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More "Descry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whose orb The Tuscan artist views through optic glass At evening from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... rocks are twirled on high, Here molten stones and scattered cinders fly: Its fury reaches the remotest coast, And strows the Asiatic shore with dust. 160 Now does the sailor from the neighbouring main Look after Gallic towns and forts in vain; No more his wonted marks he can descry, But sees a long unmeasured ruin lie; Whilst, pointing to the naked coast, he shows His wondering mates where towns and steeples rose, Where crowded citizens he lately view'd, And singles out the place where once St Maloes stood. Here Russel's actions should my Muse require; And, would ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... retained his station. Trusting this might be a gardener, or some domestic belonging to the house, Edward descended the steps in order to meet him; but as the figure approached, and long before he could descry its features, he was struck with the oddity of its appearance and gestures.—Sometimes this mister wight held his hands clasped over his head, like an Indian Jogue in the attitude of penance; sometimes he swung them perpendicularly, like a pendulum, on each side; and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... could still descry from the castle tower that enormous hay-rick which they had filled up ten or twelve years before in the middle of the marsh; it was just in the height of summer and they had mown the hillocks in the marsh; then followed a mild winter, and neither man nor sleigh could reach it. The hay was lost, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... into the expanse of the harbour. Once out in it we could almost imagine ourselves at sea, for, from the low deck of the Lily, we only see the higher grounds and hill-tops round, looking like islands in the distance, as we cannot descry the continuity of shore. And now we have leisure to make closer acquaintance with ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... wonder that I hung Raptur'd on my Leila's tongue? If her ghost's funereal screech Thro' the earth my grave should reach, On that voice I lov'd so well My transported ghost would dwell:— If in death I can descry Where my Leila's relics lie, Saher's dust will flee away, There ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... stepped over the great inert bulk of the dead horse, unclenched the muscular grasp of the soldier, as if it had been a baby's clasp, slipped the staff, technically the lance, of the guidon from its socket, and stood with it in his own hand, looking suspiciously to and fro to descry if perchance he were observed. The coast clear, he turned to the wall of rock beside the road, for this was near the mountain sandstone formation, fissured, splintered, with the erosions of water and weather; and into one of the cellular, tunnel-like apertures he ran the guidon, lance and all,—lost ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... on, the journey lengthens: wider grows the field, further advance the seekers, and from the top of unexplored headlands, through morning mists, they descry the outlines of countries till then unknown. They must be followed to realms beyond the grave, to the silent domains of the dead, across barren moors and frozen fens, among chill rushes and briars that never blossom, till those Edens of poetry are reached, the echoes of which, by a gift of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... heaven Ordained is to raise this tedious siege, And drive the English forth the bounds of France. The spirit of deep prophecy she hath, Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome: What's past and what's to come she can descry. Speak, shall I call her in? Believe my words, For they ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... presents itself to the traveller who approaches this forlorn place, is a castle of mean architecture and uncertain origin, about half an hour's walk from it, on the north side. "From thence," says Mr. Maundrell, "we descry Tadmor, enclosed on three sides, by long ridges of mountains; but to the south is a vast plain which bounds the visible horizon. The barren soil presents nothing green but a few palm trees. The city must have been ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Nymphs, and Shepherds look, What sudden blaze of majesty Is that which we from hence descry Too divine to be mistook: This this is she To whom our vows and wishes bend, Heer our solemn ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... his Eye, Speaking my Verses as he goes, And with a Sigh shut eu'ry Close. Deare Citie, trauelling by thee, When thy rising Spyres I see, Destined her place of Birth; Yet me thinkes the very Earth 60 Hallowed is, so farre as I Can thee possibly descry: Then thou dwelling in this place, Hearing some rude Hinde disgrace Thy Citie with some scuruy thing, Which some Iester forth did bring, Speake these Lines where thou do'st come, And strike the Slaue ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... authorized by the legislation which he had suggested previously to Governor Harrison. It is well known that the same views entertained by Washington and Jefferson were held and advocated by Mr. Madison, long before the most prescient statesman could descry the faintest image of that colossal empire of population, wealth and rapid development now lying west of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... couple of men were discernible with the naked eye on the proa, it followed that the latter must descry the three individuals who were standing out in full view upon the shore of ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... Unapproached! shall mind of man Descry Thy dazzling throne, And pierce and find Thee out, and scan Where Thou ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... sufficiently informed in such high matters, the Bishop and the Inquisitor offered her the choice of one or more of the assessors to act as her counsel." The accused, in presence of this assembly, in which she did not descry a single friendly face, mildly answered: "For what you admonish me as to my good, and concerning our faith, I thank you; as to the counsel you offer me, I have no intention to forsake the counsel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... while returning, I happened to descry a mighty unearthly city, moving at will, and having the effulgence of fire or the sun. And that city contained various trees composed of gems, and sweet-voiced feathered ones. And furnished with four gates, and gate-ways, and towers, that impregnable (city) was inhabited by the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Telemachus was far the first to descry her, for he was sitting with a heavy heart among the wooers dreaming on his good father, if haply he might come somewhence, and make a scattering of the wooers there throughout the palace, and himself get honour and bear rule among his own possessions. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... venial crimes in Love's gay spring, Prompt the youthful Female's sigh; When her roses all take wing, And Matrons sage her plight descry; ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw- roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... negro, while in this country, will be treated as an inferior being.' * * 'Our slavery is such, as that no device of our philanthropy for elevating the wretched subjects of its debasement to the ordinary privileges of men, can descry one cheering glimpse of hope that our object can ever be accomplished. The very commencing act of freedom to the slave, is to place him in a condition still worse, if possible, both for his moral habits, his outward provision, and for the community that embosoms him, than even that, deplorable ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... novel, and I would keep picturing to myself some leader of an army or some statesman or marvellously strong man or devoted lover or another, and looking round me in, a nervous expectation that I should suddenly descry HER somewhere near me, in a meadow or behind a tree. Yet, whenever these rambles led me near peasants engaged at their work, all my ignoring of the existence of the "common people" did not prevent me from ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... look up. Then he saw that he was under a great beech, and the sound seemed to come from somewhere in the top of it—a sound like the pleased cooing of a dove. He looked hard into the branches and their wilderness of fresh leaves, but could descry nothing. Then came a little laugh, and with a preparatory rustling and rustling in its passage, a book—a small folio—fell plump ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you,' you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marked five of that throng alike In form and garb and visage. There they stood, Each from the next undifferenced, but each Nala's own self;—yet which might Nala be In nowise could that doubting maid descry. Who took her eye seemed Nala while she gazed, Until she looked upon his like; and so Pondered the lovely lady, sore-perplexed, Thinking, "How shall I tell which be the gods, And which is noble Nala?" Deep-distressed And ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... himself, so here too, in like manner, I may be describing a school of thought in its fully developed proportions, which at present every one, to whom membership with it is imputed, will at once begin to disown, and I may be pointing to teachers whom no one will be able to descry. Still, it is not less true that I may be speaking of tendencies and elements which exist, and he may come in person at last, who comes at first to us merely in his spirit and in ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... well imagine how anxiously both officers and men scanned the western horizon towards which they were steering. Each one had a pecuniary motive for wishing to be the first to descry the New Continent, King Ferdinand having promised a reward of 10,000 maravedis, or 400 pounds sterling, to the first discoverer. The latter days of the month of September were enlivened by the presence of numerous large birds, petrels, man-of-war birds, and damiers, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... had forgotten the title to which Lord Borland of the old time was heir; and now that all doubt as to the identity of the man was over, although, let her strain her vision as she might, she could not, through the deformation of years, descry the youthful visage, she felt that all action on the part of the generation in possession was none the less forestalled and precluded by the presence of one in the house who had evidently long waited his arrival, and had certainly ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... round and you may descry the Tuscan Sea. Our situation is reported to be among the highest of the Apennines. Marcipor has made the sign to me that dinner is ready. Pass ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... were brought, and it was impossible to distinguish them in the giddy motion of the horrible arms. This lasted for a long, indefinite time until the evening. Then the partitions inside assumed a darker glow, and burning flesh could be seen. Some even believed that they could descry ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... hill of palaces, must certainly be counted the best part of San Francisco. It is there that the millionaires are gathered together vying with each other in display. From thence, looking down over the business wards of the city, we can descry a building with a little belfry, and that is the Stock Exchange, the heart of San Francisco: a great pump we might call it, continually pumping up the savings of the lower quarters into the pockets of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rejoice, they surely must lament! Or was it a stilled human moaning? Was any wrong being done far down in the white-gleaming meadows below, by the banks of the river whose platinum-glimmer he could descry through the molten amethystine darkness ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... enough to leave a distinct image, a decisive impression for better or for worse, upon the mind's eye of the most simple and open-hearted reader. They are ghosts, not men; simulacra modis pallentia miris. You cannot descry so much as the original intention of the artist's hand which began to draw and relaxed its hold of the brush before the first lines were fairly traced. And in the last, the worst and weakest scene of all, in which York pleads with Bolingbroke for the death of the son whose mother pleads ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... forward between the gusts was it possible to pass among the sand-hills; and now the salt spray flew up from the sea like down, while the ocean foamed like a roaring cataract towards the beach. It required a practised eye to descry the vessel out in the offing. The vessel was a noble brig. The billows now lifted it over the reef, three or four cables' lengths out of the usual channel. It drove towards the land, struck against the second reef, and ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... not for you, not for Hodge's emancipated horses, nor you. No; I say, No. You, for your part, have tried it, and failed. Left to walk your own road, the will-o'-wisps beguiled you, your short sight could not descry the pitfalls; the deadly tumult and press has whirled you hither and thither, regardless of your struggles and your shrieks; and here at last you lie; fallen flat into the ditch, drowning there and dying, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... it. One or two far-seeing thinkers, among whom the place of honour must be assigned to Mr. Herbert Spencer, had done more. They had used their philosophic insight, which, to science, is the eye of faith, to descry the promised land almost within reach; they knew and announced how rich and spacious the heritage would be, if once the entry could be made good. But on that 'if' everything hung. Nature was not bound ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal. Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining their eyes across the sea to descry the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Phoebus next unclosed his wakeful eye, Up rose the sexton of that place profane, And missed the image, where it used to lie, Each where he sough in grief, in fear, in vain; Then to the king his loss he gan descry, Who sore enraged killed him for his pain; And straight conceived in his malicious wit, Some Christian bade ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... observed them very completely at Gottingen, was led to believe that not merely the debris strewn along its path, but the comet itself must have been in immediate proximity to the earth during their appearance.[1226] If so, it might be possible, he thought, to descry it as it retreated in the diametrically opposite direction from that in which it had approached. On November 30, accordingly, he telegraphed to Mr. Pogson, the Madras astronomer, "Biela touched earth November 27; search near Theta ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... property for the support of their poorer brethren until the end should come. The awful day was awaited with glowing rapture of hope, or by some with terror. When it dawned there was eager gazing upon the clouds of heaven to descry the sign of the Son of man. And when the day had passed without event there were various revulsions of feeling. The prophets set themselves to going over their figures and fixing new dates; earnest believers, sobered by ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... exiles of Judah from the remnant left in the land. After suffering for years the hopelessness of converting his people, the Prophet at last saw an Israel of whom hope might be dared. It was not their distance which lent enchantment to his view for he gives proof that he can descry the dross still among them, despite the furnace through which they have passed.(493) But the banished were without doubt the best of the nation, and now they had "dreed their weird," gone through the fire, been lifted out of the habits and passions of the past, and chastened by ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... for it still exists—exists within thirty-two miles of British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweating, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to so many gaunt wild beasts. Some are gibbering like fiends, others ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the truth of that remark," observed the rector; "and the more so because I descry a male member of our race approaching, with a hat—at once the emblem and the crown of sound reason. Away with all ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... no longer look out from the castle walls to descry the glitter of Southern spears. The bell-tower from which the alarm was sounded is now silent—the only bell heard within the precincts of the castle being that of the railway porter, announcing ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... that I could expect no further help from him, had prostrated me; dashing my hopes and spirits so completely that I remained rooted to the spot long after his step had ceased to sound on the stairs. If what he said was true, in the gloom which darkened alike my room and my prospects I could descry no glimmer of light. I knew His Majesty's weakness and vacillation too well to repose any confidence in him; if the King of Navarre also abandoned me, I was indeed without ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Debate, Or seen a new-made Mayor's unwieldy State; Where change of Fav'rites made no Change of Laws, And Senates heard before they judg'd a Cause; How wouldst thou shake at Britain's modish Tribe, Dart the quick Taunt, and edge the piercing Gibe? Attentive Truth and Nature to descry, And pierce each Scene with Philosophic Eye. To thee were solemn Toys or empty Shew, The Robes of Pleasure and the Veils of Woe: All aid the Farce, and all thy Mirth maintain, Whose Joys are causeless, or whose Griefs are vain. [Footnote d: ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... gazed at the broad river and its hanging gardens, and dreamed; and was wakened by the roar of an electric train shooting across the stream on a red causeway a few yards below him. And, miles off, he could descry the twin towers of the Crystal Palace, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... ditches, behind trunks, and between fence-rails; cropping up in unexpected places along the road after vague and purposeless detours—seemingly going anywhere and everywhere but to school! So unlooked-for, in fact, was their final arrival that the master, who had a few moments before failed to descry a single torn straw hat or ruined sun-bonnet above his visible horizon, was always startled to find them suddenly under his windows, as if, like the birds, they had alighted from the trees. Nor was their moral attitude ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... a comet, with a very long tail. The superstitious thought my appearance to be significant of some coming misfortune. Some draughtsmen took my figure, as far as they could descry it, so that when I landed I found paintings of myself, and engravings taken from ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... Lord Howe had carried a press of sail to keep up with the French fleet, which he rightly conjectured would be doing the same; and as he eagerly looked forth at early dawn, great was his satisfaction to descry them, about six miles off, on the starboard or lee bow of his fleet, still steering in line of battle on the larboard tack. His great fear had been that the French Admiral would weather on him and escape; now he felt sure ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... last farewell to home. Yonder it lies on the point—the fjord sparkling in front, pine and fir woods around, a little smiling meadow-land and long wood-clad ridges behind. Through the glass one could descry a summer-clad figure by the bench ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... revelations of character in this or that man of prominence. What we should have talked about if he had not thus held the floor I could not guess. I had noted that there were upon a ponderous table six popular novels, as many magazines, and piles of the great dailies. Nowhere could I descry even a small collection of books of the sort which may furnish material for conversation. I tried to imagine the Philosopher drawing a certain beloved book of essays from his pocket, settling himself comfortably with his back to the drop-light, and beginning to read aloud to us, as he is ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... for us? Had fate Proposed bliss here should sublimate My being—had I signed the bond— Still one must lead some life beyond, Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. This foot once planted on the goal, This glory-garland round my soul, Could I descry such? Try and test! I sink back shuddering from the quest. Earth being so good, would heaven seem best? Now, heaven and she are ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... descry the Sumeru mountain, the Malaya mountain, the Dandaka forest, the mountain Prasravana, the Godaveri river, mount Malyavan, Kundinipura in the Maharashtra country, the shrine of Bhimeswara, the city of Kanchi, Ujayin, the temple of Mahakala, Mahishmati the capital of Chedi, the Jumna and Ganga rivers, ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... did he stoop a listening ear, Sweep round an anxious eye, No bark or ax-blow could he hear, No human trace descry. His sinuous path, by blazes, wound Among trunks grouped in myriads round; Through naked boughs, between Whose tangled architecture fraught With many a shape grotesquely wrought, The hemlock's spire was seen.—A. ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... bird, who 'mid the leafy bower Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night With her sweet brood; impatient to descry Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, In the fond quest, unconscious ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... bringing in of families only to inhabit his city, for, oddly enough, he who never married was going to make short shift of mere bachelors in his City Beautiful. Between pen scratches, no doubt, he looked out frequently upon the river to descry if possible a boatload of ammunition or the banners of the troops he ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... shall descry another hemisphere, Since to one common center all things tend; So earth, by curious mystery divine, Well balanced hangs amid the starry spheres. At our antipodes are cities, states, And thronged empires ne'er ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... dome, He holds unshared the silence of the sky. Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry The eagle's empire and the falcon's home — Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; His hazards on the sea of morning lie; Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh Where cold sierras ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... from some desert shore, Doth home's green isles descry, And, vainly longing, gazes o'er The waste ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... them from the tower side, across the cleared space. He waved his kepi several times that they might see him better. Lacour trembled for him. The enemy might descry him; he was simply making a target of himself by cutting across that open space in order to reach them the sooner. . . . And he trembled still more as he came nearer. . . . ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... we succeed. He has descry'd me. And (for he thinks I love him) will unfold His aching heart, and rest it on my counsel. I'll seem to go, to make ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... neighbourhood of their hotel where they became frequent and familiar figures. As the late spring days grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out on the "terrace," amid the array of small tables at the door of the establishment, where Mr. Flack, on the return, could descry them from afar at their post and in the very same postures to which he had appointed them. They complained of no satiety in watching the many-coloured movement of the Parisian streets; and if some of the features in the panorama were base they were only ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... with any notion of concerning himself with the assassin's apprehension and punishment did P. Sybarite waste that moment of hasty survey. His eyes were only keen and eager to descry the yellow Western Union message; and when he had looked everywhere else, his glance dropped to his feet and found it there—a torn and crumpled envelope with its enclosure flattened out ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... a kind reply, For CAPEL thought he could descry An admirable plan To study all their ways and laws - (But not their lady-fish, because He was ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... favoured companion of princes, yet he afterwards became the victim of persecution, and spent some of his last hours within the walls of a prison; and though the Almighty granted him, as it were, a new sight to descry unknown worlds in the obscurity of space, yet the eyes which were allowed to witness such wonders, were themselves doomed to be ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... I could descry, Who better far deserv'd then I, Calmely I did reflect; "Old services (by rule of State) Like almanacks grow out of date, - ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... the wind was very light at southwest, with a mist and drizzling rain, but by three in the afternoon the two fleets could descry and count each ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Nor less become a subject; 'tis a debt Which bad men, though they pay not, can't forget; 280 A duty, which the good delight to pay, And every man can practise every day. Nor, for my life (so very dim my eye, Or dull your argument) can I descry What you with faith assert, how that dear love, Which binds me to my country, can remove, And make me of necessity forego, That general love which to the world I owe. Those ties of private nature, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I fly About this airy welkin soon, And, in a minute's space, descry Each thing that's done below the moon. There's not a hag Or host shall wag, Or cry, ware goblins! where I go; But Robin I Their feats will spy, And send them home ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... being commended to God by Mr. Paz, we worked out of Savannah-la-Mar, and, having gained an offing with a light breeze, hoisted all her bits of canvas, even to a light jib-topsail we found on board—chiefly, I think, to impress her late owner, whom we could descry on the shore, watching us. He had steadfastly refused to believe us capable of handling a boat, whereas of our party Plinny and Mr. Goodfellow were the only landlubbers. Miss Belcher could take the helm with the best of us, and indeed it was reported of her that she had ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... seems in a very dilapidated condition; many breaches are still in the same state in which they were left after the taking of the town by the English in 1840, and part of the wall has fallen into the sea. In the background we could descry some ruins on a rock, apparently the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... of immediate communication. For I could see no reason why her opinions should prevent her from corresponding with one who, whatever might or might not seem to him true, yet cared for the truth, and must treat with respect every form in which he could descry ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... through a soft cloud. Inconsequentially, his vagrant mind recalled that, below Miami, the Southern Cross is smudgily visible on the horizon, somewhere around two in the morning. And he wondered if he could descry it, if that luminous cloud ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... give them a passage. The captain was willing to take them "for a consideration"; but they told him they were dervishes, and therefore without money, but they possessed certain wonderful gifts, which might be of use to him on the voyage. The first dervish said that he could descry any object at the distance of a year's journey; the second could hear at as great a distance as his brother could see. "Well!" exclaimed the captain, "these are truly miraculous gifts; and pray, sir," said he, turning to the third dervish, "what may your ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of Mina.] The 14 day we came within Saker-shot of the castle, and straightway they set forth an Almade to descry vs, and when they perceiued that we were no Portugals, they ranne within the towne againe: for there is a great towne by the Castle which is called by the Negros Dondou. Without this there lie two ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... the sparkling crystal and glittering silver on the flower-decked tables. All about her Billy saw flushed-faced men, and bright-eyed women, laughing, chatting, and clinking together their slender-stemmed wine glasses. But nowhere, as she looked about her, could Billy descry the ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... inhabitants thereof, hee named it Seine, because it is very like vnto the Riuer of Seine in France. From this Riuer wee retired toward our shippes, where being arriued, we trimmed our sailes to saile further toward the North, and to descry the singularities of the coast. But wee had not sayled any great way before wee discovered another very faire Riuer, which caused vs to cast anker ouer against it, and to trimme out two Boates to goe to search it out. Wee found there an Ile and a king no lesse affable then the rest, afterwarde ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... can we think that Providence will stay Man's footsteps here upon the upward way? Mankind in understanding and in grace Advanc'd so far beyond the Giants' race? Hence impious thought! Still led by GOD'S own Hand, Mankind proceeds towards the Promised Land. A time will come (prophetic, I descry Remoter dawns along the gloomy sky), When happy mortals of a Golden Age Will backward turn the dark historic page, And in our vaunted race of Men behold A form as gross, a Mind as dead and cold, As we in Giants see, in ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... both east and west, we descry dark mountains rolled up against the sky. These are the twin ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Long spurs trend towards the river, and in places appear to close up the valley. They add to the expression of many a beautiful landscape ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... open the last thrilling work of Maggie Marigold, and are immediately submerged "in a weak, washy, everlasting flood" of insipidity, twaddle, bosh, and heart-rending sorrow, you do not shut the book with a jerk. Why not? Because in the dismal distance you dimly descry two figures swimming, floating, struggling towards each other, and a languid soupcon of curiosity detains you till you have ascertained, that, after infinite distress, Adolphus and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... conjunction with the light, it suggested some one who had been watching and had slunk away; but even that thought was slightly melodramatic in so well-ordered a community. He went on till he was at the foot of the steps, at a point where he could no longer descry the glow in the upper window, but could perceive through the fanlight over the inner door that, though the lower hall was dark, the electrics were burning somewhere in ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... have smiled assent, but we had just arrived at a spot that overshadowed every countenance with ten-fold seriousness! This was no moment for gratuitous triflings. We had arrived at a spot, where there was just light enough to descry three roads, in this bosom of the wood, diverging off in different directions! two of them must be collaterals; and to fix on the one which was honest, where all had equal claims to bad pre-eminence, exceeded our divining power. Each awhile ruminated ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... moments, and the flow of her conversation was in no wise moderated. Her hurried departure was explained by a casual "I guessed I'd better," which Mr and Mrs Hilliard accepted as sufficient reason for a girl who had no ties, and more money than she knew how to use. Even Pixie's lynx-eyes failed to descry any sign of heart-break. But when the meal was over and the two girls retired upstairs for a private chat, Honor's jaunty manners fell from her like a cloak, and she crouched in a corner of the sofa, looking suddenly tired ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... Quentin began to think the attack would be deferred till daybreak, and joyfully recollected that there would be then light enough to descry the Bar Sinister across the Fleur de lis of Orleans, he thought he heard in the city a humming murmur, like that of disturbed bees mustering for the defence of their hives. He listened—the noise continued, but it was of a character so undistinguished by any peculiar or precise sound, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... cloudy ebon chair, Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out, Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice Morn on the Indian steep, From her cabined loop-hole peep, And to the tell-tale Sun descry Our concealed solemnity. Come, knit hands, and beat the ground In a ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... not knowing how far off we should find any Tartars, on the sudden, there came two horses running towards vs, which we tooke with great ioy, and our guide and interpreter mounted vpon their backes, to see, how far off they could descry any people. At length vpon the fourth day of our iourney, hauing found some inhabitants, we reioyced like sea faring men, which had escaped out of a dangerous tempest, and had newly recouered the hauen. Then hauing taken fresh horses, and oxen, we passed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... pine and so hanker after me this night I pray you come anon to the secret lair near the moat on the next floor, and there you will eke descry me. There we will discourse on love and other joyous matters, and until then I shall be, as ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... incident to it; and here was the material part of the answer made. "Many thanks for your affectionate letter, which is full of generous truth. These considerations weigh with me, heavily: but I think I descry in these times, greater stimulants to such an effort; greater chance of some fair recognition of it; greater means of persevering in it, or retiring from it unscratched by any weapon one should care for; than at any other period. And most of all I have, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... loudly in, and Hilda, having climbed into a second-class compartment, leaned out from it, to descry her porter and bestow on him a threepenny bit. George Cannon and young Lawton were still in argument, and apparently quite indifferent to the train. Young Lawton's thin face had its usual faint, harsh ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... embarked? Where were the ships?—Where could they be found? All our telescopes, directed over the sea could not descry a single friendly sail Bonaparte, I affirm, would have regarded such an event as a real favour of fortune. It was, and—I am glad to have to say it, this sole idea, this sole hope, which made him brave, for three days, the murmurs of his army. But in vain was help looked ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the closing years of the life of Pericles, the growing jealousy between Athens and Sparta broke out in the long struggle known as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles had foreseen the coming storm: "I descry war," said he, "lowering from the Peloponnesus." His whole later policy looked toward the preparation of Athens for the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... of lateral moraines, which formed, as it were, a vast raised gutter, or channel, ascending from perhaps 16,000 feet elevation, till it was hidden behind a spur in the valley. With a telescope I could descry many similar smaller glaciers, with huge accumulations of shingle at their terminations; but this great one was beautifully seen by the naked eye, and formed a very curious ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... night proved unusually dark, so that the two principals had to tie white handkerchiefs round their elbows in order to descry each other. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... Shield Ethereal temper, massie, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his Shoulders like the Moon, whose orb Thro Optick Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Evning, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, Rivers, or Mountains, on her spotted Globe. His Spear (to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian Hills to be the Mast Of some great Admiral, were but a wand) He walk'd with, to support uneasie Steps Over ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in the morning, the whole army, in order of battle, began to descry the enemy from the rising grounds, about a mile from Naseby, and moved towards them. They were drawn up on a little ascent in a large common fallow field, in one line extended from one side of the field ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... critics proposed also excellent reasons for their vehemence. And it is instructive to observe that the objections, and the reasons for the objections, recur, after the original object of wrath has passed into acceptance, nay, into dominance of the musical world. One may also descry one basic controversy running through all these utterances, even when not explicitly ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... which we passed, I endeavored in vain to guess at the nature of the country through which we were traveling; but, except the tall shafts of the everlasting pine trees, which still pursued us, I could descry nothing, and resigned myself to the amusing contemplation of the attitudes of my companions, who were all fast asleep. Between twelve and one o'clock the engine stopped, and it was announced to us that we had ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... ere the hospitable mansion of Victor's uncle appeared in sight, with lights dancing from every window, and our good steeds, like couriers of the air, scudded over the polished surface toward these pleasant beacons. We were soon able to descry forms flitting before the window, and as we turned up the road leading from the lake ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... oversights as were committed in the writings of eminent authors. On the contrary, most of the smatterers in criticism, who appear among us, make it their business to vilify and depreciate every new production that gains applause, to descry imaginary blemishes, and to prove, by farfetched arguments, that what pass for beauties in any celebrated piece are faults and errors. In short, the writings of these critics, compared with those of the ancients, are like the works of the sophists compared ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... close order they sailed along under the tall cliffs of Ireland. We were about three miles from the shore, on which now every telescope and glass was eagerly directed. As the light and fleeting clouds of early morning passed away, we could descry the outlines of the bold coast, indented with many a bay and creek, while rocky promontories and grassy slopes succeeded each other in endless variety of contrast. Towns, or even villages, we could see none—a few small wretched-looking hovels were dotted over the hills, and here and there ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... thoughts surging up swift into my mind, as I went striding on swifter than I knew. Ere long I reached the extreme limit of the land, the high-piled rocks of L'Ancresse. I looked out upon the sea to where Auremen lay flat and wide against the sky, and I thought I could descry the Norman shores and La Hague Cape stretching towards me; and, though I knew no home but the Vale Cloister, another voice of home seemed calling me over thither. A voice in which battlecries and trumpet-blasts ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... Mrs. Dodd's first impulse was that of leopardesses, lionesses, hens, and all the mothers in nature; to dart from her ambush and protect her young; but she controlled it by a strong effort; it seemed wiser to descry the truth, and then act with resolution: besides, the young people were now almost at the shrubbery; so the mischief if any, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the front of the house the elder woman was being led away with her hands bound, and no sooner did the young one descry her than she picked up her skirts and with one wild rush tried to be off and away. I called Spond, my trusty guard, and bid him stay her; and the noble hound dogged her steps till the men could catch her and lead her to my aunt. The lady questioned her closely, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brightest beams let the Sun shine On Orra Moor. Could I be sure That from the top o' th' lofty Pine I Orra Moor might see, I to his highest Bough would climb, And with industrious Labour try Thence to descry My Mistress if that there she be. Could I but know amidst what Flowers Or in what Shade she stays, The gaudy Bowers, With all their verdant Pride, Their Blossoms and their Sprays, Which make my Mistress disappear; And her in envious ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... for long left the Argonauts on the empty Libyan land. And when they came forth and saw that vast level of sand stretching like a mist away into the distance, a deadly fear came over each of them. No spring of water could they descry; no path; no herdsman's cabin; over all that vast land there was silence and dead calm. And one said to the other: "What land is this? Whither have we come? Would that the tempest had overwhelmed us, or would that we had lost the ship and our ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... to make this speech, beyond his belief—founded upon experience—that calms are always succeeded by storms. At present the bishop stood under a serene sky; and in no quarter could Graham descry the gathering of the tempest he prophesied. But for all that he had a premonition that evil days were at hand; and, sceptic as he was, he could not shake off the uneasy feeling. His mother had been a ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... mud, which ought, properly, to have been navigated with boats. The whole cavalcade always moved under the charge of an officer, and many were the anxious looks that we took with our spy-glasses, from a hill overlooking the road, on the days of their expected return, each endeavouring to descry his own. Mine came back to me twice; but "the pitcher that goes often to the well" was verified in his third trip, for—he ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... fond of watery soil; The white-barked palm tree, rising high in air; The mastic in the woods you may descry; Tamarind and lofty bay-trees ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... more, and the Glory of the South Seas would lie safe inside the strong harbor of Panama. Drake ordered the thirty cannon ready for action, and in a loud voice offered the present of his own golden chain to the man who should first descry the sails of the Spanish treasure. For once his luck failed him. The wind suddenly fell. Before Drake needed to issue the order, his "brave boys" were over decks and out in the small boats rowing for dear life, towing the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... When our words and works are done? Or will thy all-surprising light Break at midnight, When either sleep or some dark pleasure Possesseth mad man without measure? Or shail these early, fragrant hours Unlock thy bowers,[151] And with their blush of light descry Thy locks crowned with eternity? Indeed, it is the only time That with thy glory doth best chime: All now are stirring; every field Full hymns doth yield; The whole creation shakes off night, And ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... taught that these animals can descry a man at the distance of twenty or twenty-five feet. When approaching a crayfish "town" for the purpose of making observations, I use the utmost caution; otherwise, each inhabitant will retreat into its burrow before ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... judge, extended inland for perhaps a mile and a half by about two miles wide. From this flat shelf the cliffs rose perpendicularly, as they did from the sea. Up their sides were innumerable goat-tracks, upon some of which we could descry a few of those agile creatures climbing almost like flies. The plateau was thickly wooded, many of the trees having been fruit-bearing once, but now, much to our disappointment, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... endowed with a conscience for the guidance of other people, so quick was he to descry and pounce upon their shortcomings. If one's sins are sure to find one out, there is little doubt but that Brother Nehemiah would be ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... How wilt thou say Unto thy brother, let me take away The mote that's in thine eye, when yet 'tis plain The beam that's in thine own doth still remain? First cast away the beam, thou hypocrite, From thine own eye, so shall thy clearer sight The better be enabled to descry, And pluck the mote out of thy brother's eye. Give not to dogs the things that are divine, Neither cast ye your pearls before the swine Lest that they should their feet them trample under, And turn upon you, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Volaterrae, Where scowls the far-famed hold Piled by the hands of giants For godlike kings of old; From sea-girt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... the light shine out in fairness. What light can he have in him who is always on his own side, and will never descry reason or right on that of his adversary? And certainly, if he that showeth mercy, as well he that showeth justice, ought to do ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... was breaking; and, in the distance, Walter and his companions could descry the caravan, apparently guarded by a strong force: and gradually the white turbans and green caftans and long spears became more and more distinct. It was clear that, in the event of Salisbury not returning in time, Walter would have to fight against great odds; and the return ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... the sky. And you, Arabians, from your distant home Came to a world unknown, and wondering saw The shadows fall no longer to the left. (19) Then fired with ardour for the Roman war Oretas came, and far Carmania's chiefs, Whose clime lies southward, yet men thence descry Low down the Pole star, and Bootes runs Hasting to set, part seen, his nightly course; And Ethiopians from that southern land Which lies without the circuit of the stars, Did not the Bull with curving hoof advanced O'erstep the limit. From that mountain zone ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... lamps began to appear ahead. By stooping, as she clung to one of the hand-straps, Nancy was able to descry the outlines of several big buildings—or a huge building with several wings; she did not know which it was, and did ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... phrases in the language is "the Spanish Main." To the ordinary individual it suggests the Caribbean Sea. Although Shakespeare in "Othello," makes one of the gentlemen of Cyprus say that he "cannot 'twixt heaven and main descry a sail," and, therefore, with other poets, gives warrant to the application of the word to the ocean, "main" really refers to the other element. The Spanish Main was that portion of South American territory distinguished from Cuba, Hispaniola and the other islands, because ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... "you would see an oak counter from some bankrupt wine merchant's sale, and a tallow dip, never snuffed for fear it should burn too quickly, making darkness visible. By that anomalous light you descry rows of empty shelves with some difficulty. An urchin in a blue blouse mounts guard over the emptiness, and blows his fingers, and shuffles his feet, and slaps his chest, like a cabman on the box. Just look about you! there are no more books there ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Moon, whose orb The Tuscan artist views through optic glass At evening from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... cumb'rous citizen of portly paunch, Unwont to soar beyond the smoaking haunch; The meagre bard behind the moving tun, His shadow seeming lengthen'd by the sun; Who forms scarce visible shall thus descry, Like flitting clouds athwart the mental sky; From giant bodies then bare gleams of mind, Like mountain watch-lights blinking to the wind; Nor blush to find his unperverted eye Flash on his heart, and ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... at LEXINGTON, Prevent our purpose and the night by-past, Have push'd intrenchments, and some flimsy works, With rude achievement, on the rocky brow, Of that tall hill. A ship-boy, with the day, From the tall mast-head, of the Admiral, Descry'd their aim, and gave the swift alarm. Our glasses mark, but one small regiment there, Yet, ev'ry hour we languish in delay, Inspires fresh hope, and fills their pig'my souls, With thoughts of holding it. You hear the sound Of spades and pick-axes, upon the hill, Incessant, pounding, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... magenta flowers as level as a lake—it was, in fact, a lake of faded crimson lying between shores of luxuriant green. The cart-ruts went right down into the flame-flowers, and she thought she could descry where they rose from them on the other side. Evidently the blossoming had taken place since the last cart had passed over, and no doubt many miles intervened between this and the next dwelling-house. Nothing but the thought of necessities that might arise for help ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... clarion must be sounded We are not called, like demigods, to gaze on The battle from the far-off mountain's crest, But in our hearts to bear our fiery blazon, An Olaf's cross upon a mailed breast,— To look afar across the fields of flight, Tho' pent within the mazes of its might,— Beyond the mirk descry one glimmer still Of glory—that's the ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Where scowls the far-famed hold Piled by the hands of giants For godlike kings of old; From sea-girt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... his actions till his immersion in the waves brought him rudely to his senses. After coming to the surface, he looked about for the steamer, and was astounded to see it already so far away that it seemed to him impossible for a boat's crew to descry him in that heaving expanse of ocean. To add to his dismay, the vessel seemed to steam on as though determined to ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Deity set apart) 'clutch' without hands?—and as for 'the emerald girdle of the rose'—I know not what it means, unless Sah-luma considers the green calyx of the flower a 'girdle,' in which case his wits must be far gone, for no shape of girdle can any sane man descry in the common natural protection of a bud before it blooms! There was a phrase too concerning nightingales,—and the gods know we have heard enough and too much of those over-praised birds! ..." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the hill of palaces, must certainly be counted the best part of San Francisco. It is there that the millionaires are gathered together vying with each other in display. From thence, looking down over the business wards of the city, we can descry a building with a little belfry, and that is the Stock Exchange, the heart of San Francisco: a great pump we might call it, continually pumping up the savings of the lower quarters into the pockets of the millionaires ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the animal neighed, and Garin, hearing the sound, reined in and peered forward into the gloom, to descry the horse's head and back outlined above the blur of the hedge. His men halted behind him whilst he approached the riderless beast and made—as well as he could in the darkness—an examination of the saddle. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... rather more than a league and had begun to descry the first houses of the village, the red-tiled roofs of which stood out from the green trees which surrounded them, when, coming toward them mounted on a mule, they perceived a poor monk, whose large hat and gray worsted dress made them take ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... who, from some desert shore, Doth home's green isles descry, And, vainly longing, gazes o'er The waste of wave ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... habitations, with abundance of sweet waters, and dates enough, and being within foureteene miles of Medina they come vnto a great plaine called by them Iabel el salema, that is to say, the mountaine of health, from which they begin to descry the citie and tombe of Mahomet, at which sight they light from their horses in token of reuerence. And being ascended vp the sayd mountaine with shouting which pierceth the skies they say, Sala tuua salema Alaccha Iarah sul Allah. Sala tuua Salema Alaccha Ianabi Allah, Sala tuua Salema Allaccha ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... square; Around were lodgings, fit and fair, And towers of various form, Which on the court projected far, And broke its lines quadrangular. Here was square keep, there turret high, Or pinnacle that sought the sky, Whence oft the warder could descry The gathering ocean-storm. ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... The Indians had never been to sea before, and had never dreamed that such an expanse of water existed on the planet. They would stand at the rail, after the first days of seasickness were over, gazing out across the waves, and trying to descry something that looked like land, or a tree, or anything that seemed familiar and like home. Then they would shake their heads disconsolately and go below, to brood and muse and be an extremely unhappy ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... far the first to descry her, for he was sitting with a heavy heart among the wooers dreaming on his good father, if haply he might come somewhence, and make a scattering of the wooers there throughout the palace, and himself get honour and bear rule ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... totally unknown to the Pirates. At last they came to a high mountain, which, when they ascended, they discovered from the top thereof the South Sea. This happy sight, as if it were the end of their labours, caused infinite joy among the Pirates. From hence they could descry also one ship and six boats, which were set forth from Panama, and sailed towards the islands of Tavoga and Tavogilla. Having descended this mountain, they came unto a vale, in which they found great quantity of cattle, whereof ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... they two leagues from the city before every head was stuck out of window. There were outcries and astonishment. Tartarin looked in his turn, and what did he descry! the camel, reader, the inevitable camel, racing along the line behind the train, and keeping up with it! The dismayed Tartarin drew back and shut ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... that morning, and many were the muttered remarks which he made to himself, in German, as he urged the canoe against wind and current. As he neared home his fears increased. On reaching a certain part from which he had been wont to descry the chimney of old Liz's hut, he perceived that the familiar object was gone, and uttered ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... promises of Christian progress, are the auspicious auguries of this happy future. As early voyagers over untried realms of waste, we have already observed the signs of land. The green twig and fresh red berry have floated by our bark; the odors of the shore fan our faces; nay, we may seem to descry the distant gleam of light, and hear from the more earnest observers, as Columbus heard, after midnight, from the mast-head of the Pinta, the joyful cry of Land! Land! and lo! a new world broke upon his early morning ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... matter of profit for this world, nay for the mere cash-market of this world! And as a matter of profit not for this world only, but for the other world and all worlds, it outweighs the Bank of England!—Can the sagacious reader descry here, as it were the outmost inconsiderable rock-ledge of a universal rock-foundation, deep once more as the Centre of the World, emerging so, in the experience of this good Quaker, through the Stygian mud-vortexes and general Mother ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... In pity of your Pain; But when we Love, you leave us, To rail at you in vain: Before we have descry'd it, There is no Bliss beside it; But she that once has try'd it, Will never ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... Loftus!" there's somebody cries;— Nay, friend, not so fast, if you please; His wisdom was that of the self-deceived fool Who quits the clear fount for the foul, stagnant pool, Who puts out his eyes lest the light he descry, Then shouts 'mid the gloom "how clear-sighted am I!" Who turns from the glorious fountain of Day, To follow the wild ignis fatuus' ray Through quagmire and swamp, ever farther astray, With every ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... highway, to see a dance of witches merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was dressed tradition does not say; but that the ladies were all in their smocks: and one of them happening unluckily ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... great inert bulk of the dead horse, unclenched the muscular grasp of the soldier, as if it had been a baby's clasp, slipped the staff, technically the lance, of the guidon from its socket, and stood with it in his own hand, looking suspiciously to and fro to descry if perchance he were observed. The coast clear, he turned to the wall of rock beside the road, for this was near the mountain sandstone formation, fissured, splintered, with the erosions of water and weather; and into one of the cellular, tunnel-like apertures ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Ethereal temper, massie, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his Shoulders like the Moon, whose orb Thro Optick Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Evning, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, Rivers, or Mountains, on her spotted Globe. His Spear (to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian Hills to be the Mast Of some great Admiral, were but a wand) He walk'd with, to support uneasie Steps Over ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... sound of lamentation smote, Whereat mine eye unbarr'd I sent abroad. And thus the good instructor: "Now, my son! Draws near the city, that of Dis is nam'd, With its grave denizens, a mighty throng." I thus: "The minarets already, Sir! There certes in the valley I descry, Gleaming vermilion, as if they from fire Had issu'd." He replied: "Eternal fire, That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame Illum'd; as in this nether hell thou seest." We came within the fosses deep, that moat This region ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... that it was at first with difficulty that we could distinguish whether it moved or not. A quarter of an hour, however, dispelled all doubts, for within this time it had nearly reached the bottom of the hill, and we could descry a figure seated on ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... breakfast the order was given to march into the Chamla valley. My duty was to accompany the Mountain batteries and show them the way. As we debouched into comparatively open country, the enemy appeared on a ridge which completely covered our approach to Umbeyla, and we could descry many standards flying on the most prominent points. The road was so extremely difficult that it was half-past two o'clock before the whole force was clear ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... ocean, thee to sing Shall my devoted lyre awake each string! Columbus! Hero! Would my song could tell How great thy worth! No praise can overswell The grandeur of thy deeds! Thine eagle eye Pierced through the clouds of ages to descry From empyrean heights where thou didst soar With bright imagination winged by lore— The signs of continents as yet unknown; Across the deep thy keen-eyed glance was thrown; Thou, with prevailing longing, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... flower-decked tables. All about her Billy saw flushed-faced men, and bright-eyed women, laughing, chatting, and clinking together their slender-stemmed wine glasses. But nowhere, as she looked about her, could Billy descry the ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... thus for the space of ten or twelve days, our captain did oftentimes cause certain to go up into the tops of high trees, to see if they could descry any town or place of inhabitants, but they could not perceive any, and using often the same order to climb up into high trees, at the length they descried a great river, that fell from the north-west into the main sea; and presently ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... head, and these seven went forward therewith. And Branwen was the eighth with them, and they came to land at Aber Alaw, in Talebolyon, and they sat down to rest. And Branwen looked towards Ireland and towards the Island of the Mighty, to see if she could descry them. "Alas," said she, "woe is me that I was ever born; two Islands have been destroyed because of me!" Then she uttered a loud groan and there broke her heart. And they made her a four-sided grave and buried her upon the banks ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... favourite land of the acacia; and immense tracts, covered with its various species, form impenetrable thickets (chapparals). I distinguish in these thickets the honey-locust, with its long purple legumes, the "algarobo" (carob-tree), and the thorny "mezquite"; and, rising over all the rest, I descry the tall, slender stem of the Fouquiera splendens, with panicles of cube-shaped ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... God have mercy!" said De Vaux. "Yet would I rather than my best horse I had taken that watch myself. There is mystery in it, young man, as a plain man may descry, though he cannot see through it. Cowardice? Pshaw! No coward ever fought as I have seen thee do. Treachery? I cannot think traitors die in their treason so calmly. Thou hast been trained from thy post by some deep guile—some well-devised stratagem—the cry of some distressed maiden has caught ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... westward course through the middle of the Propontis, may at once descry the high lands of Thrace and Bithynia, and never lose sight of the lofty summit of Mount Olympus, covered with eternal snows. [14] They leave on the left a deep gulf, at the bottom of which Nicomedia was seated, the Imperial residence of Diocletian; and they pass the small islands ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... fleet should happen to be scattered by weather, or other mishap, then so soon as one shall descry another, to hoise both topsails twice, if the weather will serve, and to strike them twice again; but if the weather serve not, then to hoise the maintopsail twice, and forthwith to strike it ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... hearkening ear, Perplext, in every bush and nook doth pry, Her dearest Deer might answer ear or eye; So doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss, A dearer Deer (far dearer Heart) than this. Still wait with doubts and hopes and failing eye; His voice to hear or person to descry. Or as the pensive Dove doth all alone (On withered bough) most uncouthly bemoan The absence of her Love and Loving Mate, Whose loss hath made her so unfortunate; Ev'n thus doe I, with many a deep sad groan, Bewail my turtle true, who now is gone, His presence and his ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... left the Argonauts on the empty Libyan land. And when they came forth and saw that vast level of sand stretching like a mist away into the distance, a deadly fear came over each of them. No spring of water could they descry; no path; no herdsman's cabin; over all that vast land there was silence and dead calm. And one said to the other: "What land is this? Whither have we come? Would that the tempest had overwhelmed us, or would that we had lost the ship and our lives between the ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... something had unfolded in his whole manner which compelled attention. I think he had purposed on that day to indicate the origin of his endeavours, and the aim of his ambition. M. de Bassompierre had found himself forced, in a manner, to descry the direction and catch the character of his homage. Slow in remarking, he was logical in reasoning: having once seized the thread, it had guided him through a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of day is now breaking in around them and eclipsing the glare of the smouldering embers. Up starts our hero much refreshed and invigorated, and exulting in surprising buoyancy of spirit for running the race of the new day now ushering in. He withdraws a gunshot from the camp: and what does he descry in the grey dawn but, apparently, a small skiff with a single rower crossing the river towards them, but a short distance down the stream. The advancing light of day soon confirmed his hopes. He at once started in the direction of the skiff, having armed himself ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... difficulties; he foresees clearly enough that the earlier half of this present century must needs be a time of much rough pioneering service on the part of those who are the most earnest friends of the negro race. As lookers-on from afar on the European side of the broad Atlantic, we are able to descry many reassuring signs. Both in the North and the South, Booker Washington has met with abundance of sympathy, and a good deal of honest, practical help. When Harvard University bestowed on him the degree of Master of Arts, he was the first negro who had ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... longer look out from the castle walls to descry the glitter of Southern spears. The bell-tower from which the alarm was sounded is now silent—the only bell heard within the precincts of the castle being that of the railway porter, announcing the arrival and departure of trains. The Scotch express passes along the bridge, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... faithless thing. Now, wheeling round with bootless skill, Thy bo-peep tail provokes thee still, As oft beyond thy curving side Its jetty tip is seen to glide. Whence hast thou, then, thou witless puss, The magic power to charm us thus? Is it that in thy glaring eye, And rapid movements we descry— While we at ease, secure from ill, The chimney ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... stagnant creeks and back-streams, a sort of knot in the interminable loops and windings of the delta. Here and there in the line of tree-tops was a gap showing where some waterway came through. Here and there, too, I could descry a tiny beach of mud a yard or two wide, with a hut and a canoe tied to the mangrove roots, and black, naked people crouched on their hams in the shadows cast by the forest, engaged in their—to me—mysterious business ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... beautifull, so heavenly bright, That she would make them love her for the sight. Thou art more rude then such if thou proceede In the execution of so vilde a deede. Remember one thing, I did never love Till thou, my Fredericke, broughtst that fatall Glove. That and the Owners name thou didst descry; Onely for that cause, let ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... so a-tiptoe I stole out, and like a cat stealthily approached 'Brownie's' door. The hour was somewhat after eleven, for I had heard the Tron Kirk chap recently; the moon in her last quarter had risen, and I could dimly descry ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... a lantern we could descry two officers kneeling upon the ground; between them on the grass lay the figure of a third, upon whose features, as the pale light fell, the hand of death seemed rapidly stealing. A slight froth, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... who, seeking beauty, once descry Her face, to most unknown; Thenceforth like changelings from the sky Must walk ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... works are done? Or will thy all-surprising light Break at midnight, When either sleep or some dark pleasure Possesseth mad man without measure? Or shail these early, fragrant hours Unlock thy bowers,[151] And with their blush of light descry Thy locks crowned with eternity? Indeed, it is the only time That with thy glory doth best chime: All now are stirring; every field Full hymns doth yield; The whole creation shakes off night, And for thy shadow looks the light;[152] Stars now vanish without ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... in the leafy boughs of a spreading pine in a few minutes, and could descry a broad plain, with tents scattered here and there; still farther on the broad uplands frame buildings with a red and white flag floating to the wind could be seen. Back of all this he could make out a broad expanse of water and a few ungainly craft, lazily ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... their best array, Upon a carr, and who but they! 600 And follow'd with a world of tall-lads, That merry ditties troll'd, and ballads, Did ride with many a good-morrow, Crying, Hey for our Town! through the Borough So when this triumph drew so nigh 605 They might particulars descry, They never saw two things so pat, In all respects, as this and that. First, he that led the cavalcade, Wore a sow-gelder's flagellate, 610 On which he blew as strong a levet As well-fee'd lawyer on his breviate, When over one another's heads They ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Gottingen, was led to believe that not merely the debris strewn along its path, but the comet itself must have been in immediate proximity to the earth during their appearance.[1226] If so, it might be possible, he thought, to descry it as it retreated in the diametrically opposite direction from that in which it had approached. On November 30, accordingly, he telegraphed to Mr. Pogson, the Madras astronomer, "Biela touched earth November 27; search near ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... so sweetly hung About her heart; and as she gaily thought, She sung them o'er as she had heard them sung. Onward she moved: her dreamy, listless eye Had leant upon a fragrant wild-rose bed, And, glancing farther, what does she descry? Stretched stiff and bloody, his sad spirit fled, Yea, him whom when asleep she once had seen, And had so often wished again to see, Now dead and cold 'mong the leaves so green, And all ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... in Love's gay spring, Prompt the youthful Female's sigh; When her roses all take wing, And Matrons sage her plight descry; ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... such experimenting in the Brtlinka quarter, gallop off to try to charge the Prussians in the rear;—"pleasanter by far," judge many of them, "to plunder the Prussian Camp," which they descry in those regions; whither accordingly they rush. Too many of them; and the Hussars as one man. To the sorrowful indignation of Prince Karl, whose right arm (or wing) is fallen paralytic in this manner. After the Fight, they repented in dust and ashes; and went to say so, as if with the rope about ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... planetary in the distance. One could make out the formal but hazy stakes and posts, aligned in the distance to the end of sight; and here and there the swellings and round ink-blots of the dugouts. In some sections of trench one could sometimes even descry black lines, like a dark wall between other walls, and these lines stirred—they were the workmen of destruction. A whole region in the north, on higher ground, was a forest flown away, leaving only ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... which evolution is carrying us? For in any of these stages we see organs forming whose use only comes into play long after that stage has been passed; so also, in the new rudimentary forms of thought which are started by every fresh discovery may we not some day be able to descry the heights which we are destined to attain if we earnestly ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... upon the table of my little library a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and English journals and periodicals—whatever may be their worth? Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our heights I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hill where Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them. At the foot of it I was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me. And so ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... Maker, that he could win such a treasure. Then, turning to Wiglaf, he said, "Now I die. Build for me upon the lofty shore a bright mound that shall ever remind my people of me. Far in the distance their ships shall descry it, and they shall call it Beowulf's mound." Then, giving his arms to Wiglaf, he bade him enjoy them. "Thou art the last of our race. All save us, fate-driven, are gone to doom. Thither go ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... which none but brave Of noble birth may wear. Though thou Art not of chieftain father bred, Still yet thou art born noble. Take, Janishkisgan, and to the top Of Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog. There let thine eye be keen, the path Of open safety to descry;— Use this plume of eagle plucked, To point to us the way. We will Prepare the arrows; grass and grain Arrange, and make the fuel ready for The flame upon the graves. When four And twenty hours have passed, light thou The fires upon ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... based upon reason. The fact is that faith and reason are like function and organ, desire and power, or demand and supply; it is impossible to say which comes first: they come up hand in hand, and are so small when we can first descry them, that it is impossible to say which we first caught sight of. All we can now see is that each has a tendency continually to outstrip the other by a little, but by a very little only. Strictly they are not two things, but two aspects of one thing; for ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... suffering for years the hopelessness of converting his people, the Prophet at last saw an Israel of whom hope might be dared. It was not their distance which lent enchantment to his view for he gives proof that he can descry the dross still among them, despite the furnace through which they have passed.(493) But the banished were without doubt the best of the nation, and now they had "dreed their weird," gone through the fire, been lifted out ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... striking aside into a field which formed part of the Park. "Adieu, civilization of street lights!" and he pressed up into a dark grove where I stumbled after, and next, under the twilight of a sky full of stars, could descry dim outlines of the surroundings of our path and even of the Mountain, silent above us like a huge black ghost. We toiled up the steep stair, guiding ourselves by feeling, and in a few minutes Were at Prospect Point, that jutting bit of turf on the precipice's edge ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze; however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned. It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... some on earnest labour bent Their business, murmuring, ply 'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint To sweeten liberty; Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of the little reign And unknown regions dare descry; Still as they run they look behind, And hear a voice in every wind, And ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... shall I say when I descry Deep in the restless ocean The myriad creatures passing by ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... golden dreams anon, Born as the busy day's last murmurs die, In swarms tumultuous flitting through the gloom Their breathing lips and golden locks descry. And as the bees o'er bright flowers joyous roam, Around ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... approaching the verge of woman-hood. What lay beyond it I could ill descry, though surely a vague power of undeveloped prophecy dwells in every created thing—even in the bird ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... she was not sufficiently informed in such high matters, the Bishop and the Inquisitor offered her the choice of one or more of the assessors to act as her counsel." The accused, in presence of this assembly, in which she did not descry a single friendly face, mildly answered: "For what you admonish me as to my good, and concerning our faith, I thank you; as to the counsel you offer me, I have no intention to forsake the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hill-top, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... what's fit for us? Had fate Proposed bliss here should sublimate My being; had I signed the bond— Still one must lead some life beyond,— Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. This foot once planted on the goal, This glory-garland round my soul, Could I descry such? Try ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Budgett's. As custom increased, so did envy and accusation. Many scrupled not to declare, that they sold cheaper than they bought, and therefore must soon come to an end; yet they went on, year by year, in steady and rapid increase.... He already seemed to descry in the distance the possibility of a great wholesale establishment; but this must be reached by little and little. He would not attempt what he could not accomplish. Any sudden bound, therefore, by which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... punishment for leading me such "a wild-goose chase," such "a dance," over The Desert. In my wrath I was not disheartened. Now, as it was dark, I began to ascend the highest mounds of Desert, from, whose top I might descry the fires of our encampment. I wandered round and round, and on, now over, sand and sand-hills, now climbed up trees, now upon eminences of sand or earth-banks, seeking the highest mounds of the vast plain, to see if any lights were visible, looking earnestly every way. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... skirting the lake. You could almost see the rings made by rising trout, and there was enough of you visible at least to send the waterfowl scuttering from the reeds. Beyond that again, you could descry the pale ribbon of the footpath, and guess at the exuberant masses of the peony bushes, their heavy flowers, when they were white, still smouldering with the last of the sunset's fire. But once in the woods you had to feel your way, and the silence of it all, like the ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... I happened to descry a mighty unearthly city, moving at will, and having the effulgence of fire or the sun. And that city contained various trees composed of gems, and sweet-voiced feathered ones. And furnished with four gates, and gate-ways, and towers, that impregnable (city) was inhabited by the Paulamas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... I'spy * A shape, but did thy form therein descry: Nor closed mine eyes in sleep but thee I saw, * E'en as though dwelling 'twixt the lid ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... painter these are honeymoon trips with Nature. You are alone with her in that long and tranquil rendezvous. You go to bed in the fields amid marguerites and wild poppies, and, with eyes wide open, you watch the going down of the sun, and descry in the distance the little village, with its pointed clock-tower, which ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... like Pearce.[3] He knew their voices, and their wings, Who smoothest soars, who sweetest sings; Who toils with ill-fledged pens to climb, And who attain'd the true sublime. Their merits he could well descry, He had so exquisite an eye; And when that fail'd to show them clear, He had as exquisite an ear; It chanced as on a day he stray'd Beneath an academic shade, He liked, amidst a thousand throats, The wildness of a Woodlark's[4] notes, And search'd, and spied, and seized his game, And took ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Toronto in the session of 1856 or 1857, in which he described the path of the attorney-general [Macdonald] as studded all along by the gravestones of his slaughtered colleagues. Well, there are not wanting those who think they can descry, in the not very remote distance, a yawning grave waiting for the noblest victim of them all. And I very much fear that unless the honourable gentleman has the courage to assert his own original strength—and he has great strength—and to discard the blandishments and the sweets of office, ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... reply, For CAPEL thought he could descry An admirable plan To study all their ways and laws - (But not their lady-fish, because He was a ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... that has no favourable aspect. The combination and spirit there seem to be universal, and is very alarming. I am the humble servant of events, and you know never meddle with prophecy. It would be difficult to descry good omens, be the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... had been the first, as early as mid-day, to descry with his field-glass, on the extreme horizon, something which had attracted his attention. He had said, "I see yonder a cloud, which seems to me to be troops." Then he asked the Duc de Dalmatie, "Soult, what do you see in the direction ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... so completely that I remained rooted to the spot long after his step had ceased to sound on the stairs. If what he said was true, in the gloom which darkened alike my room and my prospects I could descry no glimmer of light. I knew His Majesty's weakness and vacillation too well to repose any confidence in him; if the King of Navarre also abandoned me, I was indeed without ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Then he saw that he was under a great beech, and the sound seemed to come from somewhere in the top of it—a sound like the pleased cooing of a dove. He looked hard into the branches and their wilderness of fresh leaves, but could descry nothing. Then came a little laugh, and with a preparatory rustling and rustling in its passage, a book—a small folio—fell plump ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... perhaps as far down Channel as the Scillies, or as far north as the thirteen-mile stretch of sea running between the Mull of Kintyre and the Irish coast, where the trade for Liverpool, Whitehaven, Dublin and the Clyde commonly came in, the homing sailor would suddenly descry, bearing down upon him under press of sail, the trim figure of one of His Majesty's frigates, or the clean, swift lines of an armed sloop. The meeting was no chance one. Both the frigate and the sloop were there by design, the former cruising to complete her own complement, the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... business on the trail behind. Two or three times, there was a vague rustle in the leaves that she couldn't localize—water ouzel in moss covert, or hawk babies in hiding, or—or what? She couldn't descry. Then, suddenly, with a hiss—ss and swear plain as a bird could swear, a little male grouse came sprinting down the trail to stop her, ruff up, tail spread to a fan, wings down, screaming at her ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... God by Mr. Paz, we worked out of Savannah-la-Mar, and, having gained an offing with a light breeze, hoisted all her bits of canvas, even to a light jib-topsail we found on board—chiefly, I think, to impress her late owner, whom we could descry on the shore, watching us. He had steadfastly refused to believe us capable of handling a boat, whereas of our party Plinny and Mr. Goodfellow were the only landlubbers. Miss Belcher could take the helm with the best of us, and indeed it was reported of her that she had on more than one occasion ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the canvass we'll Adeline place, With her full and expressive dark eye; Decision of purpose is stamped on that face, And good scholarship too we descry. ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... yourself with delusive expectations! The end may be according to your hope—whether it will be so (which God grant!) is as inscrutable for angels as for men. But to descry that great struggles are yet to come is within reach of human foresight—that great tribulations must needs accompany them—and that these may be—you know not how ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... departure was explained by a casual "I guessed I'd better," which Mr and Mrs Hilliard accepted as sufficient reason for a girl who had no ties, and more money than she knew how to use. Even Pixie's lynx-eyes failed to descry any sign of heart-break. But when the meal was over and the two girls retired upstairs for a private chat, Honor's jaunty manners fell from her like a cloak, and she crouched in a corner of the sofa, looking suddenly tired and worn. For the moment, however, it was not of ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden wall; is the curtain blue Or green to ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... without us, and are found in others. The first of these is found in those who are beneath us, that is, the dead and damned. Do you wonder what kind of blessing can be discovered in the dead and damned? But the power of the divine goodness is everywhere so great that it grants us to descry blessings in the very greatest evils. Comparing, then, these poor wretches, first of all, with ourselves, we see how unspeakable is our gain; as may be gathered from the corresponding image of evils.[58] ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... to time, however, Boxtel withdrew his eyes for a moment from the tulip and the purse, timidly looking among the crowd, for more than anything he dreaded to descry there the pale face of ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... your ignorant rashness Have passed through the bounds and limits Of this interdicted valley, 'Gainst the edict of the King, Who has publicly commanded None should dare descry the wonder That among these rocks is guarded, Yield at once your arms and lives, Or this pistol, this cold aspic Formed of steel, the penetrating Poison of two balls will scatter, The report and fire of which Will the air astound ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... untouched, as for the time being dog had completely taken its place. There was thus no great sign of depression to be noticed when we came back into the tent after finishing our work, and had to while away the time. As I went in, I could descry Wisting a little way off kneeling on the ground, and engaged in the manufacture of cutlets. The dogs stood in a ring round him, and looked on with interest. The north-east wind whistled and howled, the air was thick with driving snow, and Wisting ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... (a little sketch is given), which he handed to me, and which, after he left the room, remained on the table by me. I gazed at it, I know not why, for some minutes, till called away by the day's duties; and you will smile incredulously when I say that I seemed to myself to begin to descry reflected in it objects and scenes which were not in the room where I was. You will not, however, be surprised that after such an experience I took the first opportunity to seclude myself in my room with what I now half believed to be a talisman of mickle might. ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... in Alba whom we can dimly descry around Agricola's fortified frontier between the firths of Forth and Clyde, about 81-82 A.D. When Agricola pushed north of the Forth and Tay he still met men who had considerable knowledge of the art of war. In his battle at Mons Graupius (perhaps at the junction of Isla ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... would have to be) a decade of happiness beginning now, a decade of lovers of their own choosing, men of delicacy and wisdom, that thirty years from now there would be that poise and sweetness in the world that dreamers descry in far future ages. And here and there would be a beyond-man, indeed; and here and there cosmic, instead of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... Quebec, in Mass. Hist. Coll. 3, I. 101. There is a difference of ten days in the French and English dates, the New Style having been adopted by the former and not by the latter.] At length, before dawn on the morning of the sixteenth, the sentinels on the Saut au Matelot could descry the slowly moving lights of distant vessels. At daybreak the fleet was in sight. Sail after sail passed the Point of Orleans and glided into the Basin of Quebec. The excited spectators on the rock counted thirty-four of them. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... dreadful nor'wester howled along and lashed the narrow sea between England and the Continent; yet I kept our frail skiff before it, hoping, at daylight, to descry the lowlands of Belgium. The heart-broken woman rested motionless in the stern-sheets. We covered her with all the available garments, and, even in the midst of our own griefs, could not help feeling that the suddenness ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... remote a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that opinion'—this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... truth and of salvation; and that, as she was not sufficiently informed in such high matters, the Bishop and the Inquisitor offered her the choice of one or more of the assessors to act as her counsel." The accused, in presence of this assembly, in which she did not descry a single friendly face, mildly answered: "For what you admonish me as to my good, and concerning our faith, I thank you; as to the counsel you offer me, I have no intention to forsake the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... pride of Spain, and dragged the humbled banner of France in triumph at his stem. He was born yonder, towards the west, and of him there is a glorious relic in that old town; in its dark flint guildhouse, the roof of which you can just descry rising above that maze of buildings, in the upper hall of justice, is a species of glass shrine, in which the relic is to be seen; a sword of curious workmanship, the blade is of keen Toledan steel, the heft of ivory and mother-of-pearl. 'Tis the sword of Cordova, won in bloodiest ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Where were the ships?—Where could they be found? All our telescopes, directed over the sea could not descry a single friendly sail Bonaparte, I affirm, would have regarded such an event as a real favour of fortune. It was, and—I am glad to have to say it, this sole idea, this sole hope, which made him brave, for three days, the murmurs ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Shepherds look, What sudden blaze of majesty Is that which we from hence descry Too divine to be mistook: This this is she To whom our vows and wishes bend, Heer our ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of the many points of elevation that command a view of this desolate strath, you may descry, towards its western extremity, a small, rude, but massive stone bridge, grey with age; for it was erected in the time of that laird of Assynt who rendered himself for ever infamous by betraying the Duke of Montrose, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... morn, the baron climb'd the tower, To view afar the Scottish power, Encamped on Flodden edge: The white pavilions made a show, Like remnants of the winter snow, Along the dusky ridge. Lord Marmion look'd:—at length his eye Unusual movement might descry. Their ranks inclining, wheeling, bending, Now drawing back, and now descending, The skilful Marmion well could know, They watched the motions ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... at Berwick no longer look out from the castle walls to descry the glitter of Southern spears. The bell-tower from which the alarm was sounded is now silent—the only bell heard within the precincts of the castle being that of the railway porter, announcing the arrival ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... for being compelled to perceive it! Still you are right—it is better to live, even in anguish and distress, than to die in anguish and distress; for he who lives has still a future before him, and is able to strive in it for revenge and compensation for the past. Let us descry our immediate future from the hill yonder, and there decide on ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of his countrymen burst upon his sight, his heart heaved with an emotion quite new to him. He beheld with admiration the regular disposition of the intrenchments, the long intersected tented streets, and the warlike appearance of the soldiers, whom he could descry, even at that distance, by the beams of a bright evening sun ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... repeated in the sparkling crystal and glittering silver on the flower-decked tables. All about her Billy saw flushed-faced men, and bright-eyed women, laughing, chatting, and clinking together their slender-stemmed wine glasses. But nowhere, as she looked about her, could Billy descry the ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... village. We had entered a ravine and came on a cluster of wigwams to the lee side of a bluff. Dusk hid our approach; and the absence of the dogs that usually infest Indian camps told us that these fellows were marauders. Smoke curled up from the poles crisscrossed at the tepee forks, but we could descry no figures against the tent-walls as in summer, for heavy skins of the chase overlaid the parchment. All was silence but in one wigwam. This was an enormous structure, built on poles long as a mast, with moose-hides scattered so thickly upon it that not a glint of firelight came through except the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... commonly misunderstood phrases in the language is "the Spanish Main." To the ordinary individual it suggests the Caribbean Sea. Although Shakespeare in "Othello," makes one of the gentlemen of Cyprus say that he "cannot 'twixt heaven and main descry a sail," and, therefore, with other poets, gives warrant to the application of the word to the ocean, "main" really refers to the other element. The Spanish Main was that portion of South American territory distinguished from Cuba, Hispaniola and the other islands, because ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... counted the best part of San Francisco. It is there that the millionaires are gathered together vying with each other in display. From thence, looking down over the business wards of the city, we can descry a building with a little belfry, and that is the Stock Exchange, the heart of San Francisco: a great pump we might call it, continually pumping up the savings of the lower quarters into the pockets of the millionaires upon the hill. But these same thoroughfares that enjoy for awhile so elegant a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Egyptian marble, ascends to the fourth story, forming a balcony at each, where ottomans are placed, and from which a fine view of the curvature presents itself, from whence those who have ascended may descry those ascending. On the second story is a corridor, with moulded juttings and fretwork overhead; these are hung with festoons of jasmines and other delicate flowers, extending its whole length, and lighted by globular ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... eagerly, along the curves of the river, the grey remains of the fabled Tower of Julius, and the walls, gates, and turrets, that rose by the stream, or above the dense mass of silent roofs; then it strained hard to descry the tops of the more distant masts of the infant navy, fostered under Alfred, the far-seeing, for the future civilisation of wastes unknown, and the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to speak: my voice was thick with sighs As in a dream. Dimly I could descry The stern, black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes, Waiting to see ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... 'the emerald girdle of the rose'—I know not what it means, unless Sah-luma considers the green calyx of the flower a 'girdle,' in which case his wits must be far gone, for no shape of girdle can any sane man descry in the common natural protection of a bud before it blooms! There was a phrase too concerning nightingales,—and the gods know we have heard enough and too much of those over-praised birds! ..." Here he was interrupted by one of his frequent ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... gaze on The battle from the far-off mountain's crest, But in our hearts to bear our fiery blazon, An Olaf's cross upon a mailed breast,— To look afar across the fields of flight, Tho' pent within the mazes of its might,— Beyond the mirk descry one glimmer still Of glory—that's ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Her hurried departure was explained by a casual "I guessed I'd better," which Mr and Mrs Hilliard accepted as sufficient reason for a girl who had no ties, and more money than she knew how to use. Even Pixie's lynx-eyes failed to descry any sign of heart-break. But when the meal was over and the two girls retired upstairs for a private chat, Honor's jaunty manners fell from her like a cloak, and she crouched in a corner of the sofa, looking suddenly tired and worn. For the moment, however, it was not of her own affairs that she ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry 10 O'er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue Or ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... itself, we may therein descry great motives to bounty. Thus to employ our riches, is really the best use they are capable of; not only the most innocent, most worthy, most plausible; but the most safe, most pleasant, most advantageous, and consequently ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... banish the nameless forms that haunt the dim borders of insanity, he would sit in that valley for hours, regarding the wider-spread valley below him, in which he knew every height and hollow, and, with his exceptionally keen sight, he could descry signs of life where another would have beheld but an everyway dead level. Not a live thing, it seemed almost, could spread wing or wag tail, but Steenie would become thereby aware of its presence. Kirsty, boastful to her parents of the ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... soil rises gradually to a low series of ridges, from the top of which, at some distance from Hishi, the eye ranges far off toward the plains and the basin of the salt lakes. These ridges are convenient posts of observation. Scouts placed there can descry the approach of hostile Apaches. The latter roam up and down the plains, following the immense herds of buffalo, and prey upon the village Indians whenever the latter present any opportunity ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... ascended, and, when it was high over the town of Shopton, Tom headed the craft due west. Looking down he tried to descry Mary Nestor, in her carriage, but the trees were in the way, their interlocking branches hiding the girl. Tom did see crowds of other persons, though, thronging the streets of Shopton, for, though the young inventor had made many flights, there was always a novelty about them, ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... to be had at Budgett's. As custom increased, so did envy and accusation. Many scrupled not to declare, that they sold cheaper than they bought, and therefore must soon come to an end; yet they went on, year by year, in steady and rapid increase.... He already seemed to descry in the distance the possibility of a great wholesale establishment; but this must be reached by little and little. He would not attempt what he could not accomplish. Any sudden bound, therefore, by which he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... sent a kind reply, For CAPEL thought he could descry An admirable plan To study all their ways and laws— (But not their lady-fish, because He ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... seemed to threaten their advance, but by keeping close to the shore, they held their way, and on the 24th they encamped on a fine stream of water running through a mesa at the foot of a sierra, whence looking across the sea, they could descry Santa Catalina Island. This was San Juan Capistrano, and here they rested on the 25th. On the 28th they reached the Santa Ana river, near the present town of that name; a violent shock of earthquake which they experienced caused them to name the river Jesus de los Temblores[19]. July ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... in this or that man of prominence. What we should have talked about if he had not thus held the floor I could not guess. I had noted that there were upon a ponderous table six popular novels, as many magazines, and piles of the great dailies. Nowhere could I descry even a small collection of books of the sort which may furnish material for conversation. I tried to imagine the Philosopher drawing a certain beloved book of essays from his pocket, settling himself comfortably with his back to the drop-light, and beginning to read aloud to us, as he is ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... graziers who went on the way, But unto the Cripple for passage did pay. And every brave merchant that he did descry, He emptied their purses ere ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... shall mind of man Descry Thy dazzling throne, And pierce and find Thee out, and scan Where Thou dost ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... upon it stood even, the tops of its magenta flowers as level as a lake—it was, in fact, a lake of faded crimson lying between shores of luxuriant green. The cart-ruts went right down into the flame-flowers, and she thought she could descry where they rose from them on the other side. Evidently the blossoming had taken place since the last cart had passed over, and no doubt many miles intervened between this and the next dwelling-house. Nothing but the thought ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... Wichehalse, with a sudden start of intuition, saw what her father had been unable to descry or even dream. The worthy baron's time of life for fervid thoughts was over; for him despairing love was but a poet's fiction, or a joke against a pale young lady. But Albert felt from his own case, from burning jealousy suppressed, ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... possession with our arms and encampments. Britain is discovered and subdued. How often on a march, when embarrassed with mountains, bogs and rivers, have I heard the bravest among you exclaim, 'When shall we descry the enemy? when shall we be led to the field of battle?' At length they are unharbored from their retreats; your wishes and your valor have now free scope; and every circumstance is equally propitious to the victor, and ruinous to the vanquished. For, the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... break away from the bonds that limit and restrain most Red brides? This is the question that has troubled ethnologists since the North was first invaded by the, scientific. We think we have found the answer. Along the shores of Fond du Lac we descry a long-legged wader, the phalarope. This is the militant suffragette of all bird-dom. Madame Phalarope lays her own eggs (this depository act could scarcely be done by proxy), but in this culminates and terminates all her responsibilities connubial and maternal,—"this, no more." ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... at the beginning of a new century, stand with shaded eyes, gazing into the future, striving to descry the outlines of the shadowy figures which loom before us in the distance, nothing seems of so gracious a promise, as the outline we seem to discern of a condition of human life in which a closer union than the ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... seas from Teuedos arise! The frighted Neptune seems to seek the shore, With such a noise, with such a dreadful roar: As in a silent night, when, from afar, The dismal sound of wrecks invades the ear: When rolling on the waves two mighty snakes, Unhappy Troy descry'd; whose circling stroaks, Had drove the swelling surges on the rocks. Like lofty ships they on the billows ride, And with rais'd breasts the foaming flood divide: Their crests they brandish and red eye-balls raise, That all around dispence a sulphurous blaze. To shore advancing, now ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... table of my little library a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and English journals and periodicals—whatever may be their worth? Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our heights I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hill where Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them. At the foot of it I was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me. And so one must ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling work of Maggie Marigold, and are immediately submerged "in a weak, washy, everlasting flood" of insipidity, twaddle, bosh, and heart-rending sorrow, you do not shut the book with a jerk. Why not? Because in the dismal distance you dimly descry two figures swimming, floating, struggling towards each other, and a languid soupon of curiosity detains you till you have ascertained, that, after infinite distress, Adolphus and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and west, we descry dark mountains rolled up against the sky. These are the twin ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Long spurs trend towards the river, and in places appear to close up the valley. They add to the expression of many a beautiful landscape that opens ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... that the one led to glory and fame, While the other fulfilled not his heart-cherished aim; But the scales of mortality darkened his eye, And the thing I saw plainly he could not descry. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... passed the latter part of the night. Whilst replying, as ever courteously—for in the look and bearing of Maximus there was that senatorius decor which Pliny noted in a great Roman of another time—his straining eyes seemed to descry a sail in the quarter he continually watched. Was it only a fishing boat? Raised upon the couch, he gazed long and fixedly. Impossible as yet to be sure whether he saw the expected bark; but the sail seemed to ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... the literary Kazi with exemplary impartiality and severity; "denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more real"vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camelias, and in not a few English ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... one great distant existing glacier was marked by two waving parallel lines of lateral moraines, which formed, as it were, a vast raised gutter, or channel, ascending from perhaps 16,000 feet elevation, till it was hidden behind a spur in the valley. With a telescope I could descry many similar smaller glaciers, with huge accumulations of shingle at their terminations; but this great one was beautifully seen by the naked eye, and formed a very curious feature ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... with the king and inhabitants thereof, hee named it Seine, because it is very like vnto the Riuer of Seine in France. From this Riuer wee retired toward our shippes, where being arriued, we trimmed our sailes to saile further toward the North, and to descry the singularities of the coast. But wee had not sayled any great way before wee discovered another very faire Riuer, which caused vs to cast anker ouer against it, and to trimme out two Boates to goe to search it out. Wee ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... We too, O chiefs, of vulture race, Our line from Vinata may trace, Condemned, because we wrought a deed Of shame, on flesh and blood to feed. But all Suparna's(771) wondrous powers And length of keenest sight are ours, That we a hundred leagues away Through fields of air descry our prey. Now from this spot my gazing eye Can Ravan and the dame descry. Devise some plan to overleap This barrier of the briny deep. Find the Videhan lady there, And joyous to your home repair. Me too, O Vanars, to the side Of Varun's(772) home the ocean, guide, Where due libations shall ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... gradually in the east was a pale glimmer that, growing, showed great, black masses of torn cloud scudding fast above our reeling mastheads and all about us a troubled sea. But as the light grew, look how I might, nowhere could I descry aught of any ship upon that ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... anxiously both officers and men scanned the western horizon towards which they were steering. Each one had a pecuniary motive for wishing to be the first to descry the New Continent, King Ferdinand having promised a reward of 10,000 maravedis, or 400 pounds sterling, to the first discoverer. The latter days of the month of September were enlivened by the presence of numerous ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... the act of rushing off to pack your things—one moment: this essay has yet to be finished. We have yet to glance at those two extremes between which the mean is good guestship. Far to the right of the good guest, we descry the parasite; far to the left, the churl again. Not the same churl, perhaps. We do not know that Corin's master was ever sampled as a guest. I am inclined to call yonder speck Dante—Dante Alighieri, of whom we do know that he received during his exile much hospitality ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... boughs of a spreading pine in a few minutes, and could descry a broad plain, with tents scattered here and there; still farther on the broad uplands frame buildings with a red and white flag floating to the wind could be seen. Back of all this he could make out a broad expanse of water and a few ungainly craft, lazily moving to the current ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... own? How wilt thou say Unto thy brother, let me take away The mote that's in thine eye, when yet 'tis plain The beam that's in thine own doth still remain? First cast away the beam, thou hypocrite, From thine own eye, so shall thy clearer sight The better be enabled to descry, And pluck the mote out of thy brother's eye. Give not to dogs the things that are divine, Neither cast ye your pearls before the swine Lest that they should their feet them trample under, And turn upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Africans of Fez (Leo Africanus); while Maoris use a drop of blood (Taylor), Egyptians use ink (Lane), and Australian savages employ a ball of polished stone, into which the seer 'puts himself' to descry the results ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... of the wind was terrible; and only by creeping forward between the gusts was it possible to pass among the sand-hills; and now the salt spray flew up from the sea like down, while the ocean foamed like a roaring cataract towards the beach. It required a practised eye to descry the vessel out in the offing. The vessel was a noble brig. The billows now lifted it over the reef, three or four cables' lengths out of the usual channel. It drove towards the land, struck against the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... made no change of laws, And senates heard before they judged a cause; 60 How wouldst thou shake at Britain's modish tribe, Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing gibe! Attentive, truth and nature to descry, And pierce each scene with philosophic eye, To thee were solemn toys or empty show The robes of pleasure, and the veils of woe: All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain, Whose joys are causeless, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the Baron climbed the tower, To view afar the Scottish power Encamped on Flodden edge: The white pavilions made a show, Like remnants of the winter snow, Along the dusky ridge. Long Marmion looked: at length his eye Unusual movement might descry Amid the shifting lines: The Scottish host drawn out appears, For flashing on the hedge of spears The eastern sunbeam shines. Their front now deepening, now extending; Their flank inclining, wheeling, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... traveller in the desert, after a day of scorching glow and a night of breathless heat, descry the distant trees which mark the longed-for well-spring in the emerald oasis, which seems to beckon with its branching palms to the converging caravans, to come and slake their fever-thirst, and escape from ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... exceeding weary and faint, not knowing how far off we should find any Tartars, on the sudden, there came two horses running towards vs, which we tooke with great ioy, and our guide and interpreter mounted vpon their backes, to see, how far off they could descry any people. At length vpon the fourth day of our iourney, hauing found some inhabitants, we reioyced like sea faring men, which had escaped out of a dangerous tempest, and had newly recouered the hauen. Then hauing taken fresh horses, and oxen, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... of mud, which ought, properly, to have been navigated with boats. The whole cavalcade always moved under the charge of an officer, and many were the anxious looks that we took with our spy-glasses, from a hill overlooking the road, on the days of their expected return, each endeavouring to descry his own. Mine came back to me twice; but "the pitcher that goes often to the well" was verified in his third trip, for—he ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... make out the formal but hazy stakes and posts, aligned in the distance to the end of sight; and here and there the swellings and round ink-blots of the dugouts. In some sections of trench one could sometimes even descry black lines, like a dark wall between other walls, and these lines stirred—they were the workmen of destruction. A whole region in the north, on higher ground, was a forest flown away, leaving only a stranded bristling of masts, like ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... immeasured dome, He holds unshared the silence of the sky. Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry The eagle's empire and the falcon's home — Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; His hazards on the sea of morning lie; Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh Where cold ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... notion of concerning himself with the assassin's apprehension and punishment did P. Sybarite waste that moment of hasty survey. His eyes were only keen and eager to descry the yellow Western Union message; and when he had looked everywhere else, his glance dropped to his feet and found it there—a torn and crumpled envelope with its enclosure flattened out and apart ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... train of thought was the sudden suspicion that this very being was at that moment in close proximity. Unconsciously, Harvey rose to the sitting position and looked around, half expecting to descry the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... a lover's care? Could guess the fraud, the coming change descry, And in the midst of safety feared a snare. Now wicked Fame hath bid the rumour fly Of mustering crews. Poor Dido, crazed thereby, Raves like a Thyiad, when the frenzied rout With orgies hurry to Cithaeron high, And ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... heights had gained Whence the wide realms of Nature we descry; In vain their eyes our longing fathers strained To scan with wondering gaze the summits high That far beneath their ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in broad dimensions strike our sight; Millions behind, in the remoter skies, Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes; And when our wearied eyes want farther strength To pierce the void's immeasurable length Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly, And still remoter flaming worlds descry; But even an Angel's comprehensive thought Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought; Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought, Swallowed and lost in Infinite, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... scraps of schoolroom learning came back to my mind. That the stars were all suns, surrounded perhaps in their turn by worlds as large or larger than our own. Worlds beyond worlds, and others farther still, which no man might number or even descry. And about the distance of those wonderful suns too,—that one, for instance, at which I was looking,—what was it that I had been told? That our world was not yet peopled, perhaps not yet formed, when the actual spot of light which now struck my ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the favoured companion of princes, yet he afterwards became the victim of persecution, and spent some of his last hours within the walls of a prison; and though the Almighty granted him, as it were, a new sight to descry unknown worlds in the obscurity of space, yet the eyes which were allowed to witness such wonders, were themselves doomed to ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... and repose themselves, the sun coming round and drawing up the vapors from below, the gross foggy air that was now gathered and condensed above formed in a cloud upon the mountains; and, all the under places being clear and open, the river Crimesus appeared to them again, and they could descry the enemies passing over it, first with their formidable four horse chariots of war, and then ten thousand footmen bearing white shields, whom they guessed to be all Carthaginians, from the splendor of their arms, and the slowness and order of their ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... friends, 'tis fit and clear That each should consider what's most near. But as the general says, say I, One should always the whole of a case descry. We call ourselves all the Friedlander's troops; The burgher, on whom we're billeted, stoops Our wants to supply, and cooks our soups. His ox, or his horse, the peasant must chain To our baggage-car, and may grumble ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... but it was light enough to see that the ship had struck upon a reef. Straining their eyes, the alarmed passengers could descry land. Indeed, the reef was an ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... promise to return, And putting off thy ashy shroud At length disperse this sorrow's cloud. But woe is me! the longest date Too narrow is to calculate These empty hopes: never shall I Be so much blest as to descry A glimpse of thee, till that day come Which shall the earth to cinders doom, And a fierce fever must calcine The body of this world—like thine, My little world! That fit of fire Once off, our bodies shall aspire To our souls' bliss: ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... horizon; looking up, I shuddered as I beheld in the east all those splendid hues that announce the rising sun. At this hour, when all natural shadows are seen in their full proportions, not a fence or a shelter of any kind could I descry in this open country, and I was not alone! I cast a glance at my companion, and shuddered again—it was the man in the grey coat himself! He laughed at my surprise, and said, without giving me time to speak: "You see, according to the fashion of this world, mutual ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... when at last a tolerably suitable light was procured Pollux threw himself on a stool, straddled his legs, craned his head forward as far as his neck would allow, looking, with his hooked nose, like a vulture that strives to descry his distant prey-cast his eyes down, raised them again to take in something fresh, and after a long gaze looked down again while his fingers and nails moved over the surface of the wax-figure, sinking into the plastic material, applying ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the ground whereon these woes do lie; But the true ground of all these piteous woes We cannot without circumstance descry. ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... upraised Fraternal banners against a common foe, Against mine enemy, yon crafty villain. Ye sons of Slavs, speedily will I lead Your dread battalions to the longed-for conflict. But soft! Methinks among you I descry New faces. ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... was not without its fascination for her. Leaning over the side of his dory, the sea girl would shiver with delight to descry those dismal forests over which they sailed, dark and dizzying masses full of wavering black holes, through which sometimes a blunt-nosed bronze fish sank like a bolt, and again where sting ray darted, and jellyfish palpitated with that wavering of fringe which produced ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... outside of Versailles—an adventure that had been a novel and delightful break in the prescribed routine of her much-chaperoned life. She crossed the waiting-room to a window and, holding aside her veil, looked out. At first she could descry only a few dim lights, and these blurred in her sight. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she saw a superbly built horse standing near the window. Beyond was a bare square. Or, if it was a ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... mercy!" said De Vaux. "Yet would I rather than my best horse I had taken that watch myself. There is mystery in it, young man, as a plain man may descry, though he cannot see through it. Cowardice? Pshaw! No coward ever fought as I have seen thee do. Treachery? I cannot think traitors die in their treason so calmly. Thou hast been trained from thy post by some deep guile—some well-devised stratagem—the cry of some ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... for more than three months, when, about the middle of June, our attention in the cellars was distracted from doling out food, as that of the wretches we served was distracted from eating their scanty rations, by an unusual uproar in the street outside of our windows. We could descry, in the morning sunlight, military trappings, tattered cloaks, ragged tunics, dingy kilt-straps, sheenless helmets, unkempt beards, and brawny arms in the crowds which packed the narrow streets. The mob seemed made up of rough frontier ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... will show, and in a very singular manner, that every version, without exception, which came from Carey's hands, has a value affixed to it which the present generation, living as it were too near an object, is not yet able to estimate or descry. Fifty years hence the character of this extraordinary and humble man will ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Mayor's unwieldy State; Where change of Fav'rites made no Change of Laws, And Senates heard before they judg'd a Cause; How wouldst thou shake at Britain's modish Tribe, Dart the quick Taunt, and edge the piercing Gibe? Attentive Truth and Nature to descry, And pierce each Scene with Philosophic Eye. To thee were solemn Toys or empty Shew, The Robes of Pleasure and the Veils of Woe: All aid the Farce, and all thy Mirth maintain, Whose Joys are causeless, or whose Griefs are vain. [Footnote ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... the morning, the whole army, in order of battle, began to descry the enemy from the rising grounds, about a mile from Naseby, and moved towards them. They were drawn up on a little ascent in a large common fallow field, in one line extended from one side of the field to the other, the field something more than a mile over, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... seized him by the hair, and turned him over on his back, then threw myself upon my back, and dragged his head up high enough upon my breast to lift his mouth out of water, supporting him and myself by vigorous strokes with my feet. Looking round, as we rose on the crest of a sea, I could dimly descry the brig through the rapidly increasing gloom; and to my horror she appeared to be a long distance away. I had time only, however, for a momentary glance, when we sank into the trough, and I lost sight of her. A few seconds afterwards I caught sight of her again, and this time she was displaying ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... soul of youth should cry, "Man builds his temples 'tween me and the face Of Him whom I would seek; I cannot trace His purpose in their shadow, nor descry ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and the liar was standing in his night-shirt by the bed. Samuel's sleepy eyes could just descry him in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... appeared at the ground-floor window, accompanied by a female of commanding appearance. He pointed us out to her. Behind them we could dimly descry a white tablecloth, a tea cozy and ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... very completely at Gottingen, was led to believe that not merely the debris strewn along its path, but the comet itself must have been in immediate proximity to the earth during their appearance.[1226] If so, it might be possible, he thought, to descry it as it retreated in the diametrically opposite direction from that in which it had approached. On November 30, accordingly, he telegraphed to Mr. Pogson, the Madras astronomer, "Biela touched earth November 27; ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... unclosed his wakeful eye, Up rose the sexton of that place profane, And missed the image, where it used to lie, Each where he sough in grief, in fear, in vain; Then to the king his loss he gan descry, Who sore enraged killed him for his pain; And straight conceived in his malicious wit, Some Christian bade ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... is she!" Seems written everywhere Unto me. But to friends and nodding neighbours, Fellow-wights in lot and labours, Who descry the times as I, No such lucid ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... acting, as she replied by gesture to the question of the king, was perfect in its realization of the simplicity of Elsa. Nevertheless I, at any rate, as I searched her features through the lorgnon that Mrs. Sullivan had silently handed to me, could descry beneath the actress the girl—the spoilt and splendid child of Good Fortune, who in the very spring of youth had tasted the joy of sovereign power, that unique and terrible dominion over mankind ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... with delusive expectations! The end may be according to your hope—whether it will be so (which God grant!) is as inscrutable for angels as for men. But to descry that great struggles are yet to come is within reach of human foresight—that great tribulations must needs accompany them—and that these may be—you know not how ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... number of stagnant creeks and back-streams, a sort of knot in the interminable loops and windings of the delta. Here and there in the line of tree-tops was a gap showing where some waterway came through. Here and there, too, I could descry a tiny beach of mud a yard or two wide, with a hut and a canoe tied to the mangrove roots, and black, naked people crouched on their hams in the shadows cast by the forest, engaged in their—to me—mysterious business of living. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... diet, the pemmican, was practically left untouched, as for the time being dog had completely taken its place. There was thus no great sign of depression to be noticed when we came back into the tent after finishing our work, and had to while away the time. As I went in, I could descry Wisting a little way off kneeling on the ground, and engaged in the manufacture of cutlets. The dogs stood in a ring round him, and looked on with interest. The north-east wind whistled and howled, the air was thick with driving snow, and Wisting was not to be envied. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... to the known. Cf. the first essay "On the Conversation of Authors": "Coleridge withholds his tribute of applause from every person, in whom any mortal but himself can descry the least glimpse of understanding. He would be thought to look farther into a millstone than any body else. He would have others see with his eyes, and take their opinions from him on trust, in spite of their senses. The more obscure and defective ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... given a wide berth, as giving warning of rocks underneath; but in the light-draught gig they have no fear of these, and with the swell still tossing them about, they might be even glad to get in among the kelp—certainly there would be but that between it and the shore. They can descry waveless water, seemingly as tranquil as ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... was such a scene as I may not paint; for you must know that your Indian hero is not content to kill. Like the ghoul, he must mutilate. Of all the Indian band attacked by our forces, not one escaped except the girl, whose form I could descry nowhere ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... within the precincts of our smiling village there must be a chord attuned to echo back in voiceless melody the brightness and the beauty around? Yet oh! how many there may be, even here, whose sun of happiness hath set on earth forever! How many whose tear-dimmed glance can descry naught in the far future but a weary waste—whose life-springs all are dried—whose up-springing hopes all withered by the blighting touch ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... his being "God manifest in the flesh"? Now what, if one of his admirers had written panegyrical memorials of him; and his character, therein described, was so faultless, that a stranger to him was not able to descry any moral defeat whatever in it? Is such a stranger bound to believe him to be the Divine Standard of morals, unless he can put his finger on certain passages of the book which imply weaknesses and faults? And is it insulting a man, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... violento, -a violent, impetuous, furious. virar tack, put about. virgen adj. virgin, chaste. virgen f. virgin. virginal adj. virginal. virtud f. power, virtue. visin f. vision, sight, apparition, phantom. vislumbrar descry, glimpse. vista f. sight, glance, eye, appearance, look. vvido, -a vivid, bright. vivienda f. abode. viviente adj. living. viviente m. living being. vivir live; vive Dios as God lives. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Bay there is the Island of Corregidor, situated 27 miles south-west of the city, towards which the traveller glances in vain, expecting to descry something of a modern fortress, bristling with artillery of the latest type which, if there, might hold the only channels leading to the capital against a hostile fleet. The anchorage for steamers is still half a mile ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
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