"Rending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... living thing about, he took courage and entered farther. He took note of the switches, saw the deadly chair, and was about to test the apparatus to see if it could be possible that a practical electric chair existed in the heart of a peaceful city, when he heard Eva shriek in heart-rending terror. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... received a shock not easily to be recovered. The loss of her mother was weighing on her more painfully than in the first excitement; and the step her father had taken, insulting her mother, degrading himself, and rending away her veil of filial honour, had exceedingly overwhelmed and depressed her; while sorrow hung upon her with the greater permanence and oppression from her strong self-control, and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now takes personal command. He sends a shower of grape and cannister against a column of French veterans, but they never waver. Reserves, suddenly called for, pour a fierce charge against the advancing French, rending them asunder. The attack is closely followed up and the French are driven down the hill. Elsewhere in the field the battle still rages. Bluecher continues his attack on Napoleon's right and forces it back. Reduced to despair, Napoleon now gives his final and famous order: ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... fatal to me I have never seen since. Every year I receive a thousand pieces of gold; but although it rejoices me to know that this Unfortunate is so noble, still can his money never remove wo from my soul, for there lives forever the heart-rending image of the ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... tilt against the chains that still held fast. For one breathless moment the little Itasca seemed lost. Her bows rose clear out, as, quivering from stem to stern, she was suddenly brought up short from top speed to nothing. But, in another fateful minute, with a rending crash, the two nearest schooners gave way and swept back like a gate, while the Itasca herself shot clear and came down in ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... go they before the wind, which, first blowing in fitful gusts, soon becomes a steady gale, with now and then a violent burst catching still another sail, and rending ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... much. The rebels thinking if the letter would improve by baking it might be well to improve it at once, accordingly held it over the fire. This brought to light four closely written pages of the tenderest and most heart-rending sentiment." ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... so I arose in haste, and drawing the sword from under his head, dealt him a blow that made his head fall from his body. But his sister knew what I had done, and rushing out from within the tent, threw herself on his corpse, rending her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... scorching of the flames which surrounded them, and the suffocation from the smoke was overpowering, and most of the soldiers sprang over the taffrail at once, or as nearly so as possible. The consequence was, that there were thirty or forty in the water at the same time, and the scene was as heart-rending as it was appalling; the sailors in the boats dragging them in as fast as they could—the women on the raft, throwing to them loose garments to haul them in; at one time a wife shrieking as she saw her husband struggling and sinking into eternity; at another, curses and execrations from ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... rending exclamation, and he was on his feet again with a scream of ecstasy. An oblong casket, rusty, corroded, but unbroken, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, No sudden rending of the veil of clay: No angel visitant, no opening skies— But take the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... felt that she could sacrifice much for her mother. Money, if she had it, she could have given, though she left herself penniless. Her time, her inclinations, her very heart's treasure, and, as she thought, her life, she could give. She could doom herself to poverty, and loneliness, and heart-rending regrets for her mother's sake. But she did not know how she could give herself into the arms of a man she did ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... view Her tragedy was ending That need not have come due Had she been less unbending. How near, near were we two At that last vital rending, - And ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... accepting the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the protecting ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... regard for political movements and political power by the remembrance that the hardest tasks of all are accomplished by quite another power, and by a power which the politician often overlooks. What have we seen time after time in our own Parliament, but the civil power rending its garments over evils which it cannot cure? Are not the remedies which have been proposed for prevalent vices absurdly incompetent? And it is the Church's shame if she cannot step forward and confidently say, You cannot deal with such ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... love for his father had compelled him to refrain from all expression of his feelings about this, for he well knew that, bitter as it would be for him to give up Chetwynde, to his father it would be still worse—it would be like rending his very heartstrings. Often had he feared that this sacrifice to honor on his father's part would be more than could be endured. He had, for his father's sake, put a restraint upon himself; but this concealment of his feelings had only increased the intensity of those ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... side; and as, in obedience to a sign, they turned, there was a peculiarly harsh, rending noise, a singing as of escaping air, and to their astonishment, just where they had been standing the ice began to open in a curious, wavy, zigzag line, gradually extending to right and left. At first it was a faint crack, not much more than large ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... it, Thomas," said Caesar, edging away. "It isn't my ould friend that's blaspheming at all. It's the devil that has entered into his heart and is rending him. But cast the devil out, man, or ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... a sudden, frightful, heart-stilling roar of destruction; a hideous crash followed, a terrible rending, breaking, smashing, concatenation of noises, succeeded by frightful detonations, as through the gaping hole torn in the great battleship by the deadly torpedo, the water rushed upon the heated boilers, the explosion of which in turn ignited the magazines. By ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... did, Grumps was after him like a bundle of mad hair. He was in everybody's way, in Crusoe's way, and being, so to speak, "beside himself," was also in his own way. If people trod upon him accidentally, which they often did, Grumps uttered a solitary heart-rending yell proportioned in intensity to the excruciating nature of the torture he endured, then instantly resumed his position and his fascinated stare. Crusoe generally held his head up, and gazed over his little friend at what was going on around him; ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of this heart-rending event? Was it stress of weather, or a contrary wind, or unavoidable accident? No such thing! It was the entire want of moral conduct in the crew. Every sailor, to a man, was in a state of intoxication! The helm ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... penetrating winds which continually sunder and scatter the united portions of the air, eddying and whirling amidst the rest of the atmosphere; therefore the spirit who would pervade {187} this air would be dismembered or rent and broken up with the rending of the air ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... these words was heart-rending. Benito struggled with his father. Manoel, distracted, kept near the window ready to carry off the prisoner—when the door of ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... all other heart-rending scenes of those dark days, I could not erase from my memory the cruel treatment which I saw my own mother receive. Though I was small, I think of how I used to see her work hard, and how she was scolded and cursed as she was driven about like a dog. I saw her laid upon that paddling-block, and ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... now I'll tell thee all— Only concerning what you hear, And still more surely what you see, You must be dumb as any stone; And you too must be well prepared For a most sad heart-rending sight— 'Twill make ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... engage in a variety of sumptuous handicrafts, such as the scorching of wooden tablets with the semblance of a pattern, and gouging others with sharpened implements into a crude relief; depicting birds and flowers upon the surface of plates, rending leather into shreds, and entwining beaten iron, brass, and copper into a diversity of most ingenious complications; but when I asked a maiden of affectionate and domesticated appearance whether she had yet ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... crash seemed to rend the very heavens above them: a crack as of the thunder that follows close upon the bolt,—a rending and crashing as of a forest snapped through all its stems, torn, twisted, splintered, dragged with all its ragged boughs into one chaotic ruin. The ground trembled under them as in an earthquake; the old mansion shuddered so that all its windows chattered ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... great, but that the sun doth still Level his rays against the rising hill; I would be high, but see the proudest oak Most subject to the rending thunder-stroke; I would be rich, but see men too unkind Dig in the bowels of the richest mind; I would be wise, but that I often see The fox suspected while the ass goes free; I would be fair, but see the fair and proud, Like the bright sun, oft setting in a cloud; I would be poor, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... sounds of rushing streams were heard issuing from the hidden beds of every natural rill; while the larger brooks were beginning to burst through their wintry coverings, and throw up and push on before them the rending ice and snow that obstructed their courses to the rivers below, to which they were hurrying with increasing speed, and with seemingly growing impatience at every obstacle they met in their way. The road had also become so soft, that the horses sunk nearly to the flank at almost every step, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... such an assurance, and believed that without it the war would end in disaster to our cause. Having given that assurance in the extremity of our peril, the violation of it now, in the day of our power, would be a rude rending of that good faith which holds the moral world together; our country would cease to have any claim upon the confidence of men; it would make the war not only a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a rending sadness about it, as if some overwhelming desire had escaped him forever, ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... crawling, and a deer for flight, A hawk for rending, and a dog for sight To judge the strength of men that wake or sleep, A snake, when 't is advisable to creep, Illusion's self, to seem a saint or rogue, Goddess of Speech in understanding brogue; A light in blackest night, in holes a lizard I can be, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... tree, rearing above its fellows, toppled slowly. With ripping, tearing noises, it bent sedately toward the smoking, far-away mountain. It crashed thunderously down upon smaller trees. There were other rending noises. The flying things rose higher, seeming agitated. Echoes sounded in the ears of the ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... looking on the ground, paying small heed to them. Now and again, when the sound of pattering feet and panting breath and the rustling and rending among the copses fell too far behind, he drew out his shepherd's pipe and blew a strain of music, shrill and plaintive, quavering and lamenting through the hollow night. He waited while the troops of gray and black scuffled and bounded and trotted near to him. Then he ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... suffering nor of his own, as the words came fast and incoherent from his pale lips. He went on, insisting, repeating, lamenting with the vehemence of a passionate man who has overcome all that is gentlest in himself and takes a savage delight in rending his own wounds. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... lights, Must be strong of soul, and stout of arm, Able to send a shaft to the heart Of him who would quench that fire, Able to bend a warrior's bow, Able to poise a warrior's spear, Able to bear, without a groan, The torments devised by hungry foes, The pincers rending his flesh, The hot stones searing his eye-balls.— ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... his excitement, Buos forgot himself and entwined with the flowing form of the she-creature, and the result was a rending of the air that cracked like heat lightning over the field. "No," he repeated again. "They must not be too late. They must learn. They must build from the very ground, and then they must fly. And then their eyes must ...
— Reluctant Genius • Henry Slesar
... her mother was scarcely less miserable. The sight of Herbert, so changed from the form that she remembered; those tones of heart-rending sincerity, in which he had mournfully appealed to the influence of time and sorrow on his life, still greatly affected her. She had indulged for a moment in a dream of domestic love, she had cast to the winds the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... athwart his infatuated anguish, and stirred his heart with a ferocious irony, increasing even to madness, his craving for an ideal tenderness, for passionate outpourings of the bosom of an adored and faithful woman. He was compelled to stop, choked by hurried and rending sobs. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... she passed standing over hot stewpans and sealing up jars, in the torture known only to those whom the chances of life detain at a distance from the sick bed of those dear to them. She suffered such heart-rending agony as those unhappy creatures suffer who cannot go where their anxiety calls them, and who, in the extremity of despair caused by separation and uncertainty, constantly imagine that death will come ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... paused, struck at last by the face opposite him. It was awakening; it flushed, quivered, and the eyes darkened and widened. What was happening was this—Larry was setting Mary-Clare free in ways that he could not realize. Every merciless blow he struck was rending a fetter apart. He was making it possible for the woman, close to him physically, to regard him at last as—a man; not a husband that mistaken loyalty must shield and suffer for. He was placing her among the safe and decent people, permitting her at last to justify her instincts, ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... the far southerly hills came the blast, rending and crashing; the first swirls of rain that flung themselves against our windows seemed as if they might have rushed ten miles, horizontally, before they got a chance to drop; the trees bent down and sprang again, and lashed the air to ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Ascher quite as well as Gorman does. Nor am I sure that I ought to be thankful for my immunity from the fever of patriotism. Ascher suffered severely because at a critical moment in his life a feeling of loyalty to his native land gripped him hard. I have also suffered, a rending of the body at least comparable to Ascher's rending of the soul. But I have not the consolation of feeling that ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Some are still coshering here and there among their charitable neighbors, while many are bitter hearted exiles across the sea. After walking up and down amid this pitiful desolation, and hearing many a heart-rending incident connected with the eviction, a sudden squall of hail came on, and we were obliged to take shelter on the lee side of a ruined wall till it blew over. To while away the time one of the guides told me of a local song ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... a key in the semi-darkness, and with a rending crackle there leaped between two brass knobs a spark, streams ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... enthusiasm alarmed her cautious sister, and drew from her frequent and serious remonstrances. But that she also travelled rapidly towards the final rending of the bonds which had hitherto held her, we find from a letter to Sarah Douglass, written in the spring of 1835. Speaking of Jay's book of Colonization, which had just ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the sleigh to gather his wits. It was well he did, for if ever he needed them it was at that moment. Almost simultaneous with the thud of the horse's feet upon the bridge there came a crash, a sound of rending timbers, the bridge quivered like a ship struck by a mighty billow, and the next instant dropped into the chasm below, bearing with it a man, and ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... the "beginning of sorrows." It took, about three years to show the full fruits of my error. By the end of that time, half my parlor chairs had been rendered useless in consequence of the back-breaking and seat-rending ordeals through which they had been called to pass. The sofa was unanimously condemned to the dining room, and the ninety cent carpet had gone on fading and defacing, until my wife said she was ashamed to put it even ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... and I will be equally free without the rending of heart strings—free to love and enjoy home from without, for it is really strange when one comes to think of it, we learn of the outside world by looking out the windows, but we so seldom have time to stand in another view-point and look ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the cause which the Rougons served derived advantage from this circumstance. The most contradictory news arrived from Paris; sometimes the Republicans were in the ascendant, sometimes the Conservative party was crushing the Republic. The echoes of the squabbles which were rending the Legislative Assembly reached the depths of the provinces, now in an exaggerated, now in an attenuated form, varying so greatly as to obscure the vision of the most clear-sighted. The only general feeling was that a denouement was approaching. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... rate. Driving the car as though it were a monoplane in a clear sky, with an open throttle that awoke the echoes, Oldershaw charged into Fifth Avenue and caught the bonnet of a taxicab that was going uptown. There was a crash, a scream, a rending of metal. And when Martin picked himself up with a bruised elbow and a curious sensation of having stopped a punching bag with his face, he saw Oldershaw bending over the crumpled body of the taxi driver and heard a girl with red lips and a small white hat calling ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... assistant was popular with the boys at camp, and struck by this suggestion of imminent catastrophe, they clustered about him, listening eagerly. So loud was the noise of the storm, so deafening the sound of rending timber on that gale-swept height before them, that Tom had to raise his voice to make himself heard. The danger to human life which he had been the first to think of, gave the storm new terror to these young watchers. It needed only this touch of mortal ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... it, buried, and, as it were, crushed down in the secret depths of the mind, they seem happy, or, at any rate, indifferent to the eyes of the uninformed around, and the eye of the most watchful observer might be mistaken; but let a sudden shock break the seal, an unexpected rending of a portion of the veil, then, as with the crash of a thunderstorm, the tower in which the sufferer hid his sorrow falls in ruins to the ground. The conquered foe rises more fierce than before his defeat and captivity; he shakes with fury ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... totally changed. "Where is my child?" cried she, and cast an anxious and piercing look among the surrounding crowd. "Oh, she is lost! she is in the midst of flames! Save her! save her! my child!" She filled the air with heart-rending shrieks. She turned towards the house. The people that were near endeavoured to prevent her, but she shook them off in a moment. She entered the passage; viewed the hideous ruin; and was then going to plunge ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... would have been tear-compelling, nay, heart-rending, had they not been palpable inventions, the pretty, womanish Mazaro from time to time poured forth, in the ever ungratified hope that the goddess might come down with a draught of nectar for him, it profiteth not to recount; but I should fail to show a family feature of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Hautville stopped singing not one in the meeting-house had seen Burr Gordon stir, but the soul in him had surely turned and faced about with a great rending as of swathing wills that ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... on the landing. To-day is not the first time like that! but to-day we are feeling this great rending which is not one. She has begun to undress. She has taken off her blouse. I see her neck and her breasts, a little less firm than before, through her chemise; and half tumbling on to the nape of her neck, the fair hair which once magnificently flamed ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... perfection. Happy spirits! who, while they were assisting one another, took delight in praising the labours of others. How unhappy are those of our own day, who, not sated with injuring each other, burst with envy while rending others. The Consuls besought Filippo to undertake the work in company with Lorenzo, but he refused, being minded rather to be first in an art of his own than an equal or a second in that work. Wherefore he presented the scene that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... skimming the ridge. The grapnel touched, and, in the time it takes you to wink, had ploughed through a kitchen garden, uprooting a regiment of currant bushes; had leaped clear and was caught in the eaves of a wooden outhouse, fetching us up with a dislocating shock. I heard a rending noise, and picked myself up in time to see the building collapse like a house of cards, and a pair of demented pigs emerge from the ruins and plunge across the garden-beds. And with that I was pitched off my feet again as the hook caught in an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "A rending sound was heard above the roar of battle. A great spout of black smoke shot up from that destroyer and she was out of commission. The 'Iowa,' which was coming up fast, threw a few complimentary shots at the second torpedo-boat ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... spare no pains"; neither to him nor to myself, she might have added. And so when he begged to be allowed to learn the piano, she started him with characteristic barbarity on the scales; and heard in consequence "heart-rending groans" and saw "anguished claspings of hands" as he lost his way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was. He had got to the place where the messenger is relating the destruction of Pentheus by Agave, when Demetrius snatched the book from him and tore it in two: 'Better,' he exclaimed, 'that Pentheus should suffer one rending at my hands than ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... satisfy them. So Tom and Nancy both flew away to search for food, and when they came back they found, to their horror, that their six little ones had been stolen, and the nest was bare and cold. Nancy nearly fainted with sorrow, and her cries were pitiful and heart-rending; but Tom Titmouse was dreadfully angry, and came ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... remember that, and before all things satiate their subjects with food, if they would have a tranquil and unopposed government! Ah, that reminds me of our own poor, Lorenzo! Many petitions have been received, much misery has been described, and many heart-rending complaints have been made ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... glen was disclosed a frightful spectacle. A man lay on the ground, torn from his horse by a huge blood-hound, which even then was rending him with its huge fangs! The dismounted rider's foot was entangled in the stirrups, and the horse was plunging and dragging him along, while the dog was pulling him back. The man himself uttered not a cry, but tried to fight off the dog with his ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... party crouched close in beside the rock, and looked anxiously upwards, where a loud rending sound was going on. Another moment and a large cocoa-nut palm, growing in an exposed situation, was wrenched from its hold and hurled like a feather over the cliffs, carrying a mass of earth and stones ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... time to preach my full doctrine, but gave him instead a deep and misty glass of cool beer, and pledged him brotherhood, freedom, and an equal law. Then I went on my way, praying God that all these rending quarrels might be appeased. For they would certainly be appeased if we once again had a united doctrine in Europe, since economics are but an expression of the mind and do not (as the poor blind slaves of the great cities think) mould the mind. What is more, nothing makes property ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... McGlashan, formerly editor of the Truckee Republican, has written a graphic account, with great care and desire for accuracy, of the complete expedition, which gives the heart-rending story with completeness, and I expect to publish ere long the personal story of Virginia Reed Murphy, who is still alive, one of the few ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... may succeed with Mr. Paine, for he is laboring under great distress of mind every since he was told by his physicians that he can not possibly live, and must die shortly. He is truly to be pitied. His cries, when left alone, are heart-rending. "O Lord, help me!" he will exclaim during his paroxysms of distress: "God, help me! Jesus Christ, help me!" Repeating these expressions in a tone of voice that would alarm the house. Sometimes he will say, "O God, what have I done to suffer ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... dream? And I know not nor care if there be an awaking Ever at all any more, for the years that have torn us apart, Few, so few as they are, will ever be rending and breaking: Sooner by far than I knew have they wrought this change for ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... usual accusation against Browning is that he was consumed with logic; that he thought all subjects to be the proper pabulum of intellectual disquisition; that he gloried chiefly in his own power of plucking knots to pieces and rending fallacies in two; and that to this method he sacrificed deliberately, and with complete self-complacency, the element of poetry and sentiment. To people who imagine Browning to have been this frigid believer in the intellect there is only one answer necessary or sufficient. It is the fact that he ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... search revealed the fact that he had been shot in the head, and he was carried to the nearest house, immediately opposite. Mrs. Lincoln, in a frantic condition, was assisted in crossing the street with the President, at the same time uttering heart-rending shrieks. Surgeons were soon in attendance, but it was evident that the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... succeeded Pottinger, thus described the condition of the emigrant Boers:—"They were exposed to a state of misery which he had never before seen equalled, except in Massena's invasion of Portugal. The scene was truly heart-rending." ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... utterly, Stays not nor hears. Round his left arm she put Both hands, set hard against his side her foot, Drew ... and the shoulder severed!—not by might Of arm, but easily, as the God made light Her hand's essay. And at the other side Was Ino rending; and the torn flesh cried, And on Autonoe pressed, and all the crowd Of ravening arms. 'Yea, all the air was loud With groans that faded into sobbing breath, Dim shrieks, and joy, and triumph-cries of death. And here was borne a severed arm, and there A ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... slaves who are relatively happy. I cast aside unhesitatingly the stories of exceptional cruelty; it is enough for me to see that these happy slaves expose themselves to a thousand deaths to escape a situation declared "preferable to that of our workmen." It is enough for me to hear the heart-rending cries of those women and young girls who, adjudged to the highest and last bidder, become, by the law and in a Christian country, the property, yes, the property (excuse the word, it is the true one) of the debauchees, their purchasers. And remark here that the virtues ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... few cities, and the Christians sent out another, and still another, and another expedition to subdue the enemy, but all were useless. The Holy City and the Holy Sepulchre were still in the hands of infidels, who persecuted the pilgrims who visited the Holy Tomb; and the Christians sent a heart-rending cry to all Europe for help, but Europe was slow to answer the appeal, and it was several years after Pope Innocent ordered a new Crusade, before an army departed for ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Kwasind. But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies, They the envious Little People, They the fairies and the pygmies, Plotted and conspired against him. "If this hateful Kwasind," said they, "If this great, outrageous fellow Goes on thus a little longer, Tearing everything he touches, Rending everything to pieces, Filling all the world with wonder, What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies? Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies? He will tread us down like mushrooms, Drive us all into the water, Give our bodies to be eaten By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs, By the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the rival conquerors of the decaying Roman empire. That old classic world, the history of which occupies so large a portion of our early studies, lay, in the eighth century of our era, utterly exanimate and overthrown. On the north the German, on the south the Arab, was rending away its provinces. At last the spoilers encountered one another, each striving for the full mastery of the prey. Their conflict brought back upon the memory of Gibbon the old Homeric simile, where the strife of Hector and Patroclus over the dead ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... gasping for breath. Suddenly, with a last effort, he half rose, stretched his clinched fist at Hatteras, who was gazing steadily at him, uttered a heart-rending cry, and fell back dead in the midst ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... whole number was often not to be distinguished, until the eye having adapted itself to the darkness, they were pointed out, or were heard, or some filthy bundle of rags and straw was seen to move. Perhaps the poor children presented the most piteous and heart-rending spectacle. Many were too weak to stand, their little limbs attenuated, except where the frightful swellings had taken the place of previous emaciation. Every infantile expression had entirely departed; and, in some reason and intelligence had evidently flown. Many were ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... agonising in the composition of this poem; but where his wife did not venture to intrude, we surely need not seek to desecrate. 'I stept aside with the bairns among the broom,' says Bonnie Jean; not, we should imagine, to leave room for aliens and strangers. He has been again burlesqued for us rending himself in rhyme, and stretched on straw groaning elegiacs to Mary in heaven. All this is mere sensationalism provided for illiterate readers. We have the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... never forgot that last look on Black Boy's face, never lost the rending horror of his scream as his forelegs gave and he sank out of sight, never forgot the hideous sound of his fall as he rolled down the cliff ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the heart-rending appeal of Adelheid, and, notwithstanding the awful strife of the elements and the fearful character of the night, he alone breasted the shock on his feet. Though aided by a rope, and bowed like a reed, his herculean frame trembled under the shock, in a way to render even ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... escaped wounded?" muttered: Lane, as he gathered himself up, and stood with his gun ready to deliver the contents of the second barrel. But at the end of ten minutes or so there was no sound to break the silence, save a peculiar rending, tearing noise at a distance, followed by a rumbling boom, as of thunder under ground, and a sensation as of the earth ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... was to drink the cup of humiliation, of despair, to the dregs. It was there that, conquered, broken, betrayed by fortune, he was to sign his abdication. It was there that he was to utter those heart-rending words: "It is right; I receive what I have deserved. I wanted no statues, for I knew that there was no safety in receiving them at any other hands than those of posterity. A man to keep them while he lives, needs constant good fortune. I think ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... more? ye will but revolt more and more." Never were these words, never was the fact that unsanctified afflictions have the same hardening effect on men which fire, that melts gold, has on clay, more strikingly illustrated than on this occasion. So far from rending his heart with his garment, and humbling himself before the Lord, Joram flares up into fiercer rebellion; and turning from these victims of the famine to his courtiers, he grinds his teeth to profane God's name and vow vengeance on his prophet, ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... soul. The body may be in spasms while the soul is at peace; and the reverse is true;—as in nightmare, when the mind is distressed while the body sleeps. A Christian has nothing to fear in this respect. To die will not be—as in full health we suppose it is—a violent rending asunder of the soul from the unyielding grasp of the body; but the preparation of the mortal frame for dissolution, by the sickness, however rapid, also fits the mind for the event. Even in cases of death by accidents, this ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... destroyed in Havana harbor, and the feelings of the people, already drawn to the breaking point by the inhuman cruelties of Spain towards her colonies near our own shores, burst with a vehemence that portended, in unmistakable language, the rending asunder of the once proud kingdom of Spain. The army wanted a war; the navy wanted it, the whole population wanted it and here it was within our grasp. It was the dawning of a new day for the United States; a new empire was being born in the Western hemisphere. The feverish preparations attendant ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Constance in a long and painful decline, and therewith a steady cheerful influence which had immensely assisted the growth of Fulbert's character. For some years past, Sister Angela had been not a care, but a trusty helper to the Bishop; and the later trials and difficulties, especially the sore rending of the tie with the being she had come to love with all the force of her strong nature, had been borne in a manner that bore witness to the subduing of ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... under his tactful interpretation. A long breath of relief issued from his heart, and the rending doubt was dissipated: the vulture-shadow spread its dark pennons and wheeled down the west. A priceless thing is that friend upon whom one may shift the part of a burden. It seemed to be one of Cathewe's occupations in life to absorb, in a kindly, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... slide and a bump, Theodora dropped lightly at his side. She caught the placket of her skirt, on the way; but the sound of rending garments was too common an occurrence in her career to call for more than a passing attention. Strange to say, it had been much easier to talk when she had been half-hidden in the apple-tree. A ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... sais with a note to Rose; and, on reaching the Mosque, he found things lively enough already. The iron railings, round the main gate of the Fort, were besieged by a hooting, roaring mob, belabouring the air with lathis and axes on bamboo poles; rending it with shouts of abuse and one reiterate cry, "Kill the white ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... effects. On the 13th of May, Tilly himself appeared in the town, after the streets had been cleared of ashes and dead bodies. Horrible and revolting to humanity was the scene that presented itself. The living crawling from under the dead, children wandering about with heart-rending cries, calling for their parents; and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers. More than 6,000 bodies were thrown into the Elbe to clear the streets; a much greater number had been consumed by the flames. The whole number of the slain was reckoned ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... A heart-rending howl from Tiger. The coon had caught him by his lower jaw. Uncle Eb, clutching his empty rifle like a club, was starting to the rescue, when the dog with a sudden, desperate jerk freed himself. Mad with rage and pain, he tried ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... arrives remember all I said to you, and tell him I died happy, feeling that all will be well with me." After this he spoke no more, and an hour later he died with my hand clasped in his own. When, two days after, his father arrived, and found that he was indeed dead, his grief was heart-rending to witness. Never before did I see such an agony of grief as was depicted upon his countenance as he bowed himself over the lifeless body of his only son. As soon as circumstances permitted, I repeated to Mr. Dalton the conversation Robert had held ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... to cloud the rending lightnings rage, Till, in the furious elemental war Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass Unbroken floods and solid torrents pour. The Seasons: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... after cabins to the starboard cuddy port, outside of which the cutter was suspended. Scarcely a word was uttered—not a scream was heard—even the infants ceased to cry, as if conscious of the unspoken and unspeakable anguish that was at that instant rending the hearts of their parting parents; nor was the silence of voices in any way broken, except in one or two cases, where the ladies plaintively entreated permission to be left behind with their husbands. ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... the rising sun struck upon the roof. They fell down, down, as minute followed minute, till at length they rested like a sword of flame upon the statue of Amon-Ra. Once more that statue seemed to move. I thought that it lifted its stone arms to protect its head. Then in a moment with a rending noise, its mighty mass burst asunder, and fell in small dust about the throne, almost hiding it ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... his predecessor, Rupertus), reads effoetae parentum (the effoetae agreeing with Romae which follows), considering the sense to be the same as as effoetae parentis—as divina dearum for divina dea, etc. Gerlach retains the rending of Cortius, and adopts his explanation (4to. ed., 1827), but says that the explicatio may seem durior, and that it is doubtful whether we ought not to have recourse to the effoeta parente of the old critics. Assuredly ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... said Rupert, 'I assure you that nothing could have been more heart-rending than the scene presented to our eyes when the Miss Hazlebys first became aware of the untimely fate of their favourite. Who could behold it with dry eye—or dry foot?' added he, in an under-tone, with a side ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his head. It missed by inches. But from behind came a sound as of rending cloth. The glassy dome above the cage of the machine had splintered ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... the foot of the girl next her, stepped on her own dress, tripped and came to her knees; picked herself up, with a sound of rending cloth, and finally got out of the room. This time the titter was not so easily checked. Peggy heard it rippling behind her as she fled. Even Miss Russell smiled as she rapped on the desk, and said one word to ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... servant who asked for two or three weeks' leave of absence last summer, explaining that he wished to bind the feet of his baby daughter. My friend, knowing all the cruelty of the practice, and having a heart touched by memories of the heart-rending cries with which the poor little creatures protest for weeks against their suffering, pleaded with the servant to let the child's feet alone. But to no effect. "Big feet no b'long pretty," he said, and ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... The heart-rending tone in which the question was asked, the pathetic look that accompanied it, convinced Captain Winstanley that, if he valued his domestic peace, he must ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... chanced, Hungry and desperate, he lost his cloth; And I—one garment bearing—followed still My unclad lord, despairing, reasonless, Through many a weary night not slumbering. But when, at length, a little while I slept, My Prince abandoned me, rending away Half of my garment, leaving there his wife, Who never wrought him wrong. That lord I seek By day and night, with heart and soul on fire— Seek, but still find not; though he is to me Brighter than light which gleams from lotus-cups, Divine as are the immortals, dear as breath, The master ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... mysterious repetition of signs. It gives us an extraordinary epitome of the history of France at that period to turn from this scene to the wild enthusiasm of Orleans, its crowd of people thronging about her, its shouts rending the air; while Troyes was full of terror, doubt, and ill-will, though its nearest neighbour, so to speak, the next town, and ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, A long, low distant murmur of dread sound, Such as arises when a nation bleeds With some deep and immedicable wound; Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground. The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned, And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief She clasps a babe, to whom her breast ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... gone.' The paddle had no sooner glided out into the rushing, turbulent waters than the canoe followed it, and Annette saw herself drifting on to her doom. Half a mile below was the fall, and at the side of the fall, went ever and ever around with tremendous violence, the rending fans of the water-mill. Annette knew full well that any drift boat, or log, or raft, carried down the river at freshet-flow, was always swept into the toils of the inexorable wheels. Yet, if she were reckless and ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... like the Tummel in spate, while visions of the eternal things—the throne of God and the Judgment Day—filled our eyes." She paused a few moments and then sinking back into her chair she went on, "Ay, terrible preaching, yon, like the storm-blast sweeping the hillsides and rending the firs in the Pass. Yes! yes! But gentle at times and winning, like the rain falling soft at night, wooing at the bluebells and the daisies in the glen, or like a mother croonin over the babe at her breast, till men wept for love and longing after Himself. Ay, ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... somewhat taciturn and slowly ripening youth. The need, enforced upon her by love itself, of asserting herself even against the mother she adored; the shadow of Meynell's cloud upon her, and her suffering under it, during the weeks of slander; and now this rending tragedy at her doors—had tempered anew the naturally high heart, and firm will. At this critical moment, she saved Meynell from a fatal step by the capacity she showed of loving his cause, only next to himself. And, indeed, Meynell was made wholesomely doubtful once or twice ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Forebodings! wretched, heart-rending forebodings distract my mind. I may no longer have a wife; and yet my impatient restlessness addresses her a letter. To-morrow will be three weeks since our separation, and not yet one line. Gracious God! for what am ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... have discovered that Leonora is inordinately selfish? For all other faults I have charity; but selfishness, which has none to give, must expect none. O divine sensibility, defend me from this isolation of the heart! All thy nameless sorrows, all thy heart-rending tortures, would I a thousand times rather endure. Leonora's selfishness breaks out perpetually; and, alas! it is of the most inveterate, incurable kind: every thing that is immediately or remotely connected with self she loves, and loves with the most provoking pertinacity. Her mother, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and masculinely scathless. It seemed wrong to her that he should suffer, and desirable that anybody should suffer rather than he. George Cannon with faulty linen! By what error of destiny had this heart-rending phenomenon of discord been caused? (Yes, heart-rending!) Was it due to weary carelessness, or to actual, horrible financial straits? Either explanation was very painful to her. She had a vision of a whole sisterhood of women toiling ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... going deliberately along, before he could beg him to get out of his way he ran right up against him, and the consequence was, that he and the stout gentlemen came to the ice together, making a very considerable star, and a noise which was still more terrific. First there was the sudden crash and rending asunder of the thick ice, and then the noise went rolling and mumbling away to the other end ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... stride, Hiawatha journeyed westward, ever westward, until at length he reached the kingdom of Mudjekeewis, ruler of all the winds of heaven, who joyfully welcomed the handsome youth. But anger rose in the heart of Hiawatha, and, rending asunder a huge rock with his magic mittens, he flung the fragments full at Mudjekeewis. For three days a terrible fight raged between the two warriors, till at last Mudjekeewis cried: "Hold, my son, it is impossible to kill me for I am immortal; I did but fight with you to test your valor. Go ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... the hill," they declared, derisively, but we two maintained that it was nothing less than a light near by. Then sleep ruled the camp. In the middle of the night there was a sudden terrific cracking, rending, and crashing, starting all to their feet except Clem, who was not wakened by it. What had happened? We perceived in a second. One of the enormous limbs, weakened by the wind, had broken off and dropped to the ground in the middle of the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... inevitable battle waged somewhen, somehow, by every mortal soul. And that face, gaunt, with haunted, shadowed eyes, looked all at once strangely purged of the heat of its lawlessness, for on it was the first presage of the fierce slow travail of spirit rending flesh. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... moment—-an interval of time during which the torpedo from the American submarine and the German cruiser seemed irresistibly drawn toward each other. And then came the crash—-the impact of the torpedo's war-nose against the steel side of the cruiser, the detonation of the powerful explosive, the rending of the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... like an arrow up the road. The noise of the tempest was audible. Closer it was coming, crushing, rending, annihilating all before it. The way grew darker. The terrified pony scarce touched the ground. His only will was to go forward, and he still obeyed a firm use of the bit. But who could hope to outrun a hurricane? Twelve miles an hour against eighty! ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... them, but that did not matter, for now and then faint moonlight came filtering down and he was leaving a plain trail behind. His shoulders were bleeding beneath the biting straps; he was on the verge of exhaustion; but he struggled forward, panting heavily and rending his garments to rags as he smashed through the brakes in ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... I will tell you my story," Philip said at last, wringing his friend's hand, while he acknowledged his dumb repentance with a heart-rending ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... and virtues, and of all the means of usefulness and enjoyment, have been questioned, attacked, and in various places, and with respect to millions of the human race, finally overthrown. A licentiousness of opinion and conduct, daring, outrageous, and rending asunder every bond formed by God or man, has taken place of former good sense and sound morals, and has long threatened the destruction of human good. Industry, cunning, and fraud have toiled with unrivaled exertions ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... box?" I asked. Once more she replied by a sentence of which I could make nothing; and, seeing that she was relapsing into a state of agitation, with the former heart-rending movement, I begged her to allow me to question her and to answer by gestures only. After some minutes, I succeeded in discovering that the box in question was locked up in one of the two large cupboards below stairs, and that the key of the cupboard ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... examples, the words and syllables which are improperly accented or emphasized in the poetry, are marked in italics. According to the principle stated above, the reader should avoid giving them that pronunciation which the correct rending of the poetry would require, but should read them as prose, except where he can throw off all accent and thus compromise the conflict between the poetic reading and the correct reading. That is, he must read the poetry wrong, in order to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... cries of the violin, heart-rending cries of regret and despair, followed by furious protests; then a nobler grief, and ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... of naked feet padding upon her deck-planking, as the rudely awakened look-out sprang to peer over the topgallant rail. But before the man could reach the spot for which he sprang the ship was upon me, and as her cutwater crashed into the frail hull of the boat, rending it asunder and flinging the two halves violently apart to roll bottom upward on either side of the swelling bows, I leapt desperately upward at the chain bobstay, caught it, shinned nimbly up it to the bowsprit, and made my breathless way inboard, to the terror and astonishment ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... crime ever perpetrated by human turpitude could have warranted a more dreadful fate! What demons, contriving mischief and torments, could have invented a combination of miseries so terrible and heart-rending? The decorations of beauty—the gratification of pride—even the humble means of health and comfort, are thus rendered the unmerciful instruments of the keenest sufferings, the most frightful sudden deaths, and the most dismal domestic ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... infuriate any white man of the South, by placing a red flag before him; we simply desire to accustom him to look upon a picture which his grand-children will not, because of the frequency of the occurrence, regard with anything more heart-rending than complacent indifference. The world moves forward; and the white man of the South could not stand still, if he so desired. Like the black man, he must work, or perish; like the black man, he must submit to the sharpest ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... moment, a prolonged, heart-rending wail trembled upon the stillness of the evening air: so piercing, yet so plaintive, was it, that it sent a shudder through my frame I have not forgotton to ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... offered themselves, as from the rent of a garment, 1 Sam. xv. from the sabbatic year, Isa. xxxvii. from the vessels of a Potter, Jer. xviii, &c. but also when such fit objects were wanting, they supplied them by their own actions, as by rending a garment, 1 Kings xi. by shooting, 2 Kings xiii. by making bare their body, Isa. xx. by imposing significant names to their sons, Isa. viii. Hos. i. by hiding a girdle in the bank of Euphrates, Jer. xiii. by breaking a potter's vessel, Jer. xix. by putting on fetters and ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... front to back. A monstrous shadow aped him across the cutting. It was the event of a second. Dangle seemed to jump, hang in the air momentarily, and vanish, and after a moment's pause came a heart-rending smash. Then ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... purposes, had no artistic aims, had no home life, no knowledge of their children, no interest in education—that, in short, they left the whole business of worthy living to their wives, and devoted themselves exclusively to the wild-beast joys of tearing and rending their business competitors. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of these wanderings, in which I must have seemed like one seeking his soul, that my eyes fell on Moore's 'Irish Melodies,' lying open on my table at the song beginning "When he who adores thee." I seized my pen, and then and there wrote the music to that heart-rending farewell, which is published at the end of my collection of songs, 'Irlande,' under the title of 'Elegie.' This is the only occasion on which I have been able to vent any strong feeling in music while still under its influence. And I think that I have rarely reached ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... admirable success, to so many ancient writers, under a system of canons which have now raised this species of criticism to the rank of an inductive science. This criticism, applied to the Scriptures, has in many instances restored the true rending, and dissolved the objections which might have been founded on the uncorrected variations; and, as time rolls on, may lead, by yet fresh discoveries and more comprehensive recensions, to a yet further clarifying of the stream of Divine truth, till 'the river ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... of heaven swung to and fro, ebbing and heaving with the general convulsion. The doleful psalmody in the neighboring ground broke abruptly. The chorus of many feminine voices sent forth but one rending shriek. The clamor of thousands of the town-folk from their encampment gave its wakeful response. Then the dead silence of consternation ensued. I picked up every stick and brand that had been scattered about, steadied myself in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... his ideal? Oh, no! On the contrary, his passion grows stronger every day. This is proved by his frequent allusions to her whom he never names, and by those words of restless yearning and heart-rending despair that cannot be read without exciting a pitiful sympathy. As before long we shall get better acquainted with the lady and hear more of her—she being on the point of leaving the comparative privacy of the Conservatorium for the boards that represent ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... had said, they needed food more than the gems, for at best the supply they had blasted out could not last long, and when that was gone where were they to get more, for there were no more cartridges, and the rending force of powder was needed to ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... startled, at our morning coffee, by the violent irruption into the dining-room, on his knees, of a man with clasped hands uplifted, rolling eyes, and hair wildly tossing, as he knocked his head on the floor, kissed our hostess's gown, and uttered heart-rending appeals to her, to Heaven, and to all the saints. "Barynya! dear mistress!" he wailed. "Forgive! Yay Bogu, it was not my fault. The Virgin herself knows that the carpenter forced me to it. I'll never do it again, never. God is my witness! Barynya! ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... upon me, an angry growl burst from behind them. I had forgotten Nobs. Like a demon of hate he sprang among those Kro-lu fighting-men, tearing, rending, ripping with his long tusks and his mighty jaws. They had me down in an instant, and it goes without saying that the six of them could have kept me there had it not been for Nobs; but while I was struggling to throw them off, Nobs was springing first upon one and then upon another of them ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... possessed. Others in the inns embraced, sobbing; but still they sang. Two or three musicians of the neighborhood—the Gipsy Walteufel, Rosselkasten, and George Adam—had arrived, and their pieces thundered in terrible and heart-rending strains. ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... thunder With an earth-awaking blast Through the caverns of the past; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast; A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, Which soars where Expectation never flew, Rending the veil of space and time asunder! One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew; One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth the world ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... dark calamities and heralded by strange phenomena.[2] In the great day, there will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of man; it will be a startling and luminous vision like that of Sinai, a great storm rending the clouds, a fiery meteor flashing rapidly from east to west. The Messiah will appear in the clouds, clothed in glory and majesty, to the sound of trumpets and surrounded by angels. His disciples will sit by his side upon thrones. The dead will then arise, and the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... vessel could not be sooner ready to sail, I determined not to risk this packet by a private hand, or by the public post; he is now arrived and takes charge of it in person. Were it possible, I would attempt to paint to you the heart rending anxiety I have suffered in this time, through a total want of intelligence; my arrival here, my name, my lodgings, and many other particulars have been reported to the British administration, on which ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... helped, more than any other man, to bring the people who despoiled him to a national consciousness. If he did not imagine, he mainly managed the plucky New England expedition against Louisbourg at Cape Breton a half century before the War of Independence; and his splendid success in rending that stronghold from the French taught the colonists that they were Americans, and need be Englishmen no longer than they liked. His soldiers were of the stamp of all succeeding American armies, and his leadership was of the neighborly and fatherly sort ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... addition of sulphur. On the contrary, dynamite, now so important, and various similar explosives, are but mixtures of nitro-glycerine with earthy substances, in order to diminish and make more manageable the development of the rending force of the base. The explosive power of any substance is the pressure it exerts on all parts of the space containing it at the instant of explosion, and is measured by comparing the heat disengaged with the volume of gas emitted, and with the rapidity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... recesses of the more densely populated quarters of the town. This was designed to teach them a practical charity, the art of knowing the needs, the miseries of the lower classes, and to heal these heart-rending evils by a nostrum of kind words and ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to evangelize the masses by the help of childhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and naivete of the apostles, such was ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... gods themselves chided his temerity, the very heavens split and shattered all sound with rending uproar. Coaley squatted, stopped and stood shaking, his heart pounding so that Lance felt its tremulous tattoo against his thigh. The rumbling after-note of ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... attentively, looking into space, her marble-like hands extended along the old wall. The sun was shining full upon her. She was counting, it seemed without breathing, the sharp blows and listening to that heart-rending groan. She was ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal |
