withdrawing his dagger, exclaimed, 'Who is now to tell the secret but me?' 'Not you,' cried Vortiskini, raising up his sword and striking at where the voice proceeded. The trusty steel cleft the head of the abandoned Phosphorini, who fell without a groan. 'Now will I retain the secret of blood and gold,' said Vortiskini, as he sheathed his sword. 'Thou shalt,' exclaimed the wily Jesuit, as he struck his stiletto to the heart of the robber, who fell without a groan. 'With ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... The cry cleft the stillness of the room as the boy's eyes fell upon the terrible sight; and the knife flashed twice and thrice, and yet again, until the evil beauty of the dead man's face had been entirely obliterated, and a strong ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... beginning to spread a warming element though her whole being. It was as if a rough granite rock had suddenly awakened to a passionate consciousness of the beauty of some fluttering white anemone that nestled in its cleft, and felt warm thrills running through all its veins at every tender motion and shadow. A word spoken against the little one seemed to rouse her combativeness. Nor did Dame Kittridge bear the child the slightest ill-will, but she was one of those naturally care-taking ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... warriors, he stopped in front of the uncourtly soldier, took his axe from him, complained of its foul state, and flung it angrily on the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up Clovis, with his own axe, cleft his skull in twain, exclaiming: "Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons." "Even so," says Gregory quaintly, "did he inspire all ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... affected a soberer and more patriarchal style of dress and manner, he wore his grey hair long, and almost down to his shoulder. His eyebrows were not alike, one being higher up and more arched than the other, which peculiarity gave his face a look of enquiry, even in repose. In the upper lip was a deep cleft, and in the ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50 feet from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paintings, though ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... now mingling in the same current again. I was inured to scenes of bloodshed and misery; but this cut me to the heart; and never in my after-life did I raise my arm against a savage, without calling to mind the mother and her little twins with their heads cleft asunder. On examining the tracks of the Indians to see what other murders they might have committed, we found a little boy, and, a few steps forward, his father, both scalped, and both stone-dead. From the prints of the boy's feet, it seemed that he had been following the plough with ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Ormond had warmed to the business, he was delighted with the dangerous pursuit; but suddenly, just as he had laid his hand on the egg, and that King Corny shouted in triumph, Harry, leaping back across the cleft in the rock, missed his footing and fell, and must have been dashed to pieces, but for a sort of projecting landing-place, on which he was caught, where he lay for some minutes stunned. The terror of poor Corny was such ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... course, I may have had one once." She added, as he looked at her in suddenly roused surprise, "I must have had one once." She was looking beyond him at a broad ray of moted white-hot sunshine that slanted through one of the wide openings above, and cleft the thick atmosphere of the crowded place like a fiery sword. "I have often wondered what it really is, and whether I should like it if I heard it? To exchange Lynette Mildare for Eliza Smith ... that would be ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... saw why daylight had been needed for the task of escaping from the valley by this road. Their way lay through a narrow pass which ran through a deep cleft of the mountains, a cleft which seemed as though it had been carved out by a blow of a Titanic axe. There was scarcely a yard of the narrow path upon which a step could be taken smoothly and easily. For ages upon ages the forces of nature ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... in the hearts of mortals He hath named "To do His bidding, will I thrust my darts, "And through their wounds, as His ambassadors, "The spirit bruise of Him who sent them—thus!" And then again, as though his breaking heart Were cleft with red-hot blade, the voice of Saul Is heard in mortal anguish breathing out The soul-subduing tones—"What shall I do?" Dead silence intervenes; and then again The spirit of the Prophet slowly speaks: "To-morrow ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... lover Until the evening breeze blows, And the shadows disappear (at sunset), Turn, my beloved! Be thou as a young hart Upon the cleft-riven hills! ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... John?' I said, 'By taking out a Patent.' William then delivered that the law of Patent was a cruel wrong. William said, 'John, if you make your invention public, before you get a Patent, any one may rob you of the fruits of your hard work. You are put in a cleft stick, John. Either you must drive a bargain very much against yourself, by getting a party to come forward beforehand with the great expenses of the Patent; or, you must be put about, from post to pillar, among so many parties, trying to make a better bargain for yourself, and showing your ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... had indeed been a tremendous one, and had it alighted fairly on the top of his head, would assuredly Lave cleft the skull, in spite of the protection afforded by the hat. It had, however, fallen somewhat on one side, and had shorn off the scalp, ear, and part of the cheek. It was three weeks before the overseer again resumed ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... reason for this feeling. The very soul of the cottage—the essence and meaning of it—are in its roof; it is that, mainly, wherein consists its shelter; that, wherein it differs most completely from a cleft in rocks or bower in woods. It is in its thick impenetrable coverlet of close thatch that its whole heart and hospitality are concentrated. Consider the difference, in sound, of the expressions "beneath my ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... listened to her husband, still on anxious thought intent, Cleft in two her throbbing bosom, as in silence ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... stretched out of sight to the north and to the south. On this road, about half a mile within the southernmost extremity of Bracken Water, two hillocks met, leaving a natural opening between them and a path that went up to where the city stood. The dalesmen called the cleft between the hillocks the city gates; but why the gates and why the city none could rightly say. Folks had always given them these names. The wiser heads shook gravely as they told you that city should be sarnty, meaning ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... very successful with the grafting of the chestnut. It is just as simple as grafting other fruit, except the Persian walnut. Tongue grafting and cleft grafting is very successful. There is no particular secret in connection ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... thickness of the atmosphere they are not seen, until they are driven against them. A few years ago an English frigate in doubling the Cape, ran foul of an iceberg with such force that she sprung a leak, and broke the rudder in splinters. Luckily a puff of wind that streamed from a cleft in the ice and threw back the sails, freed the ship from her perilous condition since another stroke upon the iceberg would have dashed ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... was placed the chief's kraal. A hard and stiff climb it was, up a bridle path with far more resemblance to a staircase than a road. But if the road was bad, the scenery and the vegetation were wild and beautiful in the extreme. Now we came to a deep "kloof" or cleft in the steep mountain-side, at the bottom of which, half hidden by the masses of ferns and rich rank greenery, trickled a little stream; now to an open space of rough ground, covered only with huge, weather-washed boulders. A ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... in front of the bars is a thick, concave, horny plate that forms the sole. At the heels and between the bars is a wedge-shaped mass of rather soft horny tissue that projects forward into the sole. This is the foot pad or horny frog. It is divided into two lateral portions by a medium cleft. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... its pride doth wound; Through its cleft boughs the sun doth shine; Its blasted blossoms strew the ground: Give ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... white, as it swept under the bridge and fought its way between the rocky cliffs beyond, sweeping swirling, eddying, in its narrow channel, pulsing restlessly into the ragged fissures of its shores, and leaping with a tempestuous roar into the Witches' Eel-pot, a deep wooded gorge cleft in the very heart of ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bridge of Doon, Kyle, the central district of the shire of Ayr, marches with Carrick, the most southerly. On the Carrick side of the river rises a hill of somewhat gentle conformation, cleft with shallow dells, and sown here and there with farms and tufts of wood. Inland, it loses itself, joining, I suppose, the great herd of similar hills that occupies the centre of the Lowlands. Towards the sea ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flashing at lightning speed away through the darkness of the night. Higher and higher they rose, till they had pierced the heavy masses of clouds which hung hovering in the sky. Swift as an arrow the eagle still cleft its way upward until the clouds had vanished to an infinite distance below them; and still onward they were borne in the mighty stillness of an expanse where no human ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... near to where I had encountered Ben Gunn, the maroon; and I walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. The dusk had come nigh hand completely, and as I opened out the cleft between the two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where, as I judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show himself so careless. For if I could see this radiance, might ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shot, seems a dreadful task—what would it be when all those mysterious lines of batteries were vomiting fire and brimstone; when all those dark guns that you see poking their grim heads out of every imaginable cleft and zigzag should salute you with shot, both hot and cold; and when, after tugging up the hideous perpendicular place, you were to find regiments of British grenadiers ready to plunge bayonets into your poor panting stomach, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... character, the continuity of personal being, the continuity of memory, the unobliterable—if I may coin a word—results upon ourselves of our actions, all these things make it certain that what looks to us a cleft, deep and broad, between the present life and the next, is to those that have passed it, and see it from the other side, but a little crack in the soil scarcely observable, and that we carry on into another world ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and slipped one arm around her waist. In a few minutes they cleared the point. Stella was looking away across the lake, at the deep cleft where Silver Creek split a mountain range ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the edge of the level plain, and for a few moments Jolly Roger paused, while he looked off through the eastward gloom. A mile in that direction, beyond the cleft that ran like a great furrow through the Ridge, was Jed Hawkins' cabin, still and dark under the faint glow of the stars. And in that cabin was Nada. He felt that she was sitting at her little window, looking ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, a strange, rambling town, picturesquely situated on a cleft in a bare island of gray rock, and shortly after at Spetzia, a town of much the same character; then toward night sailed into the beautiful bay of Napoli, or Nauplia, once the capital ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... asking, I confess to you This is a human body which you see, Whereby the sunshine on the ground is cleft. ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... bore {borne (active) {born (passive) begin began begun behold beheld beheld bid bade, bid bidden, bid bind bound {bound, {[adj. bounden] bite bit bitten, bit blow blew blown break broke broken chide chid chidden, chid choose chose chosen cleave clove, clave (cleft) cloven (cleft) climb [clomb] climbed climbed cling clung clung come came come crow crew (crowed) (crowed) dig dug dug do did done draw drew drawn drink drank {drunk, drank {[adj. drunken] drive drove driven eat ate, eat eaten, eat fall fell fallen fight fought fought ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... up but a comparatively small number of the hepaticas, nor did they take many of the columbines nodding from a cleft in the ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... ingenuity of Linnaeus's work, repelled by his method. Thus by way of reaction, his thought was brought into its own creative movement: 'As I sought to take in his acute, ingenious analysis, his apt, appropriate, though often arbitrary laws, a cleft was set up in my inner nature: what he sought to hold forcibly apart could not but strive for union according to the inmost need ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... "Yes, I see.... But how would that help you?... Your brother has passed his examination?" so sensibly, that he had constantly to keep his brain in check; and all the time she was in fancy looking up through a telescope at white shadow-cleft disks which were other worlds, until she felt herself possessed of two bodies, one walking by the river with Denham, the other concentrated to a silver globe aloft in the fine blue space above the scum of vapors ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... shade of the towering hillside, the single beam of light shining from an uncurtained window alone faintly revealing her slenderness of figure in its red drapery. No other gleam anywhere cleft the prevailing darkness of the night, and the only perceptible sound was that of horses' hoofs dying away in the distance. The girl was not crying, although one of her hands was held across her eyes, and her bosom rose and fell tumultuously to labored breathing. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... eye at distance sees The mountain-shepherd's solitary home, Peeping from forth the moon-illumin'd trees, What sudden transports to his bosom come! But, if between some hideous chasm yawn, Where the cleft pine a doubtful bridge displays, In dreadful silence, on the brink, forlorn He stands, and views in the faint rays Far, far below, the torrent's rising surge, And listens to the wild impetuous roar; Still eyes ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... to save; no, HE could save to the very uttermost all that came unto Him; Abe tried to believe that with all his heart, and as he struggled against his doubts and fears, faith grew stronger and bolder, then in a moment the snare broke, the dark cloud over his soul burst, and out from the cleft there came a voice, which thrilled his whole being. "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." "Glory! Glory!! Glory!!!" burst from his enraptured lips; his "light ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... there is scarcely a blossom of them which is not more or less grotesque, even to ugliness, in outline; and so hooded or lappeted as to look at first like some imperfect form of snapdragon for the most part spotted also, wrinkled as if by old age or decay, cleft or torn, as if by violence, and springing out of calices which, in their clustering spines, embody the general ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... my affliction! I must roam about abandoned since I left the shelter in the cleft of my rock. Around me rages the storm, alone and forsaken I fly to the forest to seek safety in its thickets. My Friend has abandoned me! His anger was kindled, because faithless to Him I permitted the stranger to seduce me, and now my enemies harry me without respite. Since ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... was a steep slope where rock ledges broke through the wet turf, and in one place a chasm cleft the hill. He could not see the bottom, for it was filled with mist, but the height of the rock wall hinted at its depth. A transverse ravine ran into the chasm, and he could hear the roar of a waterfall. Then the mist rolled up in a white smother ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... border city of Aix-la-Chapelle, our automobile carried us down the Meuse. On the eastern bank, which mainly we followed during the first six hours of riding, there were craggy cliffs, covered with forests, which at intervals were cleft by deep ravines, where small farms clung to the sides of the steep hills. On the opposite shore cultivated lands extended from the limit of one's vision down almost to the water. There they met a ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... or cleft of the same there is a little flower growing. You cannot do what you will with that flower. It has its exigencies and requirements. Had it a voice, it could say, what the stone never could: "I must have this or that: I must have light, I must have ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... villas were and the roads. His eyes glanced curiously now to the right, now to the left and then in front of him into the twilight of the wood. There, where the last gold of the setting sun did not cling to the cleft bark like red blood and the light did not penetrate, there was a soft mysterious dusk, in which the mossy dark-green stems gleamed nevertheless. And there was a perfume there, so moist and cool, so pungent and fresh, that the boy drew a deep breath as though a weight had been ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... serpent-eater. And as birds in great affliction ascend by thousand into the skies when the trees in a forest are shaken by the winds, so those Nishadas blinded by the dust raised by the storm entered the wide-extending cleft of Garuda's mouth open to receive them. And then the hungry lord of all rangers of the skies, that oppressor of enemies, endued with great strength, and moving with greatest celerity to achieve his end, closed his mouth, killing innumerable Nishadas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... had some slight experience of it, for the three blows you gave me would have killed me had they fallen upon me. But it was not I, but a huge mountain that you struck at; and if you visit it again, you will find three valleys cleft in the rocks by the strokes ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... bear it. He turned aside. There was nothing to do but to turn aside. He turned aside, and went hither and thither, desultory. He was still attractive and desirable. But there was a little frown between his brow as if he had been cleft there with a hatchet: cleft right in, for ever, and that was ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... unbroken silence of breathless suspense, the bold marksman shot, and the apple fell to the ground, cleft into two absolutely equal halves. A cheer from every spectator burst forth deafeningly, and did not die down till the king beckoned ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... into the Treasure Valley, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft in the rocks above, and flowing among the heaps of dry sand. And then fresh grass sprang beside the river, flowers opened along its sides, and vines began to cover the whole valley. The Treasure Valley was ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... on up the pass itself. There were various parties of visitors on the roads and tracks, people from towns incongruously walking and driving. It was drawing on to evening. I climbed slowly, between the great cleft in the rock where are the big iron gates, through which the road winds, winds half-way down the narrow gulley of solid, living rock, the very throat of the path, where hangs a tablet in memory of many ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... that ever man had sung, childlike when widely opened, but infinitely various with a drooping lash. The nose was small and aquiline, fine and firm, the nostril thin and haughty. The curves of her mouth included a short upper lip, a full under one, and a bend at the corners. There was a deep cleft in the chin. Technically her hair was auburn; when the sun flooded it her admirers vowed they counted twenty shades of red, yellow, sorrel, russet, and gold. Even under the soft rays of the candles it was crisp with ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and scraping of hoofs, a chorus of hoarse shouts, and a terrific whirl of dust, the troopers pulled up, and Jim saw on the opposite edge of the cleft a party of Bolivian guerillas hacking furiously away ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... him laughing. Her pearls, nestling in the white cleft of her bosom, gleamed dully, shaken by her quiet merriment. In the short time that he had known her, she had become extraordinarily girlish—almost girlish enough to put back the hands of time for the proper man. "It won't. It won't be wiser. It's never ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the silver star which marked the place in the rock where the Holy Cross stood. And on either side of it were the sockets which received the crosses of the two thieves. And a few feet away, covered by a brass slide, was the cleft in the rock which was made by the earthquake. It was lined with slabs of reddish marble and looked nearly ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... had grasped Boone and Smith, attempted to drag them off as prisoners. The one who held Smith was compelled to release his grasp by being shot dead. Colonel Boone was slightly wounded. A second tomahawk, by which his skull would have been cleft asunder, he evaded, and it partially fell on Major Smith; but being in a measure spent, it did not inflict a dangerous wound. The negotiators escaped to the fort without receiving any other injury. The almost providential escape of Boone and Smith can only be accounted ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... was soft and grey with a little faint blue sky, and, though the coast of Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts, there were no startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooded ridges, deeply cleft, rise from the water's edge, gray, deep-roofed villages cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation, bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a great height among dark masses ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... is a very different object from the same place as the solid citizen looks up at its eaves and chimneys. The Old South and Trinity Church are two landmarks not to be mistaken. Washington Street slants across the picture as a narrow cleft. Milk Street winds as if the cowpath which gave it a name had been followed by the builders of its commercial palaces. Windows, chimneys, and skylights attract the eye in the central parts of the view, exquisitely defined, bewildering in numbers. Towards the circumference it grows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... feet, then he got me well up on to his back, as if I had been a sack of coal, and went off with me, striding along pretty near as quick as if I had not been there. It might have been half a mile, when he turned up a narrow ravine that was little more than a cleft in the rock that rose almost straight up from the valley. It did not go in very far, for there had been a slide, and it was blocked up by a pile of rocks and earth, forty or fifty feet high. It was a big job even for the chief to get me up to the top of them. The snow had drifted ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... around at the huge broken slabs of granite and speculating upon the oddness of the formation, while their conversation had taken on an academic flavor as they discussed the nebular and glacial theories. They had discovered at the bottom of a great cleft in the rock, a spring of sparkling water, so cold that it was impossible to drink it without frequent pauses. They had named the place "The Saucer," had eaten their lunch there. He remembered how beautiful she had looked as she talked in carefree ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... heap of stones, so that it had the appearance of bending forward to let the storm sweep over it. The low entrance-door opened to the land, and two small windows looked out upon the sea, and upon the boat, which was usually drawn up in a cleft above ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... overside of it, taking to cover as much as they could. By six o'clock in the evening they were as near as they dared to be until nightfall. As they stood they could see the ridge rear its ragged head to watch over the cleft where-through the two Wans race to be free. Upon the slope of this bluff was the town itself, a walled town the colour of the bare rock, with towers and belfries. The westering sun threw the whole ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... relegated the abode of their departed to the recesses of the impenetrable marshes of the Delta, so those of Siut and Thinis had at first believed that the souls of the deceased sought a home beyond the sands: the good jackal Anubis acted as their guide, through the gorge of the Cleft or through the gate of the Oven, to the green islands scattered over the desert, where the blessed dwelt in peace at a convenient distance from their native cities and their tombs. They constituted, as we know, a singular folk, those uiti whose members dwelt in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... knew at last why Hero threw herself into the Hellespont after Leander, why all that commotion was caused by Helen of Troy, why Oriana took such trouble for Mirabel, why Juliet died on Romeo's body, why Miss Richland paid Honeywood's debts. The moon, rushing through a cleft in the clouds (she had opened one of the shutters on putting out the candles), had for her a sudden beauty which accounted for the fine things the poets had said of it and love together. Yes, because it opened on her world of romance a magic window, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... spectacle. Those Indians who could not crowd into the narrow level spread themselves over the rising ground, and looked down with fierce laughter upon the driving of the stakes which the young men brought. The women and children scattered into the woods beyond the cleft between the hills, and returned bearing great armfuls of dry branches. The hollow rang to the exultation of the playgoers. Taunting laughter, cries of savage triumph, the shaking of the rattles, and the furious beating of two great drums ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... he had extinguished after satisfying himself that it would burn properly, Lance led the way into the cleft; holding his brand well before him and as high as possible, and giving his disengaged hand to Blanche, who suffered from the disadvantage of being in total darkness, her lover's bulky form almost entirely filling up the narrow passage they were traversing, and completely ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... evening husband and wife would leave the crowded beach, and mount by some tortuous dusty way on to the high plateau through which was cleft far below the wooded fissure of the village. Here they seemed to have climbed the beanstalk into a new world. The rich Normandy country lay all round them—the cornfields, the hedgeless tracts of white-flowered lucerne or crimson clover, dotted by the orchard trees which make one vast ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fearful speed; and those who looked on seemed to be impressed with a vague feeling that she had power to spring upon the strand and continue her swift career through the forest, as she had hitherto cleft her passage through the sea. As she approached, the savages shrank back in fear. Suddenly her frame trembled with a mighty shock. A terrible cry was borne to land by the gale, and all her masts went overboard. A huge wave lifted the ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... we visited a cave some two miles down the stream, which had recently been discovered. We squeezed and wriggled through a big crack or cleft in the side of the mountain for about one hundred feet, when we emerged into a large dome-shaped passage, the abode during certain seasons of the year of innumerable bats, and at all times of primeval darkness. There were various other crannies and pit-holes ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... there is nothing that they can do," said the captain, "except to let out more cable, cautiously, so as to give the anchor a better chance to catch in some cleft or crevice in the bottom. Sometimes it does catch in this manner, and then the ship is stopped, and, for a time, the people on board ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... Fleda, whose amusement seemed to be increased by the gentleman's want of understanding,—"and neither did we till we came up to him. The silly fellow had been sent up for more wood, and splitting a log he had put his hand in to keep the cleft, instead of a wedge, and when he took out the axe the wood pinched him; and he had the fate of Milo before his eyes, I suppose, and could do nothing but roar. You should have seen the supreme indignation with which Barby took the axe and released him with 'You're a ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... kicking up the soft dirt of the embankment like a volley of shrapnel. When they moved their fire forward to the wagon-road, they almost hurled the little girl from her saddle. She cried out in agony as the icy bullets cleft the air and pounded her cruelly on head and shoulders. A stone the size of a wild duck's egg split the skin of her rein-hand, and she dropped the bridle and let the sorrel go at random. Squealing shrilly whenever a missile reached his tender ears, he stayed in the road, but stopped running, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... terrifies our 'English' Theatre so much as a Ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody Shirt. A Spectre has very often saved a Play, though he has done nothing but stalked across the Stage, or rose through a Cleft of it, and sunk again without speaking one Word. There may be a proper Season for these several Terrors; and when they only come in as Aids and Assistances to the Poet, they are not only to be excused, but to be applauded. Thus the sounding of the Clock in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... top-floor has been blown off. Las Palmas is divided into two halves, northern and southern, by a grim black wady, like the Madeiran ribeiras, [Footnote: According to the usual law of the neo-Latin languages, 'ribeiro' (masc.) is a small cleft, 'ribeira' (fem.) is a large ravine.] the 'Giniguada,' or Barranco de la Ciudad, the normal grisly gashes in the background curtain. The eye-striking buildings are the whitewashed Castillo del Rey, a flat ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... mountain-born and darkness-cradled flood. Or again, looking up at the sheer steep cliff, 800 feet in height, and arching slightly roofwise, so that no rain falls upon the cavern of the pool, we seem to see the stroke of Neptune's trident, the hoof of Pegasus, the force of Moses' rod, which cleft rocks and made water gush forth in the desert. There is a strange fascination in the spot. As our eyes follow the white pebble which cleaves the surface and falls visibly, until the veil of azure is too thick for sight to pierce, we feel as if some glamour were drawing us, like Hylas, to the hidden ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... slowly back to the notch in the canon walls. Stepping through it, he continued on up the stream. A few paces beyond the notch, and a face appeared in the cleft rock, watching him. The watcher seemed in doubt. Collie's action had been natural enough. Had he seen the horse? The hidden face grew crafty. The eyes grew cold. The watcher tapped the side of the cliff with his revolver butt. The noise was slight, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... squared her trim little figure. 'Was he that when he went down the broken winze to poor Ben Holden? Was he that when he brought little Kitty Green and her pony out of the burnin' scrub? Was he all a little villain when he found you trapped in the cleft of a log under the mount there, when the Stream men wouldn't stir a foot ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson |
