"Wrack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow, And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow. Involved in sea-wrack, here you find a race Which science, doubting, knows not where to place; On shell or stone is dropp'd the embryo-seed, And quickly vegetates a vital breed. While thus with pleasing wonder you inspect Treasures the vulgar in their scorn reject, See as they float ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... to the realms which he coasted! for there Was shedding of blood and rending of hair, Rape of maiden and slaughter of priest, Gathering of ravens and wolves to the feast; When he hoisted his standard black, Before him was battle, behind him wrack, And he burned the churches, that heathen Dane, To light his band ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon the night of the 11th we fairly entered upon that por- tion of the Atlantic which is known as the Sargasso Sea. An extensive tract of water is this, inclosed by the warm current of the Gulf Stream, and thickly covered with the wrack, called by the Spaniards "sargasso," the abundance of which so seriously impeded the progress of Columbus's ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... their sides a copious mucus, which makes them as disagreeable to handle as they are unsightly to look at. Mackerel and cod are the hag's principal victims; but often the fisherman draws up a hag-eaten haddock on the end of his line, of which not a wrack remains but the hollow shell or bare outer simulacrum. As many as twenty of these disgusting parasites have sometimes been found within the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... fabric of this vision, The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind'; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and dark—a wrack sails from the west. Peace, peace, Banshee—"keening" at every window. The storm did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks. Peace, be still! Oh, a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... maist o' them. There be quite a many wrackers, but they live farther on, towards Barnegat. But a wrack draws them, like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... dey allus say, Is des' befo' de dawn, But it's moughty ha'd a-waitin' Were de night goes frownin' on; An' it's moughty ha'd a-hopin' When de clouds is big and black, An' all de t'ings you's waited fu' Has failed, er gone to wrack— But des' keep on a joggin' ind a little bit o song. De moon is allus brightah w'en de ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... all heaven Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread; Had not th' Almighty Father, where he ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... even the best one, will work to advance the interests of his own men, because so doing is part of his own buildup. Unless decisions are made from a central point of view, the subordinate who talks the most convincingly will get an extra portion of favor for his men, and jealousies will wrack the organization. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... another Wrens' nest a few evenings ago, I found the young ones had flown, and as there was a cock-nest in some wrack left by the river in a bush a few yards off, I gave it a shake to see if the old ones had taken possession of it for another brood; and I was surprised to see one, and then a second young one come flying out, and a third putting out its head to reconnoitre. ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped with the dawning, and now the rising sun tinted the fringe of the storm-wrack as it dwindled into the west and glinted on the endless crests of the long, green waves. To north and south and west lay a skyline which was unbroken save by the spout of foam when two of the great Atlantic seas dashed each other into spray. To the east was a rocky island, jutting out ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... situ occurs with Sigillaria and Stigmaria, or that the affinities of Calamites and Lepidodendron (supposing that they are found in situ with Sigillaria) are so CLEAR, that they could not have been marine, like, but in a greater degree, than the mangrove and sea- wrack, and I will humbly apologise to you and all Botanists for having let my mind run riot on a subject on which assuredly I know nothing. But till I hear this, I shall keep privately to my own opinion with the same pertinacity and, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... devotely, 'Lord, send her to us. God, send her to us.' You, seeing them upon their knees, and their handes joyned, do think that they are praying for your sauvetie; but their myndes are far from that. They pray, not God to sauve you, or send you to the porte, but to send you to them by ship-wrack, that they may gette the spoile of her. And to showe that this is their meaning, if the ship come wel to the porte, or eschew naufrage (shipwreck), they gette up in anger, crying: 'The Devil stick her; she is away from us.'" Father Blakhal does not pretend ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... What should be the business? Some falling-out amongst the cardinals. These factions amongst great men, they are like Foxes, when their heads are divided, They carry fire in their tails, and all the country About them goes to wrack for 't. ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... now he turns his last to wreak The palizadoes of his beak, The raging foe impatient, Wrack'd with revenge, and fury rent, Swift as the thunderbolt he strikes Too sure upon the stand of pikes; There she his naked breast doth hit, And on the case ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... was quiet, and the sea was calm, but across the Channel a leaden sky seemed to hover over the English mountains, though they were still light and apparently in sunshine. As Philip reached Port Mooar, a cart was coming out of it with a load of sea-wrack for the land, and a lobster-fisher on the beach was shipping his gear ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... "A wrack!" gasped Mrs. Trefethen, "and 'im in hit! Save us! but 'twill be worse than down shaft. Shaft be dry land, anyway, but they awful sea that rageth like a lion seeking whom it may devour. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... her breast, And, with still panting rock, there took his rest. So lovely-fair was Hero, Venus' nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she took more from her than she left, And of such wondrous beauty her bereft: Therefore, in sign her treasure suffer'd wrack, Since Hero's time hath half the world been black. Amorous Leander, beautiful and young, (Whose tragedy divine Musaeus sung,) Dwelt at Abydos; since him dwelt there none For whom succeeding times make greater moan. His dangling tresses, that were never shorn, Had ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... wonder if she's still—very still, takin' a sly nip on the side, as she calls it, which means a sly nip off the sideboard. You can take it from me, if she don't let up, before she knows it she'll be a teetotal wrack." ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... unutterable woe! And none knew! What was she to pray for? To what purpose and end ought she to steel herself? Ought she to hope, or ought she to despair? "O God, help me!" she kept whispering to Jehovah whenever the heavenly vision shone through the wrack of her meditation. "O God, help me!" She had a conscience that, when it was in the mood for severity, could ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... ashamed," said he, "to let things go to wrack an' ruin this way." The paths were thick with weeds. Faithful sweet-william and phlox had evidently struggled for years and barely held their own against misfortune, and bouncing-bet was thrifty. But others of the loved in old-time gardens had starved and died. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... did not only view, but will invade. Could you shed venom from your reverend shade, Like trees, beneath whose arms 'tis death to sleep; Did rolling thunder your fenced fortress keep, Thence would I snatch my Semele, like Jove, And 'midst the dreadful wrack enjoy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... came— The cannon's tongues of quick red fire licked all the hills aflame! Mad whistling shell, wild sneering shot, with devilish glee went past, Like fiendish feet and laughter hurrying down the battle-blast; And through the air, and round the hills, there ran a wrack sublime As though Eternity were crashing on the shores of Time. On bayonets and swords the smile of conscious victory shone, As down to death we dashed the Rebels plucking at our Throne. On, on they came with face of flame, and storm of shot and shell— Up! up! like heaven-sealers, and we ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... nor devil nor Spaniard feared, Their cities he put to the sack; He singed his Catholic Majesty's beard, And harried his ships to wrack. He was playing at Plymouth a rubber of bowls When the great Armada came; But he said, "They must wait their turn, good souls," And he stooped, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have the following ill effects: It would make the member more shamelessly and shockingly corrupt; it would increase his dependence on those who could best support him at his election; it would wrack and tear to pieces the fortunes of those who stood upon their own fortunes and their private interest; it would make the electors infinitely more venal; and it would make the whole body of the people, who are, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... your conquering eyes Love owes its chiefest victories, And borrows those bright arms from you With which he does the world subdue; Yet you yourselves are not above The empire nor the griefs of love. Then wrack not lovers with disdain, Lest love on you revenge their pain; You are not free, because you're fair, The boy did not his mother spare: Though beauty be a killing dart, It is no armour for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... other constituents which are normally present in minute quantities in the natural sea-water. It must derive them from the action of the plants or animals, or both. Bromine may come from sponges, or sea-wrack, perhaps. Thus artificial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... of Spaine, Ere I shall want, will cause his Indians, To rip the golden bowels of America. Navarre that cloakes them underneath his wings, Shall feele the house of Lorayne is his foe: Your highnes need not feare mine armies force, Tis for your safetie and your enemies wrack. ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... leaned against my gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back; 20 This scorn methought was crueller than shot: The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... slightly above water that at two leagues' distant it was not visible from the look-out, was discovered in latitude 15 degrees 50 minutes, and 148 degrees 10 minutes longitude. The constant recurrence of breakers, trunks of trees in large quantities, fruits and sea wrack, and the smoothness of the sea, all indicated the neighbourhood of extensive land to the south-east. It was New Holland. Bougainville determined to leave these dangerous latitudes, where he was likely to meet with nothing but barren lands, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... a great storm this morning, and I went up on the cliff to sit in the shanty they have made there for the men who watch for wrack. Soon afterwards a boy, who was out minding sheep, came up from the west, and we had ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... club, which none but he Could wield; an unlopp'd trunk it was, and huge, Still rough—like those which men in treeless plains To build them boats fish from the flooded rivers, Hyphasis or Hydaspes, when, high up By their dark spring, the wind in winter time Hath made in Himalayan forests wrack, And strewn the channels with torn boughs—so huge The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside, Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club came Thundering to earth, and leapt from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... even while they wondered, The battle-wrack was sundered; To Victory they thundered, But . . . Kelly led ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... help it, Sir John; but a craft that is foreordained to be a wrack, will be a wrack, in spite of reefing and bracing. Look ahead, you Dick Lion—ay, there ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... going down of the sun thereafter, the mother of the changeling went to the edge of the sea, and stood among the wet tangle of the wrack, [Footnote: Wrack: coarse seaweed.] and put out her supplicating hands, but never spoke word nor ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... now that I speak in general of the offences and defences, that may chance in each of the forenamed. We have formerly said that it is necessary for a Prince to have good foundations laid; otherwise it must needs be that he go to wrack. The Principal foundations that all States have, as well new, as old, or mixt, are good laws, and good armes; and because there cannot be good laws, where there are not good armes; and where there are good armes, there ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Nay, an this were all, 'twere something; but they are the only known enemies to my generation. A fasting-day no sooner comes, but my lineage goes to wrack; poor cobs! they smoak for it, they are made martyrs O' the gridiron, they melt in passion: and your maids to know this, and yet would have me turn Hannibal, and eat my own flesh and blood. My princely coz, [pulls out a red herring] fear nothing; ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... terrible in his anger. Mordecai struggled in vain against the blows of Towerculla's followers. As he sank to the ground overpowered, he caught himself murmuring, "They cannot kill me, until we three say grace together again," even while he longed for death to cut short the agony which was beginning to wrack every limb of his cruelly beaten body. Then out of the mist of red which seemed to swim before his eyes, a merciful black cloud descended and he knew nothing more until he regained consciousness and found himself in "Old Milly's" cabin, with Becky, still calm of face ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... I be gardener now, too: yaaes I be, to save the wages. And he's gone clean mazed about that garden—yaaes, I think. Would yue believe this, Maaester Harry, that he killed every one o' the blessed strawberries last year with a lot o' wrack from the bache, because he said it wued be as good for them as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... no such turning out of great men as is talked of, but that it is only to fright people, but I do fear there may be such a thing doing. He do mightily inveigh against the folly of the King to bring his matters to wrack thus, and that we must all be undone without help. I met with Cooling at the Temple-gate, after I had been at both my booksellers and there laid out several pounds in books now against the new year. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the tempest. Another wild day passed, and it was not till the evening that the weather moderated. Little by little the great seas began to calm, and the drifts of stinging rain ceased. In their wake the stars struggled through the cloud wrack, and towards ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... throws away a trifle, and to meet new conditions they developed new qualities with which they have not previously been credited, qualities of stubborn scientific stolidity. They out-Germaned the Germans in the way their organization withstood the shock and wrack of battle. It was the German machine which broke down first. On that field a new France was born. Let no German ever again say that she is effete. It was purely a French victory. This is no aspersion upon the Belgians and the British; the slight part which they played in this battle ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... will pay toll to that province. The capitalists of Nova Scotia treat it like a hired house, they won't keep it in repair; they neither paint it to preserve the boards, nor stop a leak to keep the frame from rottin'; but let it go to wrack sooner than drive a nail or put in a pane of glass. 'It will sarve our turn out,' ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... head, the sea-lions barked with the hollow note of consumptives on the outlying rocks. On the horizon was a bank of fog, outlined with the crests and slopes and gulches of the mountain beside him. It sent an advance wrack scudding gracefully across the ocean to puff among the redwoods, capriciously clinging to some, ignoring others. Then came the vast white mountain rushing over the roaring ocean, up the cliffs and into the gloomy forests, blotting the lonely ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... table across the room, quietly observing Portsmouth upon the word-wrack. Her whole manner had changed. She watched with evident delight the play of discomfiture, mingled with contempt, upon ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... seems to have plucked me with a strong hand out of the swirling drift of cares, anxieties, ambitions, hopes; and I see now that I could not have rescued myself; that I should have gone on battling with the current, catching at the river wrack, in the hopes of saving something from the stream. Now I am face to face with God; He saves me from myself, He strips my ragged vesture from me and I stand naked as He made me, unashamed, nestling close ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for sea-fishing, for the great deep pool was free from rocks save those which surrounded it, and not a thread of weed or wrack to be seen ready to entangle their lines or catch their hooks; while they knew from old experience that it was the sheltered home of large shoals, which sought it as a sanctuary from the seals or large fish ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... guilty of thy honour's wrack; Yet for thy honour did I entertain him; Coming from thee, I could not put him back, For it had been dishonour to disdain him: Besides, of weariness he did complain him, And talk'd of virtue: O unlook'd-for evil, When virtue is profaned ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... transitory canvas tent in which our earthly lives are spent. We have two dwelling-places. By the body we are brought into connection with this frail, evanescent, illusory outer world, and we try to make our homes out of shifting cloud-wrack, and dream that we can compel mutability to become immutable, that we may dwell secure. But fate is too strong for us, and although we say that we will make our nest in the rocks, and shall never be moved, the home that is visible and linked with the material passes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bright December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, where the winter roses linger and open dew-drenched and rain-washed in the watery sunbeams—there we see, hear, and welcome the birds that stay. Then and there we note their fewness, their lameness, and feel that they are really fellow-countrymen, native to ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... breathless and pale, With the terror of death upon him; of failure is all his tale: "They have fled while the flag waved o'er them! they've turned to the foe their back! They are scattered, pursued, and slaughtered! the fields are all rout and wrack!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... wrack of clouds streams across the awful sky, and the rain sweeps almost parallel with the horizon. Beyond, the heath stretches off into endless blackness, in the extreme of which either fancy or art has conjured up some undefinable shapes that seem ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... little mate, coolly, "since you've worked yourself up so much over the matter, and as we're a-goin' along on our course agin, as I suggested to the skipper afore we raised the wrack"—here he went to the pantry and brought out a bottle, and held it out ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... the Poor are old, cumbrous, unequal, as stupid as those who administer them. Forth steps the Reformer, and cries out—"Clear this wrack away! Get rid of your antiquated Bumbledom, your parochial and non-parochial distinctions, your complicated map of local authorities; re-distribute the kingdom on some more practical system, redress the injustice of unequal rating, improve the machinery and spirit of relief, and ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Captain! our fearful trip is done! The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won. The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. But, O heart! heart! heart! Leave you not the little spot Where on the deck my Captain lies, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... long-hoped-for event was at hand. It seemed impossible that Mary could be there—that she was about to stand before him. His mind was filled with the things he had arranged to say to her, but they were now in confused mass, circling and circling like the wrack of a boat in a ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... continually "straightening things out," as she called it. Her temper, like her hair, was somewhat fiery; and when her work did not suit her, she was prone to a gloomy view of life. If she was to be believed, things were always "going to wrack and ruin" about the house; and she had a queer way of taking time by the forelock. In the morning it was "going on to twelve o'clock," and at noon it was "going on ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... that thou never see me more in the visage. And furthermore I command thee on God's behalf right straightly that thou forsake my company, and to thy kingdom thou turn again, and keep well thy realm from war and wrack. For as well as I have loved thee, mine heart will not serve me to see thee; for both through me and thee is the flower of kings and knights destroyed. Therefore, Sir Lancelot, go to thy realm, and there take thee a wife, and live with her in joy and bliss, and I pray thee heartily ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... worth something, and so it was, as it sold for ten thousand francs fifteen years later. It was as simple, however, as two and two make four and was not according to academic rules. The whole right side of my canvas represented a rock, an enormous rock, covered with sea-wrack, brown, yellow and red, across which the sun poured like a stream of oil. The light fell upon the rock as though it were aflame without the sun, which was at my back, being visible. That was all. A first bewildering ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of the night before still lingered in a wrack of flying clouds, scurrying one after the other, veiling the stars—and the moon was hidden—and hidden too was the sudden whiteness of Helena's face. She knew what he had to say, knew it before she had come to him—and yet she ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... flour, an' rubbin' his hands and laughin', jes' the way Farmer does. He was a good miller, father said, an' made the mill pay well. But his eldest son, that kem after him, warn't no great shakes, an' he let the mill go to wrack and ruin, an' jes' stayed on the farm. An' then he died, an' Cap'n Hartley came (that's the farmer's father, ye know), an' he was kind o' crazy, and didn't care about the mill either, an' ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Sat Horrour plumed; nor wanted in his grasp What seemed both spear and shield: Now dreadful deeds Might have ensued, nor only Paradise In this commotion, but the starry cope Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn With violence of this conflict, had not soon The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... aweary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.— Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind! Come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... his ship, at Nombre de Dios. His remains were consigned to a sailor's grave—the wide ocean—and as the ship moved on her way, the crew, looking back to the place where the body had gone down, saw the phantom smack rise from the deep, rush like a wind-blown wrack across the spot, and melt into the air ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... a man swimmin'. Joe and Garge here say as it's only a piece o' wood or sea-wrack. But I know I'm right. That's a man swimmin', or my old eyes have lost their power!' His words carried conviction; the seed of hope in her beating heart grew on the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... the war must be crushed down and they who were foes, seeking to destroy one another, must now work together for the preservation of the civilization that is their common heritage. With the carnage and wrack and ruin of the war still oppressing us, and our hearts still lacerated and bruised, a common peril is compelling us to unite and to seek safety in fellowship and co-operation. Yesterday we relied upon the destructive arts of the warrior; to-day we must rely upon the conserving arts of ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day, I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Hills uptore; So Hills amid the Air encounterd Hills Hurl'd to and fro with jaculation dire, That under ground they fought in dismal shade; Infernal noise; Warr seem'd a civil Game To this uproar; horrid confusion heapt Upon confusion rose: and now all Heav'n Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspred, 670 Had not th' Almightie Father where he sits Shrin'd in his Sanctuarie of Heav'n secure, Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen This tumult, and permitted all, advis'd: That his great purpose he might so ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... palms bursting above the mist and the great clouds rolling away in billows, as if to expose fully the wonder of those primeval leagues of tree-tops sunlit, mist-strewn, where the feathery fingers of the palms made banners of the wrack and the baobabs held fog-banks in ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... "blood red"; "rack" or "wrack" is broken or floating cloud. What is the "morning star"? What is meant by its "shining dead"? What are the "burning plumes" and what the "meteor eyes" of the sunrise? What becomes of broken clouds when the sun strikes them? What is likened to an eagle that is "alit" on a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Then the wrack tattered and the stars appeared, Millions of stars that seemed to speak in fire; A byre-cock cried aloud that morning neared, The swinging wind-vane ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... the load altogether. Oh, the careful limits which Christian people nowadays set to their work for Jesus! They are not afraid of being tired in their pursuit of business or pleasure, but in regard to Christ's work they will let anything go to wrack and ruin rather than that they should turn a hair, by persevering efforts to prevent it. Work to the limit of power if you live ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... porticos, and the huge bulk of the edifice, heaving up its dome from an obscure foundation into yet more shadowy obscurity; and by the time I reached the corner of the churchyard nearest Cheapside, the whole vast cathedral had utterly vanished, leaving "not a wrack behind," unless those thick, dark vapors were the elements of which it had been composed, and into which it had again dissolved. It is good to think, nevertheless,—and I gladly accept the analogy and the moral,—that the cathedral was really there, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have felt something of the same thing for another,—a longing for his welfare, a delight to hear him praised, a charm in his presence,—so strong a feeling for his interest, that were he to go to wrack and ruin, I too, should, after a fashion, be wracked and ruined. But it ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... if his slumbers take him back To trail the mountain-fox's track, In corries of the shifting wrack Where one may spy Old Cruachan's twin Titan stack Heaved to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... now that I could get on by myself; but still, Edward, you know we cannot tell what a day may bring forth, and I might fall sick, or something happen which might prevent my attending to anything; and then, without you or Pablo, everything might have gone to wrack and ruin. Certainly, when we think how we were left, by the death of old Jacob, to our own resources, we have much to thank God for in having got on ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... sail—which might have brought a charge of grape-shot after him—he kept in the gloom of the piles nearly into the left bank, and then hugged the shadow it afforded. Nothing but the desolate sands surveyed him, and the piles of wrack cast up by gales from the west. Then with a stout heart he stepped his little mast, and the breeze, which freshened towards the rising of the sun, carried him briskly through ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... swam like a loch, and from the hill-side came the rumour of a thousand swollen streams. That, with the heavy drip of laden branches, made sound enough, but after the thunder and the downpour it seemed silence itself. Presently when I looked up I saw that the black wrack was clearing from the sky, and through a gap there shone ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... course, this was another postponement of Mrs. Benton's own meal, but she didn't mind that, so long as she had an opportunity to deal with the small lads. Explaining to them, as she undressed and bathed them: "You'd go to wrack and ruin if 'twasn't for me takin' a hand in your upbringin' now and then. You pull the wool over Gabriella's eyes the worst ever was. My! What you doing ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... recital of generations of cruelties and wrongs—his picture of their miserable lot and of the envied aristocrats' pleasures—and then consider the pitch of frenzied republicanism to which this wonderful fraternal climax uplifted them! With crash of thunder and wrack of the elements the Storm must break, directly the popular feeling found immediate object of ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... doubt at one time had been part of Sherwood Forest, and these were ancient trees that had been spared when others fell. Centuries old some of them, with vast trunks and huge gnarled, twisted branches which seemed to have suffered from terrible convulsions of nature, been put on the wrack, as it were, and come forth mutilated in a ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... we know that young hearts will express themselves as they were meant to express themselves even in the wrack and ruin and waste of war. And this strange picture of love and death sitting together some way reminded us of the phlox and the dahlias blooming in the dreary dooryards of the shattered homes near the battle line. And then our hearts turned to the youth on the boat—that ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... side to keep it straight. Now, Mr. Morrow, wasn't he an unfortunate man? for whoever would go down to Squire Dickson's hagyard, would see the same Larry's handiwork so beautiful and illegant, though his own was in such brutheen.* Even his barn to wrack; and he was obliged to thrash his oats in the open air when ther would be a frost, and he used to lose one-third of it; and if there came a thaw, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... state, This sauing health shall suffocate my breath, To flye from them that holds my God in hate, My Mistres, Countrey, me, and my sworne fayth, Were to pull of the load from Typhons back, And crush my selfe, with shame and seruille wrack. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... side by side. Behind them were half a dozen women, playing fifes and horns. One was carrying a tattered flag. Behind the musicians came a motley crowd. Old women, young women, half-grown children, and dozens of old men. All were armed. And they came forward like the wrack of a surviving army ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... fair, and that about her neck was a chaplet of gems that shone in the moon, and they had a longing both for the jewel and the woman: but before they laid hand on her they asked her of whence and whither, and she said: From ruin and wrack to the Well at the World's End, and therewith turned on them with a naked sword in her hand; so that ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... born somewhere in the dun firmament above, dropped down the mountain sides in ever-growing white threads. The rivers roared and plunged with aimless passion down the ravines. Stray little clouds, left behind when the wrack lifted a little, ran bleating up and down the forlorn hill-sides. More often, the clouds trailed along the valleys, a long procession of shrouded, melancholy figures, seeming to pause, as with an indeterminate, tragic, vain gesture, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... believed to be something more than an aggregation of atoms. The body dissolves into its constituent elements and serves in its turn to build up other organisms: but as a human body it all turns to dust nor 'leaves a wrack behind'. Thus Darwinism was made the basis first for a materialistic, and then for a monistic, view of the world, and hence came to be rigorously opposed to every form of Theism. But since, at that time, Darwinism was the only theory of evolution ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... flyin' inland, it ain't a case of individyooals nor neighborhoods, but whole counties comes stampedin' to the rescoo. It's no use; the boat bogs right down in the sand; in less than an hour her smoke stack is onder water. All we ever gets from the wrack is the bell, the same now adornin' a Presbyter'an church an' summonin' folks to them services. I tells you, gents, the thoughts of that Willow Run, an' we not able to save so much as a quart of it, puts a crimp in that commoonity ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... warm couch into the cold of the morning. A glance showed him that his house was still there, and he congratulated himself on his foresight in hauling it out of harm's way, for the increasing light showed him a confused wrack of drift-logs, half-stranded on the muddy flat, interlocked into a shapeless raft by their branches, tossing to and fro and grinding together in the eddy caused by the meeting currents of the two branches of the river. Mahmat walked down to the water's edge to examine the rattan ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... he had gone a hundred yards, he lost his first zest in the adventure. The darkness had thickened; and the vagrant wind-gusts had tightened into a steady gale; a gale which carried before it a blinding wrack of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... a storm has tossed the barque Since first it had its maiden trip, Full many a conflagration's spark Has scorched and seared the laboring ship; And yet it ploughs a straightway course, Through wrack of billows; wind-tossed, spent, On sails the troubled Ship of State, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... not a bad fellow—he had made many repairs, and even promised to build a new barn which the General would never consent to. It was a pity for the man! A good gentleman, but he took no interest in farming; the whole place must have gone to wrack and ruin if the General had not agreed to sell it before it was too late. The Freule was sorry, for she liked farming; she had learned to milk, and talked to the cows just as if they were human beings. And horses—yes, Jonker, even the plough horses, before they go out into the field in ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... and two; the moon (as I have said) was down; a strongish wind, carrying a heavy wrack of cloud, had set in suddenly from the west; and we began our movement in as black a night as ever a fugitive or a murderer wanted. The whiteness of the path guided us into the sleeping town of Broughton, thence through Picardy, and beside my old acquaintance the gibbet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... field and mead, The rounding noon hangs hard and white; Into the gathering heats recede The hollows of the Chelsea height; But under all to one quiet tune, A spirit in cool depths withdrawn, With logs, and dust, and wrack bestrewn, The stately river ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... wildly boisterous, but now the wind had dropped, only its rags went fluttering through the night. The rays of the full moon fell in a shower between the branches. Overhead still raced the scud and wrack, shaped like hurrying monsters; but below the earth was quiet. Still and dripping stood the hosts of trees. Their trunks gleamed wet and sparkling where the moon caught them. There was a strong smell of mould and fallen leaves. The ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... distinction between the author he has understood and the author he has not understood. Carlyle believed in himself, but he could not have believed in himself more than Ruskin did; they both believed in God, because they felt that if everything else fell into wrack and ruin, themselves were permanent witnesses to God. Where they both failed was not in belief in God or in belief in themselves; they failed in belief in other people. It is not enough for a prophet to believe in his message; he must believe in its acceptability. Christ, St. Francis, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... a veil he could not describe, even in his own thoughts, hung between him and the sand over which he walked, between him and the sea which sent spray to wet his torn clothing, between him and that wild wrack of long-ago storms. He could put out his hand and touch sand, drift, spray; yet they were a setting where something lay hidden behind that setting—something watched, calculatingly, with intelligence, and a set of emotions and values he ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... that when you visit the London diggings you may find the truth of this; but it will be time enough to speak of that subject when you return from rambling on the glaciers of Switzerland, where, by the way, the dirt, rubbish, and wrack, called moraines, which lie at the foot of the glaciers, will serve to remind you of the gold-fields to which I have referred, for much of what composes those moraines was once solid rock in a fixed position on the heights, or glittering ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon rafters, and such like means presenting themselves to men in those extremities, for we desired to save the men by every possible means. But all in vain, sith God had determined their ruin; yet all that day, and part of the next, we beat up and down as near unto the wrack as was possible for us, looking out if by good hap we might ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... Small Porges a cheery "Good-night"—Bellew went out to walk among the roses. And, as he walked, he watched the flying wrack of clouds above his head, and listened to the wind that moaned in fitful gusts. Wherefore, having learned in his many travels to read, and interpret such natural signs and omens, he shook his head, and muttered to himself—even as ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... like the great English people, the great German people, and the people of every country where the privileged classes still exist, are rising like a mighty wave to sweep all this sea-wrack high and dry on to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... south-east—is situated the large island of Europe. Thus, the enlightened French traveller passing to these shores should commune within himself: "I now cross to the Mainland"; and retracing his steps: "I now return to the fragment rent by wrack and earthshock from the Mother-country." And this I say not in the way of paradox, but as the expression of a sober truth. I have in my mind merely the relative depth and extent—the non-insularity, in fact—of the impressions ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... broadsword flaming, and laid scores of men at my feet. I was sealed up in dungeons. I was snatched out of the deep by the hair of my head. I slew men in hecatombs; and then, when the morning came and I awoke, there was not a shred of intellectual wrack left behind on which my mind could take hold. I had dreamed it all with the cerebellum. It was all organic. Why didn't I dream a novel by Turgenef, or Bjornsen? It takes brains to write "Fathers and Sons" or the "Bankrupt," and it takes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... hauled upon the halliards to mast-head the yard. Nothing availed. We had to be wrecked and wrecked we were, and as I clasped ARAMINTA's trustful head to my breast, the pale luminary sailing through the angry wrack glittered in phantasmal ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... then the open post-road with a cypress to the right; afterwards, the rich green fields, and on a bit of rising ground an ancient farmhouse with its brown dependencies; lastly, the blue hills above Fossato, and far away a wrack of tumbling clouds. All this enclosed by the heavy archway of the Porta Romana, where sunlight and shadow chequer the mellow tones of a dim fresco, indistinct ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... and to-morrow and to-morrow After life's fitful fever they sleep well And like this insubstantial bourne from which No traveller returns Leave not a wrack behind. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... Brightling, and said: "Hallblithe, it is not of death that we have to tell, but of sundering, which may yet be amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went on running and playing amidst the little ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... Parisian toilets, the eddy of trailing robes with its fairy-foam of lace, the ivorine loveliness of glossy shoulders and jewelled throats, the glimmering of satin-slippered feet,—than to watch the raging of the flood without, or the flying of the wrack ... ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... day is done. In the tempest's wrack the stars are dim and faith 's the only compass. Now or hereafter, what matters it? The sun will gild the meadows as of yesteryear. The moon will fee the world with silver coin. And all across the earth men will traffic on their little errands ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... francs a year from twenty-seven lots of land in the neighborhood of Provins, and from the sale of their inn for twenty thousand. Old Auffray's house, though out of repair, was inhabited just as it was by the Rogrons,—old rats like wrack and ruin. Rogron himself took to horticulture and spent his savings in enlarging the garden; he carried it to the river's edge between two walls and built a sort of stone embankment across the end, where aquatic nature, left ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... fit guide to lead my way, And as I deemed I did pursue her track; Wit lost his aim, and will was fancy's prey; The rebel won, the ruler went to wrack. But now sith fancy did with folly end, Wit, bought with loss — will, taught by wit, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... credit be. And hath my father from his tender youth Vouchsaf'd to bring thee up? did I therefore Believe so earnestly thy perjur'd truth, Advancing still thine honour evermore, That, not contented with a common wrack, Thou shouldst intend the ruin of us all; And when thou seemd'st afraid to turn thy back, To make a glory of our greater fall? Before thou triumph in thy treachery, Before thou 'scape untouched for thy sin, Let never Fates nor ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... innocence to rob me, As you lay out your lusts to overwhelm me, Hell never hated good, as I hate you, Sir; And I dare tell it to your face: What glory Now after all your Conquests got, your Titles, The ever-living memories rais'd to you, Can my defeat be? my poor wrack, what triumph? And when you crown your swelling Cups to fortune, What honourable tongue can sing my story? Be as your Emblem is, a g[l]orious Lamp Set on the top of all, to light all perfectly: Be as your office is, a god-like Justice, Into ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... When he has overturned the Russian rule, England comes next for wrack. They say that know!... Look—he has entered by the Royal doors And makes the Palace his.—Now let us ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... a trough, wide and deep below us, the next a mighty billow would toss itself aloft and vanish utterly into space. Everywhere wreaths of mist with ragged fringes were withering away into empty air, and, more remarkable yet, was the conflict of wind which sent the cloud wrack ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... whose eloquence at the club has not been forgotten in fifty years. "Thus did he stand," I have been told recently, "exclaiming in language sublime that the soul shall bloom in immortal youth through the ruin and wrack ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... swiftly through the dimly-lighted suburbs of London, and entered upon the open country. A wan, watery line of light lay under the brooding clouds in the west, tinged with a lurid hue; and all the great field of sky stretching above the level landscape was overcast with storm-wrack, fleeing swiftly before the wind. At times the train seemed to shake with the Wast, when it was passing oyer any embankment more than ordinarily exposed; but it sped across the country almost as rapidly as the clouds across the sky. No one in the carriage spoke. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... again, she would find herself wondering if, after all, the barque of her life had been steered by a guiding Hand, which, although it had taken her over storm-tossed seas and stranded her on lone beaches, had brought her safely, if troubled by the wrack of the waters she ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... dragged out of that house as by a magnet. The sky had cleared and lay far off and cold, and the wrack of the broken clouds was burning itself up in the west when I saw a dory cast off ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... child, listen to me. You must know that on the top of this mountain you will find a ruined house, which was built long ago, time out of mind. The walls are cracked, the foundations crumbling away, the doors worm-eaten, the furniture all worn out—and, in short, everything is gone to wrack and ruin. On one side are seen shattered columns, on another broken statues; and nothing is left in a good state except a coat-of-arms over the door, quartered on which you will see a serpent biting its tail, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... threats They should desire in thy hard bloud to bathe? And that their burning wrath which nought can quench Should pittiles on vs still lighten downe? We are not hew'n out of the monst'rous masse Of Giantes those, which heauens wrack conspir'd: Ixions race, false prater of his loues: Nor yet of him who fained lightnings found: Nor cruell Tantalus, nor bloudie Atreus, Whose cursed banquet for Thyestes plague Made the beholding Sunne for ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... flash to the sunset Reels to the wrack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long" — Maybe I'll tell you then ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... The warld's wrack, we share o't, The warstle and the care o't; [struggle] Wi' her I'll blythely bear it, And ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... subsequent passing through Parliament of an Act of Oblivion in favour of the lords, which he urged on the unkingly ground that, if severe measures were taken against them, they would go 'to armes and get forean assistance quhilk might wrack King, ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... However, Herbert, who had gone forward a little more to the left, soon came upon rocks covered with sea-weed, which, some hours later, would be hidden by the high tide. On these rocks, in the midst of slippery wrack, abounded bivalve shell-fish, not to be despised by starving people. Herbert called Pencroft, who ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... Dean't mind their awfish(3) skreekin', They 'tice folk to their death; Then ride aboon yon billows An' gloor at them beneath. They gloor at eenless corpses Slow driftin' wi' the tide, Deep doon amang the weedy wrack, ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... wood was getting low, but he decided that did not matter either. Even so, Ross got to his feet, moving over to the drifts of storm wrack to gather more. Why should he stay here by a useless beacon? But somehow he could not force himself to move on, as futile as his ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... slanting spars, And if he watched the shifting track, He marked, too, the eternal stars Shine through the wrack. ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... of delight And queene of beautie, now thou maist go pack; For lo! thy kingdoms is defaced quight, Thy scepter rent, and power put to wrack; 400 And thy gay sonne, that winged God of Love, May now goe prune his plumes like ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser |
