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More "Cower" Quotes from Famous Books



... important to me that dog flesh is their first choice. And dogs never fight hyenas; never even to defend their own lives. They may bark or howl while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. I—Baird—" his voice dropping, his face pallid, "I have hated Him. I keep His laws, it is my fate to preach His word—and I cower before Him as a slave before a tyrant, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of about eighteen, who under ordinary circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly, standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a reckless appearance, her naturally rosy cheeks blanching at the first word addressed to her, and her head falling forward on her breast in a confusion ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... perfectly in keeping with the individual character, that Cleopatra, alike destitute of moral strength and physical courage, should cower terrified and subdued before the masculine spirit of her lover, when once she has fairly roused it. Thus Tasso's Armida, half siren, half sorceress, in the moment of strong feeling, forgets her incantations, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not clearly ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... dimly the compelling power of this religion, and that it was one which, if sincerely embraced, would make the smallest details of life momentous with eternal weight, yet she knew that her soul could never respond to it, and whether saved or damned that it could only cower in miserable despair under a Deity that was so ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... stirs Morgan, and he seems to cower half timidly under the words, as if they were blows. Mary has already grasped her father's hand, and holds on to ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... bow before thee. And cower in the straw; The chickens[011] are submissive, And own thy will for law; Bullfinches and canary Thy bidding do obey; And e'en the tortoise in its shell Doth ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... other—" Loring, the Old Blizzard of two years later—had sworn. "Damn you, Maury, whom does he like? Not any one out of the Stonewall Brigade! You've got a limberer wit than most, and he can't make you cower—by the Lord, I've seen him make others do it! You go ahead, and when you're there ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... attenuated presses, grown lank and lantern-jawed in guarding the treasures they enclosed, and tottering, as though from constant fear and dread of thieves, shrunk up in dark corners, whence they cast no shadows on the ground, and seemed to hide and cower from observation. A tall grim clock upon the stairs, with long lean hands and famished face, ticked in cautious whispers; and when it struck the time, in thin and piping sounds, like an old man's voice, rattled, as if ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... not cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust, Remember Howard's warlike thrust, And all thy slumberers with the just, Maryland, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... at her work—turning neither to the right nor to the left, doing her duty with the bravery and patience of a soldier on the firing-line, knowing that any moment some stray bullet might end her usefulness. She would not dodge, nor would she cower; the danger was no greater than others she had faced, and no precaution, she knew, could save her. Her lips were still sealed, and would be to the end; some tongue other than her own must betray her sister and her trust. In the meantime she would wait ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... butler, as well born and well bred as a butler, even more intelligent than a butler. Now, simply because he has an unapproachable haughtiness of demeanour, which you can respectfully admire, but can never hope to imitate, do not cower beneath the polar light of his eye; assert yourself; be a woman; be an American citizen!' All in vain. The moment the door opens I ask for Lady DeWolfe in so timid a tone that I know Parker thinks me the ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... round him the pressure of this secret. The air was full of thoughts that he could not apprehend. Behind the benignant evasiveness of the doctors he seemed to discern a fact, like a thunderbolt withheld. He recoiled from his conjectures, to cower amid these shadows which he felt might be less agonizing than that ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... noisy bravado of his fraternity. There was an easy air of independence about him; a calm self-possession, and a sternness of glance, which might well daunt hearts less timid than those of poor slaves, accustomed from childhood and through life to cower before a driver's lash. The home plantation of Col. Lloyd afforded an ample field for the exercise of the qualifications for overseership, which he possessed in ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... and cower! Lo, for an end of breath, Clytie, hardy and frail, Anguisht after her death. For the Sun-flower droops and is pale When her king hideth his power, And ever draggeth the woe of her piteous tale, As a woman that laboureth Yet never reacheth ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... sir?" She turned into a narrow path in the shadow of arches, clothed by a great Austrian brier, on which here and there a yellow flame still glowed. "Mr. Boyce—when I meet you in company you shrink and cower detestably; when I meet you alone, you fence with me impudently enough and shrewdly; and always you avoid me while you can. I suppose there's in all this something more than the freaks of a fool. Then it's fear. Prithee, sir, why in God's name ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... but array all our force in the field, We'd teach these usurpers of power That their bodily safety demands they should yield, And in the presence of manhood should cower; But, alas! for our tethered and impotent state, Chained by notions of knighthood—we can ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... into view To observe the intruder; you see it If quickly you turn And, before they escape you surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend)— Cower beneath them. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... his mother, pretending prettily to cower before him. "What a tone! What a look! What have ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... looked to see her cower and shrink as men had often done under the glare of his angry gaze; but she stood before him tall, straight and calm—so near that he might have felled her to the ground; there was no fear in her deep eyes while she gave him back his look of hatred, unflinching; dimly ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... turned purple at the implication and the insolence. He scolded Jim loftily, but Jim did not cower. He was upheld by his own religion, which was Charity Coe's right to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... line, but the cold was no better at the present terminus, Henchir Souatir, whither he was bound on some business connected with the big phosphate company. On such occasions the natives barricade their doors and cower within over a warming-pan filled with the glowing embers of desert shrubs; as for Europeans—a dog's life, he said; in winter we are shrivelled to mummies, in ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... Being, and even of Babylon itself. His capacious Soul now soar'd into Infinity, and he contemplated, with the same Freedom, as if she was disencumber'd from her earthly Partner, on the immutable Order of the Universe. But as soon as she cower'd her Wings, and resumed her native Seat, he began to consider that Astarte might possibly have lost her Life for his Sake; upon which, his Thoughts of the Universe vanish'd all at once, and no other Objects appear'd before his distemper'd ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... me but dream of affliction and shame, Of saints that punish and sinners that cower, Of troubles by sickness and sword and flame, And not of ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart

... with your irons! Shall we, men who followed Red Jabez through a sea of blood, cower to a woman of such soft mettle? Dolores, queen or woman or wench, it is for you, not us, to explain. Lads—" he shrieked, flashing about and haranguing his companions—"back me in this. We will know why the sloop lacked powder; why to-day's ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... ourselves, in that deep place Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. For not inexorable is our power. And we are hunted of the prey we chase, Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, And draw temerity from hearts that cower. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... sees the sullen pass, high-crowned with snow, Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They try to rally—ah, too late, too late! Again, defenceless, with fierce eyes that wait For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay, And flouts the Boers, ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service

... saw an astonishing thing. Suddenly Mr. Ricardo seemed to shrivel—to cower back into himself. His fierce, triumphant energy had gone as at a blasting touch of magic. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... roused to an unexpected burst of wrath. His eyes kindled with rage, and he darted a glance at the intruders which made them cower and shrink from his rebuke. In a moment he grew calm, relapsing into his usual moody and thoughtful attitude. Taking courage, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... Tenney would let it, if he were here alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning—three together in May sunshine—had confirmed ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs. Blood arated by the air that sings through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... a new renown Even on Victoria's crown, Mightiest friend of blessed peace By commanding wars to cease, Paralysing faction still, Swift in act and strong of will, Forcing every foe to cower Under Britain's patient power, Like himself, firm, frank, and true, Who can ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... with this great nation, When woman tests her high vocation; Persuasion proves a futile power To quell the joints, but quick they cower At the ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... broad leaves, arrow-shaped, Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 160 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... once deprecating severity and asking kindness. The poor animal had evidently been used to gentle treatment; it would look up in a boy's face, and give a leap, fawning on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and cower a moment on the ground, astonished perhaps at the strangeness, the bustle and animation. The boys were beside themselves with eagerness; there was quite a babble of voices, arguing, discussing, suggesting. Each one had a plan of his own which he brought before ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... array all our force in the field, We'd teach these usurpers of power That their bodily safety demands they should yield, And in presence of womanhood cower; But alas! for our tethered and impotent state, Chained by notions of knighthood—we ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... arrogant? I think most of us have some interest in arguing the contrary. And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying. There are fierce beasts within: chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason. This is what one wishes for Mordax—that his heart and brain should restrain the outleap of roar ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... he'd bet 5 dollars he could lick the Crisis in a fair stand-up fight, if he wouldn't draw a knife on him. So it went—sum was for war, and sum was for peace. The skoolmaster, however, sed the Slave Oligarky must cower at the feet of the North ere a year had flowed by, or pass over his dead corpse. "Esto perpetua!" he added! "And sine qua non also!" sed I, sternly, wishing to make a impression onto the villagers. "Requiescat in pace!" ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne

... his sleeves. Rat-tat-tat, upon the entrance, brought Aunt Hannah to the door; Parched lips humbly plead for water, as she scanned his misery o'er; Wrathful came the dame's quick answer; made him cower, shame, and start Out of sight, despairing, saddened, hurt and angry to the heart. "Drink! You've had enough, you rascal. Faugh! The smell now makes me sick, Move, you thief! Leave now these grounds, sir, or our dogs ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... says 'Stop'; and it stands fixed upon the spot. He arrests the march of Death. Not indeed that He touches the mere physical fact. The physical fact is not what men mean by death. It is not what they cower before. What the world shrinks from is the physical fact plus its associations, its dim forebodings, its recoilings from the unknown regions into which the soul goes from out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and plus the possibilities ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... July or August, the fiat goes forth that the drones must die; there is no further use for them. Then the poor creatures, how they are huddled and hustled about, trying to hide in corners and byways! There is no loud, defiant humming now, but abject fear seizes them. They cower like hunted criminals. I have seen a dozen or more of them wedge themselves into a small space between the glass and the comb, where the bees could not get hold of them, or where they seemed to be overlooked ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... become quiet, go to rest. Norse kurr, adj. silent, kurrende still, perfectly quiet, cowered to silence. The fundamental idea in the O.N. word was probably that of "lying quiet." Cp. Shetland to cur, to sit down. Isaiah, LVIII, 5: "His head till cower like a seggan flouir." ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom

... which required great boldness and presence of mind, and Obed himself had said this much in his criticisms upon Black Bill's story; but at the present moment there was something in the tremendous figure of Obed, and also in the fear which he had that all was discovered, which made him cower into nothingness before his antagonist. Yet ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... Though she recognised dimly the compelling power of this religion, and that it was one which, if sincerely embraced, would make the smallest details of life momentous with eternal weight, yet she knew that her soul could never respond to it, and whether saved or damned that it could only cower in miserable despair under a Deity that ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... wild legion Cease to thunder at my door; Fleeting through night's rayless region, Hither they return no more. Clanking chains and sounds of woe Fill the forests as they go; And the tall oaks cower low, Bent their ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... hope, of Heaven bereft; It is the destiny of man To cower beneath his Maker's ban, And hide from his ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... strong, Clatter'd a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rung out, A hundred voices join'd the shout; With hark, and whoop, and wild halloo, No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew. Far from the tumult fled the roe, Close in her covert cower'd the doe; The falcon, from her cairn on high, Cast on the rout a wondering eye, Till far beyond her piercing ken The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint, and more faint, its failing din Return'd from cavern, cliff, and linn, And silence settled, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... nations, which still preserve that old ethnic worship and the mediaeval superstitions, are mere lingerers and camp-followers in the march of humankind. Under the ample skirts of the Roman Church still cower and lurk the superstitions of the old ethnic world, baptized to be sure, and called by new names. The Roman see has ever had a lingering kindness for the fair humanities of old religion, which live ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... work and God's ordinances to the great work which they have to do. Other people may tell us, if they like—it will not shake our confidence—that the fire that was kindled at Pentecost has all died down to grey ashes, and that it is of no use trying to cower over the burnt-out embers any more in order to get heat out of them. They may, and do, tell us that the 'rushing, mighty wind that filled the house' obeys the law of cycles as the wind of the natural universe, and will calm ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... What room for hope? Such wrath is child of hell. Before his righteous ire I shrink, I cower; Revenge I dread—and vengeance linked with power ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, beckons him forward. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... seen the child-birds growing and gaining strength. Their muscles were now well developed, their bodies were clothed with feathers, they had learned to use their wings,—they could fly. Would it not have been passing strange, had they continued as they were, contented to cower and to crawl, when they had acquired the power to soar? And will you be content to remain forever only a fledgling, satisfied with having acquired the power of rising, but never actually using the wings which these years of honorable ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... mendaciously represented him as the thief and kidnapper who is found in your own person; then, sir, would you vail your face and go out no more among men, but upon your forehead, as now upon your soul, would be the brand of thief, robber, murderer! Ay, well may you cower! well may the cold sweat force itself out upon your brow! Did it never enter into your debased mind that the villain who is degraded enough to sell himself to crime for a little sordid dust, will, for a larger sum, betray ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... in one of the music halls and gave the Mohammedans a piece of my mind. The poor Christians!—they feared the Government in the old regime; they cower before the boatmen in this. For the boatmen of Beirut have not lost their prestige and power. They are a sort of commune and are yet supreme. Yes, they are always riding the whirlwind and directing the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... should man fear any more The voice of Pytho's dome, or cower before These birds that shriek above us? They foretold Me for my father's murderer; and behold, He lies in Corinth dead, and here am I And never touched the sword.... Or did he die In grief for me who left him? In that way I may have ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... ye, maidens, and cower! Lo, for an end of breath, Clytie, hardy and frail, Anguisht after her death. For the Sun-flower droops and is pale When her king hideth his power, And ever draggeth the woe of her piteous tale, As a woman that laboureth Yet never reacheth the hour: So Clytie yearns to the Sun, for ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... wings seem scarcely of any use, and with the laziness already alluded to that forms its characteristic feature, it seeks out a solitary spot, and having dug a hole amongst the dry leaves, there it will squat for days together without stirring. It likewise delights to cower under the gnarled roots of an old oak, or to hide itself in a holly-bush, and apparently derives so much satisfaction from its own meditations, and seems to hold all other birds of the forest in such utter contempt, that ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... sullen pass, high-crowned with snow, Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They try to rally — ah, too late, too late! Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay, And flouts the ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... mourning-coach driven through a wedding procession) to kill the joys we have been seeming to receive from the former words? Are we taking back all that we have been giving, and giving out instead something that will make them all cower and be quiet, like the singing birds that stop their singing and hide in the leaves when they see the kite in the sky? No, there is no need for anything of the sort. 'For all these things God will bring thee to judgment': that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... his vote for war. But if women have been slaves, what shall we say of the little children, born in the sub-cellars, children of poverty, children of crime, children of wealth, children that are afraid when they hear their names pronounced by the lips of their mother, children that cower in fear when they hear the footsteps of their brutal father, the flotsam and jetsam upon the rude sea of life, my heart goes out to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... drivers of the sleighs waited to be sure that the stretch beyond was clear before going forward. In the country, the winter which held the village in such close siege was an occupation under which Nature seemed to cower helpless, and men made a desperate and ineffectual struggle. The houses, banked up with snow almost to the sills of the windows that looked out, blind with frost, upon the lifeless world, were dwarfed in the drifts, and seemed to founder in a white sea blotched with strange ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... Switzerland in order to be convenient to goat's milk.... Like other carnivorous animals, an Englishman is always surly over his meals. Morose at all times, he becomes unbearably so at that interesting period of the day, when his soul appears to cower among plates and dishes; ... though he gorges his food with the silent deliberation of the anaconda, yet, in descanting upon the delicacies of the last capital dinner, he makes an approach to animation altogether unusual to him; ... ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... and turned her face to the wall, as if to shut out him and the light. He stepped to her, caught her by the wrist and forced her round towards him. At the first touch he felt her wince. So will you see a young she-panther wince and cower from her ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... fountains of squibs at that point!), then through Leadenhall Street and Cornhill, by the Royal Exchange, along Cheapside and on to Temple Bar, where the bonfire awaited the puppets. In a torrent of fire the noisy Protestants passed through the exulting City, making the Papists cower and shudder in their garrets and cellars, and before the flaming deluge opened a storm of shouting people. This procession consisted of fifteen groups of priests, Jesuits, and friars, two following a man on a horse, holding up before him a dummy, dressed to represent ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... absolutely necessary to change a woman's preconceived notions as to what she should do—as, for instance, discouraging her riding through quicksand—he would persuade somebody else to issue the advice. And he would cower in the background blushing his absurd little blushes at his second-hand temerity. Add to this narrow, sloping shoulders, a soft voice, and a ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... God, I saw nothing—though I doubt not he observed my troop. For doubtless he would be with his master—aged now, soured, and prone to cower about behind his guard, fearing the dagger or the poisoned bowl, seeing an enemy in every shadowy corner, and hearing the whistle of the assassin's bullet in ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs. Blood arated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... within the closely-fastened cage Of an old lioness, well used to fight, An untamed bull is prisoned, to engage The savage monster, for the mob's delight; The cubs, who see him cresting in his rage, And round the den loud-bellowing, to the sight Of the huge beast's enormous horns unused, Cower at a distance, timid ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... Star was standing with his two officers on the quarter-deck, "conning the vessel by the feel of the wind and rain," keeping her dead before the gale—when there came a flash and a peal which made them cower almost ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... eneuch, but she has ower mony bairns to hap them a'; her wings winna cower them, and she drives this ane awa', and winna lat ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... i' the haill queentry he wadna sell her till, sae be he was o' an auld eneuch faimily, and had rowth o' siller. Haith! noo a days the last 'ill come first, an' a fish cadger wi' siller 'ill be coontit a better bargain nor a lord wantin 't: only he maun hae a heap o' 't, to cower the stink ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... not be cast down. You, I trust, are not the man to cower at such a moment. Do not be afraid to stand up your whole length in ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen

... is a mile away over the hill, yet he lingers not by the fire; but, with his books slung over his shoulder, he sets out to face the storm. When he reaches the topmost ridge, where the snow lies in drifts, and the north wind comes keen and biting, does he shrink and cower down by the fences, or run into the nearest house to warm himself? No; he buttons up his coat, and rejoices to defy the blast, and tosses the snow-wreaths with his foot; and so, erect and fearless, with strong heart and ruddy cheek, he goes on ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... cannot be vain and arrogant? I think most of us have some interest in arguing the contrary. And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying. There are fierce beasts within: chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason. This is what one wishes for Mordax—that his heart and brain should restrain the outleap of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... a firmness which was very gentle, and yet he could see that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him. Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if they would ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... dollars he could lick the Crisis in a fair stand-up fight, if he wouldn't draw a knife on him. So it went—sum was for war, and sum was for peace. The skoolmaster, however, sed the Slave Oligarky must cower at the feet of the North ere a year had flowed by, or pass over his dead corpse. "Esto perpetua!" he added! "And sine qua non also!" sed I, sternly, wishing to make a impression onto the villagers. "Requiescat in pace!" sed the skoolmaster, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne

... strip of meadow between—is green too with rising wheat, high enough now to hide the partridges. Before it got so tall it was pleasant to watch the pair that frequent it; they were so confident that they did not even trouble to cower. At any other time of year they would have run, or flown; but then, though scarcely forty yards away and perfectly visible, they simply ceased feeding but ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... all unseen, TROY HOUSE, and BEAUFORT'S bowers of green, And nameless prospects, half defin'd, Involv'd in mist, were left behind. Yet as the boat still onward bore, These ramparts of the eastern shore Cower'd the high crest to many a sweep, And bade us o'er each minor steep Mark the bold KYMIN'S sunny brow, That, gleaming o'er our fogs below, Lifted amain with giant power, E'en to the clouds his NAVAL TOWER[1]; [Footnote ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield

... tidings. Dante, Paul, Swedenborg, Edwards have seen the pit. It opens only in the holiness of such men,—is a thunder out of clear sky, before which generations of the impure, like brute beasts, tremble and cower. An equal moral genius will see that the ascension of an immortal Love has left behind this vacuum, mitigated, not deepened, by the furniture of devils and their flame. Men strive in vain to be afflicted by a revelation of the best and worst. The mind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: The Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... her work—turning neither to the right nor to the left, doing her duty with the bravery and patience of a soldier on the firing-line, knowing that any moment some stray bullet might end her usefulness. She would not dodge, nor would she cower; the danger was no greater than others she had faced, and no precaution, she knew, could save her. Her lips were still sealed, and would be to the end; some tongue other than her own must betray her sister and her trust. In the meantime she ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... had nerved himself for the worst, and did not cower or show signs of fear, as Socrates expected ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... savagely upon the girl. She seemed to cower away from him, half lifting her hands as though in fear that ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete my sweet lady that I love so well.... For in Paradise go none but ... these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars, and in the crypts.... These be they that go into Paradise; with them have I naught to make. But into Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks and goodly ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... inspirited by a sense of wrongs endured, and of the justness of its cause, bore away the palm, and plucked from the brow of its more aged competitor many a laurel yet green from the ensanguined fields of Europe. In scores of hotly-contested battles, the British lion, unused as it was to cower before a foe, was compelled to "lick the dust" in defeat. At York, at Chippewa, at Fort Erie, at Lundy's Lane, at New Orleans, on Lake Champlain, on Lake Erie, on the broad ocean, Great Britain and the world were taught lessons of American ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing, But with a silent charm compels the stern And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring, To shrink aback, and cower upon ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... Thou wilt not cower in the duet, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust Maryland! Remember Carroll's sacred trust, Remember Howard's warlike thrust— And all thy slumberers with ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... had been carrying was lying, neglected, on the floor. Locke snatched it up and, shooting one of the thugs, managed to cower the other. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... you think sitting on her eggs must be rather cramping work for the flamingo with those long legs? But I will tell you how cleverly she contrives. Instead of building a nest on the ground, where she would find it impossible to cower closely enough over her eggs to keep them warm, the flamingo heaps up a hill of earth so high, that she can sit comfortably upon it with her long legs dangling, one on each side. At the top is a hollow just large enough to hold her two or three white ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... anyone did come. Now it is warm enough for me to pick off the outer layer of dew-wet leaves from whatever heaps of dead leaves are hereabouts. I can gather the dry leaves into that little grotto. We can lie on a bed of them, wrapped up in them we can cower under them, we can even pull our heads under and be invisible if we hear ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... mist, but whence and how it is impossible to say, there come other angels dark of hue and foul smelling. But the white angels carry swords, and they wave these swords, and the scene is reflected in them as in a mirror; and the dark angels cower in a corner of the cemetery, but they do ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... toils and tears, Through passions that still enticed; Through station that came unsought, To dazzle me, snare, betray; Through the baits the Tempter brought To lure me out of the way; Through the peril and greed of power (The bribe that he thought most sure); Through the name that hath made me cower, "The holy bishop of Tours!" Now, tired of life's poor show, Aweary of soul and sore, I am stretching my hands to go Where nothing can ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... that explains the foreign language—and I do not know Spanish." Then facing him again with an air and look that made him cower, in spite of his bravado, she sternly asked: ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... go straight up the bank. I may find a ledge, or some rocks, under which we may cower," ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... of all, the Lord, And Ruler of the height, Who, robing day in light, hast poured Soft slumbers o'er the night, That to our limbs the power Of toil may be renew'd, And hearts be rais'd that sink and cower, And sorrows be subdu'd." ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... must be the Queen Sudarshana who is approaching near. [Aside to SUVARNA.] Suvarna, you must not hide and cower behind me like that. Mind, the umbrella in your ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded the eyes of, and brought ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... lead out the Queen. Nobody else moves. The townspeople cower and stare. The two little pages that bore her train as she entered remain back of the throne, not knowing what to do. As she goes by them, her train dragging on the ground, the two ragged little boys of Lisa, the wood-gatherer, run out from the group of citizens, ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... of the disadvantages of a broken life is, that what a person may do with a kind of conscience in the one part, he feels compelled to blush for in the other. The despotism exercised in the school, even though exercised with a certain sense of justice and right, made the autocrat, out of school, cower before the parents of his helpless subjects. And this quailing of heart arose not merely from the operation of selfish feelings, but from a deliquium that fell upon his principles, in consequence of their sudden exposure ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... shadowy, with a film of moisture glistening on the wall, was as gaunt and cold as a thing that is dead and rigid. But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long, drafty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and another fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the wide landing and stopped ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells

... enemy had done. And 'tis an enemy who, scattering tares Amid the corn sown in Creation's field, With deadly coil the growing plant ensnares. And no mean enemy, nor one unsteeled For bold defiance, nor reduced to cower Ever in covert ambuscade concealed, But at whose hest the ravening hell-hounds scour A wasted world, while himself prowls to seek, Like roaring lion, whom he may devour, And upon whom his rancorous wrath to wreak, Sniffing the tainted steam of slaughter's breath, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... man thou art Craves—and shame bids not breath within him cease - Craves of the woman that thou knowest I am Peace? Ay, take hands at parting, and release Each heart, each hand, each other: shall the lamb, The lamb-like woman, born to cower and bleed, Withstand his will whose choice may save or damn Her days and nights, her word and thought and deed - Take heart to outdare her lord the lion? How Should this be—if the lion's imperial seed Life not against his sire as brave a brow As frowns upon his mother?—Peace ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... volume till the very hills seemed to cower in fear. Miss Whitmore gasped when a limp form was dragged from the cabin and lifted to the back of ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... have a fire all night. In the morning they cower over it like inhabitants of the poles. Of course we as well as they, having been baked in the summer's sun, now feel ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... the circle one of the swift outriders selected precisely our direction! Straight as an arrow he came for us, at full gallop. I could see the toss of his horse's mane against the light from the opened door. There was no time to move. All we could do was to cower beneath our rock, muscles tense, and hope to be able to glide around the shadow ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... dead girl cringe and whine, And cower in the weeping air— But, oh, she was no kin of mine, And so I ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie

... the smoke of Hell, little the wonder. But we cannot yet believe. There is a sparing strain in nature, and through the world, as a thread, is spun a silence which smiles, and on the end of events we find placarded large the words: "Why were ye afraid?" A dignified Hope, therefore—even now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of the Condor of Death—becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an attitude among some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... a grumbler, all sulky and sour, But for Christopher's temper such trash was too much; And it soon made the malecontent quiver and cower, When he saw preparations for handling the Crutch. "Lay your croaking aside," The old gentleman cried, "Or I'll make you eat up each ungenerous word: Not our deadliest foe, Such injustice should know, And far less shall a friend be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... you will say. 'T is true: We cower timidly beneath the rod Lifted in menace by an angry God, But won't endure it from an ape like you. Detested simian with thumb prehensile, Switch me and I would brain ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... he said, looking about his chaotic domain disparagingly, "and they say they may have to have me out here next Sunday—somebody's sick or missing. But they won't," he continued darkly. It was a threat, we felt—a threat that would make some presumptuous superior cower and conform. "I really belong at our branch in Dellwood Park, where there is something; not out here, beyond the last of everything." And he said more to indicate that his energies and abilities ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... the garden of the cottage, which, low-roofed, seemed to submit to the majesty of nature, and cower amidst the venerable remains of forgotten time. Flowers, the children of the spring, adorned her garden and casements; in the midst of lowliness there was an air of elegance which spoke the graceful taste of the inmate. With a beating heart I entered the enclosure; as I stood at the entrance, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... if he too had the scent. There is no hurry, for the dogs are true as steel and will stand there as long as the frightened birds lie, while the latter, obedient to the instinct of sudden terror, will cower where they are for an hour, with their heads drawn back, their mottled breasts pressed to the earth and their legs gathered under them, ready to spring into the air. We cock our guns, agree to shoot respectively at the birds which go right or left or straight before us, and then ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... take you with your irons! Shall we, men who followed Red Jabez through a sea of blood, cower to a woman of such soft mettle? Dolores, queen or woman or wench, it is for you, not us, to explain. Lads—" he shrieked, flashing about and haranguing his companions—"back me in this. We will know why the sloop lacked powder; why to-day's ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... thee, haste thee; surely Ye soon will feel his power. Be watchful, be not weary; Let not thy spirit cower. ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... fiendish vengeance which awaited a spy. I knew that men with their lives in their hands would stick at nothing. All I could do was to cower at the bottom of the boat and listen silently ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... as it has done for the Esquimaux or Fuegian; and not so bountiful as to crush them by its very luxuriance, as it has crushed the savages of the tropics. They saw enough of its strength to respect it; not enough to cower before it: and they and it have fought it out; and it seems to me, standing either on London Bridge or on a Holland fen-dyke, that they are ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... are both of us wiser and stronger: we have gone through fire. Who foretold it? This day, and this misery and perversion that we can turn to joy, if we will—if you will! No heart to dare is no heart to love!—answer that! Shall I see you cower away from me again? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a little flower 'Neath a great oak tree: When the tempest 'gan to lower Little heeded she: No need had she to cower, For she dreaded not its power - She was happy in the bower Of her great oak tree! Sing hey, Lackaday! Let the tears fall free For the pretty little flower ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... again a fresh shivering fit came on. At such times I would cover my head with the bedclothes and cower, and see the Picture even so floating visibly in mid-air like ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... seasoned passenger, to spend his time on the open deck. To stand out on the front (one can hardly call it a prow, where the periphery is that of an average wash-tub) or at the stern is to be drowned by rain or sawn asunder by icy winds or broiled like an oyster, and to cower under the upper deck is to get a lively sense of the Cave of the Winds. One with a healthy sense of smell and an instinct for oxygen may well shrink from entering the cabin, and prefer the perils and discomforts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... believe that she had grace to fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... shrink and wither, Custom-straitened like her waist, All her thought to cower together, Huddling sheep-like with the rest, With the flock of soulless bodies on a pattern schooled ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... wagged beseechingly, at once deprecating severity and asking kindness. The poor animal had evidently been used to gentle treatment; it would look up in a boy's face, and give a leap, fawning on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and cower a moment on the ground, astonished perhaps at the strangeness, the bustle and animation. The boys were beside themselves with eagerness; there was quite a babble of voices, arguing, discussing, suggesting. Each one had a plan of his own which he brought before the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... back the sea for England's dower; His footfall bade the Moor change heart and cower; His word on Milton's tongue spake law to France When Piedmont felt ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... since. She did not realise that it was the system to which she had stubbornly committed herself, that drove the people of the fields to cut their crops green to be baked in the oven, because their hunger could not wait; or made them cower whole days in their beds, because misery seemed to gnaw them there with a duller fang. That she was unconscious of its effect, makes no difference in the real drift of her policy; makes no difference ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... huge limbs were rent from some of the larger trees with a crash like thunder, and swept far away into the forest. The very earth trembled and seemed terrified at the dreadful conflict going on above. It seemed to the two friends as if the end of the world were come; and they could do nothing but cower among the branches of the tree and watch the storm in silence; while they felt, in a way they had never before experienced, how utterly helpless they were and unable to foresee or avert the many dangers by which they were surrounded, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... The man's evident intention, made obvious by his manner and his leer at the old woman, was to say something against her; the Prince was in a mood to quarrel with any one, on any ground at all, who did not cower to him. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... sou for my life?" she said, while she stood straight up again with the majesty of a queen. "Do you think I feared for me—for myself? Oh! no, my own lover, never that! They can kill me when they choose, but they won't; it is you for whom I fear. Only your danger could make me cower, no other in ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... Let Christendom cower 'neath Stripes and Stars, Cloaking her shame under legal bars, Not too moral for traffic, but shirking wars, While the Southern cross, floating topmast high. Though torn, perchance, by a thousand scars, Shall ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... She turned into a narrow path in the shadow of arches, clothed by a great Austrian brier, on which here and there a yellow flame still glowed. "Mr. Boyce—when I meet you in company you shrink and cower detestably; when I meet you alone, you fence with me impudently enough and shrewdly; and always you avoid me while you can. I suppose there's in all this something more than the freaks of a fool. Then it's fear. Prithee, sir, why ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... took him from the train, the dog was led through crowds of people and bustling, noisy streets that made Jan cringe and cower. At last they reached a place where water stretched so far that it touched the sky, and the water kept moving all the time. This frightened him, for he had never seen any water excepting in the little lake ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker

... glorious host among, That band of poets who have greatly sung. But woe, alas, I cannot, I no power Of singing have, all my tired heart is wrung To think I might have known a happier hour, And sung myself, not let my aching spirit cower. (tat. 14.) ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... looks not after brother, no man for another cares. The gods in heaven are frightened, refuge they seek, Upward they mount to the heaven of Anu. Like a dog in his lair, So cower the gods together at the bars of heaven. Ishtar cries out in pain, loud cries the exalted goddess:— All is turned to mire. This evil to the gods I announced, to the gods foretold the evil. This exterminating war foretold Against my race of mankind. Not for this bare I men that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... worse than that quiescence in disgrace, Which only merits—and should only—scorn. Oh, let me see the Negro night and morn, Pressing and fighting in, for place and power! All earth is place—all time th' auspicious hour, While heaven leans forth to look, oh, will he quail or cower? ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... familiar with our native legends and tales, the willows and alders in the fields and by the brooks are peopled with hidden beings, fairies, and witches. They stretch out ghostly arms, as their veils wave over their loose hair, they bow, cower, raise themselves, become as big as giants or as little as dwarfs. They seem to lie in wait for the weak, to fill ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann

... North wind blows; to-day our hearts are one, Though you are 'mid the English snows and I in Austral sun; You, when you hear the Northern blast, pile high a mightier fire, Our ladies cower until it's past in lawn and ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... dressed and finished their packing. About the house hovered the profound silence of the cold night, such a night as makes all living things, men and beasts, cower away for warmth into the depths of sleep. Antoinette's teeth were chattering: she was frozen body ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... this much in his criticisms upon Black Bill's story; but at the present moment there was something in the tremendous figure of Obed, and also in the fear which he had that all was discovered, which made him cower into nothingness before his antagonist. Yet ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... and even scream. And all through life an unexpected and loud noise is likely to startle us. An investigation has shown that thunder is feared much more than lightning. Children will laugh at the flashes of lightning, but will cower ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... coals is the same as to cower over the coals, as a gipsy over a fire. Thus Hodge says of Gammer Gurton ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... younger children, in blythe forgetfulness of the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and dismayed by something ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... go to bed? You, with your crimes, go to bed? Why, you couldn't sleep! You would cower all night! Go to bed! Oh, my dear Struboff, think better of it. No, no, we'll none of us go to bed. Bed's a hell for men like us. For you above all! Think ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... of his ire, For he was one who could arouse and fire The coldest heart, so ardent was his own. His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone, Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power, Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower. ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the occasion and how to sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our faces, and we prepare a lie for our grandchildren. We fail to stamp our individualities upon our photographs, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... of murderers that he had been made to fear. Peter,—and other Peters about the country,—had filled his mind with sad foreboding. And there had always been something timid, something almost unmanly in his nature. He had seemed to prefer to shrink and cower and be mysterious with the Carrolls to coming forward boldly with such a man as Yorke Clayton. The girls had seen this, and had declared that he was no more than a boy; but his father had seen it and had made no such allowance. And now he saw that he trembled. But Florian got up ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... she would cower down in the bottom of the cart and cry and pray. Storms terrified her. It seemed as if all the anger of the heavens were levelled at her. She would cry and moan pitifully whilst O'Connell would try to soothe her and tell ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... I strike not thee, I will not hold thee in dungeon tower. Though the king chain me, I will not cower, Though my sire ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... you," remarked Kennedy, still holding Carroll in his vise-like grip, while the drug fiend's shattered nerves caused him to cower and tremble, "to know that a special detective working for me has located Mr. and Mrs. Dawson at Bar Harbor, where they are enjoying a quiet honeymoon. Brown is safely in the custody of his counsel, ready to appear and clear himself as soon as the public opinion ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... not that this same jeering band Will bite the dust—will lick the Mohawk's hand; Will kneel and cower at the Mohawk's feet; Will shrink when ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... delicate shower of spray over him. He was perfectly enchanted, and fluttered, turned about, and frisked, like a bird possessed. As he became accustomed to it, I began to throw handfuls of water over him, and that he did enjoy. He would cower down, and lie with his wings expanded and beak open, receiving charge after charge of water till quite out of breath; then he would run a few paces away on his island till he recovered himself, and then would go ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... I. "Let there be trouble—the more the better. This system has got to end, sooner or later. These capitalists with their speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to worse. Why should I cower in Rawdon's office, like a frightened dog, while hunger walks the streets? Hunger is the master revolutionary. When he comes we ought to turn out and salute him. Anyway, I'M going to ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper. They were not created to stretch forth their branches alone, and endure without protection the summer's sun and the winter's storm. Alone they but spread themselves on the ground, and cower unseen in the dingy shade. But when they have found their firm supporters, how wonderful is their beauty; how ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... pacing home, rotund in their buttoned-up coats, had clear drops at the end of their noses. Sometimes they stopped—their trousers legs flapping behind them—and trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... Since my boyhood I have lived in terror of the just God—the just God—who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. I—Baird—" his voice dropping, his face pallid, "I have hated Him. I keep His laws, it is my fate to preach His word—and I cower before Him as a slave before a tyrant, with ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... know how the parasite plants grow and prosper. They were not created to stretch forth their branches alone, and endure without protection the summer's sun and the winter's storm. Alone they but spread themselves on the ground and cower unseen in the dingy shade. But when they have found their firm supporters, how wonderful is their beauty; how all-pervading and victorious! What is the turret without its ivy, or the high garden wall without the jasmine ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... that he saw his property in the possession of another creature, and resented the spoliation. With an angry snarl he snatched the life-buoy and backed away, while the girl, surprised and a little indignant, followed with extended hands. He raised it threateningly, and though she did not cower, she knew intuitively that he was angry, and feeling the injustice, burst into tears; then, turning from him, she covered her eyes with her hands and crouched to ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... What time our victim sought Apollo's grace? Nay, drawn into ourselves, in that deep place Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. For not inexorable is our power. And we are hunted of the prey we chase, Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, And draw temerity from hearts that cower. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... that he did not know; not a policeman in Winnipeg that had not seen his swift and shadowy form in the gray dawn as he passed where he would; not a Dog in Winnipeg that did not cower and bristle when the telltale wind brought proof that old Garou was crouching near. His only path was the warpath, and all the world his foes. But throughout this lurid, semi-mythic record there was one recurring pleasant thought—Garou ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... enraged. All felt the swift contagion of his ire, For he was one who could arouse and fire The coldest heart, so ardent was his own. His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone, Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power, Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower. ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the hermit, roused to an unexpected burst of wrath. His eyes kindled with rage, and he darted a glance at the intruders which made them cower and shrink from his rebuke. In a moment he grew calm, relapsing into his usual moody and thoughtful attitude. Taking ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... what doth Judea but cower down Behind us? There's no rescue comes from there. We are alone with ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... kills hogs for the Squire, and has got a powerful muscle into his arms, sed he'd bet 5 dollars he could lick the Crisis in a fair stand-up fight, if he wouldn't draw a knife on him. So it went—sum was for war, and sum was for peace. The skoolmaster, however, sed the Slave Oligarky must cower at the feet of the North ere a year had flowed by, or pass over his dead corpse. "Esto perpetua!" he added! "And sine qua non also!" sed I, sternly, wishing to make a impression onto the villagers. "Requiescat in pace!" sed the skoolmaster, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne

... over the coals is the same as to cower over the coals, as a gipsy over a fire. Thus Hodge says of Gammer Gurton ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... which was very gentle, and yet he could see that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him. Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if they would have ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... gripping her composure in both hands. Far less susceptible to shame is the brazen Phoebe, who may be seen passing the opening on the arm of a cavalier, and flinging her trembling sister a mischievous kiss. The younger ladies note the incident; alas, they are probably meant to notice it, and they cower, as under a blow. ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie

... you walk, sir?" She turned into a narrow path in the shadow of arches, clothed by a great Austrian brier, on which here and there a yellow flame still glowed. "Mr. Boyce—when I meet you in company you shrink and cower detestably; when I meet you alone, you fence with me impudently enough and shrewdly; and always you avoid me while you can. I suppose there's in all this something more than the freaks of a fool. Then it's fear. Prithee, sir, why in God's name ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... did the audience let loose their pent-up feelings. The place pulsated with a roar like that of a great waterfall in a deep gorge, salvo after salvo of cheers swelling and merging. The deep boom of their applause pursued Brinnaria and made her cower. The people would never forget her now. They were in ecstasy. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... brother, no man for another cares. The gods in heaven are frightened, refuge they seek, Upward they mount to the heaven of Anu. Like a dog in his lair, So cower the gods together at the bars of heaven. Ishtar cries out in pain, loud cries the exalted goddess:— All is turned to mire. This evil to the gods I announced, to the gods foretold the evil. This exterminating war foretold Against my race of mankind. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... back the smile to her lip or chase the look of sadness from her brow. She had, from the first, exhibited great signs of fear of the chief, and did she catch his eye resting on her she would hurriedly gather her child in her arms, and with a wild look of terror cower away into the corner of the room farthest from him she could get, and there sit murmuring in wailing tones to the babe nestling in ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... inventor of this game, but he openly renounced all patent rights. He said that everybody on board ought to take the stage in turn—he himself was quite content to retire on his early laurels. So all hands took pains to contradict Cranze and to cower with a fine show of dramatic ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... straight and severe, I ask you to believe that she had grace to fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they were as nothing ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... the German way? Comes this low bleating forth from German hearts? Should Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves, Or spread their palms with priestly unctuousness, Exalt their feelings with the censer's fumes, And cower and quake and bend the trembling knee, And with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer? Then ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell, And thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven? Is this the German way? Beware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords. ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... Now and then they dozed, but sound slumber did not come to a single one of the group. Uncle Toby was quite content to cower as close to Frank as possible, satisfied that the other was able to protect him. He seemed to exhibit the blind confidence of a dog in an emergency calling for energy; to him Frank was a type of ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... the day grows old; The spiders of care are weaving their net; All night 'twill be blowing and rainy and cold; I cower at his door from the wind ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... stood a massive altar. Overhead, With drooping boughs, a venerable bay Its shadowy foliage o'er the home-gods spread. Here, with her hundred daughters, pale with dread, Poor Hecuba and all her female train, As doves, that from the low'ring storm have fled, And cower for shelter from the pelting rain, Crouch round the silent gods, and cling to ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... 've seen thee o'er the lowly, A gracious chieftain ever, The Catach[145] self below thee, And the Gallach[145] cower'd for cover; But ever more their striving, When claim'd respect thine eye, Thy scourge corrected, driving To other lands to fly. Thy loyal crew of clansmen true, No panic fear shall turn them, With steel-cap, blade, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... he seems to cower half timidly under the words, as if they were blows. Mary has already grasped her father's hand, and holds on ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... their emissaries. Let them send out their men to Louisiana; they will never return to tell their suffering, but they shall expiate the crime of interfering in our domestic institutions, by being burned at the stake." And Northern men cower at this, and consent to have their lips padlocked, and to be robbed of their constitutional right, aye, and their natural right, while travelling Southward; while the lordly slaveholder traverses the length and breadth of ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... of Richard Forester is connected with Chaucer's first in 1378, when Chaucer, about to go abroad on a mission for the King, had letters of attorney under the names of John Cower and Richard Forester, [Footnote: Life Records, No. 120, p. 216.] and again in 1386, when a lease for the house over Aldgate which Chaucer had occupied during his years as controller of the customs in London ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert

... why then should man fear any more The voice of Pytho's dome, or cower before These birds that shriek above us? They foretold Me for my father's murderer; and behold, He lies in Corinth dead, and here am I And never touched the sword.... Or did he die In grief for me who left him? In that way ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... and they soon began to play with our own younger children, in blythe forgetfulness of the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and dismayed by something he ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... to him. The man's evident intention, made obvious by his manner and his leer at the old woman, was to say something against her; the Prince was in a mood to quarrel with any one, on any ground at all, who did not cower to him. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... explanation of inherited instincts; that is why the duckling which has been hatched by a hen takes to the water instantly without needing to be shown how to swim; why the chicken just out of its shell will cower at the shadow of a hawk; why a bird which has been artificially hatched, and has never seen a nest, nevertheless knows how to make one, and makes it according to the traditions ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater

... So, dear, we cower at our warning bell. Creep close to me, where shadows gird us round. Fear we that wild revealment? Nay, not we! "Ah, perilous play, to cross Love's stalking-ground!" You whisper... yet our eyes, our eyes could tell Of hearts that leap ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... sure. Father has no weapon, and that man did have one. It was the sight of your pistol that made him cower. You couldn't have chosen a more lucky minute ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... advancing, See upon the free winds dancing Pennon proud and gaudy plume. The strangers come in evil hour, In pomp, and panoply, and power! But, while upon our tribes they lower, Think they our manly hearts will cower To meet a ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... thou be made to stay in thy hiding-places until thy bleached bones would tell that Rome findeth starvation oft cheaper than the sword. From Dan to Beersheba doth the heathen purple fly over tower and wall, and under the dark shadow of her mighty eagle do the nations of the earth cower. Whence then could come thy succor? To lift the sword is but to bring it down on thine own neck. If he whom our hearts love escape, by the wit of man's mind must the thing be accomplished. Go thou, Lazarus, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... devour me; then would I spread my two arms thus, and welcome death, crying: 'Rend thou this Jew in twain, O beast! strike thy kindly fangs deep into this heart,—be not afeard, for I shall make no battle with thee, nor any outcry whatsoever!' But, lo, the beast would cower before me and skulk away. So there is no death for me; the judgment spoken is irrevocable; my sin is unpardonable, and the voice ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke; She left the down-trod nations in disdain, And flew to Greece, when Liberty awoke, New-born, amid those glorious vales, and broke Sceptre and chain with her fair youthful hands: As rocks are shivered in the thunder-stroke. And lo! in full-grown strength, an empire stands ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... around. His snows descend And make the green Earth hoary. Chains of frost Straighten her breadth of waters. Dropping rains Refresh her summer thirst, or rending clouds Roll in wild deluge o'er her. Roaming beasts Cower in their dens affrighted, while she quakes Convuls'd with inward agony, or reels Dizzied with flashing fires. Again she smiles In her recovered beauty, at His will, Maker of all things. So, He rules the world, With wrath commingling mercy. Who may hope With finite ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 160 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... was, however, before which even Eliza herself, hardened wretch as she seemed, used to cower and shiver; and that was the great black bumble-bee, the largest and most powerful of the British bee-kind. When one of these dangerous monsters, a burly, buzzing bourgeois, got entangled in her web, Eliza, shaking in ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... conscious of his power: Or, if he was, knew not its full extent. He knew his glance would make a wild beast cower, And yet he knew not that his large eyes sent Into the heart of woman the same thrill That made the lion servant of his will. And even strong men ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... house of the Pope, pressing upon the mailed Count's stout horse, and thronging upon the heels of the Captains and the Prefect, pounding down the heavy doors with stones, and with deep shouts for every heavy blow, while white-robed John and his frightened priests cower together within, expecting death. Down goes the oak with a crash like artillery, that booms along the empty corridors; a moment's pause, and silence, and then the rush, headed by the Knight and the leaders who mean no murder, but mean to have their way, once and for ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... Rose-crowned men lean upon Indian cushions, holding golden beakers in their right hands. Women in yielding nakedness cower at their feet. Through the open door streams in a Bacchic procession with fauns and panthers, the drunken Pan in its midst. Brown-skinned slaves with leopard skins about their loins make mad music. Among them ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... it? She was afraid of her husband, and each movement of Hepworth's pen struck her with dread. Had she, indeed, laid herself open to the wrath of a man, who was so terrible in his anger, that it made even her brave heart cower? ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... girl cringe and whine, And cower in the weeping air— But, oh, she was no kin of mine, And so ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie

... but, except Lottie, whose rigor might have been meant sanatively, they treated her more with the tenderness people use with a wounded spirit; and Breckon fancied moments of something like humility in her, when she seemed to cower from his notice. These were not so imaginable after her family took to their berths and left her alone with him, but the touching mystery remained, a sort of bewilderment, as he guessed it, a surprise such as a child might show at some incomprehensible ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the Christ of power, Thou need'st not before me cower; An unknown knight thou see'st in me, Sent forth by three ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... seek to lay their want of success at the door of the public. Modest merit is, however, too apt to be inactive, or negligent, or uninstructed merit. Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market, provided it exerts itself; but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought for. There is a good deal of cant too about the success of forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed over with neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... to bed? You, with your crimes, go to bed? Why, you couldn't sleep! You would cower all night! Go to bed! Oh, my dear Struboff, think better of it. No, no, we'll none of us go to bed. Bed's a hell for men like us. For you above all! Think again, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... front of the perpendicular bank in which the Anthophora nests. What will be the result of the experiment? Will it once more cover me with confusion? The weather is cold and rainy; not a Bee shows herself on the few spring flowers that have come out. Numbers of Anthophorae cower, numbed and motionless, at the entrance to the galleries. With the tweezers, I extract them one by one from their lurking-places, to examine them under the lens. The first has Sitaris-larvae on her thorax; so has the second; ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... what? for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, beckons him forward. Death itself wears for him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... possibilities hidden away in the womb of the future. Any day may snatch from our life its light. One moment we were happy in the possession of some dear object, about which to twine the tendrils of the heart; the next, we cower and shiver in the chill gloom of a bereavement that withers the soul and makes existence an intolerable burden! To-day all nature smiles with a sunny warmth, and life spreads before us a wilderness of sweets; to-morrow-we lose ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... the Lord, And Ruler of the height, Who, robing day in light, hast poured Soft slumbers o'er the night, That to our limbs the power Of toil may be renew'd, And hearts be rais'd that sink and cower, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... repeated the man with the bag; 'from Mr. Cower's, the solicitor's. Mr. Tuggs, I congratulate you, sir. Ladies, I wish you joy of your prosperity! We have been successful.' And the man with the bag leisurely divested himself of his umbrella and glove, as a preliminary to shaking hands with Mr. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine—because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... was a time thine eagles tower'd Resistless o'er the humbled world; There was a time the empires cower'd Before the bolt thy hand had hurl'd: The standards, thy proud will obeying, Flapp'd wrath and woe on every wind— A few short years, and thou wert laying Thine iron yoke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... of pride and power, Of Empire vast beyond the sea; As here beside my hearth I cower, What mean such words as these to me? Oh, will they lift the clouds that low'r, Or light my load in ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... has pointed out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: The Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind. Psychologists ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... little square pen-trap, the wolverine, desperate but cool, thrusting its blunt nose quickly here and there in baffled hope of an orifice of escape. Somehow the man reminded her of the animal, the fierce little woods marauder, trapped and hopeless, but scorning to cower as would the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... time on the open deck. To stand out on the front (one can hardly call it a prow, where the periphery is that of an average wash-tub) or at the stern is to be drowned by rain or sawn asunder by icy winds or broiled like an oyster, and to cower under the upper deck is to get a lively sense of the Cave of the Winds. One with a healthy sense of smell and an instinct for oxygen may well shrink from entering the cabin, and prefer the perils and discomforts of too much atmosphere to those of a depleted and poisoned one. David may have been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... one's transgressions. 'Gainst his judgment stern, tears and prayers avail not. He appears—one glance (from a god that glance comes!) At a flash decides what the youngster's fate is. At his will a crowd runs, at his beck it parteth. Doth he smile? all frolic; doth he frown—all cower. By a tone he threatens, gives rewards, metes justice. Absent though he be, every pupil dreads him, For he sees, hears, knows, everything that's doing. On the urchin's forehead he can see it written. He divines who laughs, idles, yawns, or chatters, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... all our force in the field, We'd teach these usurpers of power That their bodily safety demands they should yield, And in the presence of manhood should cower; But, alas! for our tethered and impotent state, Chained by notions ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... chaotic heap on the floor. As darkness came on, the gale rose higher, the moon was obscured, the rack in heavy masses was driving across the stormy sky, and scuds of sleet and spray made the few venturous persons on deck cower under the nearest shelter to ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... like;—and having given it well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as wanted: for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence safest. Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North; more like a Student than a Senator: not four-and-twenty yet; who has written Books; a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... I had long wished to see, and they were in no sense a disappointment. Desolate, death-haunted, they pushed their white domes into the blue sky in savage grandeur. The little snow-covered towns seemed to cower at their feet like timid animals lost in the immensity of the forest. All day we rode among these heights, and at night we went to sleep feeling the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... hear the music float Along the gloaming lea; 'Tis sweet to hear the blackbird's note Come pealing frae the tree; To see the lambkins lightsome race— The speckled kid in wanton chase— The young deer cower in lonely place, Deep in her flowing den; But sweeter far the bonny face ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... wind recalls the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... so here. Dallas made a quick movement at last, turned over, and picked up a half-burned, still smouldering piece of pine, painfully raked others together with it, and threw it on the top, glad to cower over the warm embers, for the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... and the heart of a God in courage and patience; and Barbara became his slave for very love, his blessed child, the inheritor of his universe. Happily her life had not been loaded to the ground with the degrading doctrines of those that cower before a God whose justice may well be satisfied with the blood of the innocent, seeing it consists but in the punishing of the guilty. She had indeed heard nothing of that brood of lies until the unbelieving Richard—ah, not far from believing he who but rejected ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... enter, but only to have Nicolette, my sweet lady that I love so well. For into Paradise go none but such folk as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars and in the crypts; and such folk as wear old amices and old clouted frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and covered with sores, perishing of hunger and thirst and of cold, and of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... infinite movement Still moving with you; For, ever some new head and heart of them Thrusts into view To observe the intruder; you see it If quickly you turn And, before they escape you surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend)— Cower beneath them. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... the fiendish vengeance which awaited a spy. I knew that men with their lives in their hands would stick at nothing. All I could do was to cower at the bottom of the boat and listen silently to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and sucks up all brightness into its ghastly folds, and silences all song. He comes and says 'Stop'; and it stands fixed upon the spot. He arrests the march of Death. Not indeed that He touches the mere physical fact. The physical fact is not what men mean by death. It is not what they cower before. What the world shrinks from is the physical fact plus its associations, its dim forebodings, its recoilings from the unknown regions into which the soul goes from out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and plus the possibilities of retribution, the certainty of judgment. All ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... at the other which he had not seen. Accordingly, I wondered if I could frighten the lion that meant to leap at me. Acting upon wild impulse, I prodded him in the hind quarters with the spear. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a blooming idiot if that lion did not cower like a whipped dog, put his tail down, and begin to slink away. Quick to see my chance, I jumped up yelling, and made after him, prodding him again. He let out a bellow such as you could imagine would come from an outraged king of beasts. I prodded again, and then he loped off. I found Luki not badly ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... through the tent they were followed by the awful roar of the descending avalanche, and all awoke on the instant. But no one could do anything to save himself. They could only cower and pray ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... perhaps there would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... is bright as the sun. But the minions of Murder move softly; unseen they have crept from their lair, In a night that is darker than doom on the famishing face of despair. And they lurk and they tremble and cower, and stab as they lurk from behind, Like shapes from a pit Acherontic by hatred and horror made blind. These are not the soldiers of Freedom; the hearts of her lovers grow faint When the name of assassin is chanted as one with the name ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various

... abruptness there came a sound which could only be likened to rolling thunder by one uninitiated, but which caused Ixtli to shrink and almost cower, ere gasping: ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... case of the pugilist who slipped on a piece of peel and felt unable to rise: had the place been a ring, instead of a pavement, he would have been up and dancing within ten seconds. So with Anthony—had Fortune frowned, he would have laughed in her face. It was her smile that made him cower. And, so long as she smiled, what mattered it if he cowered? Had Homer never nodded, gentlemen, till it was past his bed-time, neither you nor I would ever have ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... Perhaps it would rather rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning—three together in ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... fight hyenas; never even to defend their own lives. They may bark or howl while the hyena is some distance away, but as soon as it comes near they are silent; and when it approaches them, they simply cower and submit. Not only that, but it is beyond question that hyenas have the power to call dogs to them. . . . For five weeks I have been alone in this tent six nights in every week all night, with two children and the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... which Adam Bogardus had submitted to be clothed in as a burial garment was now become a thing for the living to flee from. He had seen a woman in full health whiten and cower before it;—she who stood beside his bed and looked at him with dreadful eyes, eyes of his girl-wife growing old in the likeness of her father. Hard, reluctant eyes forced to own the truth which the ashen lips denied. Are we responsible for our silences? He had not spoken ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... girl. She seemed to cower away from him, half lifting her hands as though in fear that he ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... dazzle me, snare, betray; Through the baits the Tempter brought To lure me out of the way; Through the peril and greed of power (The bribe that he thought most sure); Through the name that hath made me cower, "The holy bishop of Tours!" Now, tired of life's poor show, Aweary of soul and sore, I am stretching my hands to go Where nothing can tempt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... last Sunday," he said, looking about his chaotic domain disparagingly, "and they say they may have to have me out here next Sunday—somebody's sick or missing. But they won't," he continued darkly. It was a threat, we felt—a threat that would make some presumptuous superior cower and conform. "I really belong at our branch in Dellwood Park, where there is something; not out here, beyond the last of everything." And he said more to indicate that his energies and abilities ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... comes down almost to the brook—a mere strip of meadow between—is green too with rising wheat, high enough now to hide the partridges. Before it got so tall it was pleasant to watch the pair that frequent it; they were so confident that they did not even trouble to cower. At any other time of year they would have run, or flown; but then, though scarcely forty yards away and perfectly visible, they simply ceased feeding ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... gather myself together out of the pools of the individual that have held me dispersed so long. I gather my billion thoughts into science and my million wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink down behind the mountains from me, well may you cower....' ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... lions fight until one is laid low; the lioness looks calmly on until the little problem of superiority is settled, and then she goes off with the victor. The horses on the Pampas have their set battles until one has asserted his mastery over the herd, and then the defeated ones cower away abjectly, and submit themselves meekly to their lord. All the male animals are given to issuing challenges in a very self-assertive manner, and the object is the same in every case. But we are far above the brutes; we have that mysterious, immaterial ally ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... and came to usher her to its discomfort. But all her usual pleasure was gone. She nodded miserably over the silver-gilt rail at friends. She knew that people were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white between two parts of the advertisement showed the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... the rock, Wotan's voice is heard: "Bruennhilde, stand!" At the sound of it, Bruennhilde's heart fails her; the hearts of the sisters, too, soften. Crowding together on the rocky peak, they let the culprit cower out of sight among them. But Wotan is not deceived; he addresses to the hidden daughter such sharp and searching reproaches that, her fear for herself losing all importance as these strike her heart, she steps forth ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... shouted, and, as the next day waned with its violence undiminished, the frost crept in upon them till they rolled and tossed shivering. Twice they essayed to crawl out, but were driven back to cower for endless, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... the view, but, when the white wreaths were scattered on the wind, a wretched spectacle was disclosed: men and officers tumbled in heaps, battalions resolved into a mob, order and obedience gone; and, when the British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses of the militia were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrollable panic. For a few minutes the French regulars stood their ground, returning a sharp and not ineffectual fire. But now, echoing cheer on cheer, redoubling volley on volley, trampling the dying and the dead, and driving the fugitives in crowds, the British troops ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... with darkness round about, and scarce draw breath, Scarce lift eyes up toward the light that saves not, scarce may cast Thought or prayer up, caught and trammelled in the snare of death. Not as sea-mews cling and laugh or sun their plumes and sleep Cling and cower the wild night's waifs of shipwreck, blind with fear, Where the fierce reef scarce yields foothold that a bird might keep, And the clamorous darkness deadens eye and deafens ear. Yet beyond their helpless hearing, out of hopeless sight, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... In so worthy a cause much sycophancy may be forgiven him. To no one, however, was he so completely sycophantic as to the Archdeacon. He was terrified of the Archdeacon; he would wake up in the middle of the night and think of him, then tremble and cower under the warm protection of Mrs. Bond until sleep rescued him ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... "I will take it." "Then," said the miller, "if your majesty does take it, I will sue you in the Chancery Court." At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his infamous demand. And the most imperious outrage against the working-classes will yet cower before the law. Violence and contrary to the law will never accomplish anything, but righteousness and according to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... glimpse of luminous immensities on the verge of which we flew; of depths inconceivable, and flitting through the incredible spaces—gigantic shadows as of the wings of Israfel, which are so wide, say the Arabs, the world can cower under them like a nestling—and then—again the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... man, in the worldly sense of that word; but in its broader and higher significance, he was an aggressive, fearless, tireless fighter. He would not kill, but he did not hesitate to brave death. He would not shoot, but he did not quail or cower before ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... be with this great nation, When woman tests her high vocation; Persuasion proves a futile power To quell the joints, but quick they cower At the whirling hatchets. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... paused here. In the crowd before him he saw scores of frightened faces. He saw men pointing and heard women cry out in terror. He saw children cower and scamper for ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... louder and yet more loud Till night be shamed of morn [Ant. 7. Rings the Black Huntsman's horn Through darkening deeps beneath the covering cloud, 260 Till all the wild beasts of the darkness hear; Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... may be bare, We may hae mony a dreary hour; But never, never nurse despair, For ilka ane maun taste the sour: Even kings themsels, wi' a' their power, Wi' a' their pomp and honours high, 'Neath adverse blasts are forced to cower, And jouk to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... so frightened. Where the stones had been there was a great hole gaping, like one of the mouths of the bottomless pit, and try how he would, he could not turn away his eyes from it. 'That's the place,' said this fearful thing; but my father was ready to cower down with terror. He could not speak, but he thought he saw a great long black arm thrust out of the hole. 'Take what he gives thee,' says Blackface, 'and make haste.' But he might as well have spoken to the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... within. . . . I cower to the earth, I waking, I only. High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... the red glare of the burning shone On deeds so dire the pure Gods might not bear, Save Ares only, long to look thereon, But with a cloud they darken'd all the air. And, even then, within the temple fair Of chaste Athene, did Cassandra cower, And cried aloud an unavailing prayer; For Aias was ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... him—it is the immemorial fallacy of economical souls to throw good money after bad; though when I saw the patience with which she bore his querulous complaints and the solicitude with which she attended to his wants, I sometimes imagined he had some secret hold over her. Often I saw her cower and flush piteously, as with terror, before his insolent gaze. But I decided finally his was merely the ascendency of the strong over the weak—of the bully over his victims, who serve him more loyally because he kicks them. The bad-tempered ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... she recognised dimly the compelling power of this religion, and that it was one which, if sincerely embraced, would make the smallest details of life momentous with eternal weight, yet she knew that her soul could never respond to it, and whether saved or damned that it could only cower in miserable despair under a Deity that was so ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... what can long depress the youthful and the loving when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings are audacious who dream of being even comfortable ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... mantel. Still desolate and cheerless shows the noble edifice. The gaunt chimney yawns still in sick anticipation of deferred smoke. The "irons," innocent of coal, and polished to the tip, skulk and cower sympathetically into the extreme corner of the fender. The very rug seems ghastly and grim, wanting the kindly play of the excited flame. We have no comfort in the parlour yet: even the privileged kitten, wandering in vain in search of a resting-place, deems it but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the wheel, and his eyes were misty. Eben never saw him look at him in such a way before. Had he stormed and raged it would have but increased his defiance. But that look of silent reproach smote his very soul, causing him to cower conscience stricken. Without a word, he left his father's side and went forward. And there he stood with his hands behind his back, staring straight before him. The captain watched him anxiously. His mind was ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... Where the Right is set in battle with the Wrong. 'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin or Simoom, The tempest that shall try if we are of God or no— Its roar is in the sky,—and they there be which cry, "Let us cower, and the storm may over-blow." Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that was a spiteful blast!) This is not a war of men, but of Angels Good and Ill— 'Tis hell that storms at heaven—'tis the black and deadly Seven, Sworn 'gainst the Shining Ones to work their damned will! How the Ether ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... heart shall shrink and wither, Custom-straitened like her waist, All her thought to cower together, Huddling sheep-like with the rest, With the flock of soulless bodies on ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... across her eyes as if to shut out some dreadful vision, and seemed to cower and shrink as if some one was smiting ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... matter with the Government. They have been brought up to slobber over the public and try to cheat it out of votes. They can't tell the truth. When hard deadly reality breaks through their web of make-believe, they cower together in corners and howl. I doubt if you will get a free hand, Dawson. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... them and the troopers whooping jubilantly outside, Chenier and his eighty followers call out: "We are done! We are sold! Let us jump!" Chenier jumps from the steeple, is hit by the flying bullets, and perishes as he falls. His men cower back in the flaming steeple till it falls with a crash into the burning ruins. Amid the ash heap are afterwards found the corpses of seventy-two patriots. The troopers take one hundred prisoners in the region, then ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... day she sat in an easy chair under the trees, watching us as we played ball on the lawn, or cut weeds in the garden; and each time we looked at her, we both acknowledged a profound sense of satisfaction, of relief. Never again would she burn in the suns of the arid plains, or cower before the winds of a desolate winter. She was secure. "You need never work again," I assured her. "You can get up when you please and go to bed when you please. Your only job is to sit in the shade and boss the rest of us," and to this she answered only with ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... ye are men, follow me! strike down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work as did your sires at old Thermopyl! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that ye do crouch and cower like base-born slaves, beneath your master's lash? O! comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we must die, let us die under the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... her just then. Another figure had emerged from the front door—a rather largish figure, all in black—her left hand clutching the right hand of a child, aged, possibly, five. And this figure did not cower and hurry away. This figure halted, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... sojourn amongst the wild beauties of Switzerland in order to be convenient to goat's milk.... Like other carnivorous animals, an Englishman is always surly over his meals. Morose at all times, he becomes unbearably so at that interesting period of the day, when his soul appears to cower among plates and dishes; ... though he gorges his food with the silent deliberation of the anaconda, yet, in descanting upon the delicacies of the last capital dinner, he makes an approach to animation altogether unusual to him; ... when, upon such auspicious occasions, he does go off into something ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... he should be admitted, tremulously she awaited his sentence upon her mother's peace, and, as she thought of all he must have heard, all he must believe, she felt as if she must flee; or, if that were impossible, cower in shrinking dread of the glance of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... passed!—and their wild legion Cease to thunder at my door; Fleeting through night's rayless region, Hither they return no more. Clanking chains and sounds of woe Fill the forests as they go; And the tall oaks cower low, Bent ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... spending their time in genteel dissipations, For cutting their garments, and—poorer relations. Controlled by thy will, they select their society; Thou art their instructor in manners and piety. And thus they obey the decrees of a power, To which, in a servile allegiance, they cower— A power that binds them in thraldom, and then Makes puppets of women ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and then do bloody word, as did your sires at old Thermopylae! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors! If we must die, let it be under the clear sky, by the bright ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... other Peters about the country,—had filled his mind with sad foreboding. And there had always been something timid, something almost unmanly in his nature. He had seemed to prefer to shrink and cower and be mysterious with the Carrolls to coming forward boldly with such a man as Yorke Clayton. The girls had seen this, and had declared that he was no more than a boy; but his father had seen it and had made no such allowance. And ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... to sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our faces, and we prepare a lie for our grandchildren. We fail to stamp our individualities ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... not cowards," said they. "We have never been foiled in battle; never have we been the vassals of a stranger. Why, then, shall we cringe and cower before such men as ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin









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