"Flit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cardo in bewilderment, as he saw through the doorway the graceful white figure flit up the narrow stairs. "Uncle John! Can that be Captain Powell? Of course, old Essec's brother, no doubt. I have ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... flows it forms a little oasis upon the barren slope. Along the course of the streams are little patches of green grass, flowers, and bushes. Birds flit about, and there are tracks of small animals in the mud. Evidently the water is as great an attraction to them as it is to us. If a well were dug in the plateau above, we can understand now how deep it would have to be in order to reach ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... face thy name is inscribed in the convulsions of death, and will be registered by the destroying angel! May a form like this draw thy curtain when thou sleepest, and grasp thee with its clay-cold hand! May a form like this flit before thy soul when thou diest, and drive away thy expiring prayer for mercy! May a form like this stand by thy grave at the resurrection, and before the throne of God when he pronounces thy doom! (He faints, the servants receive him ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he said, "so we must even flit hence to the mainland and wait until Harald is tired of seeking us. It is in my mind that he seeks not so much for revenge as for payment of scatt from our islands. Now he has a reason for taking it by force. He will seek to fine us, and ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... great Lake itself. Every moment of this portion of the ride is a delight. The senses are kept keenly alert, for not only have we the Lake, the bay and the mountains, but part of the way we have flowers and shrubs by the thousands, bees and butterflies flit to and fro, and singing streams come foaming white from the snowbanks above, eager to reach the Lake. As our car-wheels dash across these streamlets they splash up the water on each side into sparkling diamonds and on every hand come up the sweet scents ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... quite a common thing to see 10,000 or 15,000 spectators. I have heard of such people as those who actually hate cricket and football, and make it a constant aim to prevent those over whom they have some influence from engaging in the manly sport. They occasionally flit across one's path like an evil spirit, and disappear as rapidly, but leave behind a chilling effect on the imagination, far more intense than the terrible nightmare after a disastrous defeat. They cannot see the fun of spending valuable time in such ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... the house of the Lord.' He knew what he was saying when he preferred his humble office to all honours among the godless. He was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the Temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. No doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. No doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have heard and understood the great charter of spiritual ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... groaned. Then I got up and went out. I had forgotten "Little Frank" and hoped that she had. If she was to flit about Europe seeing "Little Frank" on every corner I foresaw trouble. "Little Frank" was likely to be the ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Young looked back at the hut. It was dark. He saw three boats flit silently by him toward the city, as if phantoms guided them. They crossed the moonbeams, and Young lost them in the dark shadows near ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... triumphant way,—where privately they are not very welcome, though one puts the best face on it, and a dinner of importance is the first thing imperative to be set in progress. A flurried Court, that of Gotha, and much swashing of French plumes through it, all this morning, since Seidlitz had to flit. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... way of a treat, I would offer him, whenever I could get it, a locust, or large grasshopper. His way of accepting this was unique and pretty. He would look surprised, stare, curtsey once or twice, stare again and then, suddenly, noiselessly and as lightly as a fairy, flit across the cage and, without alighting, pluck the insect from my fingers with both his feet and return ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... might be the case, with a score of red men prowling near at hand. They would flit hither and thither like so many phantoms, and all the acuteness the Pawnee possessed was needed to elude the traps they were likely to set for his feet. He seemed to believe he was alone, and, resuming his noiseless advance, he did not stop until the listening ear detected the soft ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... costume was sufficiently discreet in sleeves—they came almost to the elbow, but the bodice allowed so liberal a view of neck and shoulders as to cover the wearer with confusion. She felt exactly as you feel in a dream when you flit down the aisle of a crowded car in your night clothes, or inadvertently remove most of your garments in a pew in church, and with Deena self-consciousness always took the form ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... every fawn and satyr flies For willing service; whether to surprise The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit; Or upward ragged precipices flit To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewildered shepherds to their path again; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, 270 And gather up all fancifullest shells ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... feelings might have identified him with all. In a word, we apprehend he was a tolerably fair example of what vague generalities, when acting on a temperament not indisposed to moral impressions, render the great majority of men; who flit around the mysteries of a future state, without alighting either on the consolations of faith, or discovering any of those logical conclusions which, half the time unconsciously to themselves, they seem to expect. When Bluewater made his last remark, therefore, the vice-admiral looked anxiously ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "You may assume as much." In despair for a hint the decorator steals a look at a photograph of the miss, full-lipped, melting dark eyes, and blue-black hair. Sensing an houri he hangs the walls with a deep shade of Persian orange, over which flit tropical birds of emerald and azure; strange pomegranates bleed their seeds at regular intervals. The couch is an adaptation, in colour, of the celebrated Sumurun bed. The dressing table and the chaise-longue are of Chinese lacquer. A heavy bronze incense burner ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the stars, perfect in their form and alive with heavenly instincts, which complete with wondrous speed their rapid courses. Wherefore, my son, by you and by all just men that soul must be retained within its body's confines, nor can it be allowed to flit without command of him by whom it has been given to you. You may not escape the duty which God has trusted to you. Live, my Scipio, and shine with piety and justice, as your grandfather did and I have done. It is your duty to your parents and to your relatives, but ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... commonly the poets, creating for themselves an ideal of motion, fasten upon the charm of a boat. They do not usually express any desire for wings, or, if they do, it is only in some vague and half-unintended phrase, such as "flit or soar," involving wingedness. Seriously, they are evidently content to let the wings belong to Horse, or Muse, or Angel, rather than to themselves; but they all, somehow or other, express an honest wish for a Spiritual Boat. ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white—then melt forever; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm.— Nae man can tether time or tide; The hour approaches Tam maun ride; That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane, That dreary hour he mounts his ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... the distorted fancies that flit through the mind of one who is at college and lives as I do in an atmosphere of ideas, conceptions and half-thoughts, half-feelings which tumble and jostle each other until one is almost crazy. I rarely have dreams that are not in keeping with what I really think ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... dressing very carefully. She is a tall, imposing, handsome, languid woman, with flashing dark eyes and long lashes. They make for the chesterfield, not noticing the two palpitating figures blotted against the walls in the gloom on either side. The figures flit away noiselessly through the window ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... was at length relieved; a rude folding-door opened opposite, and showed a low dim sitting-room beyond, from which there rose a few steps to the entrance of my chamber. On these appeared, not, alas! the fancied visitant who was to flit about my bedside, and mix her bright presence with my dreams, but stately and severe, with a pale cheek and compressed ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... earth. On other evenings, sitting inside with lighted candles and wide opened doors, great bats flap inside, make a round of the apartment, and pass out again, whilst iris-winged moths, attracted by the light, flit about the ceiling, or long-horned beetles flop down on the table. In this way I made my first acquaintance with many entomological rarities.* (* In moths, numerous fine Sphingidae and Bombycidae; and in beetles, amongst many others, the rare Xestia nitida (Bates) and Hexoplon albipenne ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Schuyler, standing still, saw her slim figure flit across a strip of frost-bleached sod as the moon ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... nightingale doth shake His feathers, and the air is full of song; In those old days when I was young and strong, He used to sing on yonder garden tree, Beside the nursery. Ah, I remember how I loved to wake, And find him singing on the self-same bough (I know it even now) Where, since the flit of bat, In ceaseless voice he sat, Trying the spring night over, like a tune, Beneath the vernal moon; And while I listed long, Day rose, and still he sang, And all his stanchless song, As something falling unaware, Fell out of the tall trees he sang among, Fell ringing down the ringing ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... spoke he saw a strange expression flit across her face. The next instant she rose and going across to her husband's chair stood looking down upon him ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... guessing what thy sickness can be, nor will he scold thee at all, but he will rather beg every one to take all the care they can of thee. After that he will set off west to the Firths, and Sigmund with him, for he will have to flit all his goods home from the Firths west, and he will be away till the summer is far spent. But when men ride to the Thing, and after all have ridden from the Dales that mean to ride thither, then thou must rise from ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... flit over one's mind in looking at any phase of work, or any piece of work. In the right choice of work lies the fullest use of one's capacities; in the right conditions of work lies the freest play of one's energies; in the right spirit ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... world at midsummer only makes my loneliness more keen. The butterflies flit through the meadows like wandering souls of last year's flowers that died and were buried by the snow. The harvest moon, red-gold and wonderful, will rise slowly up out of the sea. The path of light will lie on the still waters and widen into a vast arc at the line of the shore. Cobwebs will ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... with the appalling and incessant waste of these benefits that goes on; with the number of men of Newtonian capacity who are undoubtedly born into the world only to chronicle small beer; with the hosts of high and worthy souls who labour and flit away like shadows, perishing in the accomplishment of minor and subordinate ends. We may suspect that the notion of all this immeasurable profusion of priceless treasures, its position as one of the laws of the condition of man on the globe, would be unspeakably ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... heart; in want of a wife mayhap; a man that can earn his own bread and another's;—half a dozen others' when the half dozen come? Would not that be a good sort of lodger? Such a question as that too did flit, just flit, across the widow's sleepless mind. But then she thought so much more of the wolf! Wolves, she had taught herself to think, were more common than stalwart, honest-minded, ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... screen, and with a hurried movement of alarm she darts away. In a moment the male, with a tuft of wool in his beak (for there is a sheep pasture near), joins her, and the two reconnoitre the premises from the surrounding bushes. With their beaks still loaded, they flit round with a frightened look, and refuse to approach the nest till I have moved off and lain down behind a log. Then one of them ventures to alight upon the nest, but, still suspecting all is not right, quickly darts away again. Then they both ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... hillside.[873] Certainly witches are constantly thought to ride through the air on broomsticks or other equally convenient vehicles; and if they do so, how can you get at them so effectually as by hurling lighted missiles, whether discs, torches, or besoms, after them as they flit past overhead in the gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes that witches ride in the dark hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring down the hags, while he curses them, saying, "Curse, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... window. One pane of the stained glass was open, to throw light upon the half-finished sketch and the box of colours, while the rest of the perfumed apartment was steeped in a soft subdued glow. Absorbed in his work he seemed not to have heard the carriage stop, the bell ring twice, and a lady's dress flit along the passage. He had: but it was not his mother's shabby black dress that he expected, it was not for her that he posed at his desk, nor for her that he had provided the delicate bouquets of fine irises and tulips, or the sweetmeats and elegant ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... as the lovers of whom M. Anatole France has written (La Messe des Morts). Above the witches' lake come shadows of the women who suffered under Knox and the Bastard of Scotland, poor creatures burned to ashes with none to help or pity. The shades of Dominicans flit by the Black Friars wall—verily the place is haunted, and among Murray's pleasures was this of pacing alone, by night, in that airy press and throng of those who lived and loved and ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... he!" said my uncle Jervas, viewing me languidly through his quizzing-glass. "How confoundedly the years flit! Nineteen—and on me soul, our poor youth looks as if he hadn't a single gentlemanly ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... course, the indigenous birds of a country that emphasise its foreignness far more than its people. People can travel. Turbaned heads are, for example, not unknown in England; but to have green parrots with long tails flitting among the trees, as they used to flit in my host's garden in Bombay, is to be in India beyond question. At Raisina we had mynahs and the babblers, or "Seven Sisters," in great profusion, and also the King Crow with his imposing tail; while the little striped squirrels were everywhere. These ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... was most as light as day, and I saw as plain as could be something flit in at the stable door. 'Twasn't so big as a man, nor so small as a boy, and its head was white. So then I thought, 'Surely 'tis the brownie, for night's his working time,' and I'd half a mind to take ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... shalt thou have thy will, for thou hast wrought thyself into something better than thou wert." So Illugi rode hastily from home, and bought for Gunnlaug half a ship which lay in Gufaros, from Audun Festargram—this Audun was he who would not flit abroad the sons of Oswif the Wise, after the slaying of Kiartan Olafson, as is told in the story of the Laxdalemen, which thing though betid later than this.—And when Illugi came home, ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... beauty, of Anderssen, McDonnell's jokes and after dinner speeches, Boden's recollections, Pickwickian and other quotations, and in fact little incidents relative to most of the celebrated chess players, constantly flit through the memory in social chat, which invariably seem to entertain chess listeners whom a minute's conversation about the history, science, or theory of the game would utterly fail ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... lost. It brings in an amiable person, who is fairer than the children of men, who is all love, and hath no spot in him. Is it not a sweet word, a Redeemer to captives, a Saviour to sinners? And will not the soul rise up, and go forth out of itself? And will it not choose to flit(480) unto him who is the desire of all nations? Will it not go unto him for food and clothing? Love then is the soul's journey and motion towards Jesus, whom faith hath brought in such a ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... As that abundant gush of wine from Heaven Loosens the dreary grasp of Cares which coil Round the lone heart like serpents,—the sweet toil Of draining the dear dream-cup thou hast given Is unto me,—and thoughts which long have striven With joyousness, flit far away the while My lips are prest to it. By the fire-light, Or in full gaze of sun-set, when the choirs Of winged minstrels, waking out of light, Ring requiem meet to those departing fires— Let me be with thee then—forgetting ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... cross the glade To take his nurse his broken toy; Sometimes a thrush flit overhead Deep in her unknown ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... screen; Nor me thy gifts shall wile to let thee pass Scatheless from war, as once did Tydeus' son. Though thou didst 'scape his fury, will not I Suffer thee to return alive from war. Ha, in thy many helpers dost thou trust Who with thee, like so many worthless flies, Flit round the noble Achilles' corpse? To these Death and black doom shall my ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Conscious of horror huge as heaven, and knew Where Goneril's soul made chill and foul the mist, And all the leprous life in Regan hissed. Fierce homeless ghosts, rejected of the pit, From hell to hell of storm fear watched them flit. About them and before, the dull grey gloom Shuddered, and heaven seemed hateful as the tomb That shrinks from resurrection; and from out That sullen hell which girt their shades about The nether soul that lurks and lowers within Man, made ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... those green slopes of shadowy grass. The nightingale sings now, and now is hushed again. Streams murmur through the darkness, where the growth of trees, heavy with honeysuckle and wild rose, is thickest. Fireflies begin to flit above the growing corn. At last the plain is reached, and all the skies are tremulous with starlight. Alas, that we should vibrate so obscurely to these harmonies of earth and heaven! The inner finer sense of them seems somehow ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... little Cinderellas don't get half a chance with life, the stolid ones do better. But she could hold an audience with that story, if she was not afraid of the audience," smiling a little, "and the lovely expressions that flit over her face! She is not the ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... plainly. One, riding furiously a few lengths ahead of the foremost, he guessed was Clavering, and he fancied he recognized the Sheriff in another; but he could not discern Torrance anywhere. He turned his eyes ahead and watched the bluff rise higher, though the white levels seemed to flit back to him with an exasperating slowness. Beyond it a faint grey smear rose towards the blue; but the jaded horse demanded most of his attention, for the sod was slippery here and there where the snow had lain in a hollow, and the beast stumbled ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... effective, and the practical musician, as well as the student of aesthetics, will do well to examine by what means these various effects are produced. In the second nocturne, F sharp major, the brightness and warmth of the world without have penetrated into the world within. The fioriture flit about as lightly as gossamer threads. The sweetly-sad longing of the first section becomes more disquieting in the doppio movimento, but the beneficial influence of the sun never quite loses its power, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Lordship the bow, and we pushed off. The boatman, a big, husky fellow, had been rowing a long hour when we put into a cove under the high shore of an island. I could see a moving glow back in the bushes. It swung slowly, like a pendulum of light, with a mighty flit and tumble of shadows. We tied our boat, climbed the shore, and made slowly for the light. Nearing it, his Lordship whistled twice, and got answer. The lantern was now still; it lighted the side of a soldier in high boots; and suddenly I saw it was D'ri. I caught his hand, raising ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... "sauced" her landlady, found it wise to change her quarters. She had taken a room in an apartment house two blocks removed from her former home, and Win, not being able to afford a "flit," remained at the old address. At first, when her pay was increased by two dollars a week, she had intended to save and follow Sadie. One had, however, to live mostly on ice-cream soda in the hot weather, which cost money. Besides, even had ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... dashed down upon him and the wind hustled him, Huldbrand grew bewildered. The storm seemed to have changed the peaceful meadows into a weary wilderness, and even the maiden herself seemed to flit before him as a phantom spirit ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... a fine warm day in June. Out of the town the air is soft and pure. Bird and bee flit from tree to tree, from blue-bell to rose, till at sun-set they hie away to nest ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... is not a road To bring you near the skies Where you can sit and gather clouds That flit before your eyes, Or jump upon a golden fleece And sail to paradise— But it is a super-mountain road Where you can feast your eyes Upon the beauties of the world The Lord God gave to man For his enjoyment and his use; Improve it if you can. The builders of ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... go by perpetual motion is perpetual nonsense. Multitudes of boys and men have wasted much valuable time in trying to find it, but they never can, as it is contrary to natural laws, and therefore impossible; but one certainty of the future is, that a million useful flying machines will flit hither and thither; and one certainty of the present is, that while Cole's Book Arcade contains 80,000 sorts of books, not a single person has yet been able to come to it for a supply in a flying machine.—Laggard inventors, think of this! N.B.—Cole ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... her face as she spoke, but he had seen a little tremulous smile flit over her features, and she could not hide her dimple. What could she mean? Was he fooling himself—dreaming? The next moment he had dropped on one knee beside her, and was begging her, with tears in his ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... her, and then, on their side, strove to be heroic. But the minutes crept by, and it seemed as if the cold gust had slowly passed away. Sometimes, at the twilight hour, a night-bird will come in by the window like some messenger of misfortune, flit round the darkened room, and then fly off again, carrying its sadness with it. And it was much like that; the gust passed, the basilica remained standing, the earth did not open to swallow it. Little by ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a butterfly, With gorgeous wings of golden sheen, Flit lightly 'neath a sapphire sky Amid ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... that flit and sway, And mass, and scatter in the breeze, And meet and part, open and close; Thou sister of the clouds and trees, Thou daintier phantom of the rose, Thou nun of the hot and ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... armoury be secretly unlocked, should the crones have dozed by the palisade and the weapons find their way unseen into the village, revolution would be nearly certain, death the most probable result, and the spirit of the tyrant of Apemama flit to rejoin his predecessors of Mariki and Tapituea. Yet those whom he so trusts are all women, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him as I could and peered at him through my binocular, while he returned the compliment by peering at me, and then warily ventured to rehearse his little tune. The least movement on my part would startle him, cause him to flit to another perch and crane out his neck to glare at me questioningly with wild, dilated eyes, uncertain whether I was to be trusted or not. Both of us presently grew tired of our strained position, and so I walked ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... closer, and gave the doctor to understand she knew they came from Hanover; she now even endured her mother's caresses, but would leave her with indifference at the slightest signal. After a while, on the mother taking hold of her again, a vague idea seemed to flit across Laura's mind that this could not be a stranger; she therefore felt of her hands very eagerly, while her countenance assumed an expression of intense interest; she became very pale, and then suddenly red; hope seemed struggling with doubt and anxiety, and never were contending emotions ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... they shall still succeed, And still are disappointed: rings the world With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind, And add two-thirds of the remaining half, And find the total of their hopes and fears Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay As if created only, like the fly That spreads his motley wings in the eye of noon, To sport their season and be seen no more. The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise, And pregnant with discoveries new and rare. Some write a narrative of wars, and feats Of heroes little known, and call ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of poesy!" rejoined Sah-luma complacently.. "It makes the hours flit like moments, and long days seemed but short hours! ... Nevertheless 'tis time we were within doors and at supper,—for if we start not soon for the Temple, 'twill be difficult to gain an entrance, and I, at any rate, must be early in my place ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... evil spirits did flit about the banished Sintram, but it was without his calling them up. In his dreams he often saw the wicked enchantress Venus, in her golden chariot drawn by winged cats, pass over the battlements of the stone fortress, and heard her say, mocking him, "Foolish Sintram, ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... saw the figure of a man flit, by him. The stranger was dressed in citizen's clothes. There was nothing suspicions in that, since there is no law to prevent citizens from visiting the Military Academy. But there was something stealthy about ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... practice. For the rest, I am sure that Mr. Brummell was no lackey, as they have suggested. He wished merely to be seen by those who were best qualified to appreciate the splendour of his achievements. Shall not the painter show his work in galleries, the poet flit down Paternoster Row? Of rank, for its own sake, Mr. Brummell had no love. He patronised all his patrons. Even to the Regent his attitude was always that of a master in an art to one who is sincerely willing and anxious to ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... generation. Living in all of them, especially the ages just ahead, and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins, may be well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it, but in the meantime all the while we are living in this one. The faces of the people we know flit past us; the gaunt, grim face of the crowd haunts us—the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon and drop into the Darkness—a whole generation of it, without seeing how things are coming out; and there is something about the streets, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... those are special cases, Hermes. I do not go on my own feet on those occasions, and it is not Zeus who sends me, but Pluto, who has his own ways of conferring wealth and making presents; Pluto and Plutus are not unconnected, you see. When I am to flit from one house to another, they lay me on parchment, seal me up carefully, make a parcel of me and take me round. The dead man lies in some dark corner, shrouded from the knees upward in an old sheet, with the cats fighting for possession of him, while those ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of the honeysuckle lies motionless upon my study floor, as if it were a figure in the carpet; and through the open window comes the fragrance of the wild-brier and the mock-orange. The birds are carolling in the trees, and their shadows flit across the window as they dart to and fro in the sunshine; while the murmur of the bee, the cooing of doves from the eaves, and the whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in the honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy to meet ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... hearts. Geneva, that godly Calvinist city, was a poor hunting-ground on the whole for them. But they turned their steps to the old cit, rightly believing that among those ancient and narrow streets vice might, if anywhere, flit by night. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... "Ye scenes, that flit my memory o'er, Deck'd in the smiles which then ye wore, In the same gay and varied dress, I cannot but admire and bless! What though some anxious throbs would beat, Some fears within my breast retreat, Yet then I found sincere delight, Whenever ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... line mentioned by W. T. M. is "Flits by the sea-blue bird of March," instead of "blue sea-bird." This reading appears to be a better one. I would suggest that the bird meant by Tennyson was the Tom-tit, who, from his restlessness, may be said to flit among ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... in his life's work, and he has stood the test. Many young fellows of his age would have abused their opportunities. He has not done so. My only disappointment has been that he has developed no definite taste, but has been content to flit from one fancy to the next, always carried away by the latest novelty on ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... And where there is love it is reciprocated. That is the way of the world. I am only surprised that he didn't take a vacation and flit over here. When one has such a ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... progress, only when the brakeman with measured tone shouts the name of the station; he looks up from his paper or rouses from his doze, looks out at the cheerless prospect, and then settles himself for another thirty miles. Time passes as unobserved as the meadows or bushy pastures that flit by the jarring window at his ear. But with Greenleaf, the reader will believe, the case was far different. He had never noticed before how slowly the locomotives really moved. At each station where wood and water were to be taken, it seemed to him the delay was interminable. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the giant-mother, 'which thou beholdest to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep on, equally ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... I want you to do it," he said, "because with you there will be no particular danger even if you are caught. You will know how to get yourself out of it better than one of these poor farm laborers. Flies get caught in a cobweb, but wasps flit straight through them. But what kind of a crime is it anyway to protect your own property against monsters that eat it up and ruin it?" he cried, the laugh on his face suddenly changing into an expression of the most fervent anger. The veins in his brow swelled up, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... a covert glance from the corner of her sparkling eyes. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she decided calmly. "I always have. When fresh drummers begin to talk private dining-room and cold bottles, I spread my little wings and flit." ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the sunny, dusty village street—who would have thought, a month ago, that we should complain of sun and dust again!—and turn the corner where the two great oaks hang so beautifully over the clear deep pond, mixing their cool green shadows with the bright blue sky, and the white clouds that flit over it; and loiter at the wheeler's shop, always picturesque, with its tools, and its work, and its materials, all so various in form, and so harmonious in colour; and its noise, merry workmen, hammering and singing, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... we have done. If any faint remembrance, as of a dream, flit in some puzzled moment across your brain, and you shall feel that the potion which is to be given you shall not have done its work, and the memory of this existence which you are leaving endeavours vainly to return; we say in such a moment, when you clutch at the dream but it eludes ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... and the rat-mole (Spalax). The jerboa has very long hind legs, and a habit of jumping, so that it resembles superficially (but not really) a small kangaroo. The Spalax is quite blind, and has the burrowing habit, and somewhat the shape of the common mole. Some rodents are fitted to flit through the air in long jumps, by means of the wide extensibility of the skin of their flanks, which, when stretched out, acts as a parachute. Such forms are the flying squirrels, and a curious rodent called Anomalurus, from the exceptional clothing ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... shines out, the weather grows warm and pleasant; flowers spring up, great trees cast a friendly shade, streams murmur cheerfully over their pebbly beds, jewelled fruits are to be had for the trouble of gathering them; invisible hands set out well-covered dinner-tables, brilliant and graceful forms flit in and out across our path, and we all at once find ourselves in the midst of a company of dear old friends whom we have known and loved ever since we knew anything. There is Fortunatus with his magic purse, and the square of carpet that carries him anywhere; and Aladdin with his ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... of intellect: it is like the calm in the whirlwind's centre, where the waves run higher though the air is deadly still, and the surly mariner wishes the mad wind back again.—To and fro you flit, goaded on and strengthened by untiring anguish. You are but the body of a man; your thought and emotion are abroad, haunting ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... happy moths that now flit and hover From the blossom of white to the blossom of red, Take heed, for I was a lordly lover Till the little day of my life had sped; As straight as a pine-tree, a golden head, And eyes as blue as an austral bay. Ladies, when loosing ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... come to quote Tennyson to her; Dr. Maryland's shy, distant homage was more comical yet; and the tender little mouth began to find out its lines and dimples and power of concealment. But the young heart had a good share of timidity, and that stirred very often; making the colour flit to and fro 'like the rosy light upon the sky'— Mr. Kingsland originally observed; while Dr. Maryland looked at the evening star and was silent. Compliments!—how they rained down upon her; how gayly she shook them ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... it might have to be, at times," Garlock said. "But that's a very minor point. With yours so nearly ready to flit, no change in size is indicated now. But Belle and I have got to have another conference with the legal eagle. So if you and Brownie, Jim, will 'port whatever you need out of the Pleiades, we'll be ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... imagination, narrow perceptions and limited knowledge, that he would see strange sights and hear strange sounds. Images and visions which have been portrayed in tales of romance and given interest to the pages of poetry were made by him to throng the woods, flit through the air and hover over the heads of terrified officials, whose learning should have placed them beyond the bounds of superstition. The ghosts of murdered wives, husbands and children played their part with a vividness of representation and artistic skill of expression hardly ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... through our own open door I saw Felicity's white-clad figure flit down the stairs to Aunt Janet's room. From the room she had left ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... immaculata. Among others are the anagrammatic answer to Pilate's question, "Quid est veritas''—namely, "Est vir qui adest''; and the transposition of "Horatio Nelson'' into "Honor est a Nilo''; and of "Florence Nightingale'' into "Flit on, cheering angel.'' James I.'s courtiers discovered in "James Stuart'' "A just master,'' and converted "Charles James Stuart'' into "Claimes Arthur's seat.'' "Eleanor Audeley,'' wife of Sir John Davies, is said to have been ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... others, however, which repose by day, stand erect, and expand themselves in the stillness of night. But few flowers are open; only those of the sweet-scented Paullinia greet me with a balmy fragrance, and thine, lofty mango, the dark shade of whose leafy crown shields me from the dews of night. Moths flit, ghost-like, round the seductive light of my lantern. The meadows, ever breathing freshness, are now saturated with dew, and I feel the damp of the night air on my heated limbs. A Cicada, a fellow-lodger in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... that it carry off all our regard from its elder sister, the drama. In the novel every thing passes by in dizzy rapidity; we are whirled along over hill and valley, through the grandeur and the filth of cities, and a thousand noble and a thousand grotesque objects flit over our field of vision. In the drama, it is true, we often toil on, slow as a tired pedestrian; but then how often do we sit down, as at the foot of some mountain, and fill our eyes and our hearts with the prospect before us? How gay is the first!—even when terrible, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... thought so,' said Djama, half closing his eyes and allowing just the ghost of a smile to flit across his lips. 'I thought I knew enough about archaeology and the science of mummies in general to expect you to say that. Now, just for the gratification of my own vanity, I should like to try and anticipate what you are going to say; ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... flit in the soft sunlight and spiders run over tree trunks while their single shining lines of silk ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... confectionery, and articles rejected by the Society of Decorative Art. I hope it will be a success, and help many worthy women, all over the land, to help themselves.... I find it hard to consent to your having, at your age, to flit about from home to home, but a loving Father has a mansion for you beyond all the changes and chances of this strange complicated life. If He gives you His presence, that will be a home. I wish you ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I, And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... the green woods were but a few steps away, with flowers blooming and rich mosses growing all around. They constantly longed to be free, if only for a few moments, to wander at will and make playhouses in the dusky shade, 20 to climb upon the great logs and watch the gay-winged birds flit about ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... learning that some of the members of the New York orchestra were in indigent circumstances, she generously made them a substantial gift. Her beneficent actions during her entire stay in America are too numerous to detail. Frequently would she flit away from her house quietly, as if about to pay a visit, and then she might be seen disappearing down back lanes or into the cottages of the poor. She was warned to avoid so much liberality, as many unworthy persons took unfair advantage of her bounty; but she invariably replied, ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... on his. She had seen a curious expression of mingled annoyance and contempt flit across his face as she came in. Why, why had she allowed Julian to over-persuade her? She was looking horrible, a scarecrow, a ghost of a woman. She was certain of it. For a moment she felt almost angry with Julian for placing her in such a bitter position. But he was glowing with a consciousness ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... bereavement which wails through Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' or Cowley's 'Ode on the Death of Mr. Hervey'. Much, especially in the earlier stanzas, is common form. The Muse Urania is summoned to lament, and a host of personified abstractions flit before us, "like pageantry of ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... have them come and feed, And sing and flit about; Yet not where we have dropped the seed, To ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... her aunt with wonder which savored of horror, but she heard the door close and saw Lily flit back across the yard with a feeling of immeasurable relief. Then she heard her aunt's voice at her door, opened a ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to the places where I should best obtain all that I sought. Needless to say, he became my slave—never was monarch better served than I—the very waiters hustled each other in a race to attend upon me, and reports of my princely fortune, generosity, and lavish expenditure, began to flit from mouth to month—which was the result I ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... athwart the clear blue sky. The dust and foulness which the night has hidden stand revealed. But in the forests and hills the pulses of nature beat fresh and full; the leopard and the tiger slink away; the gay flowers open; the birds flit to and fro, and with woodland music welcome the rising day. In the city all forms of life quicken into active exercise. The trader sits ready on his stall; the judge is on the bench; the physician allays pain; ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... given case, or with reference to the policy of the department, "where we were at." I do not mean talk for publication. It is a common mistake of people who know nothing about the newspaper profession that reporters flit about public men like so many hawks, seizing upon what they can find to publish as their lawful prey. No doubt there are such guerrillas, and they have occasionally more than justified their existence; ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Does the woodpecker flit round the young ferash? Does grass clothe a new-built wall? Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... other, heartily, as he eyed the boy; and perhaps a dim suspicion that he might find the fugitive valuable as a guide began to flit through ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... the great lateen swinging lazily under the pressure of those light airs that flit to and fro over the islands at evening and sunrise. All the arts of civilization have as yet failed to approach the easiest of all modes of progression and conveyance—sailing on a light breeze. For here is speed without friction, passage through the air without opposition, for it ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Derek watched her flit down the aisle, saw her jump up the little ladder onto the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance. He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The thing seemed ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... or haunted only by those whose business—whether for good or evil—forced them out of doors, he met no one and saw no lights. The man's mind was evidently filled with pleasant thoughts, for ever and anon a smile would flit across his face, as though he dwelt upon the surprised look of his daughter when she would behold him. These agreeable anticipations, which had taken the place for the moment of the sterner purposes which ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... letter. Here there are lots of funny little lizards that run about in the dusty roads very fast, and then stand still with their heads up. Beautiful red cardinal birds and tanagers flit about in the woods, and the flowers are lovely. But you never saw such dust. Sometimes I lie on the ground outside and sometimes in the tent. I have a mosquito net because there are so ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... or given warning, on account of the governesses, than from any other cause. In the drawing-room they are a check upon conversation; in the school-room, if they do their duty, they are the cause of discontent, pouting and tears; like the bat, they are neither bird nor beast, and they flit about the house like ill-omens; they lose the light-heartedness and spring of youth; become sour from continual vexation and annoyance, and their lives are miserable, tedious, and full of repining. I tell ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... misfortunes like its own; among whom it was its hard fate frequently to suffer imposition, from assumed worth and fictitious distress. Beings of supposed benevolence, capable of perceiving, loving, and promoting merit and virtue, have now and then seemed to flit and glide before it. But the visions were deceitful. Ere they were distinctly seen, the phantoms vanished. Or, if such beings do exist, it has experienced the peculiar hardship of never having met with any, in whom both the purpose and the power were fully united. Therefore, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... done honestly by, even if she is of humble station. 'Tis best, and cheapest too, in the long run.' The coachman was apparently imagining the dove about to flit away to be one of the pretty maid-servants that abounded in Enckworth Court; such escapades as these were not unfrequent among them, a fair face having been deemed a sufficient recommendation to service in that house, without ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... do not encourage the motorist, and are impassable for heavy lorries. So incredible weights and bundles are moved on hand-barrows; and bales of goods and stacks of produce are punted down the dark waterways which give to parts of Tokyo a Venetian picturesqueness. Passengers, too proud to walk, flit past noiselessly in rubber-tyred rickshaws—which are not, as many believe, an ancient and typical Oriental conveyance, but the modern invention of an English missionary called Robinson. The hum of the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... ranged in the same class, because they are, in many respects, very similar in their appearance; but bats, papa, seem so extremely different. They are a great deal more like birds than man. They have wings, you know, and flit ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... The blessed One, made perfect? Why, by grief— The fellowship of voluntary grief— He read the tear-stained book of poor men's souls, As we must learn to read it. Lady! lady! Wear but one robe the less—forego one meal— And thou shalt taste the core of many tales, Which now flit past thee, like a minstrel's songs, The ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... maliciously, "pardon me if I caution you. Yet in truth if veiled ladies flit thus through your apartments in the light of day, it will reach the ears of the holy but violent Issachar, of whose doings I come to speak. Then, Prince, I tremble ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... she had made up her mind that she would be the Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her favours—after a period of coquetry and coy reluctance—were at his disposal; but the price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring—nothing less. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... horses had slowed down to a walk, the heavy sand retarding progress. It was a gloomy, depressing scene in the spectral gray light, a wide circle of intense loneliness, unbroken by either dwarfed shrub or bunch of grass, a barren expanse stretching to the sky. Vague cloud shadows seemed to flit across the level surface, assuming fantastic shapes, but all of the same dull coloring, imperfect and unfinished. Nothing seemed tangible or real, but rather some grotesque picture of delirium, ever merging into another yet more hideous. The very ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... put Shakespeare in the dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in all of the man's misdoings, he himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... blossoms Such different hues? And the waves of the sea Such a number of blues? So many soft greens Flit over the trees? And little gray shadows Fly ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... to discharge a duty in the face of his own scepticism that he had spoken thus, and he did not expect to see another shade of sadness flit across ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... neighbor, Grieg, he is never mincing and meretricious. We never find him languishing in a pretty boudoir. He is always out under the sky. It is only that he is not always free and resourceful and deeply self-critical. Even through the bold and rugged and splendid Violin Concerto there flit at moments the shadows of Beethoven and Wagner and Tchaikowsky. The first theme of the quartet "Voces intimae" resembles not a little a certain theme in "Boris." The close of "Nightride and Sunrise" is watered ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... as much for the present time, and assure posterity that there never was such a lamb as Catherine II., and that, so far from assassinating her own husband and Czar Ivan,[2] she wept over every chicken that she had for dinner. How crimes, like fashions, flit from clime to clime! Murder reigns under the Pole, while you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent cardinals to the other ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... don't see each other often," the old fairy woman had said. "You flit in like, and flit away again as if you was a butterfly, I think sometimes when I'm sitting here alone. When you come to stay you're mostly flitting about the wood and I only see you bit by bit. But I couldn't tell you, Miss, my dear, what it's ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... blue, the sun is often fiercely hot; you could not perhaps prove that the pathetic radiance is not an efflux of your own consciousness that summer is but hanging over the land, briefly poising on wings which flit at the first dash of rain, and will soon vanish in long retreat before the snow. But somehow, from without or from within, that light ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Manchester, when Nanette slept so contentedly and Henry Rayne smoked in moody silence by the fire-place in the hotel parlor. When we become interested again, it is a clear, bright day, blue and white threads of filmy loveliness flit along the sky, a soft, gentle breeze is blowing, and over the restless waves of the broad Atlantic the "Parisian" is skipping gracefully. She is nearing the port, and many are the anxious, weary faces that turn landward with a sigh upon ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... will be beautiful!" cried Patty, jumping up and dancing about the room; "but I must flit, girls,—I have an engagement at five. Wait, what about motors? I'm sure we can ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... midst of strangers, you do feel rather melancholy. You try to read, and when you are tired of chasing the words up and down the page, you look out of the window and admire the scenery as you flit past until your eyes ache to such an extent you are obliged to withdraw your gaze and be satisfied with the study of human nature, as far as it can be procured from the inmates of your compartment. Finally you go to sleep, only to wake up after a few minutes, to find the eyes of all ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... feet, nor hearing the rattle of the exploding shells. He flew rather than ran, stumbled over charred roots, fell, picked himself up again and darted onward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, almost with closed eyes. Now and then, as from a train window, he saw a pale, troubled face flit by. Once it seemed to him he heard a man moaning for water. But he wished to hear nothing, to see nothing. He ran on, blind and deaf, without stopping, driven by the terror of that bad, reproachful, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... cast. All over the camp the lights glimmer in the tents, and as I sit at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and glee. Boys laugh and shout,—a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some tent, not an officer's,—a drum throbs far away in another,—wild kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead slavemasters,—and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous sound of that strange festival, half powwow, half prayer-meeting, which they know only as a "shout." These ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... proclaiming the festival of the ensuing day. The ravine was overshadowed by fig-trees, vines, and myrtles, and the outer towers and walls of the fortress. It was dark and lonely, and the twilight-loving bats began to flit about. At length the soldier halted at a remote and ruined tower apparently intended to guard a Moorish aqueduct. He struck the foundation with the butt-end of his spear. A rumbling sound was heard, and the solid stones ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... confidently, but Virginia was put into great agitation. She began to flit about the room like a moth, wringing her hands ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... will see more than that. First, with the instinctive selfishness of human nature, you will recognize your own future habitation; perhaps your eye will mark the identical spot where the body you love must lie through all seasons and weathers, through the slow centuries that will flit so fast for you, till the crash of doom. It is good that you should think of that, although it makes you shudder. The English churchyard takes the place of the Egyptian mummy at the feast, or the slave in the Roman conqueror's ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... hears a sound of timbrels, and suddenly appear A troop of ruddy damsels and herdsmen drawing near: They reach the castle greensward, and gayly dance across; The white sleeves flit and glimmer, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... your wife ran away with a soldier that day, And took with her your trifle of money; Bless your heart, they don't mind - they're exceedingly kind - They don't blame you - as long as you're funny! It's a comfort to feel If your partner should flit, Though YOU suffer a deal, THEY don't mind it a bit - They don't blame you - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... deep; Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas, Where scent comes forth in every breeze. Thou hast not seen the rich grape grow For miles, as far as eyes can go; Thou hast not seen a summer's night When maids could sew by a worm's light; Nor the North Sea in spring send out Bright hues that like birds flit about In solid cages of white ice— Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Love-one-place. Thou hast not seen black fingers pick White cotton when the bloom is thick, Nor heard black throats in harmony; Nor hast thou sat on stones ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... Touggourt exactly know, so far as I am aware. But, alas! even Aghas are sometimes human, and play pitch and toss with magical things. As Grand Dukes who go to disport themselves in Paris sometimes hie them incognito to the "Cafe de la Sorciere," so do Aghas flit occasionally to Touggourt, and appear upon the high benches of the great dancing-house of the Ouled Nails in the outskirts of the city. And Halima was young and beautiful. Her eyes were large, and she wore a golden crown ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... which the lily blooms," he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, "to the cliffs round which the eagles flit,—what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On one side ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Bay when he returned above decks to lean on the rail, watching the shores flit by, marking with a little wonder the rapid change in temperature, the growing mildness in the air as the steamer drew farther away from the gorge-like head of Toba with its aerial ice fields and snowy slopes. Twenty miles below Salmon Bay the island-dotted area of the Gulf ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the single figures melt into the dusk, until only an obscure stir and coming and going of black clusters is visible upon the loch. A little longer, and the first torch is kindled and begins to flit rapidly across the ice in a ring of yellow reflection, and this is followed by another and another, until the whole field is full ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forward a few feet, then his mouth flew open, but no sound came out. Had he seen a white streak flit across the snow? He had. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... 156). This careful and conscientious recognition of the duty of having ordered opinions, and of responsibility for these opinions being both as true and as consistent with one another as taking pains with his mind could make them, distinguished Mr. Mill from the men who flit aimlessly from doctrine to doctrine, as the flies of a summer day dart from point to point in the vacuous air. It distinguished him also from those sensitive spirits who fling themselves down from the heights of rationalism suddenly into the pit ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... 'Tis said, an operator of the first class can always procure work, but there are times when even the best of them are on their uppers. For instance, when winter's chill blasts sweep across the hills and dales of the north, like swarms of swallows, operators flit southwards to warmer climes, and for this reason the supply is often greater than ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... hydrogen, by which, in accordance with the most ordinary natural laws, you would not only rise to the ceiling and float there in quasi-angelic posture, but perhaps, as one of your feminine adepts is said to have done, flit swifter than train or telegram to "still-vexed Bermoothes," and twit Ariel, if he happens to be there, for a sluggard? We have not the presumption to deny the possibility of anything you affirm; only, as our brethren are particular about evidence, do give us as much to go upon as may ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... I am so proud, I heard one day With endless schemes If I allowed A gentleman say Both good and new My family pride That criminals who For Titipu; To be my guide, Are cut in two But if I flit, I'd volunteer Can hardly feel The benefit To quit this sphere The fatal steel, That I'd diffuse Instead of you And so are slain The town would lose! In a minute or two, Without much pain. Now every man But family ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... like Parsons; they think nobly of the Universe, and believe in Souls and Eternal Happiness. And some of them, I am told, believe in Angels—that there are Angels who guide our footsteps, and flit to and fro unseen on errands in the ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... bay affords a daily delight, although Christchurch and Poole are the nearest real harbours. At the close of a summer's day, when sea and sky and shore are enveloped in soft mist, nothing can be more delightful than to flit with a favouring wind past the picturesque Chines, or by the white cliffs of Studland. The water in the little inlets and bays lies still and blue, but out in the dancing swirl of waters set up by the sunken rocks at the base of a headland, all the colours of the rainbow seem ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... knew that there were plenty of living men only biding their time and waiting their opportunity. It was only night that these people desired; a good black night so that no one could see them flit about. You felt in the small of your back as you rode along that ugly faces were looking at you from the silent houses, and that at any moment shots might ring out suddenly and bear you to the ground. But that was merely a preliminary ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the whole day through; Stars rise for them, and moons grow large And lessen in such tranquil wise As joys and sorrows do that rise Within their nature's sheltered marge; Their hours into each other flit, Like the leaf-shadows of the vine And fig-tree under which they sit; And their still lives to heaven incline With an unconscious habitude, Unhistoried as smokes that rise From happy hearths and sight elude In kindred blue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... side on the balcony above the public square, withdrew quietly to his own apartments. The casement of his closet stood wide, and he leaned against the window-frame, looking out on the silent radiance of the gardens. As he stood there he saw two figures flit across the farther end of one of the long alleys. The moonlight surrendered them for a moment, the shade almost instantly reclaiming them—strayed revellers, doubtless, escaping from the lights and music of the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a French name, and his son after him, but no Chippewa of pure blood and name looked habitually as he did into those whirlpools called the chutes, where the slip of a paddle meant death. Yet nobody feared the rapids. It was common for boys and girls to flit around near shore in birch canoes, balancing themselves and expertly ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "If I were a stenographer in your office I would think that I was making a fairly good start; but I happen to be the daughter of Alexander Strong living in my own home with my only sister, who can afford to flit like the flittingest of social butterflies from one party to another as well dressed as, and better dressed than, the Great General Average. You have known us, John, ever since Eileen sat in the sun to dry her handmade curls, while I was leaving a piece of my dress on every busk in Multiflores ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... The sunbeams round thee flit, So merry the minutes go by, go by, While fast thy fingers fly, ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... Sometimes, wildly as she struggled against such thoughts, there would come to Olive's fancy dreams of what her life might have been. The holiness of lovers' love, of wedded love, of mother-love, would at times flit before her imagination; and her heart, still warm, still young, trembled to picture the lonely old age, the hearth blank and silent, the utter isolation from all those natural ties whose place not even ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock) |
