"Sunbeam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Amelia, who invariably breakfasted in bed, I inhaled the most delicious odour of heliotrope. It was wafted towards me, in a cool current of air, as I approached her bed, and seemed, to my childish fancy, to be the friendly greeting of a sparkling sunbeam that rested ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... into a doze in a chair in front of the fire, but a stray sunbeam coming through a window fell upon his closed eyelids, and he awoke with a start. For a minute he could not think where he was. Then the cheery voice of Stella fell upon his ears. Somewhere in the distance she was singing, and he sprang to his feet ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... over strange waters. Then occurred the most notable event of my life. In the twinkling of an eye I was caught away from the Earth and, without any effort of my own, I was darting through space faster than a sunbeam. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... stretched out. And she seemed to look for something on the far-off border of the desert that never came. And I wondered if she were awake or asleep. And as I looked her body quivered, and a light came into her eyes, like when a sunbeam breaks into a ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... animals, birds, insects, and flowers which are, apparently without rhyme or reason, placed in one great disarray in the Stuart pictures is said to have been heraldic and symbolic. The sunbeam coming from a cloud, the white falchion, and the chained hart are heraldic ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... and however light, buoyant, and ethereal they may seem, are subject to this force: the tiniest speck in a sunbeam and the most volatile vapour, equally with the heaviest metal and the hugest block, the particles of bodies as well as the bodies themselves. The rising of a balloon in the air may seem an exception to this law; but it is not so; for ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... pearls, with which the fond, proud father and husband had presented them that morning, when a slight tap was heard at the door, and our pet Lillie entered. A bright-eyed, light-hearted creature is Lillie Mason—a sunbeam to her home. She ran up to me with affectionate greetings, and united in our raptures ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... woods with her musical words, And the sky-lark, ashamed of his voice, forbore. She called back the years that had passed, and long I heard their voice in her happy song. Her heart was the home of the sunbeam. Bright Poured the stream of her song on the starry night. O, why did the chief of the tall Hh His feet from Kapza [6] so long delay? For his father sat at my father's feast, And he at Wakwa's—an ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... as the ones you can find in the woods now, and grew in just such a shady place. When the breezes crept down under the trees they waved the fern gracefully about so that it gently touched the tall rushes that grew above it and cast little shadows on the moss at its feet. Now and then a playful sunbeam darted through the crevices in the leaves and found the fern, and at night drops of dew stole silently in and made a glistening crown upon its head. But there were no children then to find it. It was long, long ago, when the earth was young, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... walked a wood; She never smiled, nor never could. One day a sunbeam from the South Kissed full her petulant proud mouth; She laughed, and there, beneath the trees, Fluttering in the April breeze, Spread tracts of blossom, green and white, Curtseying to the golden light— The broken ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... Mullen had read the service in his melodious voice, gazing straight over the Prayer-book as though he saw a vision in the sunbeam above Judy's head. On that solitary occasion his soul, which revolted from what he described in secret as the "Methodistical low church atmosphere" of his parish, had adorned the simple word with the facial solemnity that accompanies ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... shudders at the tale. Now look over the shoulder. When the fiery tongue of the Revolution blazed into the undying speech of liberty, Madison, Mason, Patrick Henry, and Edmund Randolph uttered their declaration that like a sunbeam has been written upon every page of the nation's history: "All men are by nature equally free and have inherent rights—namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Upon the ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... sculptured figures to which it refers have supplied the poet with an example of the "glory" which may "arise" from "defect," the power from limitation. It needs, he says, the obstructing prism to set free the rainbow hues of the sunbeam. Only dumbness can give to love the full eloquence of the eyes; only deafness can impress love's yearnings on the movements ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... morning sunbeam peeped into the chamber Zaica opened her eyes, refreshed and smiling. She sat up in bed remembering the dream, and then jumped lightly to the floor. As she did so she glanced at her feet, which felt queer. Wonderful! They were little bird claws! She looked down at herself. She was covered with soft ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... he is, most of the time—a sunbeam took human shape when he was born. But naturally that dreadful scene left a scar on his brain, as the bullet left a scar on his shoulder, and he is always liable to see ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... delivered to your brother yesterday. I trust to our good luck for finding quick conveyance. I did send to the White@horse cellar here in Piccadilly, whence all the stage-coaches set out, but there was never a genie booted and spurred, and going to Florence on a sunbeam. If you are not charmed with the watch, never deal with us devils any more. If any thing a quarter so pretty was found in Herculaneum, One should admire Roman enamellers more than their Scipios and Caesars. The device of the second seal I stole; it is old, but uncommon; a Cupid standing ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... just out;" Fresh strawberries sold under all the house-eaves, And young ladies on sale for the strawberry-leaves: When cards, invitations, and three-cornered notes Fly about like white butterflies—gay little motes In the sunbeam of Fashion; and even Blue Books Take a heavy-wing'd flight, and grow busy as rooks; And the postman (that Genius, indifferent and stern, Who shakes out even-handed to all, from his urn, Those lots which so often decide if our day Shall be fretful and anxious, or joyous and gay) Brings, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... so: legions of rats and mice infested this retired spot; at night they ran over Francis's bed with an infernal uproar, so that he could find no repose from his sufferings. But he soon forgot all that when near his sister-friend. Once again she gave back to him faith and courage. "A single sunbeam," he used to say, "is enough to drive away ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... exploded," murmured the shadowy shape, mixing itself up with the motes of a sunbeam and drifting out through the window. Then Richard fell to laughing in his sleep, and so awoke. He was still confused with the dream as he sat on the edge of his bed, pulling himself together ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... down there could not get in at all. So Polly got the broom, and carefully swept away the dust and the spider-webs, and then she washed and polished the four panes until they shone again, and the very next afternoon a sunbeam came to visit the geranium, and a tiny new leaf peeped out to greet it. When the window was cleaned, the shelf (holding a few old tin pans) that hung below it looked so dingy that Polly could not rest until she had scrubbed ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... end of the canon a vagrant sunbeam ran like a bridge of faery gold. It pelted the gray wall with a million particles of mellow fire. It flickered, flashed anew, and faded. The ponies drew apart. The colt Yuma ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... set out. To some fair damsel, who, intent to charm, Declares she thinks the weather fine and warm, Such words as these address her trembling ear— "I really think we shall have rain, my dear; Pray do not go, my love," cries soft mama; "You shall not go, that's flat," cries stern papa. A lucky sunbeam shines on the discourse, The parents soften, and Miss mounts her horse. Each tickled with some laugh-inspiring notion, Behold the jocund party all in motion: Some by a rattling buggy are befriended, Some mount the cart—but not to be suspended. ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the yard the sunbeam, as it crept up the wall, fell slantingly through the attic window whence issued the sound of hammer-blows. A man with a hard face stood in its light, driving nails into the lid of a soap box that ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... was welcome everywhere,—perhaps for the sake of his yellow hair and blue eyes, which were a wonder in that country; but more likely for the smiling ways and cheerful speech of him, that made his passing through that gloomy land like the passage of a sunbeam through thick clouds; ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... secure a life of two hours, obtain general circulation because it seems to have required some degree of courage to write them. The most insignificant scribblers will be looked upon as men of mind, and the most venal writers suddenly become 'martyrs of truth.' A thousand noxious insects, whom a sunbeam of truth and real sagacity would have dispersed, favored by the darkness created for them with deplorable short-sightedness, insinuate themselves into the unarmed minds of the people, and instil their poison to the last drop, as though it were a forbidden delicacy of the most exquisite character. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of a child entered; a perfect sunbeam irradiating the whole room. If, under the confidence induced by the vision I had had of him on his knees the night before, any suspicion remained in my mind of his being Gwendolen Ocumpaugh in disguise, it ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... flutters of eyelids, flutters round the eyes, flutters at the mouth. "Oh," she said, "oh, yes, and I don't know why. I'm—I believe—" She tried to laugh, but the little flutterings clouded the smile like soft, dark wings flickering upon a sunbeam. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... comforter, in this dark hour of love Thy faith and trust in God is like the pole star's glow To some benighted sailor; yes, e'en now a thought Has come to me like light from dawning sunbeam brought. My father, Ethel, was a Mason; ere he died He called me to him, and kneeling at his side, Gave me a jewel, charged me with his dying breath Never to give it up except for life or death, For when at last he ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... through the air, like an echo on the mountain church bells chime. It was an answer in song, in the melting tones of a chorus from others of nature's spirits—good and loving spirits, the daughters of the sunbeam. They who place themselves in a circle every evening on the mountain peaks; there they spread out their rose-colored wings, which, as the sun sinks, become more flaming red, until the lofty Alps seem to burn with fire. Men call this the Alpine ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... I was fain to return to the stone so 'pure and flat,' on which I sat, enjoying the grand sylvan solitude, the dark background and the grey bridge mid-way, so tall and slim, across whose ruins a sunbeam glimmered, and the gigantic forest trees that slumbered round, opening here and there in dusky vistas, and breaking in front into detached and solemn groups. It was the setting of a dream ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... can't," repeated Ruby firmly, "because I won't let yon. I don't think I need say to you that I am innocent," he added, with a look in which truth evidently shone forth like a sunbeam, "but now that they have put these irons on me I will not consent that they shall be taken off except by the law which put ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... any other time. Many laws are to be found there which are unnecessary and superfluous if applied elsewhere. Many actions, innocent in themselves, are prohibited. All the mala prohibita are not mala in se. But one thing is as clear as a sunbeam, and that is a very important light to the student of Ethics; if God was the author of these laws, nothing morally wrong was commanded or allowed by them. When it was said of the Jews through the prophet, "I gave them statutes which were not ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... anyone—if it was not absolutely necessary—to work in a laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly come by without a Christian effort, of "Sunbeam." But, oh! I have a large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working day, all over the "civilized," world to keep people "civilized." The labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and buttons and thread ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... There is, however, the vitality which informs the physical frame; that must be equally an object of incessant care. Then he whose physical frame is perfect and whose vitality remains in its original purity—he is one with God. Man passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes through a crack; here one moment, and gone the next. Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings life; then comes another, and there is death. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Life!" he cried, desponding, 40 "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the third day of his fasting By the lake he sat and pondered, By the still, transparent water; Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping, 45 Scattering drops like beads of wampum, Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, And the herring, Okahahwis, 50 And the Shawgashee, the craw-fish! "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the fourth day of his fasting In his lodge he ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... dawn of light saved my senses and Annie's life. When the first red beam shot through the blinds at the farther end of the room, tears came into my eyes. I felt as if angels were watching outside. A tiny sunbeam crept between the slats and fell on the carpet. It was no more than a hair's breadth, but it was companionship to me. Slowly, steadily it came towards me. I forgot all else in watching it. To this day ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... thought of the dress she wore. The quiet composure of the figure was what attracted me, and the peculiar expression of the face. It was sad, almost severe; so I thought it at first; till a smile once for an instant broke upon the lips, like a flitting sunbeam out of a cloudy sky; then I saw that kindliness was quite at home there, and sympathy and a sense of merriment were not wanting; but the clouds closed again, and the look of care, of sorrow, I could not quite tell what it was, only that it was unrest, retook ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... forms so large a part of the folklore of Western Europe, is found among the American races. The Ojibbeways see thousands of fairies dancing in a sunbeam; during a rain myriads of them bide in the flowers. When disturbed they disappear underground. They have their dances, like the Irish fairies; and, like them, they kill the domestic animals of those who offend them. The Dakotas also believe in fairies. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... they are indeed our fellow-creatures, and part of one wise and wonderful system! If there be sermons in stones, what think ye of the hymns and psalms, matin and vesper, of the lark, who at heaven's gate sings—of the wren, who pipes her thanksgivings as the slant sunbeam shoots athwart the mossy portal of the cave, in whose fretted roof she builds her nest above the waterfall! In cave-roof? Yea—we have seen it so—just beneath the cornice. But most frequently we have detected her procreant cradle on old mossy stump, mouldering walls or living rock—sometimes ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... to Alfred like losing a sunbeam, and his spirit felt very dreary after he had heard this sentence. Ellen knew her well enough to suspect that she was very sorry, but that she could not help herself; and Mrs. King caught the brother and sister making such grumbling speeches ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... found her way to Olympus is known only to herself. I believe she first climbed some rocks, then a cloud, then sprang over a rainbow bridge, and at last scaled a long sunbeam, which led her straight to the marble steps ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... romance was deserving of a great love. She was like a sunbeam when she entered a room, she always brought gladness; she ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... instantaneous and equal ease. Still further: if this abstract truth be insufficient to support faith and bestow peace, what will he say to the visible fact that all the races of beings, and all the clusters of worlds, from the motes in a sunbeam to the orbs of the remotest firmament, are now taken care of by Divine Providence? God now keeps them all in being and order, unconfused by their multiplicity, unoppressed by their magnitude, and not for an instant forgetting or neglecting either the mightiest ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... child's face into a strange beauty, as a stray sunbeam finds a hidden flower and glorifies it. Turning her face upward to the nest, she patted her own cheek and said: "Be goodu, ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... stopping tears, and Nell, astonished at Antonia's appearance and words, presently sat up on the grass, and, flinging back her heavy mane of hair, watched the priestess of art with great interest. How could Antonia imprison a sunbeam? It sounded interesting! Nell blinked her eyes and looked ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... in dew, and when about seven o'clock, the first sunbeam pierced the grey mantle of the east, every leaf flashed back the yellow light. Will was walking there alone, his eyes turned now and then to the white window of his ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... a beautiful sight to look upon, as the long jet, curving like the tail of a horse, plunged into the foaming pool below; and then rising with its millions of globules of snowy spray, glittered under the sunbeam with all the colours of the rainbow. It was, indeed, a beautiful sight; but our eyes did not dwell long upon it, for other objects were before them that filled us with wonder. Away below—far below where we were—lay a lovely valley, smiling in all the luxuriance ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... diagram originally drawn by Newton, to explain the experiment by which he first learned the composition of light. A sunbeam is admitted into a darkened room through an opening, H, in a shutter. This beam when not interfered with will travel in a straight line to the screen, and there reproduce a bright spot of the same shape ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... A sunbeam shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey, with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention distracted. His ideas, if such an animal could have ideas, took another direction. He stopped, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... of the clearing he could see Danny Stern and his crew, tiny beneath the cavernous sunbeam-shot overhang of giant leaves. Danny was standing up at the controls of the 'dozer, waving his arms. His crew was struggling to get a log set so he could shove it into place with the 'dozer. They were repairing a break in the barricade—the place where one of New Earth's ...
— Where There's Hope • Jerome Bixby
... voice, now silent forever! God help her! It seems a dream! She hopes, even now she may waken; But see yonder cruel sunbeam. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... said Maxine, as they sat in the chintz-hung sitting room before a bright fire of logs. They had finished their private affairs. The day was two hours older, and a sunbeam that had pointed at them through the diamond-paned window had travelled away and vanished. The day was darker outside, and it was as though spring had lost her sportive mood and then withdrawn, not wishing to hear the tale that Adams ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Apostle's thought, which is more adequately and accurately expressed in the Revised Version. 'His glory' is the flashing brightness of the divine self-manifestation, and in that Light resides the strength which is the standard or measure of the gift to us. The tremendous force of the sunbeam which still falls so gently on a sleeper's face as not to disturb the closed eyes is but a parable of the strength which characterises the divine glory. And wonderful and condemnatory as the thought is, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... effort was being made to find Nancy, and to learn if she were safe, Nancy lay upon an old bed in the little house in the country lane, and slept soundly, after having cried herself to sleep the night before. She awoke with a start when a stray sunbeam came in through the tiny window ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... the beating storm, But fled like a sunbeam, white and frail, To the sea, to the air, somewhere, somewhere — I have ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... theatre at the lecturer's head, the slumbering student, or any other object worth aiming at—an amusing way of beguiling the hour's lecture, and only excelled by the sport produced, if he has the good luck to sit in a sunbeam, from making a tournament of "Jack-o'-lanthorns" on the ceiling. His locker in the lobby of the dissecting-room has long since been devoid of apron, sleeves, scalpels, or forceps; but still it is not empty. Its contents are composed of three ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... again, my dear; Sunshine and violets blue, you know; Crocuses lifting their sleepy heads Out of their sheets of snow. And I know a blossom sweeter by far That violets blue, or crocuses are, And bright as the sunbeam's glow. But how can I dare to look in her eyes, Colored with heaven's own hue? That wouldn't do at all, my dear, It really ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... about to set the bloodhounds upon this little sunbeam! 'Tis long since these grim walls have echoed strains so sweet as hers. (Croons.) "Woa, LUCINDY," &c. "Dey tried him by a jury, way down in ole Missouri, an' dey hung him to a possum-dip tree!" (Goes to couch, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes: Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine: Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots, Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the roots Keep languid time to the music's soft ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... affectionate, but also a wonderfully bright, nature. It was as impossible for Annie to turn away from laughter and merriment as it would be for a flower to keep its head determinately turned from the sun. In their darkest days Annie had managed to make her mother laugh; her little face was a sunbeam, her very naughtinesses were ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... pleasant Garonne; of the hundred horses in the stables, the seventy hounds in the kennels, the fifty hawks in the mews. His English friend should come there when the wars were over, and what golden days would be theirs! Nigel too, with his English coldness thawing before this young sunbeam of the South, found himself talking of the heather slopes of Surrey, of the forest of Woolmer, even of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and waited and watched eagerly for the rich girls to come down to the well to water their father's flocks, just as one watches in the twilight for the first star to sparkle in the azure overhead, for the first sunbeam of the morning or the ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... fantastic forms of some of the stalactites and stalagmites are a never-ending source of interest. There are long winding passages and roomy chambers following one after another for great distances, with here and there some chink in the stony vault above, through which a sunbeam penetrates, enabling us to see to the right and left openings leading to untrodden places in the bowels of the earth. As few of these caves have been explored, the wildest accounts are given by the natives concerning the dark recesses where only wild beasts seek shelter. Before ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... rose-buds, soft and sweet, "We revel in the stream; "We wanton lightly on the wind, "Or glide on a sunbeam. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... we should beware of infringing the custom. Once admit two or three faces seated at your hearthside, or gazing out from your windows on the laughing sun, and when they are gone, they carry off the glow from your grate and the sunbeam from your panes. Poor Mrs. Saunders! in vain she sought to rouse herself, to put the rooms to rights, to attend to the chickens to distract her thoughts. The one-eyed cripple, the little girl, the shaggy-faced dog, still haunted ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the open doorway, whence his proud glance strayed From the tentyard where the quiet papoose played To the newly bladed corn, the sassafras, Dearer than his life the love of Matoax. Like the morning sunbeam was her smile, and frequent, Like the rippling water was her happy laughter, In her eyes the sparkle of the evening planet, And her lips were red as brightest coral. Day by day she grew in grace of form and ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... and weeds: While, ever and anon, there falls Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls. Yet time has seen, that lifts the low, And level lays the lofty brow, Has seen this broken pile complete, Big with the vanity of state; But transient is the smile of fate! A little rule, a little sway, A sunbeam in a winter's day, Is all the proud and mighty have Between the cradle and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Thy sunbeam comes upon this earth of mine with arms outstretched and stands at my door the livelong day to carry back to thy feet clouds made of my tears ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... at length to a forest whose trees were greater, grander, and more beautiful than any we had yet seen. Their live pillars upheaved a thick embowed roof, betwixt whose leaves and blossoms hardly a sunbeam filtered. Into the rafters of this aerial vault the children climbed, and through them went scrambling and leaping in a land of bloom, shouting to the unseen elephants below, and hearing them trumpet their ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... it not joy, the anticipating joy," answered Nigel, with animation, "to look on a beloved one, and mark, amid the clouds of distance, glory, and honor, and love entwining on, his path? to look through shades of present sorrow, and discern the sunbeam afar off—is there not ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... and recorded in days gone by. Yet in the midst of a literature professedly false, and which paints in fascinating colors the various phases of unrepented vice and crime, without the redeeming shadows of honor and Christian morality, our little volume must fall a welcome sunbeam. The strange career of our heroine constitutes a sensational biography charming and beautiful in ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... fastening a foot-link to a cotton-wood tree, bait the hook with maggots or bits of easily-gotten fresh meat. Often the trout are caught as fast as the hook can be baited, and looking through the ice hole in the track of a sunbeam, you see a mass of tails, silver fins, bright eyes, and crimson spots, a perfect shoal of fish, and truly beautiful the crimson-spotted creatures look, lying still and dead on the blue ice under the sunshine. Sometimes two men bring home 60 lbs. of trout as the result ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Then a sunbeam, that was still strong enough to help a little, heard the faint cries of the old Wild Goose and was sorry for him. She melted the ice so that the Goose could pull out his feet, first one, and then the other. She stood for a moment in ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the effect of the glimpse of a sunbeam, just sufficient to light Lawyer Clippurse to mend his pen. The pen was mended in vain. The attorney was dismissed, with directions to hold himself in readiness ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... She thought on something which she was preparing for Sara, and which was to be an agreeable surprise to her, and which was to be made known to her in a few days—she thought of this, and in that moment of trouble the thought of it, like a sunbeam on dark clouds, brightened the night in her soul. The thought of gratifying one, who on this evening had so deeply wounded her, gave a mild and ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... after her mother had kissed her, "Why has papa don away? I 'ove my papa ever so much, and I asked him, before he went away, if he 'oved oo and Eddie and Allie, and he taid he did, and that he 'oved me, his 'ittle sunbeam, too, and ett he has don and left us all. I am so sorry papa ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... but he could not sleep. Three years of night, and through the darkness a sunbeam at last! At sea adrift and lost, and now land! Dead so long, and, lo! the thrill and stir of resurrection. Sleep was not for such an hour. Hope deals with the future; now and the past are but servants that wait on ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... circumstance of his early life stood out bright and vivid as if touched with a sunbeam:—an act of childish folly, done fifteen years before, for which his grandfather had made him learn the text, "Thou God seest me." It came flashing back upon him now. Had God seen him all this while? Then He knew ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... thee it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary,— Watched within a curtained room Where no sunbeam brake the gloom, Round the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... while we are looking at her, it is clearing away—like a sunbeam, out peeps a smile from each corner of her rosy mouth, and hark! you may almost hear her merry laugh as clapping her bands ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... a sunbeam?" said the first speaker. "She must be a fast craft to come up with him. They ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... The harriers would have more victims but for the quick, warning cry of the male bird, who catches sight of us standing behind the shining grey trunk of the beech. The rovers instantly vanish, apparently gliding down a sunbeam into the rising morning mist which begins to fill ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of the sun, he bored a tiny hole in the wall, and a thin sunbeam gleamed through. Then, taking a few grains of sand he blew them through the hole and in the sunbeam they seemed ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the prism's obstruction shows aright The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light Into the jewelled bow from blankest white; So may a glory from defect arise: Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek, Only by Dumbness adequately speak As favored mouth could ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... not gainless is the loss; A glorious sunbeam gilds thy sternest frown, And while his country staggers neath the Cross, He ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... Behind these, Castor and Pollux, and next the cloudlike, nebulous Cancer. Largest of all, great Sirius is flaming in the south, quivering with the ebb and flow of his light, sometimes with an emerald scintillation like a dewdrop on which a sunbeam glances. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... therefore he has thus blessed us.' Thus only can we be truly happy. With this feeling there is always consolation in distress. It begets charity, and love, and confidence, and gentleness; it makes the heart light and the face cheerful, and the life like a sunbeam gladdening where it goes. That's what ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... people in this generation have but a very imperfect belief in the actual, supernatural, and, if you like to call it so, miraculous manifestation of Jesus Christ, His very Self, to men that love Him and cleave to Him. Do you believe as a simple revealed truth, plain as a sunbeam in such words as these, that Jesus Christ Himself will do something on you, and in you, and for you, if you love Him and trust Him; that His hand will be laid on your eyes as it was laid of old; that He will indeed, in no metaphor, but in reality, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... for a few weeks in the summer, to the unspeakable rejoicing of the whole family; but it was a break of light in a cloudy day; the clouds closed again. Only now and then a stray sunbeam of a letter found its ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... up from the bricked yard. The young woman's face was thin and strong; two great, clear, hazel eyes looked straight out, like arrow shots; it was a clear, undeviating glance; it never wandered, or searched, or wavered, any more than a sunbeam; it struck full upon whatever was there; it struck through many things that were transparent to their quality. She had square, white, strong teeth, that set together like the faces of a die; they showed easily when she ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... prolonged by contrary winds, we arrived at Vao, a small island north-east of Malekula. When one has sailed along the lifeless, greyish-green shores of Malekula, Vao is like a sunbeam breaking through the mist. This change of mood comes gradually, as one notices the warm air of spring, and dry souls, weather-beaten captains and old pirates may hardly be aware of anything beyond a better appetite and greater thirst. And it ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... I've always noticed that they take a turn for the better. 'It may not be my way; it may not be thy way; but yet in His own way the Lord will provide.'" Mrs. Wainwright spoke steadily and cheerfully. Her thin cheeks flushed with feeling. Her tones were strong. Her smile was like a sunbeam. Doctor Wainwright's courage rose. ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... emotion he felt,—"and God bless Amelie! Think you she would care to see me to-day, Le Gardeur?" Philibert's thoughts flew far and fast, and his desire to know more of Amelie was a rack of suspense to him. She might, indeed, recollect the youth Pierre Philibert, thought he, as she did a sunbeam that gladdened long-past summers; but how could he expect her to regard him—the full-grown man—as the same? Nay, was he not nursing a fatal fancy in his breast that would sting him to death? for among the gay and gallant throng about the capital was it not more than possible that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... own fault has put some obstacle to choke the channel and dam out His Spirit from our spirits. We cannot too firmly hold, or too profoundly feel, that an unbroken continuity of supplies of His grace—unbroken and bright as a sunbeam reaching in one golden shaft all the way from the sun to the earth—is His purpose concerning us. Here, in this highest region, the thought of our text is most absolutely true; for He who gives is ever pouring forth His own self for us to take, and there is no limit to our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the Lucrine lake to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and the Caieta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament in affected language that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... last, she repeated the name of her friend Alexis Razumovsky. Her fair brow lighted up as with a reflected sunbeam on his approaching her throne, and, holding out to him both hands, she said aloud: "Alexis Razumovsky, I have you most to thank for my success in dispossessing the usurpers who have robbed me of my father's throne; for your wise counsels gave me courage ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... had ceased for some time, and as again the wild chant went up from those harsh strained voices, a stray sunbeam, like a gleam of good promise, shot across the floor. But what was this little figure stealing in through a side-door and joining the circling throng?—a figure in lilac gown, with the stiff muslin cap and folded neckerchief. She ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... was no stain upon the earth, no mist to obscure the sun. Her soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that Rodd was as clear.... Of all that she had left she did not even think, so worthless was it. A career, money, power, influence? With love, the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys that give moments of perfection wherein all is revealed and ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... remains, first interred in Manchester, were afterward removed by her husband to Brussels, where he raised a circular memorial chapel to her memory at Lacken. Her statue, chiseled in white marble by Geefs, represents her as Norma, and stands in the center, faintly lit by a single sunbeam admitted from a dome, and surrounded by masses of shadow. "It appears," says the Countess de Merlin, "like a fantastic thought, the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... soft, silky locks of that beautiful infant, that is cradled so lovingly in my father's arms. Oh! whose do you think that smiling cherub is, with such dark, velvet eyes, and pearly skin, and mouth of heavenly sweetness? It is mine, it is my own darling Rosalie, my pearl, my sunbeam, my flower, my every sweet ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... to happen. Away flew the bone across the deck, with so good an aim that it made a cannon against the boatswain's nose and his glass, breaking both one and the other with a loud crash, which was followed by a volley of oaths. The steerage of a frigate, even when a sunbeam penetrates through a scuttle, is not over and above brilliantly lighted; and on the present occasion a purser's dip here and there just enabled us to grope our way about the deck. Now it happened that the carpenter ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... a strange group that he peeped in upon, where the old family portraits seemed looking down with haughty contempt upon the slumbering invaders of their dignified solitude. The soubrette was the first to awake, starting up as a warm sunbeam shone caressingly full upon her face. She sprang to her feet, shook out her skirts, as a bird does its plumage, passed the palms of her hands lightly over her glossy bands of jet-black hair, and then seeing that the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the leaves, waking from their brief and uneasy slumber, looked around to see the splendor in which they were arrayed. How the sun stared at them, when he rose. He sent down a special sunbeam to give them his compliments and to say that he had never seen them look so charming. Oh! very proud were the little leaves, and very happy, they thought; but somehow they did not feel at all well. The day was bright and warm, and yet they were so cold, so cold! and the numbness and weakness ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... too late. Stop a moment; does not that sunbeam yonder, just by the side of the town, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the worst, it often happens that some unexpected success breaks on his path like a bright sunbeam. Alas! it often happens, also, that when his hopes are high and his prospects brightest, a dark cloud overspreads him like a funeral pall. We might learn a lesson from this—the lesson of dependence on that Saviour who careth for us, and of trust in that blessed assurance ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... that five engines are installed in the ship; these are all of the same type and horsepower, namely, 250 horse-power Sunbeam. R.33 was constructed by Messrs Armstrong, Whitworth, Ltd.; while her sister ship R.34 was built by Messrs Beardmore on ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... the paly radiance fell. Within, from thousand lamps the lustre strays. Reflected back from gems about the wall; And from twelve dolphin shapes a fountain plays, Just in the centre of a spacious hall; But whether in the sunbeam formed to sport, These shapes once lived in supleness and pride, And then, to decorate this wonderous court, Were stolen from the waves and petrified; Or, moulded by some imitative gnome, And scaled all o'er with gems, they were but stone, Casting their showers and rainbows 'neath the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... him the card of her boutique, and laughed like a sunbeam playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like the witch that ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend |
