"Harbinger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assignare. The word is a trifle altered. The Latin of your present doctors may be better than that of your old comedy; their wisdom and the variety of their resources are the same. They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... ourselves, find the same regard for self pervades the rest, and that there is no voluntary attendance—then the sight of the expiring wretch, in his last effort, turning his head over the side of his hammock, and throwing off the dreadful black vomit, harbinger of his ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ingenuous truth. Oh, that's his antipode, of courteous race, The man of bows and ever-smiling face. Why Nature made him, or for what design'd, Never he knew, nor ever sought to find, 'Till cunning came, blest harbinger of ease! And kindly whisper'd, 'thou wert born to please.' Rous'd by the news, behold him now expand, Like beaten gold, and glitter o'er the land. Well stored with nods and sly approving winks, Now first with this and now with that he thinks; ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... want to show you a present I got to-night." Then silence. Wesley had no watch. The rebels had relieved him of that at Bull Run. But it must be quite midnight. He opened one of the windows softly. Oh, the glory of the night, harbinger of his high emprise, his deathless glory! The wondrous, wondrous stillness of the scene—and to think that over yonder, in the dark depths of the forest, fifty, perhaps a hundred, men were waiting for him—for him? Yes, the mighty arms of the Union were about him; ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... think at last that it must be near dawn, and turned our eyes eastward, in the expectation of seeing the pale red and yellow streaks which usher in the rich glow, the harbinger of the rising sun. That was my idea, not friend Obed's. He remarked, "Daylight will soon be on, I guess, and it is time we were back at camp to get some breakfast, before we begin our trudge over the mountains, for I'm mighty hungry, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... west than they would have looked for. The voyage is spoken of as long, and amid its discomforts the drooping spirits of the soldiery were signally cheered by a meteor of special brilliance which one night darted westwards as their harbinger. Moreover we find that when the Romans did land, their first success was a defeat of the Dobuni, subject allies of the House of Cymbeline, who, as we gather from Ptolemy, dwelt in what is now Southern ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... 'tis excellent; for in this kind the hand, you know, is harbinger to the tongue, and provides the words a lodging in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... they joked, they laughed, they speculated on politics, though it was well known that in a few minutes yonder door was to open, and that on its threshold the jailer would appear, list in hand; that from this list he would call out with his loud, croaking voice, as Death's harbinger, the names of those whose death-warrants had been yesterday signed by Robespierre, and who would have immediately to leave the hall, to mount the wagons which were already waiting at the prison's gate to drive them to ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... gold and yellow frill, Arcturus, like a daffodil, Now dances in the field of gray Upon the East at close of day; A joyous harbinger to bring ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... not miscarry and another be, In its stead and place, engendered anew, 'Tis hard to show by reason, or by words To prove absurd—since, lo, so many things Can be create with fixed successions: Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus' boy, The winged harbinger, steps on before, And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora, Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all With colours and with odours excellent; Whereafter follows arid Heat, and he Companioned is by Ceres, dusty one, And by the Etesian Breezes of the north; Then cometh Autumn on, and with ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... above the abyss; an event happened which diverted our minds from the horrors of our situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sail. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. It was the ninth day we had been upon the raft; the torments of hunger consumed our entrails; and the soldiers and sailors already devoured with haggard eyes this wretched prey, and seemed ready to dispute about it. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... could distinctly hear, during the night, the murmurs of the surf on the beach, and the sound was most grateful to our ears, as the welcome harbinger of the point to which eighteen weeks of anxious pilgrimage had been directed. I accompanied the men who had been appointed to cut the road along the banks of the river. We had performed about a mile when we were stopped by a large stream ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... with your permission, I will notice. Some men, of whom I wish to speak with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge, they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, who have read a little poetry and a little history, is dangerous ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rate, as I told you but now, each is a harbinger of the Virgin. As to Joseph persecuted and sold, a slave raised almost to the throne, the merciful protector of his people, he ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... which this, merry morn was the harbinger, the arrivals of guests at the castle had been numerous and important. First came the brother of the duchess, with his countess, and their fair daughter the Lady Katherine, whose fate, unconsciously to herself, had already ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... up the bare, mean little room where the wretch cowered and shivered in the bed, sleepless and fearful he knew not why. He feared the storm and the night. He feared everything. His guilty heart made terrors out of the night and nature's healthful workings. The very storm, blessed harbinger of clearer days and sweeter airs, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... lay there in the ditches by the roadside, the early morning air bit sharp and chilly, having a touch of frost in it—the harbinger of colder weather to come—but still retaining a dampness ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the significant expression of "No petticoat government—no Scotch minister—no Lord George Sackville," prefigured those popular tumults which soon afterward disturbed the metropolis and extended to the American colonies. That placard was the harbinger of that great DECLARATION, the adoption of which by a representative Congress of the Anglo-American people fifteen years afterward, is the occasion of our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... way sailing Like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for the isles Of Javan or Gadire, With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, Sails fill'd, and streamers waving, Courted by all the winds that hold them play; An amber-scent of odorous perfume Her harbinger, a damsel train behind!"] ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... on the 17th April, some of them climbing over the icebergs to the shore found much open sea. They also saw a small bird diving in the water, and looked upon it as a halcyon and harbinger of better fortunes. The open weather continuing, they began to hanker for the fatherland. So they brought the matter, "not mutinously but modestly and reasonably, before William Barendz; that he might suggest it to Heemskerk, for they were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... songstress charms the night." "'Tis chanticleer the shepherd's clock announcing day." "The evening star love's harbinger appears." "The queen of night fair Dian smiles serene." "There is yet one man Micaiah the son of Imlah." "Our whole company man by man ventured down." "As a work of wit the Dunciad has ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... can I tell the next lesson a soul is capable of learning?' he would say. 'The Spirit of God is the teacher. My part is to tell the good news. Let that work as it ought, as it can, as it will.' He knew that pain is with some the only harbinger that can prepare the way for the entrance of kindness: it is not understood till then. In the lulls of her pain he told her about the man Christ Jesus—what he did for the poor creatures who came to him—how kindly he spoke to them—how he cured them. He told her how gentle he was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... armory of the union is so effective as the boycott. A flourishing business finds its trade gone overnight. Leading customers withdraw their patronage at the union's threat. The alert picket is the harbinger of ruin, and the union black list is as fraught with threat as the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... Anglo-Saxon is almost ashamed of his seeming or intended brusqueness before the graceful salutation of the poorest peon. Hat in hand, and with courteous or devout wish for your welfare on his lips, the poor Mexican seems almost a reproach to the harbinger of an outside world which seemingly grows more hard and ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace; She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere, His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace through ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... these heights. They are mournful, cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire and wish for had to them been denied. If, indeed, the earth be ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... lamp, the flaming sun Thy harbinger; take thou my soul, Now bounding forth thy race to run, ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... was his amazement to find that it was a plaster cast of that little statuette of the Dying Hercules which had won for him the Adelphi Gold Medal so many years before in London. There was the token of his first artistic success appearing to him out of the gloom as the harbinger of another success which he hoped would also soon emerge from behind the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Communist party. Since March, 1917, the word democracy is simply a shackle fastened upon the revolutionary nation and preventing it from establishing boldly, freely, and regardless of all obstacles a new form of power; the Council of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, harbinger of the abolition of every ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... in the East. It is the Heb. "Shaked" and the fruit is the "Loz" (Arab. Lauz)Amygdalus communis, which the Jews looked upon as the harbinger of spring and which, at certain feasts, they still carry to the synagogue, as representing the palm ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... moon in which she came to the land of the Ottawas was the moon in which the forest trees put forth their earliest buds, and the blooming takes place of the little blue flower, which our forest maidens love to twine with their hair, and our forest boys to gather as the harbinger of returning warmth, and joy, and gladness. She came not at first to the village of the Ottawas in the perfect shape of a human being. It was many years before that, one morning, as the head warrior of the nation went out, as was his wont, to look ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... mine village was directly below him. The few buildings huddled together below the big mine dump were dark. The mine buildings, too, were dark. A faint glow showed in the east—harbinger of the dawn. ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... one: with the exception of the day I had the happiness of dedicating our Synagogue at Ramsgate, and the day of my wedding, the proudest day of my life. I trust the honour conferred by our most gracious Queen on myself and my dear Judith may prove the harbinger of future good to the Jews generally, and though I am sensible of my unworthiness, yet I pray the Almighty to lead and guide me in the proper path, that I may observe and keep His ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... hundred Lutheran pastors, members of nearly all of the synods represented on this territory, there was organized a "Conference of the Lutheran pastors of the Metropolitan District for the discussion of all questions of doctrine and practice to the end of effecting unity." This, too, is a harbinger of an approaching ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... moral does the history of human greatness convey! The hour of triumph is often but the harbinger of defeat and shame. "Pride goeth before destruction." Charles V., with all his policy and experience, overreached himself. The failure of his ambitious projects and the restoration of Protestantism, were brought about by ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... whimsical instrument, take it altogether! But what, thinkest thou, are the arms to this matrimonial harbinger?—Why, in the first place, two crossed swords; to show that marriage is a state of offence as well as defence; three lions; to denote that those who enter into the state ought to have a triple proportion of courage. And [couldst thou have imagined that these ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Visit Geelong. Station Peak. Aboriginal Names. South Channel. Examine Western Port. Adventure with a Snake. Black Swans. Cape Patterson. Deep Soundings. Revisit King and Hunter Islands. Fire. Circular Head. Gales of Wind. Reid's Rocks. Sea Elephant Rock. Wild Dogs. Navarin and Harbinger Reefs. Arrive at Port Phillip. Sail for Sydney. Pigeon House. Drought. Mr. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... quick revival of all his Highland superstition, Law hailed now as happy harbinger the fact that, upon his entry into Paris, the city once more of his hopes, he had met in such fashion this lady of his dreams, even at such time as the seal of silence was lifted from his lips. It was no wonder that ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... whether pity and love are so near a-kin as poets feign, for I have seldom seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love, or the harbinger ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... bright morning star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and loads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail beauteous May that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and ...
— Two Festivals • Eliza Lee Follen
... black night, hiding innumerable Cities, Towns, villages, and all those places where soon teeming multitudes of men shall awake, and by their unceasing toil and the spirit within them produce marvels of which the Aeroplane is but the harbinger. ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... Yaspard to encounter That fierce harbinger of gloom— Fain to dare the spells of magic, Fain to foil the wrath of doom. Hark! the solitary raven Croaks a note of death and pain, And a human call defiant Answers ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... "Where I see anything at variance with the doctrines of Christ, I will not obey, though the stakes were staring me in the face." That was his maxim all through life; and in such an age such heroism in such a cause was the harbinger ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... by all nations during the prevalence of the Black Plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. Thus, after reliance on the future had died away, the spiritual union which binds man to his family and his fellow-creatures was gradually dissolved. The pious ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... direction. The times were out of joint, trade bad, and discontent universal, and the possession of a little bit of the land we live on was to be a panacea for every abuse complained of, and the sure harbinger of a return of the days when every Jack had Jill at his own fireside. The misery and starvation existing in Ireland where small farms had been divided and subdivided until the poor families could no longer derive a sustenance from their several moieties, was altogether overlooked, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the May; As gesture outstrips thought; So, haply, toyer with ethereal strings! Are thy blind repetitions of high things The murmurous gnats whose aimless hoverings Reveal song's summer in the air; The outstretched hand, which cannot thought declare, Yet is thought's harbinger. These strains the way for thine own strains prepare; We feel the music moist upon this breeze, And hope the congregating poesies. Sundered yet by thee from us Wait, with wild eyes luminous, All thy winged things that are ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... could arrange our camp and set the tents up, down poured the furious harbinger of the Masika season in torrents sufficient to damp the ardor and newborn love for East Africa I had lately manifested. However, despite rain, we worked on until our camp was finished and the property was safely stored from weather and thieves, and we could regard with resignation ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of bronze was the harbinger of better days to the various tribes of Europe. Without metals it is doubtful if man would ever have been able to raise himself from barbarism. His advance in civilization has been in direct proportion ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... an echo in the heart of Sidney Wilton, who, seated near the entrance of the ball-room, watched every arrival with anxious expectation. But the anxiety vanished for a moment under the influence of the fantastic and frolic strain. It seemed a harbinger of happiness and joy. He fell into a reverie, and wandered with a delightful companion in castles of perpetual sunshine, and green retreats, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... plants available within the Washo territory during the spring, summer, and fall it seems highly unlikely that the failure of one species of plant created a serious problem. This, of course, was not true of the pine nut. A failure of the pine-nut crop was a harbinger of a starvation winter. The gathering of pine nuts, in contrast to the gathering of other plants, was the subject of a great deal of ritual and, in some degree, of ceremonialism uncommon to most Washo gathering activities. ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... wrote in his diary at the time of my Mother's death. He said that the thought that Rome was doomed (as seemed not impossible in 1857) so affected my Mother that it 'irradiated' her dying hours with an assurance that was like 'the light of the Morning Star, the harbinger of the ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... I replied, "the cessation of your pains is a sure harbinger of death. Already has mortification set in, and the best surgeon in the world ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Abbey fell on troublous times. The Reformation—that harbinger of good not unmixed with evil—closed the book of the monastery. It is strange and sad that ecclesiastical changes should partake so largely in the destruction of buildings and the spoliation of belongings. Never yet did religious fanaticism satisfy its own desires without simultaneously ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... now a robin sing, I wonder if his English mate May not be hopping near your gate, A harbinger, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however, that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger—whose name will be familiar to the scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute—was quite unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even with Mr. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... might otherwise multiply too fast. On a spring or summer evening you may hear its plaintive hoot among the apple-blossoms of an orchard, or the sheaves of a cornfield. Curiously enough, this simple sound earned the little bird the name of being the harbinger of death, and peasants believed that whenever its cry was heard where sickness was in the family, the patient ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... shade some little patch of green grass might serve for a resting-place, or a pic-nic ground; we were familiar with every old trunk with wide-extending roots, in whose protecting cavities that little, speckled, pepper-and-salt-looking flower, the spring harbinger, nestled, peeping forth toward the end of March, ere the ice and snow had well melted, or any other green thing dared show itself. Deeper in the shade lay the soft beds of decaying leaves, where somewhat later the spring beauties would start forth, clothing the brown and purple tints ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... date from? But the fear was groundless: the birds are regaining their lost ground; broods of young blue-coats are again seen drifting from stake to stake or from mullen-stalk to mullen-stalk about the fields in summer, and our April air will doubtless again be warmed and thrilled by this lovely harbinger of spring. — ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Settlement. A deep and early snow having fallen, and remained with frequent additions, a long and rigorous winter reigned in absolute sway. But now, on the last of February, the sun wheeled high on his circuits; thaws and rains ensued, and the first robin on the leafless maple sang, sweet harbinger of spring. Winter recalled his tyrant ministers, or restrained them in their wrath; and milder days and warmer skies appeared in pleasant alternation, with many still of tempest ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... young again in our children," he said, as they sallied forth just as the east was growing rosy with the harbinger ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... works. Many years later Zelter, the friend of Goethe, bore witness to the electric effect of the play upon himself and the other excitable youth who saw it in the first days of its popularity. Like 'The Robbers,' it was a harbinger of the revolution. It seemed to voice the hitherto voiceless woe of the third estate; and just because of that savage force which made it seem absurd to sedate minds, just because it rang out in such shrill and clangorous notes, it has continued ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Charles II. The evidence suggests that there was no violent division between royalists and Parliamentarians in Virginia. The people were Virginians first and royalists or Parliamentarians second. The solidarity of their political interests was a harbinger of the American independence that was slowly to ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... is asleep; during the time he is awake, even at night, he seldom sweats much. The thrush generally shows itself towards the close of the disease, attacking the tongue, the tonsils, and the soft palate, and is a sure harbinger of approaching ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... pearl-tinted spikes of iris perfumed the air and great masses of peonies nodded along borders banked deep under the long wall. A few butterflies still flitted in the golden radiance, but already that solemn harbinger of sunset, the garden toad, had emerged from leafy obscurity into the gravel path, and hopped heavily ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Argus-eyed, but blind as mole to good. Minister of torment! Jealousy! Fetid harpy! Tisiphone infernal! Who steals and poisons others' good, Under thy cruel breath does languish The sweetest flower of all my hopes. Proud of thyself, unlovely one, Bird of sorrow and harbinger of ill, The heart thou visitest by thousand doors; If entrance unto thee could be denied, The reign of Love would so much fairer be, As would this world ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Night is past and sweet Morning reddens in the east, ... another Day is born,—a day in which to win God's grace and pardon,—another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake! Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,—this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!— open your ears to the singing of birds, the whispering of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... prodigies foretold it: A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking states. When public villany, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... last" (deafening cheers) "and we must make our concert a stunner. It must go with a bang from start to finish. It must lick every other fag's concert that ever was, and 'be the bright harbinger of—' What is the rest of ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... not—through the night That long has reigned with tyrant sway, E'en now I see the opening light, The harbinger of coming day; To Heaven I now direct my prayer— O God of love, forsake me not! Grant that my waywardness may ne'er Quench ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,—the moan of the whippoorwill from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech-owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fire-flies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... VENUS, and her Harbinger, Near to her moves the winged Zephyrus, For whom maternal FLORA strews the way With Flowers of every ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... Marrable was not in her best form when her young ladyship arrived, and Benjamin the coachboy came up the garden pathway as her harbinger to see if she should descend from the carriage to interview the old lady. She did not want to do so, as she felt she ought to get Mrs. Prichard home as soon as possible; but wanted, all the same, to fulfil ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... on the sense like music. Beyond word The peace that floods the soul, for night is here, And Beauty still is guide and harbinger. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Dis, on heaps of gold fixing his look. By this, Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard, But he the bright Day-bearing car prepar'd, And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night Till she, o'ercome with anguish, shame, and rage, Dang'd down ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... ripe age looks on at things which ought to amaze it. And yet any little one of its own concerns grows more important, perhaps, than ever as the shadow of the future dwindles. Major Hockin had found on the beach a pebble with a streak of agate in it. He took it as the harbinger of countless agates, and resolved to set up a lapidary, with a tent, or even a shop, perhaps—not to pay, but to be advertised, and catch ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... that blacksmith shop went an inspiration lifting its votaries to a self-reliance founded on God, a harbinger of hope ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... and his ear listen to the murmurings of his own element. The Tramontana, as usual, had driven all perceptible vapor from the atmosphere, and the vault of heaven, in its cerulean blue, and spangled with thousands of stars, stretched itself above him, a glorious harbinger for the future to one who died in hope. The care of Ghita and the attendants had collected around the spot so many little comforts, as to give it the air of a room suddenly divested of sides and ceiling, but habitable and useful. Winchester, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, fairly ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... of Ver; Merry springtime's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds on ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... overhauled, and everything that had caught the rain was soon drying in the warm sun, which was now smiling serenely upon them. The mock suns, or "sun dogs," as they were commonly called, all disappeared with the storm of which they seemed to have been the harbinger. Beautiful as had been their appearance, the boys all agreed that if their coming was to be so speedily followed by such a storm they would gladly dispense with them in the future; nor did they see them again until when, in ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... of sky this little harbinger of spring appears, as we see him and his mate househunting in early March. Oftentimes he makes his appearance as early as the middle of February, when his attractive note is heard long before he himself is seen. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... now scattered miles toward the east, and, save for two of the number left behind, blown, spent and hopelessly out of the race, soon lost to view among the distant swales and ravines. Then everyone turned to welcome the coming harbinger, to congratulate him on his escape, to demand the reason for his daring essay. Gregg and his men were first to reach him, and while one of them was seen through the levelled glasses to dismount and give the courier his fresh horse, thereby ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... even for the delight of meeting the mistress of his heart, the period of whose return was now uncertain, would he disappoint her. William was engaged in packing his trunk, when Dr. Keene, again the harbinger of good ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... uniformly taken the historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and token of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... forgot, my jocund Boy! DAVUS, [12] the harbinger of childish joy; For ever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet, with a breast of such materials made, Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; 270 Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel In Danger's ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... with its purple hues and its sparkling sapphires. Aurora, fair harbinger of the day, graciously dispenses smiles; and brightness of the roses which wreath her forehead dissipates the mists ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... royal Blood, we count it as our own. [Exeunt WARRIORS in haste. This Scene is dark, and doubtful the Event; Some great Decree of Fate depends upon it, And mighty Good or Ill awaits Mankind. The Blood of Princes cannot flow in vain, The Gods must be in Council to permit it: It is the Harbinger of their Designs, To change, new-mould, and alter Things on Earth: And much I fear, 'tis ominous of Ill, To me and mine; it happen'd in my Kingdom. Their Father's Rage will swell into a Torrent— They were my Guests—His Wrath will centre here; Our guilty Land ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... of the Castle death-bell came swelling across the river from the other side. In an instant I knew it was the harbinger of death—of the Princess Charlotte? I was right—she ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... tempest-tossed, but such a being as Saronia could not long sustain it. Her soul was a spirit in chase, pursuing something undefinable which she longed to obtain, that she might be for ever satisfied and her measure of happiness complete. A calm to her was like a summer day in winter-time, the harbinger of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... bygone romance. And yet it was among these "distant dreams of dreams" that my ears became first awake to the nearer sounds of some vague social disturbance of which Ruskin's gospel of Labor, as I heard it at Oxford without any clear comprehension of it, had been a harbinger. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall, fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a little of what is called the 'Norman' type—having a certain firm regularity of feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the bridge—but that which in the elder man seemed to indicate only an unconscious acceptance of self as a standard, in the younger man gave an ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... enthusiasm in Allied countries when it declared war on Austria-Hungary August 27th. A sudden descent by a Roumanian army into Transylvania on August 30th was hailed as the harbinger of further successes. These hopes were turned to ashes when von Mackensen headed an irresistible German and Austrian rush which fairly inundated Roumania. The retreat from Transylvania by the Roumanians was turned into a rout. Bulgarian forces invaded ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... that, our Americanism does not go. At that point, we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland. We are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black to-morrow which is yet destined to soften the whiteness of the Teutonic to-day. We are that people whose subtle sense of song has given America its only American music, its only American fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid its mad ...
— The Conservation of Races • W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
... accipitres the most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of whose paternity he was doubtful, and on her return placed before her ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... welcome amongst us because we know your history; we know the history of your country; we know the history of your great men, from Washington to Roosevelt. You are truly and sincerely welcome amongst us, because you are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future, bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid the cannon's roar, or the din of popular acclamations, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... there is sufficient evidence to show that he was independent of any influences save those which he took from real life. None the less, of course, Marivaux, who has a name for affectation which his writings scarcely deserve, has an interest for us as a harbinger of the modern novel. Pamela was published in two volumes in 1740. The author was sufficiently ill-advised to add two more in 1741. In this latter instalment Mrs. B. was represented as a dignified matron, stately and sweet under a burden of marital infidelity. But this continuation is hardly worthy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... gentle Hannah! Trust me, not in vain My prison gates are opened. This small grace Is harbinger of greater happiness. No! I mistake not; 'tis the active hand Of love to which I owe this kind indulgence. I recognize in this the mighty arm Of Leicester. They will by degrees expand My prison; will accustom me, through small, To greater liberty, until at last I shall behold the face of him ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... doubt that the result in Maine, which many Democrats were of the opinion was a forecast of the results throughout the nation in November, had a depressing effect. The Republicans accepted it as a harbinger of victory and the Democrats as an indication of defeat. On the night of the Maine elections I kept close to the telephone at the Executive offices and engaged in conferences with two or three practical politicians from New Jersey. It was interesting to watch the effects of the returns from Maine ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... to put on the appearance of cumulus, the whole, at the same time, rising from the ground like a magnificent curtain. As the cloud ascends, it is broken up and evaporates or passes off with the morning breeze. The stratus has long been regarded as the harbinger of fine weather; and, indeed, there are few days in the year more serene than those whose morning breaks out through ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... early in the morning. As he trudged off, Birt Dicey stood watching the receding figure. His eyes were perplexed, his mind full of anxious foreboding. He hardly knew what he feared. He had only a vague sense of mischief in the air, as slight but as unmistakable as the harbinger of storm on a sunshiny ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... operated in Pagan Italy. The same omen announced to Lord Lindsay's Arab attendants in the desert the approach of some disaster, which partially happened in the morning. And a Highlander of the 42d Regiment, in his printed memoirs, notices the same harbinger of evil as having crossed his own path on a day of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... lapped gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... to carry into effect a sound military conception. Of these two factors in the century's progress, it needs hardly to be said that the one contributed by Hawke is the greater. In spirit and in achievement he, rather than Rodney, is the harbinger ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... desire to lead the child's mind through a long sequence of thought from the lower to the higher life, the amphibian affords an easy step in this ascending scale. And among amphibians that familiar and picturesque harbinger of spring, the frog, and his cousin the friendly toad, ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... were pointed out by Indiana as the harbinger of a rising hurricane; and now a swift spark of light like a falling star glanced on the water, as if there to quench its fiery light. Again the Indian girl raised her dark hand and pointed to the rolling storm-clouds, to the crested, waters and the moving ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in the spring should denote that the strife and war between these two elements was at an end. He is the peace-harbinger; in him the celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences of the spring on one hand, and the retreating footsteps of winter ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... however, awaited me this morning in Wales. The vision of clouds seemed to have been the harbinger of the magnificence of the vale of Llangollen,—a spot which, in my opinion, far surpasses all the beauties of the Rhine-land, and has, moreover, a character quite its own, from the unusual forms ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... truer worshipper of the Beautiful; his love for it was a consecrating passion, and herein he parts company with his illustrator. Poet or artist, Death at last transfigures all: within the shadow of his sable harbinger, Vedder's symbolic crayon aptly sets them face to face, but enfolds them with the mantle of immortal wisdom and power. An American woman has wrought the image of a star-eyed Genius with the final torch, the exquisite semblance of one whose vision beholds, but whose ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... high and breaking in fiery sparkles. The silver sharks unwearyingly kept their silent vigil about the rocking buoy. Up the eastern horizon was stealing a faint pallor, harbinger ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... should prefer your staying. Nike will prefer it, too. In the old days she always liked you to be her harbinger. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... beautiful, but one-eyed daughter of a rich Portuguese, who had migrated from Damascus to Gaza. Opulent and zealous, he devoted himself henceforth to preaching the Messiah, living and dying his apostle and prophet—no other in short than the Elijah who was to be the Messiah's harbinger. Nor did he fail to work miracles in proof of his mission. Merely on reading a man's name, he would recount his life, defaults and sins, and impose just correction and penance. Evil-doers shunned ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... name of good neighbourship, and with an appeal to her generosity, beg some small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me." Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant's door, and said: "Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion of ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... thine! I cannot think, as thy bright dyes appear To my enraptured gaze, that thou wert born Of Evening's exhalations: more sublime, Light-giver! is thy birth-place, than of earth. Wert thou not formed to herald in the day, And clothe a world in thy unborrowed light? Or art thou but a harbinger of rains To budding May?—or in thy subtle screen Nursest the lightnings that affright the world? Or wert thou born of th' thin aerial mist That shades the sea, or shrouds the mountain's brow? Whate'er thou art, I gaze ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... got considerable money at command: we live frugally, and realize the blessings of health, comfort, and contentment. Our only disquietude is on your account, Alonzo. Your affair with Melissa, I suppose, is not so favourable as you could wish. But despair not, my son; hope is the harbinger of fairer prospects: rely on Providence, which never deserts those who submissively bow to the justice ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... ground: in the cheer of the work hardships were forgotten, and we paused now and again to laugh at some sally of Terence McCann's or odd word of Swein Poulsson's. As the day wore on to afternoon a blue haze—harbinger of autumn—settled over fort and forest. Bees hummed in the air as they searched hither and thither amongst the flowers, or shot straight as a bullet for a distant hive. But presently a rifle cracked, and we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... warning given by that clock some time before the premonitory hiss. Between this harbinger of coming events, and the joyful sound which was felt to be "an age," Ned was wont to wipe his pen and arrange his papers. When the hiss began, he invariably closed his warehouse book and laid it in the desk, and had the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always rare, and quickly disposed of. While the ancients considered the opal a harbinger of good fortune to the possessor, it has been deemed in our day to be exactly the reverse; and many lovers of the gem have denied themselves the pleasure of wearing it from a secret superstition as to its unlucky attributes. This fancy has been gradually dispelled, and fashion now indorses ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... to rest usually between eleven and twelve, and I am always up before seven. I was always instructed by my father to consider indolence as one of the greatest faults; it was, in fact, a sin of the first magnitude in his vocabulary.—Indolence, he always said was the harbinger of every vice, of every evil. And the Songs of Solomon and his Proverbs were on every occasion ready to support his opinion. He would say to the sluggard, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... dwellings on the surface of the earth instead of those cellars in which they resided when we passed them. there was great joy with the natives last night in consequence of the arrival of the salmon; one of those fish was caught; this was the harbinger of good news to them. they informed us that these fish would arrive in great quantities in the course of about 5 days. this fish was dressed and being divided into small peices was given to each child in ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... resting place is in the midst of a well-nurtured animalism. The Herod of a ruling selfishness seeks to obliterate the loftier ideal. But while he summons all his strength to prevent the embodiment of the new thought, there are other faculties that perceive the star of promise and follow it as a harbinger of truth. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Slapman. "I will mention it to Mr. Gormit. On reflection, however, I won't. I might wound his feelings, for he is an exquisitely sensitive creature. As you have ingeniously discovered, he is a social reformer. At present he is only known to the public as the editor of the 'Humanitarian Harbinger;' but his select circle of friends are well aware that he is devoting his ripened genius to the production of a work called the 'Progressional Principia,' which will be in four volumes, and exhaust the whole subject of social science. This immense undertaking ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... not been able to raise. The whole caravan thought of the same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing: it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter Canaan. Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children. But your ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... we sat in the carriage on our way to R—sitten, well wrapped up in good fur coats, driving through a thick snowstorm, the first harbinger of the coming winter. On the journey the old gentleman told me many remarkable stories about the Freiherr Roderick, who had established the estate-tail and appointed him (V——), in spite of his youth, to be his Justitiarius ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Pickett's command were killed, wounded, or captured. Every brigade commander and every field officer except one fell. Lee and Longstreet had seen from the edge of the woods, with great exultation, the blue flag of Virginia waving over the crest occupied by the Union troops. It seemed the harbinger of great success to Lee. He thought the Union army was conquered at last. The long struggle was over, and peace would soon come, accompanied by the acknowledgment of the independence of the Southern Confederacy. It was but a passing dream; the flag receded, ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... a kingdoms, or of a camp (an honourable place); also, a blacksmith; also, a farrier, horse-leech, or horse-smith; also, a harbinger," ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... proved the harbinger of the reality, for Dr. Zimmerman himself now entered. He was accompanied by Col. Hellar of the Information Staff, a man of about Zimmern's age. Col. Hellar bore himself with a gracious dignity; his face was sad, yet there gleamed from his eye ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... his Church towards true science, and her right to determine what true science is. Let us dwell for a moment on the proofs of her scientific competence. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456 it was regarded as the harbinger of God's vengeance, the dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, and by order of the Pope the church bells of Europe were rung to scare the monster away. An additional daily prayer was added to the supplications of the faithful. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... friend of men, and keep near their dwellings. I shall ever be happy and contented; and although I could not gratify your wishes as a warrior, it will be my daily aim to make you amends for it as a harbinger of peace and joy. I will cheer you by my songs, and strive to inspire in others the joy and lightsomeness of heart I feel in my present state. This will be some compensation to you for the loss of glory you expected. I am now ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... the surrender of Burgoyne thrilled the whole land, for all felt it to be the harbinger of final triumph. The people went wild with joy; salvos of artillery, toasts, bonfires, illuminations, everywhere testified to the general exultation. The name of France was hailed with acclamations. At once a sense of national dignity and solidity ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... evening was glamorous; and all the lower sky was spread with those colours which Titian stole from the joyous horizon that filled his eyes. There was in that evening light, somehow, just a touch of pensiveness— the triste delicacy of heliotrope, harbinger of the Indian summer soon to come, when the air would make all sensitive souls turn to the past and forget that to-morrow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Genius of Liberty seemed to be hovering over England; and Thomas Paine was the harbinger ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... "carminger" the cobbler means harbinger, an officer; who preceded the monarch during progresses, to give ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... mistress of the scene, Chasing gloom, and courting glee, With the merry tambourine; Many a form of fairy birth, Many a Hebe, yet unwon, Wirt, a gem of purest worth, Lively, laughing Pleasanton; Vails and Tayloe will be there, Gay Monroe so debonair, Hellen, pleasure's harbinger, Ramsay, Cottringers and Kerr; Belles and matrons, maids and madams, All are gone to ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Hansom cab to that hotel near Fleet Street where his young wife was pining in her second-floor sitting-room, like a wild woodland bird behind the bars of a cage. The young man thought the little fellow might be a harbinger of peace—nor was he mistaken, for Ida melted at sight of him, and seemed quite happy when they three sat down to a dainty little luncheon, she waiting upon and petting her young ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... dinner-party,' thinks I to myself, seeing these preparations (and not, perhaps, displeased at the idea that some of the best people in the neighbourhood were coming to see me). 'Hark, theres the first bell ringing! 'said Ponto, moving away; and, in fact, a clamorous harbinger of victuals began clanging from the stable turret, and announced the agreeable fact that dinner would appear in half-an-hour. 'If the dinner is as grand as the dinner-bell,' thought I, 'faith, I'm in ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the violent breaking up of winter, the first phoebe-bird of the season alighted in a tree overhanging the torrent, and in her plaintive notes seemed to say, as interpreted by John Burroughs, "If you please, spring has come." They gave the brown little harbinger such an enthusiastic welcome that she speedily took flight ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Society will come down from the town, and see them decently buried. Stores has several times spoken of this good woman; were she a ministering angel he could not speak of her name with more reverence. For years, he tells us, has she been a harbinger of good, ever relieving the sick and needy, cheering the downcast, protecting the unfortunate. Her name has become a symbol of compassion; she mingles with the richest and the poorest, and none know her but to love and esteem her. "And she, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... version hirundo stood as hirdo, and the translator, overlooking the mark of contraction, declared to the astonished world on the authority of Plato that the horse- leech instead of the swallow was the harbinger of spring. Hoole, the translator of Tasso and Ariosto, was as confused in his natural history when he rendered "I colubri Viscontei'' or Viscontian snakes, the crest of the Visconti family, as "the ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... we always looked as the harbinger of good, was met with in every part of the interior—where there was water—and frequently at such vast distances from it, when migrating, I suppose, that ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... her praise, to remove the chagrin which her ingenuous countenance (ever the faithful harbinger of her thoughts) betrayed so plainly—"I assure you, my dear," said she, "that for some time you performed very prettily; didn't ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger." Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors and colors—a theory which might never have been dreamed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... sustained—necessarily, from chagrin, heightening the effect of the picture by exaggeration. The solicitor-general, Wedderburne, endeavoured to reconcile the house to this loss, by appealing to British magnanimity under distress, which, he conceived, was the harbinger of victory. During the war of the succession, he said, General Stanhope was compelled to surrender himself, and his whole army, prisoners of war in Spain; but the disgrace only served to call forth an ardour ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that death did seem to her Of long-lost joy the harbinger— Like an old household servant, come To take the willing scholar home; The school-house, it was very dear, But then the holidays were near; And why should she be lingering here? Softly the servant bore the child Who at her parting turned and smiled, And looked back to us, till the night For ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur |
