"Postern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the postern door, and unfastened it, and went out through the streets of Beaucaire, keeping in the shadow, for the moon shone very bright; and she went on till she came to the tower where her lover was. The tower was shored up here and there, and she crouched down by one of the pillars, and wrapped ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... world, For no thought is contented. The better sort, As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd With scruples, and do set the word itself Against the word: As thus: 'Come, little ones'; and then again, 'It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a needle's eye.' Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails May tear a passage through the flinty ribs Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls; And, for they cannot, die in their own pride. Thoughts tending ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... "he calls me—Miss Vere, return home, and leave unbolted the postern-door of the garden; to that which opens on the back-stairs I have a ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... apprehension. He went up into the great Knight's Hall, which had a small cabinet adjoining where Freiherr Roderick von R—— used to sleep when engaged in making his astronomical observations. Between the door of this cabinet and that of a second was a postern, leading through a narrow passage immediately into the astronomical tower. But directly Daniel (that was the house-steward's name) opened this postern, the storm, blustering and howling terrifically, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the most extraordinary weather,' I said. My teeth chattered like Barbou's. It was all I could do to keep myself steady. No one made any reply; but Lecamus said, 'Have the goodness to open the little postern for foot-passengers: M. le Maire wishes to make an ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... see what he did. This is the old spiral stairway that goes round the inside of the Keep. There are two doorways at the bottom. One opens into the courtyard, the other is a postern gate through the curtain wall to the outside—but that was closed up in the sixteenth century, so the only way out ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hand, my lord," returned the governor, "when the first rebel should pass the threshold of my postern doors I should be obliged to kill you with my own hand, since you were confided peculiarly to my care and as I am obliged to give ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... restored, and looked picturesque enough except for the ancient castle which has been turned into a modern house by its latest purchaser, who has tried with more zeal than judgment to copy the style of the older portions. Through the postern by which we had left the town a number of workmen from the iron-works straggled, grimy and weary; in their modern dress and employment marking a contrast with their surroundings. Muggia Nuova first appears in history in 1235. When Paganino Doria destroyed Monticula (Muggia ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... had turned round and gone on our way I observed that there was some one sitting on the stile which led out on the road nearly opposite the postern gate in our park wall and supposed it to be some one resting there who would rise ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... if God pleases; and if I do not as I have said, then let me be slain. And the King believed all that he said, and received him for his vassal, and did him great honour. And all that night they talked together of his secrets, and he made the King believe that he knew a postern by means of which he would put ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... with the honesty of Licentiate Don Alvaro de Mesa y Lugo, their associate, who as the senior auditor presided over them—was to admit Licentiate Geronimo de Legaspi into the assembly hall by a secret postern. He had been removed from office a long time before by act of the said Don Alonso Fajardo, a measure taken in virtue of your Majesty's decree which was sent, to take his residencia; this was confirmed by all the Audiencia. Although it was advisable to remedy that matter, the little time that I have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... prevented from leaving the palace. Afterwards I knew that Offa had had all going out of the place stopped, hoping to take some man who knew more of the secret of Ethelbert's end, if not Gymbert himself. Hilda had been thrust out by a private postern hastily, and doubtless Gymbert had been told where to seek her long before. I believe it was no affair of the spur of the moment, but wrought in ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Roman substructure, although surmounted by work of later date. It had many turrets or towers, and seven double-gates, supposed to have been Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and the Tower Postern-gate; and the streets now named from those gates will serve to mark out the included area. Roman London may be said to lie about sixteen feet below our London, over all this area; about two feet being the debris of the Roman buildings, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... and alarm at the voice of a stranger; but the man, seizing her by the hand, drew her hastily from the chapel, and hurried her across the garden, through a small postern door, which stood ajar, into an obscure street bordering the convent wall. Here stood the expectant porter, with a bundle in his hand, which he opened, and took thence a long cloak, such as the women of middling rank ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they found the draw-bridge down and the postern open, so confident and unsuspecting were the Basques, and entered, cutlasses drawn and pikes forward, into the great hall. There were killed seven young men, who had barricaded themselves behind tables and would there make sport with ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the stair into the fosse, crept along in the shelter of the ivy for a little, saw that no one was visible, and darted across and up to a postern in the eastern turret. The door creaked noisily as he entered, and a flight of stairs, dimly lit by candles, presented itself, up which he ventured with his heart in his mouth. On the first landing ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Henceforth he knows he loves, and because his love has been slow to develop itself it is not necessarily sluggish or deficient when once it is come. But Englishmen are rarely heroic lovers except in their novels. There is generally a little bypath of caution, a postern gate of mercantile foresight, by which they can slip quietly out at the right moment and forget all about ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... captive, in romance, Through postern and dark passage, past grim glance Of arms; where from throned state the dame He loved, in sumptuous blushes came To him ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... old premises having become totally unfit for the care—to say nothing of the treatment—of the inmates, it was decided to build another hospital. The City granted a piece of land on the north side of London Wall, extending from Moor Gate, seven hundred and forty feet, to a postern opposite Winchester Street, and in breadth eighty feet—the whole length of what is now the south side of Finsbury Circus. At the present time the corner of London Wall and Finsbury Pavement, Albion Hall, and the houses to the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... with another burst of mirth, and then the star-gazers filed through a small postern door in the walled-up arch that was one day to be opened wide for the passage of a road. Leigh took up his lantern, only to find that in his haste he had unwittingly turned out the flame. A puff of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... love went to bed that night in a passion of tears. The time came for her to know and confess that Angelot's father, when he barred the postern door, might have had more than one guardian angel behind him; but ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... the roofs of Madrid at night, scarcely did more for his friend than was here done for us in the bright sunshine and open air. The keys that were to be made use of in this journey, to gain us a passage through many a tower, stair, and postern, were in the hands of the authorities, whose subordinates we never failed to ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... creation, starting point &c 293; dawn &c (morning) 125; evolution. title-page; head, heading; van &c (front) 234; caption, fatihah^. entrance, entry; inlet, orifice, mouth, chops, lips, porch, portal, portico, propylon^, door; gate, gateway; postern, wicket, threshold, vestibule; propylaeum^; skirts, border &c (edge) 231. first stage, first blush, first glance, first impression, first sight. rudiments, elements, outlines, grammar, alphabet, ABC. V. begin, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of spring, the cutting of the dunes by the company of sappers, and the capture. But instead, it was all distant and dry. A "Good-night" such as one might have thrown at a dog—no, he would not throw the word at Whitefoot. For even as she passed the postern window, looking out she saw Stair crossing the court in the direction of the barn, side by side with Whitefoot. The dog's eyes were raised to those of his master in a kind of adoration, and his tail waved triumphantly. As Stair bent to stroke the dog's head, Patsy ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... they trouble to flee, nor do they see where they could find refuge if they should have fled; for the sea and their enemies are around them, and they in the midst. No longer do they tarry at their council: now they apparel and arm themselves, and issue forth towards the north-west by an ancient postern towards that side whence they thought that those of the host would least expect to see them come. In serried ranks they sallied forth: of their men they made five battalions; and there were no less than two thousand foot-soldiers well equipped for battle ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... the court gave permission for any freeman of the city to erect a tent or shed wherein to carry on his trade or craft on any part of the artillery ground, or if he so wished, either outside London wall between the postern near Broad Street and Moorgate, or within the wall between the said postern and Coleman Street. He might also erect his tent or shed in the "Round" at Smithfield. But in every case the ground was to be set out as apportioned by the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... wishing to examine the town (as beautiful as a suit of antique armor) may walk alone, not without sadness, through a deserted street, where the mullioned windows are plastered up to avoid the window-tax. This street ends at a postern, flanked with a wall of masonry, beyond which rises a bouquet of trees planted by the hands of Breton nature, one of the most luxuriant and fertile vegetations in France. A painter, a poet would sit there silently, to taste the quietude which reigns beneath ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... they dismounted, and leaving the animals in charge of the shopkeeper of Tafelberg, Barney and Butzow hastened toward a small postern-gate which swung, groaning, upon a single rusted hinge. Each felt that there was no time for caution or stratagem. Instead all depended upon the very boldness and rashness of their attack, and so as ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... remind him of his promise; and Uther swore it should be as he had said. Three days later, a prince was born, and, with pomp and ceremony, was christened by the name of Arthur; but immediately thereafter, the King commanded that the child should be carried to the postern-gate, there to be given to the old man who would be ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... immediately despatched a messenger to their lord, with an account of what had happened. Alarmed at this information, from which he immediately concluded that the stranger was young Melvil, he forthwith quitted the chase, and returning to the castle by a private postern, ordered his horse to be kept ready saddled, in hope that his son-in-law would repeat the visit to his mother. This precaution would have been to no purpose, had Renaldo followed the advice of Farrel, who represented ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... to their work they passed by a palace of considerable extent, surrounded by grounds which were entered on that side by a small postern gate. "I would give a good deal to know if that gate ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... She had opened the postern gate in the wall, and through the narrow opening was framed a wonderful picture of the Cornish sea, rolling into the rock-studded bay. Its soft thunder was in their ears; salt and fragrant, the west wind swept into their faces. She closed the gate behind ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the cry, Roland jumped out of bed, and, without staying for clothes or horse, ran off in his shirt, escaping by a postern gate which opened on the forest just as de Menon entered by another. He found Roland's bed still warm, and took possession of his clothes, finding in a coat pocket a purse containing thirty-five Louis, and in the stables three superb horses. ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... guarded; And now they are come with purpose to apprehend Your mistress, fair Vittoria. We are now Beneath her roof: 'twere fit we instantly Make out by some back postern. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... extensive castle, consisting of a great number of buildings inclosed within a high wall. It is in the lower part of London, on the bank of the Thames, with a flight of stairs leading down to the river from a great postern gate. The unhappy queen was landed at these stairs and conveyed into the castle, and shut up in a gloomy apartment, with walls of stone and windows barricaded with strong bars of iron. There were four or five gentlemen, attendants upon the queen in ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to steer clear of the burning rubbish which encumbered our path. Several outlets were tried, but unsuccessfully, as the hot breezes from the fire struck against our faces, and drove us back in terrible confusion. At last a postern opening on the Moskwa was discovered, and it was through this the Emperor with his officers and guard succeeded in escaping from the Kremlin, but only to re-enter narrow streets, where the fire, inclosed as in a furnace, was increased ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... through the postern in the small round tower beside the gateway, knowing that when she came out under the portcullis, the funeral train would be just reaching the other end of the bridge. The little vaulted room in the lower story of the tower was not four steps in width across, from door to door; but it was almost ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... intervals, form thrillingly medieval foregrounds for the Cathedral towers. In Pound Lane the wall continues in a furtive and rather desultory fashion until it ends at the West Gate. Opposite Lady Wootton's Green there still remain indications of a narrow postern, which is generally accepted as that through which Queen Bertha was wont to pass on her way to her devotions at St. Martin's Church. This, however, presupposes that the portion of the wall immediately surrounding ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... Having spent three-quarters of an hour with Don Fernando, without going anywhere else, he continued his journey to this city, where he arrived at two o'clock, and was received with a salvo. He entered the coach of the governor, and going from the fort of Santiago (by the postern gate of which he made his entry), he reached the palace. On the plaza a body of troops had been formed in order, who received him with a general salute of arquebus-shots. He spent about an hour with the governor, at the time making known to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... anon; but the little postern door is seldom locked since thou art gone, and I can get out thus. Linger not beside the house, Cuthbert; speed to the chantry—I will meet thee there. He might hear or see thee here. Do not linger; go. I will ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... second; and as he crossed the bridge over the fish-pond, an officer making the rounds stopped him once more. The parade of watch was more than usual; but curiosity was dead in Otto's mind, and he only chafed at the interruption. The porter of the back postern admitted him, and started to behold him so disordered. Thence, hasting by private stairs and passages, he came at length unseen to his own chamber, tore off his clothes, and threw himself upon his bed in the dark. The music of the ball-room still continued to a very lively measure; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street by Trinity's postern a loyal king's man, Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper and raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... superior number of forces. In August, count Brown, at the head of an Austrian detachment, surprised Velletri in the night; and the king of the Two Sicilies, with the duke of Modena, were in the utmost danger of being taken. They escaped by a postern with great difficulty, and repaired to the quarters of count Gages, who performed the part of a great general on this occasion. He rallied the fugitives, dispelled the panic and confusion which had begun to prevail in his camp, and made a disposition for cutting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... advances hastily.] Haste, Caesario, You must away! the king's returned, I see His train now loitering near the garden-gate, Fly by the private postern. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... that stir and liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the great. No visitors passed in or out, and the big iron gates were shut, as if none were looked for. Of a truth, the persons who visited Monsieur these days preferred to slip in by the postern after nightfall, as if there had never been a time when they were proud to be seen in ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... now reached a little postern-door in the garden-wall. He opened the latch, and thrust out his poor cousin. Then looking down the lane, which was long, straight, and narrow, and seeing it was quite solitary, his eye fell upon the forlorn man, and remorse shot through his heart. For a moment the hardest of all kinds of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said, "by this outrage? Know ye not that this is the Monastery of St. John, and that it is sacrilege to lay a hand of violence even against its postern? Begone," he said, "or we'll lodge a complaint before ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... my true love's name, And call him traitor vile, Who dar'd disclose to Charlie's foes The secret postern aisle; But though, alas! that fatal pass He rashly did reveal, He ne'er betray'd his maniac maid,— ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... gather'd round her and the home that she loved so well, And the deathless fame of a woman's name whom nothing but love could quell. Who, when the men would have yielded, with her own sweet lily hand, Led them straight from the postern gate, and drove the foe from the land. There's many a little homestead that is cosy and sung to-day, Because of a woman who stood in the door and kept the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... many armed men, and they fought at the gate, while those in the upper story threw the tables from the windows upon the heads of the besiegers. Seeing that they were lost, Stephen's men went out by the postern behind the house, and his nephew, Battista Sciarra, with four companions, fought his way through, only one of them being taken, because the points of his hose were cut through, so that the hose slipped down and he ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... in her avoiding Lord Algernon that morning; not wishing, as she herself might have frankly put it, "to take stock" of his inheritance in his presence. As she passed into the garden through the low postern door, she turned to look along the stretching facade of the main building, with the high stained windows of its banqueting-hall and the state chamber where a king had slept. Even in that crisp October air, and with the green of its ivied battlements against the gold of the distant ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Keep to the right till you pass the first sentries; then you will find yourself in a garden, in the centre of which is a tank. Fill, or make show of filling, your jar. Then the long dark passage which, you will see on the left will conduct you to a postern gate of the palace; there will be a guard at ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... rapidity, considering that he never moved in a straightforward direction, undulated into the open air in front of the house, described a rhomboid towards a side-buttress in the new building, near to which was a postern-door; unlocked that door from a key in his pocket, and, motioning Lionel to follow him, entered within the ribs of the stony skeleton. Lionel followed in a sort of supernatural awe, and beheld, with more substantial alarm, Mr. Fairthorn winding up an inclined plank which lie embraced with both ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... allies. Their catapults rained missiles on the town, and their men-at-arms waited impatiently for a breach to be battered in the Porte Beauvoisine. But it remained steadfastly shut, and the Duke made another brilliant sally from a postern gate with the blood-red standard waving again above his Norman knights, and swept back once more the assailing lines of Germany until the French had to bring up their reinforcements from the rear and save ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... dawning had just streaked the east, when Pelistes took lance in hand, hung his shield about his neck, and, mounting his steed, issued quietly forth from a postern of the convent. He paced slowly through the vacant streets, and the tramp of his steed echoed afar in that silent hour; but no one suspected a warrior, moving thus singly and tranquilly in an armed city, to be an enemy. He arrived at the gate just at the hour of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... on the stroke of nine thou wilt pass through the postern door of the castle and fall into my arms,—here, take this, sweet, to pledge thyself." He slipped from his finger a ring of marvellous beauty and essayed to ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... a Sebastopol which must have cost a good half-hour's engineering, and the terrible Bytes Gridley besieging the fortress with hostile manifestations of the most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed, the missile would certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants' eyes were levelled at Miss ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... down—the tinge of many mountains and the distant sea—until the sun himself settled quietly into it, and there grew richer and more ripe (as old bottled wine is fed by the crust), and bowed his rubicund farewell, through the postern of the scaur-gate, to the old Hall, and the valley, and the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... a guard of soldiers within the covered entrance, with a sentry outside the gate. He was leaning against the postern, his form in the darkness just distinguishable against the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... up among all these," he said, "they might make their sport of us both, so that we might have time. Let us see whether the little garden postern be open." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... afternoon he stopped before the closed gateway of the Palazzo Chiaromonte and pushed the little postern that stood ajar. The big porter was within, standing dejectedly before the door of his lodge, and already dressed in the deep mourning which is kept in readiness in all the great Roman houses. The painter asked in broken Italian if the bad news was true, ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... She came to the postern gate, and unbarred it, and went out through the streets of Beaucaire, keeping always in the shadows, for the moon was shining. And so she got to the dungeon where her lover, Aucassin, lay. She thrust her head through the chink, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... rich cream colour to a soft grey. A very marked feature is 'the great number of projections carried on machicoulis, through the openings of which stones and other missiles could be thrown on the heads of assailants.' Both the chief doorway and a postern gate to the south were ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... for they see no place where they could find refuge should they betake themselves to flight, being completely surrounded by the water and their enemies. So they spend no more time in talk, but arm and equip themselves and make a sally by an old postern gate [220] toward the north-west, that being the side where they thought the camp would least expect attack. In serried ranks they sallied forth, and divided their force into five companies, each consisting of two thousand ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... search could be made for them, the authors of this tragic interruption had clattered down a turnpike stair and decamped by a postern door. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... elders kept their long debate, Coroebus stole unheeded to his band, And led a handful by a postern gate Across the plain, across the barren land Where once the happy vines were wont to stand, And 'mid the clusters once did maidens sing,— But now the plain was waste on every hand, Though here and there a ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... Chester. It was destroyed in 1768, and the present gate erected by Earl Grosvenor. The custody of the Water-gate belonged to the Earls of Derby. It also was destroyed, and the present arch erected in 1788. A new North Gate was built in 1809 by Robert, Earl Grosvenor. The principal postern-gates were Cale Yard Gate, made by the abbot and convent in the reign of Edward I as a passage to their kitchen garden; New-gate, formerly Woolfield or Wolf-gate, repaired in 1608, also called Pepper-gate;[7] and Ship-gate, or Hole-in-the-wall, which alone retains its Roman arch, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... then a castle, protected, probably, by battlements and mantlets and turreted walls, and with its keep and its drawbridge, its postern and its fosse—simple works of defence that were armed for retaliation, with catapult and mangonel, the canon raye of the period, besides arquebuse and other hand weapons wielded, no doubt, by mighty men at arms, mail-clad and helmeted, who knew how to give and take with ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... by one of the postern doors, and found means to convey the Sheriff's plate through the streets. Afterwards when he reached the gate, he continued to win his passage by pure statesmanship, pretending that he had been sent out at that strange hour to snare young ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... never any one so many fathoms deep in love as I. Love bandies me from the postern to the frying-pan, from hot to cold. Ah, Catherine, Catherine, have pity upon my folly! Bid me fetch you Prester John's beard, and I will do it; bid me believe the sky is made of calf-skin, that morning is evening, that a fat sow is a windmill, and I will do it. Only ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the morrows Of lovers and winds and streams, And the face of a thousand sorrows At the postern gate of dreams. ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... but you don't know him. He sits quietly in his chair, but he is in the temple. You speak to him; his soul comes out into the vestibule to answer you, and returns,—and the gates are shut; therein you can not enter. You were discussing the state of the country; but when you ceased, he opened a postern-gate, went down a bank, and launched on a sea over whose waters you have no boat to sail, no star to guide. You have loved and reverenced him. He has been your concrete of truth and nobleness. Unwittingly you touch a secret spring, and a Blue-Beard chamber stands revealed. You give ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... That welcome postern open'd on a court— Say rather, grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd, Each on its hoary tablature, half hid With moss, with hemlock, and with nettles rank, The sculptured leer of that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Theban, in his midnight tramp, A sleeping guard beside the postern saw, He slew him on the instant, that the camp Might read in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is a great sedative in troubles. What with intermittencies (safe hidings in one's MARQUISAT, or vacant interlunar cave), with alternations of offence and reconcilement; what with occasional actual flights to Paris (whitherward Voltaire is always busy to keep a postern open; and of which there is frequent talk, and almost continual thought, all along), flights to be called "visits," and privately intending to be final, but never proving so,—the Voltaire-Friedrich relation, if left to itself, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Front-de-Boeuf led the way to a postern where, passing the moat on a single plank, they reached a small barbican, or exterior defense, which communicated with the open field by ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... wake up with that word, and said: I have the key of the priest's door of the chapel, and the postern beyond it; that shall be thine out-gate, lady. I will come and scratch at thy chamber-door much betimes, and I will see to it that thy palfrey is bestowed in the bower wherein thou didst rest the first night thou camest amongst us. She said: I trust ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... league between us who guard this city, by day in spirit, and by night in body also; and never on ancient holidays have its conduits run wine more merrily than we will pour forth our legendary lore. We are old chroniclers from this time hence. The crumbled walls encircle us once more, the postern-gates are closed, the drawbridge is up, and pent in its narrow den beneath, the water foams and struggles with the sunken starlings. Jerkins and quarter-staves are in the streets again, the nightly watch is set, the rebel, sad and lonely in his Tower dungeon, tries ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... keeper of the Castle and honor of Pickering, to cause to be newly constructed a barbican before the Castle gate with a stone wall and a gate with a drawbridge in the same, and beyond the gate a new chamber, a new postern gate by the King's Tower and a roof to a chamber near the small hall; to cover with thin flags that roof and the roof of the small kitchen, to remove the old roof of the King's prison and to make an entirely new roof covered with lead, and to thoroughly point, both within and without, the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... the minister answered, "for that reason. He is waiting at the postern, where he landed. He came, hoping to be ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... leave. In the evening he made it his business to sit smoking on the bole of a tree which commanded a view of the upper ward of the castle, and also of the old postern-gate, now enlarged and used as a tradesmen's entrance. It was half-past six o'clock; the dressing-bell rang, and Dare saw a light-footed young woman hasten at the sound across the ward from the servants' quarter. A light appeared in a chamber which he knew to be Paula's dressing-room; ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... through the low postern; on either side of the hall were small and badly lighted rooms, where clerks were very busy writing. In the inner room, a man with a stern and haughty face sat writing under ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the duties of commander of the garrison, was now exercising those of engineer, and displaying great skill, as well as wonderful personal strength, in directing and assisting the establishment of a large mangonel, (a military engine used for casting stones,) upon a station commanding an exposed postern gate, which led from the western side of the castle down to the plain; and where a severe assault was naturally to be expected. The greater part of his armour lay beside him, but covered with his cassock to screen it from ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... seem much impressed," thought Beatrice to herself, as she tugged away at the postern bell; "I think he must ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... quarrel between the Basutos and the Boers. That gave him the prestige which was requisite for anyone who would go to Thaba Bosigo. Having a Boer for guide, and a few natives for retinue, the Governor presented himself at the outer postern of the stronghold, after darkness ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... the talents that were lost are being found again, gathered in humility from this stone floor; where poor-making riches are banished from the postern, and rich-making poverty streameth in as light from the grated window; where care vexeth not now the labourer emptied of his gold, and calumny's black tooth no longer gnaws the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... is overgrown with weeds, and in the fall of the year is gay with the yellow plumes of the golden-rod. You can almost touch with your cane the low edge of the broad, overhanging eaves. The batten shutters at door and window, with hinges like those of a postern, are shut with a grip that makes one's knuckles and nails feel lacerated. Save in the brick-work itself there is not a cranny. You would say the house has the lockjaw. There are two doors, and to each a single chipped and battered ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... on, good Eglamour, Out at the postern by the abbey-wall: I fear I am attended by ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... angle of the curtain projects a spur work protected by two curtains, one of which, 4 feet thick and 24 feet high, only remains, with a shouldered postern door opening on the scarp of the ditch at its junction with the main curtain. This spur work was the entrance to the Castle, and contains a deep pit, now called the Dungeon, and a Barbican or Sally-port beyond. The pit is 12 feet deep and measures 27 feet x 10 feet across. ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... published in A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land, by W. R. Hughes, for the background of his drawing of "Durdles Cautioning Sapsea". There are, however, two other gatehouses, the "Prior's", a tower over an archway, containing a single room approached by a "postern stair", and "Deanery Gate", a quaint old house adjoining the Cathedral which has ten rooms, some of them beautifully panelled. Its drawing-room on the upper floor bears a strong resemblance to the room—as depicted by Sir Luke Fildes—in which Jasper entertained ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... save as footmen," Harry said that night to his host. "There is a postern gate, is there not, behind the castle? Methinks that if we could get out in the dark unobserved, and form close to the walls, so that their pickets lying around might not suspect us of purposing to issue forth, we might, when daylight dawned, make an attack ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... fiddles, of which M. de Rohan was a very great admirer. But, in fact, though the King was just at hand with the troops, and though M. Mold, Keeper of the Seals, was at the gate demanding entrance for the King, the Duchess crossed the river in a barge, made the watermen break down a little postern, which had been walled up for a long time, and marched, with the acclamations of multitudes of the people, directly to the Hotel de Ville, where the magistrates were assembled to consider if they should admit the Keeper of the Seals. By this means she turned the scale, and MM. de ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... banker,—for these professions were not as yet separated from each other,—was a person of too much importance to receive the slightest interruption from sentinel or porter; and, leaving his mule and two of his followers in the outer-court, he gently knocked at a postern-gate of the building, and was presently admitted, while the most trusty of his attendants followed him closely, with the piece of plate under his arm. This man also he left behind him in an ante-room,—where three or four pages in the royal livery, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in an instant by human voices calling us to re-embark. Again we glided to the verge of tumultuous falls, again we were flung through foaming narrows and labyrinthine passages of torn rocks, until, the last promontory turned with arrowy swiftness, we shot through a postern of the granite barrier and bounded far into still water fringed with trees of profoundest shadow. We put in to shore, for this stage of our journey was over; the dawn was near; the carts stood waiting on the road. But the influence of the wonderful night, clinging about us, would ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... man to enter the kingdom of God.' I have heard this and similar texts ingeniously explained away and brushed from the path of the aspiring Christian by the tender Great-heart of the parish. One excellent clergyman told us that the 'eye of a needle' meant a low, Oriental postern through which camels could not pass till they were unloaded—which is very likely just; and then went on, bravely confounding the 'kingdom of God' with heaven, the future paradise, to show that of course no rich person could expect to carry his riches beyond the grave—which, of course, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the gondola rounded the corner of the narrow canal skirting the garden-wall of Santa Chiara. Alarmed lest he should lose her again he passionately urged her to receive him on the morrow; and after some hesitation she consented. A moment later their prow touched the postern and the boatman gave a low call which proved him no novice at the business. Fulvia signed to Odo not to speak or move; and they sat listening intently for the opening of the gate. As soon as it was unbarred she sprang ashore and vanished in the darkness of the garden; and with a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... through with this job." He turned thoughtfully toward the big windows on the south of the room, and mused aloud: "That's the way through the two long rooms to the postern gate. Umm." ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard |
