"Defile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is really a Colossus to the anti-Republican party. Without numbers he is a host in himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished; but too much security on the Republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose him. In truth when he comes forward there is no one ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... enemy, full up the increasing steepness of the mountain side, where, horses failing, it would be necessary to creep by stealth and upon the hands and knees. And, where the shelter ended, there lay before them a short defile between walls of naked rock, and the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Dougal among the victors. I had little doubt that the part he had played was assumed, on purpose to lead the English officer into the defile, and I could not help admiring the address with which the ignorant, and apparently half-brutal savage, had veiled his purpose, and the affected reluctance with which he had suffered to be extracted from him the false information which it must have been his purpose ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... foe. The road mounts steadily, and this February morning had broken grey and cloudy, so that the colonel found himself in the mists that hang over these mountains during the spring months, long before he reached the narrow entrance to the grim and soundless Lancone Defile. The heavy clouds had nestled down the mountains, covering them like a huge thickness of wet cotton-wool. The road, which is little more than a mule-path, is cut in the face of the rock, and, far below, the river ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... with the Spirit. What a thought it gives of the hallowedness and sacredness of the body, to think of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. How considerately we ought to treat these bodies and how sensitively we ought to shun everything that will defile them. How carefully we ought to walk in all things so as not to grieve Him ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... tells a falsehood, and deceives, and when he invokes the Gods, according to the customs and cautions of the wardens of the agora, he does but swear without any respect for God or man. Certainly, it is an excellent rule not lightly to defile the names of the Gods, after the fashion of men in general, who care little about piety and purity in their religious actions. But if a man will not conform to this rule, let the law be as follows: He who sells anything in the agora shall not ask two prices for that which he sells, but he shall ...
— Laws • Plato
... ever loved the poor Ellen, bow with her now. It is her prayer; and, oh, think, how weak is the vanity of this pride in a situation like yours. How idle the stern and stubborn spirit, when men can place you in bonds—when men can take away life and name—when men can hoot and hiss and defile your fettered and enfeebled person! It was for a season and a trial like this, Guy, that humility was given us. It was in order to such an example that ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... strange musical rout of the nations. Stannum saw defile before him Silence, "eldest of all things"; Brahma's consort Saraswati fingered her Vina; and following, Siva and his hideous mate Devi, who is sometimes called Durga; and the brazen heavens turned to ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Grecian generals. The army crossed the Hellespont, and entered Asia Minor, and, passing across the country, reached at last the famous pass of Cilicia, in the southwestern part of the country—a narrow defile between the mountains and the sea, which opens the only passage in that quarter toward the Persian regions beyond. Here the suspicions which the Greeks had been for some time inclined to feel, that they were going to ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... great cause of their origin? They are simple crevasses, like those so often noticed on Alpine glaciers, only that these tremendous cracks in the surface are produced by the shrinkage of the crust consequent on cooling. Can we point out some analogies to this on the Earth? Certainly. The defile of the Jordan, terminating in the awful depression of the Dead Sea, no doubt occurs to you on the moment. But the Yosemite Valley, as I saw it ten years ago, is an apter comparison. There I stood on the brink of ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... at Venice a few days. To-morrow we shall see them in the Piazza, and at Florian's, and St. Mark's, and the Ducal Palace; and the young ladies will cross the Bridge of Sighs, and will sentimentally feed the vagabond pigeons of St. Mark which loaf about the Piazza and defile the sculptures. But now our travelers are themselves very hungry, and are more anxious than Americans can understand about the table-d'hote of their hotel. It is perfectly certain that if they fall into talk there with any ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sweetly still The sunset rays thy valley fill; Poured slantwise down the long defile, Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile. I see the winding Powow fold The green hill in its belt of gold, And following down its wavy line, Its sparkling waters blend with thine. There 's not a tree upon thy side, Nor ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... imperial plate and jewels. He now took up a position at Sirmium (Sirmich), and endeavored to wear out the barbarians by skirmishes and sudden attacks, without venturing far from his strong-hold. At length, however, upon one occasion, having been drawn into a defile, the Roman army was relieved by a fierce storm of thunder and rain, which terrified the barbarians. Tradition attributes this sudden storm to the prayers of a Christian legion. The barbarians now submitted, and ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... from appearance, subject to not unfrequent inundations: towards the mouth, indeed, it is partially flooded by each returning tide. Thirty-five miles from its mouth its whole appearance undergoes the most striking alteration. We now enter the narrow defile of a precipitous rocky range of compact sandstone, rising from 4 to 500 feet in height, and coming down to the river, in some places nearly two miles wide, in others not less than twenty fathoms deep, and hurrying through, as if to force a passage, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... to the river led through a narrow defile of rock. But the beast was not trapped at the water's edge as the Gypsy had expected. It took to the water with ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... and taking anything that harms the body is a sin. The Bible says, "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy: for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." I Cor. 3:17. What could be plainer? My dear grandson, I am expecting you to flee from all of these sins which ...
— The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles
... about the doors and windows that seemed more in keeping than the moat and towers with the habits of the present day. The other curtain had been thrown down years before,—how or why nobody could tell me, but not improbably in some of the domestic wars which fill and defile the annals of mediaeval Europe. In those days the loss of it must have been a serious one; but for the modern occupant it was a real gain,—letting in the air and sunlight, and opening a pleasant view of green plantations from every window ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Odin shook the bridle in his hand, and the Eight-footed, with a bound, leaped forth, rushed like a whirlwind down the mountain of Asgard, and then dashed into a narrow defile between rocks. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... instance," asked Schill, indignantly, "why we lost the important defile of Koesen? In consequence of the night-sweat of General ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... spot out of breath, saw nobody, then returned in order to gain the fields through a defile, which ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... row of tangled branches. Here and there an enormous pine-parasol, separated from the others, opening like an immense umbrella, displayed its dome of dark green; then, all of a sudden, we gained the boundary of the forest, some hundreds of meters below the defile which leads into the wild valley ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... defile our royal English blood By marriage with such families as these? Shall English kings inherit all this flood Of imbecility and dread disease? Must all the purity of Guelph be so Impaired and ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... words give us a hint, at least, of the answer to that most perplexing of all questions, Why was evil ever permitted to disturb the harmony and mar the beauty of God's primal creation, defile heaven itself, fill earth with corruption and violence, and still exist even in eternity? Ah, we tread on ground here where we need to be completely self-distrustful, and to cleave with absolute confidence and dependence ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... their advance into the jaws of that defile with a confidence that made my heart turn cold. What did they know? What were they depending on in addition to their weight of numbers? Mahmoud Bey had evidently hurried up almost his whole division, and was driving them forward into our ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... impossibility. I dare not hope for mercy and forgiveness. Why, the very angels would scout me; and she, who was always glad of my approach, would now draw aside the hem of her raiment lest I should touch it and defile her! ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... smoke that defile the land, the shrieking of steam, and the perpetual, terrible grinding of iron against iron (sounds which our little children grow up not to heed) are part of a system which enables Mr. Ruskin, one day to address a crowd in ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... Juggernaut which knows nothing of moral values. Let the progress of industry make life noisy and ugly and anxious and unhappy: let it engross the great mass of mankind in tedious and uncongenial tasks and the remainder in the foolish and unsatisfying activities of luxurious living; let it defile the green earth with pits and factories and slag-heaps and the mean streets of those who toil at them, and dim the daylight with exhalations of monstrous vapour. It is not for us to complain or to resist: ...
— Progress and History • Various
... couzins, are more intolerable than all the rest. In the day-time, it is impossible to keep the flies out of your mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears. They croud into your milk, tea, chocolate, soup, wine, and water: they soil your sugar, contaminate your victuals, and devour your fruit; they cover and defile your furniture, floors, cielings, and indeed your whole body. As soon as candles are lighted, the couzins begin to buz about your ears in myriads, and torment you with their stings, so that you have no rest nor respite 'till you get into bed, where ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... by a deep, black defile which pierced the range. For a day and night they wound through this, hardly pausing to rest, for it had become piercingly cold. Moreover, as Silawayo explained, even when the weather was at its highest stage of sultriness elsewhere, in the ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... rows of trees Glare of the mid-day sun; Creeping along the highway wide, Slowly in long defile, we ride— ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Father! that mine ear Upon this earth so evil, Against Thy name and pow'r should hear The wicked rage and cavil. Let not the poison and the gall Of slanderers defile me; If I such filth should touch at all It surely would beguile me, Might ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... a clatter of boots upon the rocks and two men came staggering up the defile. Colonel Richford and his partner did not look to be in good repair. The colonel's face was drawn and sun-blotched. His companion, the "Fred" of Silent Charley's bar, was bloated and shaken with liquor. Both panted with the hard, dry, open-lipped breath of the first stage ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the opposite bank of the torrent, which, just at the angle of the rock on which the ruins are situated, falls sheer over a cascade of nearly a hundred feet in height, and then rushes down the defile, through a trough of living rock, which perhaps its waves have been deepening since time itself had a commencement. Facing, and at the same time looking down upon this eternal roar of waters, stood the old tower, built so close to the verge of the precipice, that the buttresses ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... 6 m. N.W. of Chard. The hamlet of Bishop's Wood, the most thickly populated part of the parish, lies in a broad defile, through which trickles the Otter brook. The church is 2-1/2 m. away on the hill-top. It is not of great interest, but contains a stoup, a piscina, and a ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... defile was made before the Hotel de Ville, and delegates of the different socialist groups were formally received by the mayor and deputy-mayors, wearing their tricolour ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... being set in for rain, we resolved to put ourselves under shelter. The place where the bad weather overtook us was very fit to set up at. On going out to hunt, we discovered at five hundred paces off, in the defile, or narrow pass, a brook of a very clear water, a very commodious watering-place for the buffaloes, which were in great numbers ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Then, in its turn, the Little Ossipee joins forces, and the river, now a splendid stream, flows onward to Bonny Eagle, to Moderation and to Salmon Falls, where it dashes over the dam like a young Niagara and hurtles, in a foamy torrent, through the ragged defile cut between lofty banks of ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... encircling hills, where he saw the image of the High Priest of the Magi sculptured on the wall of rock, with hand uplifted as if to bless the centuries of pilgrims; past the entrance of the narrow defile, filled from end to end with orchards of peaches and figs, through which the river Gyndes foamed down to meet him; over the broad rice-fields, where the autumnal vapours spread their deathly mists; following ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... may know. Sisteron is an old Roman city, most strongly and picturesquely built in a narrow defile of the Durance. On one side the river is the high, bare rock of La Baume; on the other, a higher rock where houses, supporting each other by outstretched buttresses, seem to cling to the sheer hillside as shrubs in mountain crevasses, and are dominated and protected by ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... betrayed to a false password, the proudest virtue hauls down its flag, and kneeling, proffers its keys. Doubtless they move under fate to an end appointed, though to us they appear but as sightseers, obscure and irresponsible, who passing through a temple defile its holies and go their casual ways. We wonder that this should be. But so it is, and such was this man. Let ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Jesus taught in the parable of the mustard seed came also to pass as the age progressed. The little mustard seed became a great tree, and the birds began to lodge in its branches to defile the tree. The professing church became a great world institution, and in alliance with the world where the throne of Satan is, became corrupted; instead of being the espoused virgin, she became the harlot and adultress. What the Lord Jesus announced ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the Northern Indians, coming down upon them from this mountain rampart through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the Prussian general permitted Dumouriez to occupy the difficult country of the Argonne, where, while waiting for his reinforcements, he was able for some time to hold the invaders in check. At length Brunswick made his way past the defile which Dumouriez had chosen for his first line of defence; but it was only to find the French posted in such strength on his flank that any further advance would imperil his own army. If the advance was to be continued, Dumouriez ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... their common libertie. Is authoritie geuen thee, libidinously to abuse our wyues and children? Exercise thy crueltie behinde our backes, and vppon our lives if thou liste, so that thou doe not contaminate and defile the vertue of chastitie. Whereunto if thou inferre any damage or iniurie, I will for mine owne parte, and for the loue of my beloued, crie out for the ayde of the Romaines that be present, and Virginius shall do the like of the souldiours, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... of a more practicable opening. This at length was found; and as the valley was much broader, and the sand slanted more gradually on either side, there appeared a fair prospect of our being able to pass through. The whole caravan then entered the defile between the sand-hills; but we were fully three hours travelling between those prodigious masses of sand. Sand was below our feet, sand in front and behind, sand on each side. A sudden blast would inevitably cover us with it for many feet. It was ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... more wildly roared the storm. There was something appalling in the fierce volleyings of the wind along the stark and broken faces of the precipice: it was like the rattle of thunder. In the sombre defile of the Schoellenen the air rushed as through a funnel. We could see nothing save the thread-like road illuminated by our steadfast lanterns—the sole beacon of safety in this welter. We had a ghostly impression of winding through ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... through Andujar and Bailen, and on the third day reached Carolina, a small but beautiful town on the skirts of the Sierra Morena, inhabited by the descendants of German colonists. Two leagues from this place, we entered the defile of Despena Perros, which, even in quiet times, has an evil name, on account of the robberies which are continually being perpetrated within its recesses, but at the period of which I am speaking, it was said to be swarming with banditti. We ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to his integrity of purpose, his unwillingness to conceal his disloyalty. When temples are shattered and altars crumble, we save our idol and flee into the wilderness, exulting in the assurance that no clay feet defile it. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... funeral procession defile past me, I think I even made one of the Committee sent by the Society of Men of Letters to march in the funeral convoy. It was superb. This lawyer from the Provinces, good honest man, eloquent orator, honest politician that he was, who came to Paris but to die ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... river ran his lands; And here, within a green-roofed kirk of woods, The slave found that seclusion he desired. His only treasure was a Testament Hid in the friendly opening of a tree. Often the book was kept within his cot, At times lay next his heart, nor did its beat Defile the fruity knowledge on the leaves. The words were sweet as wine of Eshcol grapes To his parched lips. He saw the past arise. Vague were the people, and the pageant moved, Uncertain as the figures in the dusk; Yet One there was, who stood in bold relief; A lovely, noble face with sweeping ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... god, began to stream up the steps and pass through the crowd, which opened respectfully and made a wide avenue within itself: for well the smallest child in that crowd understood that no touch might defile those Brahmans as they walked, wringing out their dripping garments and their long ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... getting grander every moment; the brook was working its way deeper below the level of the road, while here and there in this sombre defile a splash of yellow aspen gleamed like living gold on the face of the precipice. The wild and beautiful gorge interested him in spite of himself; it disengaged his thoughts alike from his personal grievance, and from his dissatisfied contemplation of his own lack of proper ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... establish themselves in a position from which they could come down upon the small Greek army in their rear. Leonidas, perceiving this, ordered all his allies from the other states of Greece to withdraw, leaving himself and his three hundred countrymen alone in the defile. ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... after the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra; and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, had withstood a whole army. I did not then know what war was; but my cheeks burned, I know not why, and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, until my mother, parting the hair from off my forehead, kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me go to rest, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... beat to arms, on all sides. A considerable number of battalions defile along the Boulevard Montmartre; more than twenty thousand men, some say, who pretend to know. On they march, singing and shouting "Vive la Commune! Vive la Republique!" They are answered by a few shouts. These are not ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... until the increasing darkness told them that the Sabbath had come. Then they returned and rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment; but neither they, nor Joseph, nor Nicodemus, nor John, would be able to partake of the Paschal festivities. To take part in a burial at any time would defile them for seven days, and make everything which they touched unclean; to do so at that time involved seclusion through the whole of the Passover week, with all ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... "Men defile us and kill us while loving us, We hang to the earth by a thread; This thread is our root, that is to say, our life, But we raise on high our ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... veneering to cover the moral deformity and the blasphemous wickedness which, side by side with acknowledged excellences, mar the pages of the Koran. The soiled finger-marks of the sensual Arab everywhere defile them. Like the blood of Banquo, they defy all ocean's waters to wash them out. It was easy enough for Mohammed to copy many exalted truths from Judaism and Christianity, and no candid mind will deny ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... expedition against the Norsemen is one which would bring more fatigue and labour than profit. The peasants would seek shelter in their forests and mountains, and march as we would we should never see them, save when they fell upon us with advantage in some defile." ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... of the hills they began to be visibly perturbed, and they would say: 'The eighth mile! cheer up!' Then 'The ninth mile! Sanctissima Madonna! Have you seen anything moving on the heights?' But when they got to the tenth milestone, which stands before the very jaws of the defile, then indeed they said with terrible emphasis, 'Ad Decimam!' And there was no restraining them: they would camp and entrench, or die in the venture: for they were Romans and stern fellows, and loved a good square camp and a ditch, and sentries and a clear moon, and plenty of sharp stakes, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... It would seem that sacrilege is not a special sin. It is stated (XVII, qu. iv) "They are guilty of sacrilege who through ignorance sin against the sanctity of the law, violate and defile it by their negligence." But this is done in every sin, because sin is "a word, deed or desire contrary to the law of God," according to Augustine (Contra Faust. xxi, 27). Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... cause, Conscience, at large how thou comest so spotted, Whereby many by thee hath been greatly infected; For under the colour of Conscience thou deceived'st many, Causing them to defile the temple of God, which is man's body. A clean conscience is a sacrifice, God's own resting-place: Why wast thou then corrupted so, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... beside the silver Thames? O pool and flowery thickets, hear my vow! O trees of freshest foliage and straight stems, No sharer of my secret I allow: Lest ere I come the while Strange feet your shades defile; Or lest the burly oarsman turn his prow ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... of the field were the Van Grolls of Antony's nose, struggling to get to the thickest of the fight, but horribly perplexed in a defile between two hills by reason of the length of their noses. So also the Van Bunschotens of Nyack and Kakiat, so renowned for kicking with the left foot, were brought to a stand for want of wind in consequence of the hearty dinner they had eaten and would have been put ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... white stick, with the pincers, which he carefully laid upon the fire. Then with his left hand he gently fanned the flames, and his mouth being protected by the linen cloth in such a manner that his breath could not defile the sacred fire, he began slowly and in a voice muffled by the bandage he wore, to recite the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... moved at 2 A.M. of the 19th as ordered. Wilson's cavalry succeeded in crossing the creek and driving the enemy's cavalry through a deep defile some two miles towards Winchester. Wright followed, Getty's division leading, Ricketts and Russell following. When the defile was passed, Getty went into position on the left of the pike, Ricketts on the right, both in two lines, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... close behind him as they rode up the High-street, a gloomy defile of tall houses dotted from topmost window to pavement with the heads of chattering goodwives, and the flutter of household clothing ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... walk which runs through the garden grounds, and is set on either side with marble statues, for the most part of heathen Gods and Goddesses, with which these Lagidae were not ashamed to defile their royal dwellings. At length we came to a beautiful portico with fluted columns of the Grecian style of art, where we found more guards, who made way for the Lady Charmion. Crossing the portico we reached ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... as a watch-spring to an old horse-shoe. I purchase a rude tool that might have been fashioned on the anvil of a village blacksmith. From Saverne my road leads over another divide and down into the glorious valley of the Rhine, for a short distance through a narrow defile that reminds me somewhat of a canon in the Sierra Nevada foot-hills; but a fine, broad road, spread with a coating of surface-mud only by this morning's rain, prevents the comparison from assuming definite shape for a cycler. Extensive and beautifully ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Thy mild Dove, and our High-Priest, Help us, when man proves false or frowns, To bear the Cross, and save our crowns. O honour those that honour Thee! Make babes to still the enemy! And teach an infant of few days To perfect by his death Thy praise! Let none defile what Thou didst wed, Nor tear the garland from her head! But chaste and cheerful let her die, And precious in the Bridegroom's eye So to Thy glory and her praise, These last shall ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... place where the five dead cows were stretched out was the beginning of a long, narrow defile, or gorge which ran back into the hills. Some of these hills were quite high and were covered with a growth of timber. Others consisted of big rocks piled in fantastic fashion as though there had been a volcanic eruption some time when the world was young. Between the hills were small ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... subsequent period all provisions sold in the markets, in some parts of the empire, were sprinkled with the water or the wine employed in idolatrous worship, that the Christians might either be compelled to abstinence, or led to defile themselves by the use of polluted ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... of hatred whose sting I would thou couldst feel." He paused, biting his lip as though the pain he described was actual and physical. "Go not among the Unbelievers!" he continued vigorously. "Let not their shadow defile thee! For their breath is poison, and in their eyes is a deadly flame—or if thou goest, let it be with steeled breast and in thy right hand ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... mak'st them up. Sometimes they use alluring wiles To draw into their power; And sometimes weep like crocodiles; But all is to devour. Thus they beset my feeble heart With fraud, deceit, and guile, Alluring her from Thee to start, And Thy pure rest defile. But, oh! the breathing and the moan, The sighings of the seed, The groanings of the grieved one, Do sorrows in me breed. And that immortal, holy birth, The offspring of Thy breath (To whom Thy love brings life and mirth, As doth thy absence, death); That babe, that seed, that ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might need, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the gulls to defile Pookjinsquess with their dung. They flew over her, and as she looked up they covered her face with bird-lime.[14] They then burst out in a laugh, which they still have, when they saw how ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... toward the Port of Missing Men; and together they found rough niches in the side of the gap, down which they made their way toilsomely to the boulder-lined stream that laughed and tumbled foamily at the bottom of the defile. They found the wreckage of the slender bridge, broken to fragments where the planking had struck the rocks. It was very quiet in the mountain cleft, and the stars seemed withdrawn to newer and deeper arches of heaven as they sought in the debris ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... disturbed, nor his conscience perverted. Compare their fame with the everlasting infamy that time has fixed upon the names of the Jack Cades, the Robespierres, the Tomaso Nielos—guides and gods of the "fierce democracies" which rise with a sickening periodicity to defile the page of history with a quickly fading mark of blood and fire, their own awful example their sole contribution to the good of mankind. To be a child of your time, imbued with its spirit and endowed with its aims—that is to petition Posterity for a niche in the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... second-hearing," says Lord Byron, "fell once under my own observation. On my third journey to Cape Colonna, as we passed through the defile that leads from the hamlet between Keratea and Colonna, I observed Dervish Tahiri (one of his Albanian servants) riding rather out of the path, and leaning his head upon his hand as if in pain. I rode up and inquired. 'We are in peril!' ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me) to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... reality, a close pheasant preserve, occupying the banks of a ravine, which, after a deep and tortuous course, terminated in the declivity heretofore described as forming the park boundary. Luke plunged into the heart of this defile, fighting his way downwards, in the direction of the brook. His progress was impeded by a thick undergrowth of brier, and other matted vegetation, as well as by the entanglements thrown in his way by the taller bushes of thorn and hazel, the entwined and elastic ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... charming. It is, of course, a history and a comparison of religions. With Reinach Saltus believes that Christianity owes much to its ancestors. Brahma, Ormuzd, Amon-Ra, Bel-Marduk, Jehovah, Zeus, Jupiter, and many lesser deities parade before us in defile. Prejudice, intolerance, tolerance even are lacking from this book, as they were from "Imperial Purple." "The Lords of the Ghostland" is neither reverent nor irreverent, it is unreverent. Mr. Saltus finds joy in writing about ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... before Him?— could we bear to profane His name, to neglect His commands, to go contrary to His will? Should we then bear ill-will to other men who love Him, and whom He loveth? Should we speak falsely in His ears who is the Truth? Should we suffer pride to defile our souls, knowing that He dwelleth with the lowly in heart? ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... and above the timber-line, the trail ran around Crater Lake and gained the rocky defile that led toward Happy Camp and the first scrub-pines. To pack his heavy outfit around would take days of heart-breaking toil. On the lake was a canvas boat employed in freighting. Two trips with it, in two hours, would see him and his ton across. But he was broke, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... desperately for their mistress' liberty or life; but the odds were too great, both in numbers and equipment; and not five minutes passed, before they were all cut down, and stretched out, dead or dying, on the rocky floor of the dark defile. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... regard to certain dangerous bodily diseases. Jesus also laid His finger on the source of sin when He declared, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man" (Matthew 15:19). A man must think evil before he does evil, and hence the emphasis which Jesus placed upon ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... topographic features of mountain-regions. Inasmuch as the ranges themselves are obstacles to communication, it follows that the latter must be concentrated at such cross valleys or gaps as may be traversed. Khaibar Pass, a narrow defile in the Hindu Kush Mountains, between Peshawur and Jelalabad, for many years was the chief gateway between Europe and India. Even now the cost of holding it is an enormous ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... defile, entered another portion of the valley, forded a fork of the Shenandoah, crossed the Luray Valley, and then entered the steep passes of the Blue Ridge. Here they found autumn gone and winter upon them. As the passes rose and the mountains, clothed in pine forest, hung ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... heals division of love from love, and renews awhile Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of speech and smile, Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no fears enter or doubts defile, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... my grief; For dark to me the future is, and all That I discern is such, as makes hope seem A fable and a dream. To your old homes A wretched crew succeed; to noble act or word, They pay no heed; for your eternal fame They know no envy, feel no blush of shame. A filthy mob your monuments defile: To ages yet unborn, We have become a by-word ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... he said. "Ned, you were a most timely herald. If it had not been for you our surprise would have been total. Look how they defile ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mysteries is the upward tendency of so many souls through so much that clogs and would defile their wings, while so many others SEEM never even to look up. Then, having so begun with the dust, how do these ever come to raise their eyes to the hills? The keenest of us moral philosophers are but poor, mole-eyed creatures! One day, I trust, we shall laugh ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... upon Waterloo Bridge, one beheld staggering changes. The mountainous motor bus put on speed and scampered past the churches left like rocky islets in the midst of a swift river of traffic. Once past Temple Bar and in the narrow defile of Fleet Street the author's thoughts darted up Fetter Lane and hovered around a grimy building where he had pursued his studies with the relentless fanaticism of youthful ambition. There, under the lamp-post at the corner, one keen evening in early spring, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... him, rushing on All heedless-wild at that ill death his fellow fair had won, And buried all his sword deep down amid his wind-swelled lung. Then Sthenelus he meets, and one from ancient Rhoetus sprung, Anchemolus, who dared defile his own stepmother's bed. Ye also on Rutulian lea twin Daucus' sons lay dead, 390 Larides, Thymber; so alike, O children, that by nought Your parents knew you each from each, and ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... party-coloured, tiny. The waters gleam blue; the forests are black; heaps of stones piled up shine grey. Around them small beetles are still bustling,—thou knowest, those two-legged beetles who have as yet been unable to defile either thou or me." ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... swinging in toward the myriad-legged, writhing gray caterpillar on the pass road and many field-batteries were trotting along a parallel road. Their plan developed suddenly when a swath of gun-fire was laid across the pass road at the mouth of the defile, as much as to say: "Here we make a gate of death!" At the same time the head of the Brown infantry column flashed its bayonets over the crest of a hill toward the point where the shells were bursting. These ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... matter of tactical prudence. At Nachod (June 27, 1866) the Prussian Advanced Guard hurriedly established a defensive position and kept at bay the whole Austrian Army, while the Prussian Army emerged in security from a defile and manoeuvred into battle array. The Pass of Thermopylae was occupied in B.C. 480 by 1,400 Greeks under Leonidas, King of Sparta, to withstand the Persian hosts of Xerxes, and although the Greek force was destroyed by an attack from the rear (through the disclosure of ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... mountain sides.... But we dare not arouse the dwellers for many obvious reasons.... Finally we did encounter an abandoned inn or hut where we camped for the night.... Next morning in a fierce and searching sun we rambled into a village set upon a wonderful defile in the heart of the mountains, where we ate our frugal meal.... At night we reached the Jhelum coursing gracefully over rocky beds and through picturesque gorges that rise into the azure and serene skies of the Himalayan heavens.... It was a delightful place to camp for ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... on a ridge north of the Sand Spruit, and held it for a short time. While Captain Hardy was attending to Lieutenant Crum, who was wounded, Colonel Moeller retired his force into a defile, apparently with the intention of returning to camp round the Impati Mountain, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... it is certain we all think too much of sin. We are not damned for doing wrong, but for not doing right; Christ would never hear of negative morality; thou shall was ever His word, with which He superseded thou shall not. To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the Champs Elysees, the sovereigns placed themselves under a tree, in front of the palace of the Thuilleries, within a few yards of the spot where Louis XVI. and many other victims of the revolution had perished; and they saw the last man of their armies defile past the town, and proceed to take a position beyond it, before they ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... modes of death." Those who were experienced in the events which had occurred in Spain, added, that "he would not have to engage with Caius Nero, the general, as an unknown person, whom, when accidentally caught in a difficult defile, he had eluded and baffled like a little child, by drawing up fallacious terms of peace." Under the dictation of fear, which always puts the worst construction upon things, they magnified all the advantages which the enemy possessed, and undervalued ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... India, making accurate military sketches and noting the ranges of all positions suitable for defence, artillery, or observation. Mounted on Badshah's neck he ascended the steep hills—elephants are excellent climbers—and explored every known duar and defile. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... mellow afternoon under the trees upon a rugged mountain that guarded the defile, through which a rushing torrent, one of the tributaries of the Oire, dashed over the rocks on its swift course to Argentan. Below them in the valley were a village and a railroad along which a tiny passenger train was ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... way. The dross of humanity is rejected: all the common wants and grosser feelings of our natures are disallowed. It is a novel which is all mind and passion. Corporeal attributes and necessities are thrown on one side, as they would destroy the charm of perfectability. Nothing can soil, or defile, or destroy my heroine; suffering adds lustre to her beauty, as pure gold is tried by fire: nothing can kill her, because she is all mind. As for my men, you will observe when you read ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... something incredible. It had been seen to destroy a four year old bull by a single impact upon that animal's gnarly forehead. No stone wall had ever been known to resist its downward swoop; there were no trees tough enough to stay it; it would splinter them into matchwood and defile their leafy honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable brute—this incarnate thunderbolt—this monster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of conquest and glory. It was with a view to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... river wound among green swards and clumps of trees, forming a park-like scene such as might have been witnessed in England. Presently, however, the character of the country suddenly changed, and we were passing through a rocky defile, arid and waterless, while at the end could be seen a wide open country without rock or tree stretching away as far as the eye could ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Here the eye looks down on two valleys, or rather narrow defiles, filled with thick vegetation. On the right is perceived the ravine which descends between the two peaks to the farm of Munoz; on the left we see the defile of Chacaito, with its waters flowing out near the farm of Gallegos. The roaring of the cascades is heard, while the water is unseen, being concealed by thick groves of erythrina, clusia, and the Indian ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... serious, the Battle had been lost. At Breslau, Erlach [who is a Major-General, forsooth!], instead of covering the Army by seizing the Heights, marched off with his Division straight as a row of cabbages into that Defile; whereby, had it been earnest, the enemy's Cavalry would have cut down our Infantry, and the Fight ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... night was beginning to yield to the pale tints of early dawn. A bat was sounding the departure of the hours of darkness with a singular note resembling the gurgling of liquid from a narrow bottle-neck. A neighing of horses was heard far up the defile; then, with the first rays of dawn, we distinguished a sledge driven by the baron's servant; its bottom was littered with straw; on ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... piece on the horse's back, standing beside him and watching the mouth of the defile, while the others carried the injured man to the side and laid him down, the professor taking out his flask ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... Percy on it, and set off, stepping along at a brisk rate, showing that they considered him alight burden. Denis carried his gun; and Raff, to whom he had given some water, as well as an ample supply of meat, trotted after them perfectly revived. Reaching the rocks, they passed through a narrow defile, into which another smaller one opened, and at its farther extremity they came to some thick bushes, which Mangaleesu pulling aside, the mouth ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... leaving Ekaterin-Nikolskoi we entered the Buryea or Hingan mountains. This chain extends across the valley of the Amoor at nearly right angles, and the river flows through it in a single narrow defile. The mountains first reach the river on the northern bank, the Chinese shore continuing low for thirteen miles higher up. There are no islands, and the river, narrowed to about half a mile, flows with a rapid current. In some places it runs five miles an hour, and its depth is from fifty to a hundred ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... entered a narrow defile and here with difficulty the vessels were forced along against a strong current; and over the pebbly bottom, against which they were constantly striking. At Nan-gan-foo, where we arrived in the evening, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... heretics, like unto the Saracens, that ye have abolished true religion and worship and have turned to a superstition corrupt and fatal, the which in your zeal to maintain and to spread abroad there be no shame nor cruelty ye do not dare to perpetrate. You defile the sacraments of the Church, tear to pieces the articles of her faith, overthrow her temples. The images which were made for similitudes you break and throw into the fire. Finally such Christians as embrace not ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... are spent in watching, and my soul melteth away for very heaviness. O Lord, thou knowest I am willing—I am ready. Take me, stretch me on thy cross: let the wicked who delight in blood, and rob the poor, and defile the temple of their bodies, and harden themselves against thy mercy—let them wag their heads and shoot out the lip at me: let the thorns press upon my brow, and let my sweat be anguish—I desire to be made like ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... person unknown who would persist in interfering with their work. They were the louder that their suspicions fluttered about Fergus, who was rather overbearing with them, and therefore not a favourite. He was in reality not at all a likely person to bend back or defile hands over such labour, and their pitching upon him for the object of their suspicion, showed how much at a loss they were. Their only ground for suspecting him, beyond the fact that there was no other whom by any violence ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... that had he loved her, he must have yielded. No man who cared could have refused her, and the scourge of wounded pride drove her into that outer darkness where bitterness and "proper self-respect" defile the face of Love. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... I do not reject thee in any wise: I only reject myself. Belasez, long years ago, Licorice thy mother did me a cruel wrong. If I baptise thee, I shall feel it to be my revenge on her. And I have no right thus to defile the snow-white robe of thy baptism because my hands are not clean, nor to mingle the revenge of earth with the innocence of ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... reason why the great world is perishable, is this, that the Spirit of God hath not his dwelling or habitation in the great world, but in the little world; for Man is the Temple of the Holy Ghost, if he do not wilfully defile himself, adhering to the Hellish Fire, which makes a breach and difference. For he remaines in the little world, which he formed after his own similitude, and made him a consecrated Temple; otherwise there is every thing in the little world which is to be found in the great, as Heaven and Earth ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... usual by Hamed's kirangozi. We had barely gone a mile before I perceived that we had left the Simbo road, had taken the direction of Kiti, and, by a cunning detour, were now fast approaching the defile of the mountain ridge before us, which admitted access to the higher plateau of Kiwyeh. Instantly halting my caravan, I summoned the veteran who had travelled by Kiti, and asked him whether we were not going towards Kiwyeh. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... gentleman say 'Go On?' Does any man who has a wife and sisters, or children at home, say 'Go on' to such disgusting ribaldry as this? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the King's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heap. It was a foliated jester's cap, with a bell hanging from every point, which gave out a tinkling sound as I picked it up. I let it fall again as though it had scorched me, the memory of what stood between Madonna Paola and me rising like a warning spectre in my mind. I would not again defile myself by the garb of folly; not again would I incur the shame of playing the Fool for the amusement ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Depuis ce defile jusqu'a Acre les montagnes sont peu elevees, et l'on y voit beaucoup d'habitations qui, pour la plupart, sont remplies d'Arabes. Pres de la ville je rencontrai un grand seigneur du pays nomme Fancardin. Il campoit en plein champ, et portoit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... attacked by the regiment which had just escaped from the field of battle. They had been ordered by some superior officer on the ground to attack the major's command; and the regiment had rushed into the narrow defile, where only a portion of it could be brought into action. The sharpshooters were rapidly reducing the numbers at the head of the column, though the ranks were immediately filled up by ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the bridal hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record the long strife between Serpent and Seraph:—How still the Father of Lies insinuated evil into good, pride into wisdom, grossness into glory, pain into bliss, poison into passion? How ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Wigtownshire. To these I shall add a verbatim account extracted from the journal of the late John Berthier Heatherstone, of the events which occurred in the Thul Valley in the autumn of '41 towards the end of the first Afghan War, with a description of the skirmish in the Terada defile, and of the death ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... late at night by the light of the moon. Hidvar was now close at hand. As the prospect opened out on both sides, at the turn of a narrow defile, suddenly, like a picture in a black frame, between two mountain slopes, thickly covered with dark beech-trees, the castle of Hidvar came full in view, standing lonely and isolated on the summit of ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai |
