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More "Grope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other new members and worn the club colors in his buttonhole to be admired by the girls and envied by the other fellows. But now there was none of that charmed fellowship for him. He nourished his feeling of bitterness and hatred until his scheming mind began to grope for some way of spoiling the success of the play. As usual, he turned to his friend, Abraham Goldstein, who was about the only one who had not shown any coolness. Together they watched their chance. The play progressed toward perfection, the dress rehearsal had ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... to have a shave," said Dennis; "and I say, Wetherby, you might grope in the kit-bag and put a refill in that spare torch of mine. I've got an idea it may be useful to-night. Oh, ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... with eyes that saw not. At the sound of Mordaunt's voice he started, and began to grope on the floor for the keys as ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... that the wind-flower would grope its way Out of the darkness into the day; That the rain would fall and the sun would shine, And the rainbow hang in the sky for ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... and heavy seas are not dangerous, whilst it is not wise to grope one's way between two coasts. One is sure to be detained for some time in the strait, but this delay is not time wholly lost. One meets with water in abundance, wood and shell-fish, and occasionally very good fish. And I am decidedly of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of myriad lines, an unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage, tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed, the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way along the bridle-path that led ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and well-meaning—stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all unconscious of needing pity. Perhaps one out of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... painful for me to grope in the dark, guided only by our books in the treatment of the sick—to prescribe according to this or that fanciful view of the nature of diseases, substances that only owed to mere opinion their place in the Materia Medica. I had conscientious ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... believe in you so humbly and so ignorantly. You are always safe though, for our consciences are usually smarting under the remembrance of some transgression which might have hindered you if it did not. Poor humanity," she added in a tone of compassion. "It has to grope its way ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... read her letter to Glen, suppressing that final page, together with sundry questions and references to himself, she could never have dreamed. It is ignorance always that baffles, as we grope our way in the world. And Beth had not yet entirely lost all trust ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... philosophic. When, in Plato, Socrates asks the conceited sophist Hippias, what is the meaning of the beautiful, the latter is at once ready with a superficial answer, but is afterwards compelled by the ironical objections of Socrates to give up his former definition, and to grope about him for other ideas, till, ashamed at last and irritated at the superiority of the sage who has convicted him of his ignorance, he is forced to quit the field: this dialogue is not merely philosophically instructive, but arrests the attention like a drama ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... "How could I see in the dark?" sleepily, even fretfully, I asked myself. And yet, was the tent dark?...It had been, I remembered that. I remembered that Anthony had got to bed first, and I had extinguished the two candles on the washhand-stand. Afterward, I had had to grope my way to the bed. Now, however, there was a light...a very faint, rather curious light. There seemed to be only a square of it, a square sloped off at the top. It was opposite my eyes, which really were open now, I felt sure. I couldn't be dreaming this. It was like a queer-shaped window ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... thirty-three people. They ascended the St. Joseph River to find a portage to the head waters of the Illinois. This brought them within the present state of Indiana; and when they had reached that curve of the river where South Bend now stands, they left St. Joseph to grope for the Theakiki, or Kankakee, a branch called by ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... people—well, and what about them? Their greediness is immense, and yet they purposely whirl about in business that they might not see themselves. They hide themselves, the devils. Try to free them from this bustle—what will happen? Like blind men they will grope about hither and thither; they'll lose their mind—they'll go mad! I know it! Do you think that business brings happiness into man? No, that's not so—something else is missing here. This is not everything yet! The river flows that men may sail on it; the ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... the rope. With his chisel he had but little difficulty in prising open the casement. His companions were not long in joining him. Once inside the house they made their way with great caution. They had no means of striking a light, and were forced to grope about with their swords in front of them to prevent their touching any piece of furniture, till at last they discovered the door. It was not fastened, and passing through, and, as before, feeling the floor carefully ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... and began to grope for the matchbox. But this passed away. The face of Death grew mild, and then seemed to smile. He lay down on his side, his face turned from the open window, composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and fell softly into ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... hard to live alone in the dark, confusing the day and night; dropping to sleep through sheer weariness at mid-day, and rising restless in the chill of the dawn. At first Dick, on his awakenings, would grope along the corridors of the chambers till he heard some one snore. Then he would know that the day had not yet come, and return ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... greater than ever; more slowly too, because along a path, dark, narrow, unknown, shaggy with thorns. They have to grope every inch of their way; all the while in surprise at the Indians having chosen it. There must be a reason, though none of them can think what ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... swoop in upon its defeat. The woman examined it, found that it was all but done, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. Then she made anxious haste to empty and replace the last of the birchen cups before she should be left in darkness to grope her way ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... entered the house and began to grope their way up the narrow, winding staircase. They could make only slow progress, not only because of the absence of light, but owing to the rotten condition of the stairs. Indescribably filthy and littered with all sorts of rubbish and broken glass, in some places the boards ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... succeeded in freeing himself from his bonds. He then essayed to examine and explore the dismal pit into which he had been thrown—which, in the intense darkness that prevailed, was a task of no little danger. However, he cautiously began to grope about, and soon became satisfied that the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... a torch for feet that grope Down Truth's dim trail; to bear for wistful eyes Comfort of light; to bid great beacons blaze, And kindle altar fires of sacrifice. Let me set souls aflame with quenchless zeal For high endeavors, causes true and high. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... horse bak, Al sodeinliche upon him brak And hath him be the bridel sesed, And seide: "O thou, which hast desesed 3010 The Court of France be thi wrong, Now schalt thou singe an other song: Thin enterdit and thi sentence Ayein thin oghne conscience Hierafter thou schalt fiele and grope. We pleigne noght ayein the Pope, For thilke name is honourable, Bot thou, which hast be deceivable And tricherous in al thi werk, Thou Bonefas, thou proude clerk, 3020 Misledere of the Papacie, Thi false bodi schal abye And soffre that it hath deserved." Lo, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... away. The LORD shall smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled alway, and there shall be none to save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... or some form of athletics will start us to thinking. Self-analysis teaches us to see ourselves in a true light without embellishments or undue optimism. We can gauge our chances in no better way. If we grope in the darkness we haven't much of a chance. "Taking stock" throws a searchlight on the dark spots and points the way ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... waist by a piece of string. The water for the most part was only two or three fathoms deep, but sometimes it would be as much as eight fathoms,—which was the greatest depth to which the men cared to go. When he reached the bottom, the diver would grope about for shells, and generally return to the surface with a couple, held in his left hand and hugged against his breast; the right hand was kept free and directed his movements in swimming. Each diver seldom remained under water more than one minute, and on coming to the surface ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... of Job. Where else in the Scriptures is there a more striking picture of the fate that overtakes those who yield to sin? "They meet with darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night" (Job V, 14). And further on: "They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" (Job XII, 25). I read these beautiful passages over and over again. They ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... darker than they had found it on their previous visit. Jeremy and his father had to grope in the pitchy blackness for the coins that Bob held out to them. Their pockets were about half-full when there came a whispered exclamation from ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... but now all's dark, And I am fain to grope: Were it not for one little spark I should be out ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... And, to no rules and orders tied, Roughly deny to be her guide, 830 She must renounce Decorum's plan, And get back when, and how she can; As parsons, who, without pretext, As soon as mention'd, quit their text, And, to promote sleep's genial power, Grope in the dark for half an hour, Give no more reason (for we know Reason is vulgar, mean, and low) Why they come back (should it befall That ever they come back at all) 840 Into the road, to end their rout, Than they can give why they ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... be more stultifying to the musical instinct of the child. For instance, the plan generally pursued is to let the child grope over the white keys of the piano keyboard and play exercises in the scale of C, until he begins to feel that the whole musical world lies in the scale of C, with the scales of F and G as the frontiers. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... inquisitorial buildings, Jesuit colleges, and gathered such vast stores of gold and silver. All this time the poor people were being reduced to the utmost poverty, and every right and opportunity for personal and civil advancement was taken from them. They were left to grope on in intellectual darkness. They could have no commerce with foreign nations. If they made any advance in national wealth, it was drained away for royal and ecclesiastical tribute. Superstition reigned under the false teachings of a corrupt priesthood, while the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... want to know the love of Christ, first of all, that love must purify your souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of this, that only the single eye is full of light, and that they who are not 'saints' grope in the dark even at midday, and whilst drenched by the sunshine of His love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we get that miserable and mysterious tragedy of men and women walking through life, as many of you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of Christ's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... one thing that burthens me a good deal in my patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under it, however, with much composure. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he continued to grope his way almost in darkness, but soon a light began to shine before him, which grew bigger and bigger as he advanced, and he perceived that he was coming to another mouth of the cave, leading to an open but very rough country. The Prince ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... other? And who is to distinguish such a process from the state of war? In such international—or, I should say, interparochial—differences, the nearest we can come towards understanding is to appreciate the cloud of ambiguity in which all parties grope— ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other than human passions. But how, except through divination, can these passions, which grow out of the deepest sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be estimated which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and uncertain ground, where one has to grope one's way, Napoleon moves with almost absolute certainty; he moves promptly. First of all, he studies himself; indeed, to find one's way into another's soul requires, preliminarily, that one should dive ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... basic problems on the planet of his origin than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for the stars. ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Wright pulled himself to his feet, and with one shaking hand on the table felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Park Corner. Both of us knew the way well; but we lost it half a dozen times, and his spirit seemed to rise as the fog thickened. "Isn't this like life," he said, after one of our blunders: "a deep yellow fog all round, with a dim light here and there shining through. You grope your way on from one lamp to another, and you go up wrong streets and back again; but you get home at last—there's always light enough for that." After a short pause he said, quite abruptly, "Tom, do you ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... was continued for years afterwards. Of course, the system was a very imperfect one. There was no one to select books for me, nor to direct my mind in its search after knowledge. I was an humble apprentice boy, inclined from habit to shrink from observation, and preferring to grope about in the dark for what I was in search off, rather than intrude my wants and wishes upon others. Day after day I worked and thought, and night after night I read and studied, while other boys were seeking pleasure and recreation. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... superlatively good impersonation in the Reading)—"Yes; first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you get's to the top of the stairs"—with which the dirty slipshod in black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat, but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the tray of glasses, they were very soon followed, one after another, by the remainder of ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... him," he said with a sigh, "was at Holmes's seventieth-birthday breakfast, in Boston. But then his mind was like a splendid bridge with one span missing; he had—what is it you doctors call it?—aphasia, yes, that is it—he had to grope for his words. But what a serene, godlike air! He was like a plucked eagle tarrying in the midst of a group of lesser birds. He would sweep the assembly with that searching glance, as much as to say, 'What is all this buzzing ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... would be free from error, founded as it is upon a principle new to the world, or only known as having totally failed in the past through the clumsiness of its originators and subsequent custodians—a system which had little aid from the experiences of the past, and must necessarily grope in the darkness which surrounds all new experiments of this kind, lighted only by the few, meagre, a priori truths of deductive reasoning. Our ancestors, hampered as they were by the lack of this great experience of social life, legislated for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated—I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess: but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed—I aided—I surpassed them in volume ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... angle, for I found a veranda, destitute of chairs and furnishings, but dry and evidently roofed. It was better than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my way to Hotchkiss. That was how I found the open window. I had passed perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand grope for the next one, and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... all the races differing from our own, except the primeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of uncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as do many creeping, crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be a member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... lame hands of faith and grope And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... beat his puissant wings against the stone which confines him,—oh! then, in prey to a frenzy without a name, to a despair without bounds, I invoke the unknown master and friend who might illumine my spirit and set free my tongue; but I grope in darkness, and my tired arms grasp nothing save delusive shadows. And for ten thousand years, as the sole answer to my cries, as the sole comfort in my agony, I hear astir, over this earth accurst, the despairing sob of impotent agony. For ten thousand years I have cried in infinite space: Truth! ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... been there and know what the place is, but no one but myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep, to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what I ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... went out of it to continue its existence elsewhere, but that those who hated the thought of such change could, by taking thought, prolong life and live for a thousand years, like the adder and tortoise or for ever. But no, he would not leave the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that hidden knowledge he was burning to possess. He pitied him too much. The means were simple and near to hand, the earth teemed with the virtue that would save him from the dissolution which so appalled him. He would be startled to hear in how small a thing and in ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... dependent on genius and on nothing else. It is that something which touches, that something which creates, that something which itself is life; that something which belongs, in all ages, to those who grope to the light through darkness; that something of which we almost lose sight in the great completeness of the greatest artists, but which hovers like a halo of glory upon the brows of Italy's earliest, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 'O for the safe and natural way of Intuition! I cannot grope like a mole in the gloomy passages of experience. To the attentive spirit, the revelation contained in books is only so far valuable as it comments upon, and corresponds with, the universal revelation. Yet to me, a being social and sympathetic by natural impulse, though ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... things, we discussed Cleopatra. Here we were unanimous in deciding that the horse had, as yet, disclosed only two faults, and these not the faults of the Irishman's horse in the weary yarn. One of them, we concluded, was to buck like a demon on being first mounted, and the other was to grope backward for the person who went to catch him ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... arithmetic to geometry, from observation to science, from practice to theory, and play with edged tools long before we know what knives mean. For, like Hop-o'-my-Thumb and his brothers, we are driven out early in the morning to the edge of the forest, and are obliged to grope our way back to the little house whence we come, by the crumbs dropped on the road. Alack! how often the birds have eaten our bread, and we are captured by the giant lying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Thus, though I grope in darkest night, Of what men call a world of ills, The closer concentration fills My inmost ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of us all. For surely, surely, if only you saw realities, and things as they are, some of you would not be content to continue as you are—without this water of life. Blind, blind, blind, are the men who grope at noon-day as in the dark and turn away from Jesus. If you knew, not with the head only, but with the whole nature, if you knew the thirst of your soul, the sweetness of the water, the readiness of the Giver, and the dry and parched land to which you condemn yourselves by your refusal, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... nor despond, Though I grope in the dark for the dawn: Birth and laughter, and bubbles of breath, And tears, and the blank void of death, Round each its penumbra is drawn,— I ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... larger surface. The horny breast-plate offers no wider breach. If the Philanthus were guided in her operation solely by the question of vulnerability, it is here certainly that she ought to strike, instead of persistently seeking the narrow slit in the neck. The weapon would not need to hesitate and grope; it would obtain admission into the tissues off-hand. No, the stroke of the lancet is not forced upon it mechanically: the assassin scorns the large defect in the corselet and prefers the place under the chin, for eminently logical reasons which ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... neighborhoods, Or solitary; then through shadowy woods Of pine or birch, until the road, grass-grown, Had given back to Nature all her own Save a faint wheel-trace, that along the slope, Rain-gullied, seemed to stop and doubt and grope, And then quite ceased, as if 't had turned and fled Out of the forest into which it led, And left us at the gate whose every bar Was nailed against us. But, "Oh, here we are!" My friend cried joyously. ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... other door," said Rose after they had screamed themselves hoarse. "We must not be frightened, Anne, for father is sure to look for us. Let's go round the room and try and find a door. We can feel along the wall," so the two girls began to grope their way from ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... noblest literature, and to see them printed in comfortable volumes, that we are apt to forget that in their origin they were but the children of the pavement, the publications of the hour. If, however, you ever visit any old public library, and grope about a little, you are likely enough to find a shelf holding some twenty-five or thirty musty, ugly little books, usually lettered 'Burke,' and on opening any of them you will come across one of Burke's pamphlets as originally issued, bound up with the replies and counter-pamphlets it occasioned. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the dark clouds above the dark earth hung low and motionless. Solomon Grow found it something of an undertaking to grope his way back from the little hut of unhewn logs, where he had stabled his father's horse, to the door of the cabin ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... did I tell you? You look fagged to death, and as cross as two sticks. Five shillings wasted on taxis, and nothing for it but getting thoroughly upset. Next time I hope you will take my advice!" said Cecil, and took up her candle to grope her way up the dark ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and for many days she went about her duties mechanically, but her blind mother missed nothing, knew nothing. Wearisome vigils were those! Not for a moment could she trust her charge alone. With the perverseness of age she would try to grope her way about, and more than once had she wandered into danger. Besides this active, bodily vigilance, there were papers and books to read to her, and the post-office was fairly haunted by fruitless messages for tidings of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... the door for her to step inside the quiet hall he bent over the girl a moment, taking both her hands in his. Then he drew away abruptly and bolted into the living room, leaving her to grope her way up stairs ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... O, mist of suns I grope amidst your light, O, further yet, what vast response From what transcendent height? Wild wings that burst thro' death's dim night I can but pause and hark; For O, ye are too swift, too white, To ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... lightning showed me was a column, standing in exactly the opposite direction from my own house. I could now locate myself correctly, and the lightning becoming every moment more vivid, I was enabled to grope my way by slow degrees to the mess, where I expected to find someone to show me my way home, but the servants, who knew from experience the probable effects of a cyclone, had already closed the outside Venetian shutters and barred all the doors. I could just see them ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... and less eloquent manner, have often repeated that arrogant Hebraic cry: they have told us in their systems what God thinks about the world. Such pretensions would be surprising did we not remind ourselves of the obvious truth that what men attribute to God is nothing but the ideal they value and grope for in themselves, and that the commandments, mythically said to come from the Most High, flow in fact from common ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... The epistle itself (Alexias, l. iii. p. 93, 94, 95) well deserves to be read. There is one expression which Ducange does not understand. I have endeavored to grope out a tolerable meaning: The first word is a golden crown; the second is explained by Simon Portius, (in Lexico Graeco-Barbar.,) by a flash ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... outset both spirits and sitters are ignorant of their powers, of the conditions necessary for success, and the association that exists between them being affectional rather than intellectual or spiritual, they have to grope their way towards each other. It follows, therefore, that experiments have to be made on BOTH sides. Sitters and young mediums often spoil the seances by over-anxiety. There would not be half so much heard of 'evil spirits' (so-called) ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... Raymonde, as leader, went first, with her body-guard in close attendance behind her. Very, very gently she drew back the curtains and entered the larder. It was pitch-dark in here, and she began to grope her way along the wall. Then she stopped, for in front of her she fancied she heard breathing. She listened—all was silent. She started again, intending to go to the far side of the table. She put out her hand to guide herself, and came in contact ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... grope and ponder, heedless of the questions the professor and the magistrate kept asking him. He rose at last, and with a distracted gesture took the arm of M. Fuselier, and dragged him before the stone slab on which the corpse, but recently ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... aerial cope, With eyes enkindled as the sun's own sphere, Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope, And makes for joy the very darkness dear That gives her wide wings play; nor dreams that fear At noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope. Then, when the soul leaves off to dream and yearn, May truth first purge her eyesight to discern What ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... narrow limits her assigned, Truth fled the earth; and men were fain to grope In utter darkness. Blindly they blundered, And were long distraught, till on the horizon rose A luminosity, and in its midst A form. They cried, "'Tis Truth! fair Truth returned!' And though the light seemed dim, the form but faint To that of other days, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... from his videttes that a force of the enemy were in front, and that several men had been observed going into the woods on the right. A search was made of the bush, but as the shades of night had fallen fast it was impossible to grope through the woods, and fearing an ambuscade Col. Peacocke resolved to halt his column for the night. In the meantime he had sent two companies of the 16th Regiment to scour the woods, but owing to the darkness they were unable to do so. Having been told by some ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... and rested, striving vainly to garner some clue to his bearings. Inexorably the blackness forbade that. He might have failed ere dawn to grope a way out of that trap had not the disappearance of the submarine been ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... see Mr. Gresham, I was directed to an unfashionable part of the town, to one of the dark old streets of the city; and from all appearance I thought I was going to grope my way into some strange dismal den, like many of the ancient houses in that quarter of the town. But, to my surprise, after passing through a court, and up an unpromising staircase, I found myself in a spacious apartment. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair. I am speaking of comparative strangers, people who are forced to stay a certain time by the eccentricities of trains, and in whose presence you grope about after common interests and shrink back into your shell on finding that you have none. Then a frost slowly settles down on me and I grow each minute more benumbed and speechless, and the babies feel the frost ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... too late To drag you out for just a good-night call On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope By starlight in the grass for a last peach The neighbors may not have taken as their right When the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking: I doubt if they have left us many grapes. Before we set ourselves to right the house, The ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be strong enough to search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... numbed limbs, and presently fell headlong over a little scaur into a moss-hole. When I crawled out, with peat plastering my face and hair, I found I had lost my notion of the light's whereabouts. I strove to find another hillock, but I seemed now to be in a flat space of bog. I could only grope blindly forwards away from the moss-hole, hoping that soon I might come to a lift in ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... very good,' replied the Learned Man. 'The fact is, I have to finish my report on Lady Grope's Settlement among our Poor in the Bull Ring—it is making some progress. But their condition is heart-breaking, my ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... than the middle of a man, and has the most distorted and mistaken views of most things. He may then indeed look up to the sky, and see heaven open, and angels ascending and descending; but he can only grope about on the earth, and he knows nothing aright that goes on there beyond his small boy's world. Some people remain in this condition as long as they live, and keep the ignorance of childhood, after they have lost its innocence; heaven has been ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... the forgotten folds of hoarded letters, that have been preserved only to blast the memory of the dead! What precious words, again, have been destroyed, that might have lightened for a whole heavy lifetime the doubt and anguish of the living! In this, as in all we do, we grope about in darkness, and the one and the other course must often enough have been bitterly lamented by those who "did for the best" in keeping or destroying these ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... places the hypocrisy of this Society in bold relief. It pretends to be anxious to evangelize benighted Africa, and stop the slave trade; but only assure it that the blacks may be safely colonized nearer home, and Africa might still continue to grope in darkness, and the slave trade to increase in enormity, and its bowels of compassion would speedily cease to yearn!—Hence it is that the rapid enlargement of the Wilberforce Settlement in Upper Canada so disturbs the repose of the advocates of African colonization; ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... rushed into the smoking and gloomy archway to find themselves met hand to hand by the Afghan defenders, who had recovered from their surprise. Nothing could be distinctly seen in the narrow gorge, but the clash of sword blade against bayonet was heard on every side. The stormers had to grope their way between the yet standing walls in a dusk which the glimmer of the blue light only made more perplexing. But some elbow room was gradually gained, and then, since there was neither time nor space for methodic street fighting, each loaded section gave ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... lamps penetrated but faintly inside the cab, so Harleston, being averse to lighting a match save for an instant at the end of the search, was forced to grope in semi-darkness. ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... Outstretch'd did fling him, crying, 'Hast no help For me, my father!' "There he died, and e'en Plainly as thou seest me, saw I the three Fall one by one 'twixt the fifth day and sixth: Whence I betook me now grown blind to grope Over them all, and for three days aloud Call'd on them who were dead. Then fasting got The mastery of grief." Thus having spoke, Once more upon the wretched skull his teeth He fasten'd, like a mastiff's 'gainst ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... keen for a daring policy, had undertaken to attack the Danish defences with a squadron of twelve seventy-fours, and the frigates and bomb-vessels of the fleet. He determined to shun the open way of King's Channel, grope through the uncertain passage called the Dutch Deep, at the back of the Middle Ground, and forcing his way up the narrow channel in front of the shallows, repeat on the anchored batteries and battleships ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... sharp whistles from the water shrilly pierced the air and penetrated into the darkened room, and, while the tumult around Hermon gradually died away, he strove, tortured by burning pain, to grope his way toward the door; but here his foot struck against a human body, there against something hard, whose form he could not distinguish, and finally a large object which felt cool, and could be nothing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... descended into a dungeon, or series of dungeons, such as we had already seen. But inspecting them more closely, we saw that the third step terminated the flight, and beyond was a dark vacancy. Three steps a person would grope down, planting his uncertain foot on a dimly seen stone; the fourth step would be in the empty air. The guide told us that it used to be the practice to bring prisoners hither, under pretence of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which was always liable to be shelled unexpectedly? In cellars beneath the unwholesome and dilapidated town our men found billets. They were really quite comfortable, but at night when the place was as black as pitch, and one had to grope one's way in the darkness along debris-covered streets, shaken every now and then by the German missiles from the sky, one longed for Canada and the well-lighted pavements of ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... till six, and all the boat's lights revealed was a yellow circle of fog that traveled with us. Wet and chilled, we two stood at the wheel together, in such hard conditions that no navigator and no pilot could have done much more than grope. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... retracted again as superfluous, would certainly be an evidence rather of childish trifling or dictatorial pedantry, than of infinite wisdom. But no, I am mistaken; from the beginning of all things the Creator knew, that one day the inquisitive children of men would grope about after analogies and homologies, and that Christian naturalists would busy themselves with thinking out his Creative ideas; at any rate, in order to facilitate the discernment by the former that the opercular peduncle of the Serpulae is homologous with a branchial filament, He ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... and empty when Ritter and his following entered. They could scarcely see and had to grope their way after the young man that led them to seats in the parquet. Gradually, their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and they could distinguish the vast windowless cave, with its rows of seats, its galleries and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... "my verses! in which I only praise the love of labor and of goodness! To arrest me for that! If so, justice would be but a blind noodle. That she might grope her way, it would be necessary to furnish her with a dog and a pilgrim's staff ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... for fear they kept silence. Ruggieri was not a little disconcerted by the fall, but, finding that thereby the chest was come open, he judged that, happen what might, he would be better out of it than in it; and not knowing where he was, and being otherwise at his wits' end, he began to grope about the house, if haply he might find a stair or door whereby he might take himself off. Hearing him thus groping his way, the alarmed women gave tongue with:—"Who is there?" Ruggieri, not knowing the voice, made no answer: wherefore the women fell to calling the two young men, who, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... waiting-rooms, are frustrated by mobs, and foiled by an eternal clamour. We have forgotten the feast and occupy ourselves in all manner of foolish and irrelevant ways. Only now and again, struck by the absurdity of our occupations, we grope after our lost consciousness and feel somehow that somewhere out beyond is our real destination, that somewhere out there a feast is proceeding, that a cover is laid for us and dishes served, that though we are absent the master calls a toast to ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... body; at another, like a rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor. She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way out—he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... are. Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better things beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send out pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the bare stone for the earth by which it must be fed. Let the sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant confidence in what we, even we, may become if we will only take the grace we have. To this touchstone let us bring all claims to higher holiness—they who are perfect are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was anybody near, and, satisfied with her scrutiny, she then opened the door, and calling down the saints to protect me, shook hands with me, and I quitted the house. It was a dark, cloudy night, and when I first went out, I was obliged to grope, for I could distinguish nothing. I walked along with a pistol loaded in each hand, and gained, as I thought, the high road to E——, but I made a sad mistake; and puzzled by the utter darkness and turnings, I took, on the contrary, the road to Mount Castle. As soon as I was ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... too, in the right direction, just because it is a step forward— because the path of deliverance is, as "Locksley Hall" sets forth, not backwards towards a fancied paradise of childhood—not backward to grope after an unconsciousness which is now impossible, an implicit faith which would be unworthy of the man, but forward on the road on which God has been leading him, carrying upward with him the aspirations of childhood, and the bitter experience ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... lift her eyes toward Mr. Bernard, and let them rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly, that she herself was the subject of observation or remark. Then they seemed to lose their cold glitter, and soften into a strange, dreamy tenderness. The deep instincts of womanhood were striving to grope their way to the surface of her being through all the alien influences which overlaid them. She could be secret and cunning in working out any of her dangerous impulses, but she did not know how to mask the unwonted feeling which fixed her eyes ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... their inferiority, but knew no remedy, and all worked busily, copying and distorting Giotto, until they and the public were heartily tired. A change at all costs became necessary, and it was very simple when it came. "Why grope about for the significant, when the obvious is at hand? Let me paint the obvious; the obvious always pleases," said some clever innovator. So he painted the obvious,—pretty clothes, pretty faces, and trivial action, with the results foreseen: ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... day; Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears, And every little corner, nook, and hole Is penetrated with the insolent light. 180 Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me? And wherefore should I wish for night, who do A deed which shall confound both night and day? 'Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist Of horror: if there be a sun in heaven 185 She shall not dare to look upon its beams; Nor feel its warmth. Let her then wish for night; The act I think shall soon extinguish all For me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom Than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... poems again. Now that she was so near to him they impressed her less with a sense of fear and anxiety than with one of pity and of love. He was her child, and therefore to be protected and caressed. She found it difficult not to leave her room in the night, and grope her way along the creaking corridors to the room in which she knew he was sleeping. She wanted to kiss him and hold him in her arms. She placed the poems on the table at her bedside and blew out the candle. It was unfortunate ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... interests and obligations. Now, whether we are aware of it or not, our constant effort is, out of the great variety of experience pressing in upon us, to select such details as make to a definite purpose and end. Instinctively we grope toward and attract to us that which is special and proper to our individual development. Our progress is toward harmony. By the adjustment of new material to the shaping principle of our experience, the circle of our individual lives widens its circumference. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... long it was after my senses had gone when I began to grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms below. Any attempt ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the mother sank down in her chair and began to grope for a handkerchief. Keith saw that her eyes were lustrous ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning mysteries of life, that are a burden to age and experience even when lightened by the helping hand of a common sympathy, I ceased before long to struggle against these abstract foes that made a mockery of ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... of blindness—poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... you to say, my boy," retorted the yeoman. "Pray God he never has, and never may. Slow work this, however! I should really be glad to find something! Pshaw! What a notion that is, when the only good luck would be to paddle, and drift, and poke, and grope, hereabouts, till morning, and have our labor for our pains! For my part, I shouldn't wonder if the creature had only lost her shoe in the mud, and saved her soul alive, after all. My stars! how she will laugh at us, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... do?" the woman rejoined. He encountered her eyes, saw them widen into a stare, saw them grope over his mangled face, and then quickly turn in another direction, as if she could not bear the sight. He wanted to stop, but he noticed her lips quiver and heard a murmured "Jesus, son of Mary," ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... Morrell taught me the way of the little death, that I had not been a more thorough student of history. I should have been able to identity and place much that is obscure to me. As it is, I am compelled to grope and guess my way to times and places of my ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... artist, think ourselves into sympathy with his position and, in the technical phrase, create his character. A historian confronted with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged with a part, have but one pre- occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human nature appears, the politician ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the mizzen with the severed stays and shrouds dangling ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... vanities, All things for which men grasp and grope! The precious things in heavenly eyes Are love, and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... with the plan I have laid down, and embodying the suggestions herein contained, the Government will complete the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the cold, to grope about in the dark as their ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... we grope for Somewhat far off, yet to hope for, That through some future repentance, Justice may ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... concluding note by Chu Hsi. 2 See the Introductory note below. strange or extravagant than what we have. It begins sufficiently well, but the author has hardly enunciated his preliminary apophthegms, when he conducts into an obscurity where we can hardly grope our way, and when we emerge from that, it is to be bewildered by his gorgeous but unsubstantial pictures of sagely perfection. He has eminently contributed to nourish the pride of his countrymen. He has exalted their sages above all that is called God ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... any bravery or presence of mind, but from utter annihilation of both qualities in the shock and surprise of it all. At last I began trying to grope my way toward the door. I found it. Some people—I heard and felt rather than saw—were standing about the battered-in door, and there was the sound of water hurrying past the door-way. The Rhine ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... darkness and terror, When I would grope nearer to God, With my back to a record of error And the highway of sin I have trod, There come to me shapes I would banish— The shapes of the deeds I have done; And I pray and I plead till they vanish— All vanish and leave ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... proved long and tedious; at least so it seemed to us compelled to grope slowly onward through the darkness. However, it ran straight and upon a level, although the numerous supports of the roof gave us occasional foul blows, and proved so confusing we were considerable time in traversing its distance. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... comfort, of defence, and hope, To mortals crushed by sorrow and by error. And though thy feet through shadowy paths may grope, Thou shalt not walk ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Lord God of Israel light on the man who has informed against us. May he be smitten with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart. May he grope at the noonday as the blind gropeth in the darkness. May his life hang in doubt before him. May he fear day and night, and have none assurance of his life. May he say in the morning—'Would God it ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... evidence. Science has hitherto dealt strictly with the physical; it has made almost no effort to test the claims of the spiritual. In fact, the highest of these claims, that of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. God may exist, and science grope for Him through eternity in vain. Finite facts can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproofs alike have been offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains unsolved. None of these proofs or disproofs are positive; they all depend on ideal conceptions, ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... must find out for myself. Perhaps if I had been born two hundred years ago, I might have been caught by some strong enthusiastic organisation and have been a private in a great army. A miserable time is this when each man has to grope his way unassisted, and all the incalculable toil of founders of churches goes for little or nothing. . . . I do not pray for any more pleasure: I ask only for strength to endure, till I can lie down and rest. I have had more rapture ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... judicious inquiry into His acts, and a deliberate research into His creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. Every essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause and some positive end both of its essence and operation. This is the cause I grope after in the works of Nature; on this hangs ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the starless night of the Uncreated, that was before the stars, a soul begins to grope back to light. It gropes its way through strange, half-lighted chambers of Dreams, where in a brown and gold twilight, it sees many things that are dimly significant, true stories twisted into new and amazing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... still stunned by that terrific experience, and I grope vainly for means of expression by which I can reproduce the emotions which we felt. Perhaps it is best and wisest not to try, but merely to indicate the facts. Even Summerlee and Challenger were crushed, and we heard nothing of our companions behind us save an ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... did not roll between. Rolling had long ceased to be a pleasant figure of speech with me. How frail are all things here below, how false, and yet how fair! My mind is naturally picturesque. In the midst of my sadness the force of nature compelled me to grope after an illustration. I could only think that my own foothold was frail, that the Jane Moseley was false, that the Pretty Girl was fair. A dizziness of brain resulted from this rhetorical effort. I silently ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... place had it not been for an unwonted accident. At the end of this day they made a bleak and miserable camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to grope for a camping place. They could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose a perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and Francois were compelled to make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. The tent they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... it. The movement by us through Snake-Creek Gap was a total surprise to him. My army about doubled his in size, but he had all the advantages of natural positions, of artificial forts and roads, and of concentrated action. We were compelled to grope our way through forests, across mountains, with a large army, necessarily more or less dispersed. Of course, I was disappointed not to have crippled his, army more at that particular stage of the game; but, as it resulted, these rapid successes ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Alexandria with the last of his troops, but by the acts of the ubiquitous Jackson his lines of communication were cut and the Federal commander had to grope his way in the dark for fear of running foul of his ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... than mine of long ago. How could we know?—) For who should guess The shock and smiting of that perfectness?— The lily-thrust of those ecstatic feet Unpityingly sweet?— Sweet beyond all the blurred blind dreams that grope The upward paths of hope? And who could guess The dulcet holiness, The lilt and gladness of those jocund feet, Unpityingly sweet? Ah, for your coolness that shall change and stir With every glee of her!— Under the fresh amaze That drips and glistens from her wiles and ways; ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... this blazing September sun looks dull to me this morning. I have come from such a riotous dream. All last night I walked in a realm of such golden splendor, that I think even in our fullest noon I shall only see enough light to grope by for days ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... ditch. What a splash! It wet all of us. Ruff went out of sight. Then he rolled up like a huge hog. We were all scared now. That dip's rank poison, you know. Reckon Ruff knew that. He floundered along an' crawled up at the end. Anyone could see that he had mouth an' eyes tight shut. He began to grope an' feel around, trying to find the way to the pond. One of the men led him out. It was great to see him wade in the water an' wallow an' souse his head under. When he came out the men got in front of him any stopped him. He shore looked bad.... An' Glenn called ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... turn aside from the several stumbling-blocks that Satan, together with his instruments, hath laid in our way, which otherwise thou wilt not be able to shun, but will certainly fall when others stand, and grope and stumble when others go upright, to the great prejudice of thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was as yet no tree, nor grass, nor anything that would serve for food, in this gloomy abyss. But when the Giant Ymir began to grope around for something to satisfy his hunger, he heard a sound as of some animal chewing the cud; and there among the ice-hills he saw a gigantic cow, from whose udder flowed four great streams of milk, and with this his craving was ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... brother walked bravely on in front, I knew he was afraid of the water, and no doubt in fear that he might stumble into it in the dark. We were walking in Indian file, for there was no room to walk abreast in safety, while in places we had absolutely to grope our way. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... will need it now. I'm sorry for her. I don't know how he left her, exactly. He did a tremendous business, but he spent as he went. He was a good fellow—I always liked the doctor! Terrible affair! Terrible affair! Jason! Where is that advertisement of Grope County Iowa Mortgage? You have filed it in the wrong place! Be ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... narrowly, lest this should be a deception, but were at length convinced that the long absence of light had rendered him blind. They now permitted him to descend frequently to the lower chambers of the tower, and to sleep there occasionally, during the heats of summer. They even allowed him to grope his way to the cistern, in quest of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,—of Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning. Oh, I will believe that Mr. Gabriel hadn't any need to grope as we do, but that suddenly he saw the Heavenly Arm and clung to it, and the grasp closed round him, and death and hell can have no power over him now. Dan, poor boy, is it better to lie in the earth with the ore than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... blind man, by tapping the kerbstone with his cane. Arrived here, he stood for a moment in the middle of the road, bareheaded. There was not a breath of wind anywhere. He made his way carefully down towards Downing Street, meeting few people, and still obliged to grope rather than walk. Along Downing Street he made his way by the railings and rang the bell at last at the Premier's house. He was shown at once into the council room. The four or five men who were seated around a table, and who looked ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reply in the affirmative, and the three boys proceeded to grope their way along in silence, until the broad archway of the tunnel's mouth appeared through a fog ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... U-boat, as you grope With your half-blind periscope, Lo, your hateful trail we mark, Send you to ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the rout ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... Emperor, as Chief Pontiff, such is not at all the case. I feel a fumbler, a bungler. I grope. I suspect that the judgment of my advisers is better than mine. What is worse, I know that they think so. I am surrounded by men pre-eminent in their specialties, who look on me as a green boy placed by mere chance ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... The ties of fellowship shall bind Our constant souls; and soon or late— We laboring still in harmony— The grand results for which we wait Shall crown the mighty years to be! Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset, We grope in twilight darkness yet, We who would found the age of gold, Based on the universal good, And forge the links that yet shall hold The world ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... they drew up in the utter solitude, and had to confess they were lost. The men left to grope for signs of the path and the two women were alone. Jean grew depressed, not on her own account but on "Ma's," for she knew that she was utterly exhausted, and could not hold out much longer. "What if they desert us?" she said. "Well," replied Mary, trying to appear as if fatigue and fear and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... in every temple I see those who see thee, and, in every tongue that is spoken, thou art praised. Polytheism and Islam grope after thee, Each religion says, 'Thou art one, without equal,' Be it mosque, men murmur holy prayer; or church, the bells ring, for love of thee; Awhile I frequent the Christian cloister, anon the mosque: But thee only I seek from fane to fane. Thine elect know naught of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... of town every morning. But like all growing young things she felt a desperate, undefined need. She could not know that self-expression is as necessary to natures like hers as breath is to young bodies. She could only grope and yearn and struggle in the ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... on his coat and panted and breathed foul air. 'Twas dark as a wolf's mouth, of course, and he didn't know from Adam what dangers lay around him; but he couldn't bide still long and so rose up and began to grope with feet and hands. He kicked a few of the big stones that Ernest Gregory had thrown down, as he thought atop of him; and then he found the bottom of the hole was bigger than he guessed. And then he ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... falls in, and has Not any likeness,—face, and hand, and tree, All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought, This hastening, and that pressing upon this, A mighty crowd within so narrow room: And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come, The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss Their way, and what ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... episode in the development of the nations of Europe is so tragic as this. That two peoples should, within the space of nine months, abjure their friendly relations and furiously grapple in a life and death struggle over questions of secondary importance leads the dazed beholder at first to grope after the old Greek idea of ate or Nemesis. In reality the case does not call for supernatural agency. The story is pitiably human, if the student will but master its complex details. It may be well to close our study with a few general observations, though they ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the first time I had heard the roar of the tiger in his own domain, and I must confess that my sensations were not altogether pleasant. We set about collecting sticks and what roots of grass we could find, but on the sand-flats everything was wet, and it was so dark that we had to grope about on our hands and knees, and pick up whatever ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... — N. touch; tact, taction^, tactility; feeling; palpation, palpability; contrectation^; manipulation; massage. [Organ of touch] hand, finger, forefinger, thumb, paw, feeler, antenna; palpus^. V. touch, feel, handle, finger, thumb, paw, fumble, grope, grabble; twiddle, tweedle; pass the fingers over, run the fingers over; manipulate, wield; throw out a feeler. Adj. tactual, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... attempt at flight, but stood waiting its approach, with my sword uplifted to smite it. Loss of blood had brought a dimness over my eyes, which, added to the darkness of the wood, made me that I had rather to grope and listen for the animal, than perceive it, as it might attempt to spring upon me. I would rather have met ten enemies than, in darkness, and in my then fainting state, have waited the attack of that savage beast. It sprang upon me—I struck towards it with my sword, and wounded ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... some little trouble in finding our way into the town, as for the last two hours the daylight failed, and we had to grope our way along at a snail's pace in total darkness. This, in a country of such rough roads and deep and dangerous gulleys and water-courses, was a most intricate and difficult proceeding. Eventually, however, we reached our ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... ether: the notion of such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze; my eyes desired those eyes; if that glance did not press against them, they would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be compelled to go down on my hands and knees and grope in search for them. No, no, I must return to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... on the flat top indicated, his silhouette cutting vigorously into the dimness, particularly the rather heavy double wave to his hair causing Lilly to grope with a vague sense of having seen him before. It was merely a rather remote resemblance to the remote Horace Lindsley, but not for days did she ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... been rendered intelligible by close study and interpretation of fragmentary and widely separated facts, capable of being read only by one conversant with the text of human affairs, and who has the patience to grope through the trackless intervals of time, and the skill to supply the lost words and syllables of history by careful collation with those which are spared. How faithfully this accidentally found MS. typifies such a labor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... were discovered in the obscurest recesses of monasteries; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required not less ingenuity to find out places where to grope in, than to understand the value of the acquisition. An universal ignorance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among the Latin writers ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... blessing, but where it has enough to do to live, whence it cannot move to obtain what it wants or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms here and there for bare breath and light, and split its way among rocks, and grope for sustenance in unkindly soil; it would be hard upon the plant, I say, if under all these disadvantages, it were made answerable for its appearance, and found fault with because it was not a fine plant of the kind. And so we find it ordained that in order ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin; In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, And see not dimly the smooth-hinged gate That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly,—ye who never knew On your young hearts love's consecrating dew, Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal nightshade ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... light was curtained back From my exploring eye, And I seemed left to grope in night, And there at ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... to descend into the valley for water and grass; and we were obliged to grope our way in the darkness down a very steep, bad mountain, reaching the river at about ten o'clock. It was late before our animals were gathered into the camp, several of those which were very weak being necessarily ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... disappoint her? She did not yet know that those who are most sincere find it more difficult than the others to say what they think. Words, in their souls, are like climbing plants which, sown by chance in the middle of a roadway, waver and grope, send out tendrils here and there in despair and end by entangling themselves with one another. Whereas most people, just as we provide supports for flowers, bestow certainties and truths upon their words to which they cling, the sincere refuse to yield to any such illusions. ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... relief for the moment, but little comfort could our friends take from the fact. Their enemies were not likely to go far, when they would suspect that something of the nature described had occurred, and they would return and grope along shore for their victims. So certain was Dr. Marlowe of this turn that he believed the wisest course was for the entire party to abandon the boat, and, as may be said, "take to the woods." They ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... somewhat dark in the outer room, and darker yet in the little chambers. Selred had to grope awhile before he found what he wanted; then Erling opened the outer door for him, and he went his way, and I would have the door left open after ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... and a patriot," Furley continued, "just as much as you are, although you are a son of the Earl of Maltenby, and you fought in the war. You must listen to me without prejudice. There are thoughtful men in England, patriots to the backbone, trying to grope their way to the truth about this bloody sacrifice. There are thoughtful men in Germany on the same tack. If, for the betterment of the world, we should seek to come into touch with one another, I do not consider that ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their exile, twice accursed If they forget and join the accursed throng. How doth my heart that is so wrung not burst When I remember that my way was plain, And that God's candle lit me at the first, Whilst now I grope in darkness, grope in vain, Desiring but to find Him Who is lost, To find him once again, but once again! His wrath came on us to the uttermost, His covenanted and most righteous wrath. Yet this is He of Whom ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... such institutions are important in Europe, abounding in works of art, how much more so in our country, separated as it is by the broad Atlantic from the artistic world, which few comparatively can ever visit: many of our young artists, for the want of such an institution, are obliged to grope their way in the dark, and to spend months and years to find out a few ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... the city oft, when swims The pale moon o'er the smoke that dims Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs; And still, and still, I seem to hear, where shadows grope Mid ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,— Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope Above the clover-sweetened slope,— Retreat, despairing, past all hope, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... to suffer his company, but to suffer it willingly. And here, as she passed through the darkling garden under the solid blackness of the yews, was an opportunity of making a further advance. She would have to grope her way, a reason for taking her hand might offer, and—his head grew hot ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... their eyes, and will not behold the light thereof, not for that must the sun be blamed, or scorned by others: still less shall the glory of his brightness be dishonoured through their silliness. But while they, self-deprived of light, grope like blind men along a wall, and fall into many a ditch, and scratch out their eyes on many a bramble bush, the sun, firmly established on his own glory, shall illuminate them that gaze upon his beams with unveiled face. Even so shineth the light of Christ on all men abundantly, imparting to ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... feeble a ray that it was with the greatest difficulty I could grope my way through the confused mass of lumber among which I now found myself. By degrees, however, my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I proceeded with less trouble, holding on to the skirts of my friend's coat. He brought me, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the little one, with the active hands of children that cannot talk, touched her chin and mouth and cheeks, persisted in putting her fingers in her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them moving over her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear little digits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was as if her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From time to time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the little one's head, and would call to ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the subject; and all persons are beginning to feel awake to the truth, that something is yet wanting to insure efficiency and permanence to the labours of the teacher. The public will not be satisfied till some decided change has taken place; and many are endeavouring to grope their way to something better. It is with an earnest desire to help forward this great movement, that the writer of the following pages has been induced to publish the result of much study, and ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... dropped his knife when we stumbled, and we were forced to grope round in that unspeakable mess for many minutes ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... is among the obscurities of providence, The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The All-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemned before commission. In these things we grope and flounder; and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatched from vice (no great compliment to it, by the by), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have borne the heat ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Miller's kids in the open; I suppose the terrific influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration behind it. I'll think out my own way—grope it out through Pantheon and living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... The girls grope their way, till their arms come in contact. Then, closing in mutual embrace, they sink together upon the cold ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... about that dark future where some of our hearts live so constantly, things about the depths of His nature and the divine character, things about the relation between God's love and God's righteousness, things about the meaning of all this dreadful mystery in which we grope our way. These and a hundred other questionings suggest to us that it would have been so easy for Him to have lifted a little corner of the veil, and let a little more of the light shine out. He holds all in His hand. Why does He thus open one finger instead of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... rules and orders tied, Roughly deny to be her guide, 830 She must renounce Decorum's plan, And get back when, and how she can; As parsons, who, without pretext, As soon as mention'd, quit their text, And, to promote sleep's genial power, Grope in the dark for half an hour, Give no more reason (for we know Reason is vulgar, mean, and low) Why they come back (should it befall That ever they come back at all) 840 Into the road, to end their rout, Than they can give why they went out. But ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... by conviction and glowing with a fervent faith, thoroughly knows what he is about. Strong in his faith, and by his faith, he clearly sees his way, and steadily walks in it, while others grope hither and thither amidst shadows and darkness and bewildering doubts! Such a man boldly takes the initiative, marches onward, and is as a beacon-light to a nation, to a people; often, sometimes, even for all humanity. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... were guided in her operation solely by the question of vulnerability, it is here certainly that she ought to strike, instead of persistently seeking the narrow slit in the neck. The weapon would not need to hesitate and grope; it would obtain admission into the tissues off-hand. No, the stroke of the lancet is not forced upon it mechanically: the assassin scorns the large defect in the corselet and prefers the place under the chin, for eminently logical reasons which ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... all over and she came out from under the opiate, she lay for a while, open-eyed but unseeing, too inert to grope for the lost thread of memory. She felt a stirring in the bed beside her, the movement of some living thing. She looked and there, squeezed into the edge of the pillow was a miniature head of a little old man—wrinkled, copperish. Yet the face was fat—ludicrously fat. A painfully homely face with ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... almost dark when he entered, and he had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... where the rent decks slope, Where the dead roll and the wounded grope, He dragged ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... memory, melodiously mute as it may be, While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod; Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby, As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God. Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer: Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... happened—that I've been given such a treasure. And she's my own! I can watch her little body grow and help to make it strong and beautiful! I can help mould her little mind—see it opening up, one chamber of wonder after another! I can teach her all the things I have had to grope so to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... presently fell headlong over a little scaur into a moss-hole. When I crawled out, with peat plastering my face and hair, I found I had lost my notion of the light's whereabouts. I strove to find another hillock, but I seemed now to be in a flat space of bog. I could only grope blindly forwards away from the moss-hole, hoping that soon I might come to a lift in ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... steady strain upon the rope. With his chisel he had but little difficulty in prising open the casement. His companions were not long in joining him. Once inside the house they made their way with great caution. They had no means of striking a light, and were forced to grope about with their swords in front of them to prevent their touching any piece of furniture, till at last they discovered the door. It was not fastened, and passing through, and, as before, feeling the floor carefully as they went, they ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... when "deep calleth unto deep," have no such "strong consolation" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when sorrow and bereavement overtake them—the lowering shadows of the dark and cloudy day—have still to grope after an unknown Christ; and, amid the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for the first time, ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... immense black mass looming over the water. Then a sharp scratching was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank in front of the Austrian camp. This shore was bordered with very thick trees, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... again with more transcendent sense, Hearing unchecked, and unimpeded sight. If we who walk now, then should wing the air, Who stammer now, then should discard the voice, Who grope now, then should see with other sight, And send new eyes about ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is very like ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... students are known to conclude that AM contains nothing of use to them when they look for one or two things and do not find them. It is difficult to discover that middle ground where one has a sense of what the system contains. Some students grope toward the idea of an archive, a new idea to them, since they have not previously experienced what it means to have access to a vast body of somewhat ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... ditch, you who answer me with an 'if.' And, by God! I'll do it! An 'if'? We say 'ifs' to fools. Was I a fool to turn the lickshoe of Charles the Bully into the Prince of Talmont? Was I a fool to grope in the mud for a Seneschal of Poitou? Am I a fool now—I, who have held the strings of all Europe in my hand for thirty years, and loosed or ravelled them as suited the greatness of France? God be my witness, all has been for the greatness of France! ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... that Santa Ma. She will need it now. I'm sorry for her. I don't know how he left her, exactly. He did a tremendous business, but he spent as he went. He was a good fellow—I always liked the doctor! Terrible affair! Terrible affair! Jason! Where is that advertisement of Grope County Iowa Mortgage? You have filed it in the wrong place! ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... door, and she had no choice but to obey. In the dark passage outside there was darkness that might be felt. The child all but fainted with the sickness of horror as she turned the handle of the other door and began to grope her way. She knew exactly where the coffin was; she knew that to avoid touching it in the diminutive room was all but impossible. And touch it she did. Her anguish uttered itself, not in a mere sound of terror, but in a broken word or two of a prayer ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... on the Cherwell this morning I heard some gentleman saying. A gentleman from St. Cuthbert's College saved a young lady from drowning; he ought to marry the young lady, I say," he concluded with a waggish shake of the head, and he began to grope in his ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... though it was, threw into outline against the darkness a pith helmet and a very English figure. Certainly, too, Shere Ali spoke the Pushtu tongue with a slight hesitation, and an unfamiliar accent. He seemed to grope for words. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... work from the first line of it! It seems as if he came into the full possession of himself and of his material at one bound,—never had to grope for his way and experiment, as most men do. What apprenticeship he served, or with whom he served it, we get no hint. He has come to his own, and is in easy, joyful possession of it, when he first comes into view. He outlines his scheme in his first ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... What does this mean? My wife has vanished! it is nearly daybreak and she does not return! Wanting to relieve myself, lo! I awake and hunt in the darkness for my shoes and my cloak; but grope where I will, I cannot find them. Meanwhile my need grew each moment more urgent and I had only just time to seize my wife's little mantle and her Persian slippers. But where shall I find a spot suitable for my purpose. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... gazing upward, my companion unwittingly stumbled against a lady who was standing silently looking up at this light, and who had failed to notice our approach. The contact was severe enough to dislodge from her hand her folded parasol, for which I began to grope. ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... not oblivion drowsing love and pain Into dull slumber; still we can retell How young blithe valour broke the powers of hell; We grope for hands that will not stir again In ours, hear still in every carillon The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... sun-dial when I determined to cry out. Then, remembering the shock experienced by a suddenly awakened somnambulist, and remembering that the Chinese ladder hung from the window at my feet, I changed my mind. Checking the cry upon my lips, I got astride of the window ledge, and began to grope for the bamboo rungs beneath me. I had found the first of these, and, turning, had ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... magic word, "Gold." It will call greedy thousands from the uttermost parts of the earth to break the seals of ages, and burrow far below these mountain bases. Through stubborn granite wall, tough porphyry, ringing quartz, and bedded gnarled gneiss, men will grope for the feathery, fairy veins ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... no one in the sleeping mews; and doubling back noiselessly through the passage, I took up my station beside the one low window which opened upon it from the blank back premises of the house. Even with the glimmer of snow to help me, I had to grope for the window-sill to make sure of my bearings. The minutes crawled by, and the only sound came from a stall where one of the horses had kicked through his thin straw bedding and was shuffling an uneasy hoof upon the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... thirty hours at a stretch, and then, awaking in the dead of night, he saw the past even more clear and vivid; he lighted his candle and began to grope in the Cape Gazette. As to dates, he now remembered when he had sailed from England, and also from Madeira. Following up this clew, he found in the Gazette a notice that H. M. ship Amphitrite had been spoken ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... therein am I willing to be judged by the players. He had no sooner spoke these words than the works of Virgil were brought in. But before the book was laid open, Panurge said to Pantagruel, My heart, like the furch of a hart in a rut, doth beat within my breast. Be pleased to feel and grope my pulse a little on this artery of my left arm. At its frequent rise and fall you would say that they swinge and belabour me after the manner of a probationer, posed and put to a peremptory trial ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... moon, and here a cross passage turned to the right. Twenty feet away a thin bar of light shone from a room that I knew was Captain Rudstone's, and beyond that lay some empty apartments. My own room was one of the first. I slipped into it, put my boots on the floor and began to grope for a light. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... particulars; though it might be quite unproductive. To probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child had seen and understood, but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. There was nothing else left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyss ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... before, they ascended to the Staked Plain, and are now nearly across it. Guided by the traitor, they had no need to grope their way, and have made quick time. In a few hours more they will pounce upon the prey for which ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... But it does not grope and it succeeds very well. Its gallery is still contained within one plane, the first condition of the minimum of labour. Moreover, of the different vertical planes that can pass through the eccentric starting-point, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... doctrines of the church and penetrating into obscure silences only to hear and feel the more deeply his own condemnation. The sentence of saint James which says that he who offends against one commandment becomes guilty of all, had seemed to him first a swollen phrase until he had begun to grope in the darkness of his own state. From the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, covetousness in using money for the purchase of unlawful pleasures, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... greatcoat, with much care, three or four matches. By lighting, first one and then the others, he was able to grope around until he found the hearth of the cabin. Cold ashes marked the remains of a fire long since extinguished. His foot struck against something which proved to be a small piece of dry pine-wood. With the flame from his last match Watson succeeded ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... restores her to consciousness. She tells him that she suffers from consumption. Rudolph is struck by her beauty and her delicate hands. She notices that she has lost her key and whilst they search for it their candles are extinguished. As they grope on the floor in the dark, Rudolph finds the key and puts it in his pocket. Their hands meet and Rudolph tries to warm her hands and tells her all about his life. Mimi confides her struggles to him and their conversation soon turns upon their love ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... herself in the shade. She had waited till the crowd left the square. Michael, abandoned as a wretched being from whom nothing was to be feared, was alone. She saw him draw himself towards his mother, bend over her, kiss her forehead, then rise and grope ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... and seers of the olden time who were worthy to be media of such a communication. And surely the generations of the past needed such a spiritual uplift as much as we do to-day. Yet for ages and ages the revelation was not given. Men had to grope in the twilight for centuries, until at length the illumination dawned on a few souls. But the reputed wise men of the world did not hail with joy the new illumination, but generally treated it as a new presumption. And however agreeable with reason and with ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... ruins—grey lumps against the moon: they were the houses of a little town. A sort of gulf, winding like a river gorge, and narrower than a column of men, was the street that brought us in. But just as we feared that we should have to grope our way to find companionship we saw that great surprise of modern mountain villages (but not of our own England)—a little row of electric lamps hanging from walls of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... engineers' stores were parked, and some of it strayed into the highway. I noticed lots of small details—machine-gun detachments, signalling parties, squads of stretcher-bearers—which mean the fringe of an army, and as soon as the night began the white fingers of searchlights began to grope in the skies. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... down and almost went out, the darkness seeming to swoop in upon its defeat. The woman examined it, found that it was all but done, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. Then she made anxious haste to empty and replace the last of the birchen cups before she should be left in darkness to grope her way back ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... require from them very accurate rehearsals as the only condition on which they shall be listened to; and to refer them to their books for the information which they need, and in general for the solution of all their doubts. But then the teacher must see that he does not set them to grope their way through a wilderness of absurdities. He must know that they have a book, which not only contains the requisite information, but arranges it so that every item of it may be readily found. That knowledge may reasonably be required at their ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... myself alone with him in the cabinet, through which we passed, I embraced him with an extreme pleasure. We had entered by the backstairs; we descended by the same, so as not to be observed. It was dark, so that on both occasions we were obliged to grope our way. Upon arriving at the bottom I could not refrain from again embracing Millain, so great was my pleasure, and we ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... up in bed and began to grope for the matchbox. But this passed away. The face of Death grew mild, and then seemed to smile. He lay down on his side, his face turned from the open window, composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and fell softly into ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... laughed, and the laugh sounded merry and sweet, and the voice said: "Hast thou no flint and fire-steel?" "No," said Ralph. "But I have," said the voice, "and I am fain to see thee, for thy voice soundeth pleasant to me. Abide till I grope about for a stick ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out of his shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next that the sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned in a flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... murmur as of waves That grope their way through sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon the strand, Carolina! Shout! let it reach the startled Huns! And roar ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... it duly; for the Norns are departed now; From the blood of our foster-brother no branch of bale shall grow; Hoodwinked are the Gods of heaven, their sleep-dazed eyes are blind; They shall peer and grope through the darkness, and nought therein shall find, Save the red right hand of Guttorm, and his lips that never swore; At the young man's deed shall they wonder, and all shall be covered o'er: Ho, Guttorm, enter, and hearken to the counsel of ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and adds, "one kept in captivity preferred fruit, plantains, &c., as food, and refused all kinds of meat. Another would eat meat, fish, and used to burrow and grope under the walls of the bungalow for worms and shells." My idea is Balu-suar, or Sand-pig is the correct name, although Bhalu-suar or Bear-pig may hit off the appearance of the animal better, but its locality has always been pointed out to me by the Gonds in the sandy beds of rivers in ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... concealment behind the barrel, and stood erect. He felt stronger now, and in less pain, convinced that his injuries were in no degree serious. He could move his limbs freely and his mind was active. The darkness was so intense he had to grope his way forward, anxious to make no noise which might betray his presence. No doubt the basement could be reached in some way from the floor above, and any unusual sound below ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... his wife, powerless to do aught beyond grope in mental blackness for some ray of understanding as to this horrible revelation made by ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... trial, supposing it at all possible, it is sure to occur after a sufficient number of trials—and over and over again if the trials are repeated often enough. For example, if a million grains of corn, of which a single one was red, were all placed in a pile, and a blindfolded person were required to grope in the pile, select a grain, and then put it back again, the chances would be a million to one against his drawing out the red grain. If drawing it meant he should die, a sensible person would give himself no concern at having to draw the grain. The probability of his death would not ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... by two Fellows I did not like in the Alley, so was forc'd to goe round with a design to Sheer-off into Sheer-Lane, but the Trumpet sounding at that very time, alarm'd me so, I was forc'd to Grope my way back through Hemlock-Court, and take my Passage by Ship-Yard without the Bar again; but there meeting with one of our trusty Friends, (all Ceremonies a-part) he told me under the Rose I must expect no Mercy in St. Clement's Parish, for the Butchers there on ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... me the profiteer's Lucky hauls, But a prospect of lean years That appals; Yet, although I dimly grope On an ever downward slope, I espy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... then a fire-fly made a spot of light in the blackness, only to leave a deeper spot of blackness when he shut off his intermittent ray. And when at last Julia found herself at the place where the path entered the woods, the blackness ahead seemed still more frightful. She had to grope, recognizing every deviation from the well-beaten path by the rustle of the dead leaves which lay, even in summer, half a foot deep upon the ground. The "fox-fire," rotting logs glowing with a faint luminosity, startled her several times, and the hooting-owl's shuddering ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... They had only proceeded a short distance, however, when they got on to a sandbank, where they were obliged to remain for two hours, feeling the gravest anxiety all the time. At last the tide floated them off again, and they endeavoured to grope their way through the fog, passing several vessels, which were only visible when quite close upon them. Mr Montefiore was standing near the bow of the ship, when suddenly a steamer was seen to be quite close to them, and before it was possible to avoid her, she struck their bow with ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as under an empty bird-house. The many kindly burn up for the few; for the minority is selfish and the majority generous. The minority has ruled the world for physical reasons. The physical reasons are being removed by this "converting culture." Webster will not much longer have to grope for the mind of his constituency. The majority—the people—will need no intermediary. Governments will pass from the representative to the direct. The hog-mind is the principal thing that is making this transition slow. The biggest prop to the hog-mind is pride—pride in property and the power ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... turn aside from laws and statutes and consider the ordinary life and social intercourse of the Negro, we shall find more than one contradiction, for in the colonial era codes affecting slaves and free Negroes had to grope their way to uniformity. Especially is it necessary to distinguish between the earlier and the later years of the period, for as early as 1760 the liberalism of the Revolutionary era began to be felt. If we consider what was strictly the colonial epoch, we may find it necessary to make a division ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... focus of all rays Passing through Nature and the soul and mind. It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze, That had it not, at intervals, a haze, Grading both Angel and the Human-kind, The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind, To grope in Heaven, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... repeated, only this time, as it was being dashed against the wall, the bird crew. Again Donat replaced it, examining the hen-house thoroughly and finding it quite perfect; as he was so engaged the wind puffed out his light, and he must grope back to the door a good deal shaken. Yet a third time the bird was dashed upon the wall; a third time Donat set it, now near dead, beside its mates; and he was scarce returned before there came a rush, like that of a furious strong man, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bantering tone. Julian began to look doubtful. Could it be that all was changed, that there was only danger in this act, that to grope thus in the darkness for lost hope, lost safety, a lost Valentine, with love, trust, beauty, still clinging about him, was to stumble further into a deepening night? It might be ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that Branwell's debts might honourably be paid, with gathering fears for the father, on whom dyspepsia and blindness were laying heavy hands. He could no longer see to read; he, the great walker who loved to ramble alone, could barely grope his way about; all that was left to him of sight was the ability to recognise well-known figures standing in a strong light. Yet he still continued to preach; standing grey and sightless in the pulpit, uttering what words (perforce unstudied) ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... ghosts, according to the old sense of the word, and I could grope with comfort through any amount of dark old rooms, or midnight aisles, or over churchyards, between sunset and cock-crow. I can face a spectre. Being at one time troubled with illusions, I have myself crushed a hobgoblin by sitting ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... exclaimed the laborer; "if we can grope about and find a little dead wood, we shall be able to dry ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... to him with an unprecedented spiritual charm. As though he had just risen from a long illness and had for the first time gone into the open, he scarcely trusted his hand and his eye, and seemed to grope along his way. Thus it was an almost delightful surprise to him to find that he was still a musician and an artist, and perhaps then only for ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... my Horoscope Until my dream-enamoured Senses grope Towards the Light, where in her opal Shrine Smiles Hopefulness, ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... now in the kitchen. It was dangerous to grope about in the dark, for some article of furniture might be overturned, and that would probably create an alarm which would be fatal to their plans. The first thing, therefore, was ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... dinner," thought Jack with a chuckle, as he also dipped his hand to grope for the finny delicacies. He had less than a minute to wait when something cold and smooth touched his fingers. He made a desperate clutch, sinking his arm to his elbow, but the fish was too quick, and darted beyond his reach, just as ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... fragile! just twenty— How mocking the bells sound to-night! She starved in this great land of plenty, When she tried to grope back to the light. Christ. are Thy disciples inhuman, Or only for men hast Thou died? No mercy is shown to a woman Who once ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... for I found a veranda, destitute of chairs and furnishings, but dry and evidently roofed. It was better than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my way to Hotchkiss. That was how I found the open window. I had passed perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand grope for the next one, and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from a word that may signify the meadow of Eois, or high meadow. It has a history that goes back to grope about Ararat for the potsherds thrown out of the ark. It has a very old and famous round tower, used at some time as a place of sepulchre, for a great quantity of human bones have been found in it. In one stone of this tower is the mark ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... trust and hope In the tide of God's love that unceasingly rolls, In the dear words of promise that bear up our souls, In the tender compassion that sweetly consoles, When in death's darkened valley we tremblingly grope. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in a hole, he sat for a bit on his coat and panted and breathed foul air. 'Twas dark as a wolf's mouth, of course, and he didn't know from Adam what dangers lay around him; but he couldn't bide still long and so rose up and began to grope with feet and hands. He kicked a few of the big stones that Ernest Gregory had thrown down, as he thought atop of him; and then he found the bottom of the hole was bigger than he guessed. And then he kicked a soft object and a great wonder happened. Kneeling to see what it might be, he ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... fought his way from obscurity to honour. And when that happens, when a man has fought the fight with adverse circumstances and overcome them, when he has made his mark in the world by sheer force of work and character, no one cares to grope through musty fusty parchments in search of his progenitors. What does it matter! God has given him a certificate of noble birth; that was surely what the historian meant: "Jabez was more ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... folk-lore and custom occasionally show themselves even in the midst of our highly developed and complex civilisation of to-day. The thought of early man on the problems of his being—for after all his superstitions reveal thought—deserve respect, for in his efforts to think he was trying to grope towards the light. ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... step forward—a whole moral aeon beyond Byron and Shelley; and a step, too, in the right direction, just because it is a step forward— because the path of deliverance is, as "Locksley Hall" sets forth, not backwards towards a fancied paradise of childhood—not backward to grope after an unconsciousness which is now impossible, an implicit faith which would be unworthy of the man, but forward on the road on which God has been leading him, carrying upward with him the aspirations of childhood, and the bitter experience of youth, to help the organised ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... that aboriginal malice which resists life is directly responsible for this illusion of "unconscious matter" through the midst of which we grope like outlawed exiles. Reason and the bodily senses, conspiring together, are perpetually tempting us to believe in the reality of this desolate phantom-world of blind material elements; but the unreality of this corpse-life ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... slightly jolly, too. They (George's father and George's father's friend) were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds. They took the candle, and went up. The candle lurched up against the wall when they got into the room, and went out, and they had to undress and grope into bed in the dark. This they did; but, instead of getting into separate beds, as they thought they were doing, they both climbed into the same one without knowing it - one getting in with his head at the top, and the other crawling in from the opposite ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... remarked, a superlatively good impersonation in the Reading)—"Yes; first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you get's to the top of the stairs"—with which the dirty slipshod in black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat, but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the tray of glasses, they were very soon followed, one after another, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... possibly be more stultifying to the musical instinct of the child. For instance, the plan generally pursued is to let the child grope over the white keys of the piano keyboard and play exercises in the scale of C, until he begins to feel that the whole musical world lies in the scale of C, with the scales of F and G as the frontiers. The keys of F sharp, B, D flat and others are looked upon as tremendously difficult and the child ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... gave out so feeble a ray that it was with the greatest difficulty I could grope my way through the confused mass of lumber among which I now found myself. By degrees, however, my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I proceeded with less trouble, holding on to the skirts of my friend's ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sceptical than his, sees no folly in questing for the beautiful, and if we expect no marvels, nor any sleight of faery, however desirous we are, we do not hold it time lost to plunge into the enchanted forest and in its magic half-gloom grope for, and perchance grasp, dryad draperies, or be trapped in the filmy webs of fancy which are spun in these shadows for ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... sots and lovers from one string Dangle and dance in the same ring. Tom, of your piping I've heard said And seen—that you can rouse the dead, Dead-drunken men awash who lie In stinking gutters hear your cry, I've seen them twitch, draw breath, grope, sigh, Heave up, sway, stand; grotesquely then You set them dancing, these dead men. They stamp and prance with sobbing breath, Victims of wine or love or death, In ragged time they jump, they shake Their heads, sweating to ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... hand, mine hands grope up and down, And cannot find thee; I am wondrous sick: Have I thy hand Amintor? Amint. Thou greatest blessing of ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... bed and began to grope for the matchbox. But this passed away. The face of Death grew mild, and then seemed to smile. He lay down on his side, his face turned from the open window, composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and fell softly into ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... man solved his basic problems on the planet of his origin than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Ross's imperturbable belief that things-as-they-are were going pretty well, that "you can't change human nature," Una would become meek and puzzled, lose her small store of revolutionary economics, and wonder, grope, doubt her millennial faith. Then she would again see the dead eyes of young girls as they entered the elevators at five-thirty, and she would rage at all chiefs and bright young men.... A gold-eye-glassed, kitten-stepping, good little thing ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... been athirst of dreams! And all earth's common goals and gifts have been But fuel to flame. O strange and piteous heart! O credulous and visionary heart! Desirous of the infinite—from defeat Arising still to grope again for light And the high word of vision! And in vain! Till, not having found, its bitterness corrodes Inward—like one betrayed by his ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... call the particular attention of the judges. The opposing counsel interrupted him, calling for the authority sustaining his principle,—'The book—the book!' demanded his adversary. 'Sir, and your honors,' said Wirt, straightening himself up to his full height, 'I am not bound to grope my way among the ruins of antiquity, to stumble over obsolete statutes, or delve in black letter law, in search of a principle written in living letters upon the heart of every man.' If the idea contained in this answer of Wirt, were ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... dim, the vision fades, Myself seems to myself a distant goal, I grope among the bodies' drowsy shades, Once more the ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... miseries of earth are here and with them all must cope. Who seeks for joy, through hedges thick of care and pain must grope. Through disappointment man must go to value pleasure's thrill; To really know the joy of health a man must first be ill. The wrongs are here for man to right, and happiness is had By striving to supplant with good the ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... in the open; I suppose the terrific influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration behind it. I'll think out my own way—grope it out through Pantheon and living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... spirit and sex find their perfect mate. Love is the great enlightener. And in my own mind I am fully persuaded that comparatively few mortals ever experience this rebirth that a great love gives. We grope our way through life. Nature's first thought is for reproduction of the species; she has so overloaded physical passion that men and women marry when the blood is warm and intellect callow. Girls marry for life the first man that offers, and forever put behind ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... "pass-supper" given by an inceptor, who has just taken his degree. These suppers were not voluntary entertainments, but enforced by law. At supper the talk ranges over University gossip, they tell of the scholar who lately tried to raise the devil in Grope Lane, and was pleased by the gentlemanly manner of the foul fiend. They speak of the Queen's man, who has just been plucked for maintaining that Ego currit, or ego est currens, is as good Latin as ego curro. Then the party breaks up, and Stoke goes towards Merton, with some undergraduates of ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... no tree, nor grass, nor anything that would serve for food, in this gloomy abyss. But when the Giant Ymir began to grope around for something to satisfy his hunger, he heard a sound as of some animal chewing the cud; and there among the ice-hills he saw a gigantic cow, from whose udder flowed four great streams of milk, and with this his craving ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... luminous publicity in which he moved rendered the smallest of his mental processes so brilliantly overt. It was immediately plain to Adams that the jerky sentences were shot out at random in order that Perry's slow mind might gain a larger space in which to grope for the word he really wanted. There was something evidently behind it all, and until the situation should disclose itself they walked on in an embarrassed and waiting silence. In his top hat and his mink-lined overcoat Perry presented an ample dignity ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... development of the nations of Europe is so tragic as this. That two peoples should, within the space of nine months, abjure their friendly relations and furiously grapple in a life and death struggle over questions of secondary importance leads the dazed beholder at first to grope after the old Greek idea of ate or Nemesis. In reality the case does not call for supernatural agency. The story is pitiably human, if the student will but master its complex details. It may be well to close our study with a few general observations, though they almost necessarily involve the risk ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... encloses the curious sight, to look again upon the river and the mighty signs on its banks of life, enterprise, and progress, the question that comes nearest is beyond doubt a home one. Whether we ever by any chance, in storms, trust to red flags; or burn joss-sticks before idols; or grope our way by the help of conventional eyes that have no sight in them; or sacrifice substantial facts for absurd forms? The ignorant crew of the Keying refused to enter on the ships' books, until 'a considerable amount ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... temporarily quiescent, smoking a woodbine, heaves a resigned sigh, extinguishes the woodbine and places it behind his ear; hitches his repairing-wallet nonchalantly over his shoulder, and departs into the night—there to grope in several inches of mud for the two broken ends of the wire, which may be lying fifty yards apart. Having found them, he proceeds to effect a junction, his progress being impeded from time to time ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... maw great sucking discs and beyond them a brilliant glow. The whole cavernous pit was aflame with phosphorescent light. Dimly he knew that this light explained the ability of the beastly arms to grope so surely in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... put out his hand to grope his way back to the door. It touched Ramoni, sitting rigid. He did not stir. The hand reached over him, caught the lintel of the door and guided the blind man to the hall. Then Ramoni stood up. Without a word he followed the other. ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth... that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him." But while man, unaided by direct revelation, can grope in the dark and feel after God, and can invent systems of religion based on experience that are better than none, any man that accepts facts and testimony will soon discover that God has not thus left us in the dark oil religious matters, but has "appointed a day in which he will judge ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... The blind men grope around wildly for their guide who rings the bell all the time, but must move in different places, so as to escape the blind men who are hunting him. The blind men are only guided by the sound of the bell, and the ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... collect more wood. He had to grope among the icy mass along shore to find his way. The tide was rising and the frozen spray half blinded him. Besides, he was not ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... embodying the suggestions herein contained, the Government will complete the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the cold, to grope about in the dark as their ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Scott began to grope about on every side with his cramponed feet, but not until his struggles set him swinging did his leg suddenly strike a projection. At a glance he saw that by raising himself he could get a foothold on this, and after a short struggle ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... seen individual specimens of nearly all the races differing from our own, except the primeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of uncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as do many creeping, crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be a member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to belong ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... could I see in the dark?" sleepily, even fretfully, I asked myself. And yet, was the tent dark?...It had been, I remembered that. I remembered that Anthony had got to bed first, and I had extinguished the two candles on the washhand-stand. Afterward, I had had to grope my way to the bed. Now, however, there was a light...a very faint, rather curious light. There seemed to be only a square of it, a square sloped off at the top. It was opposite my eyes, which really were open now, I felt sure. I couldn't be dreaming this. It was like a queer-shaped window in ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... was so pitch dark that he had almost to grope his way, for it was impossible to see a hand's breadth in front of him. Some night-birds flying across the road from one hedge to the other brushed Pinocchio's nose with their wings as they passed, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... and makes them congruous with each other; and lastly comes opinion, which does not deal at all with things, but only with thoughts about things. By faith we see God; by knowledge we become conscious that we see God; by belief we arrange in order what we see; and by opinion we feel and grope among our thoughts, seeking what we may find of his works and ways. Every act of faith brings us into the presence of God himself, and makes us partakers of the divine nature. Thus faith is strictly and literally the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... out of it to continue its existence elsewhere, but that those who hated the thought of such change could, by taking thought, prolong life and live for a thousand years, like the adder and tortoise or for ever. But no, he would not leave the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that hidden knowledge he was burning to possess. He pitied him too much. The means were simple and near to hand, the earth teemed with the virtue that would save him from the dissolution which so appalled ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... tool-shed against the outer lower wall, where you leave your tools every evening, there is a small portable steam-engine. Place your answer inside the furnace door, to the right, and search there every morning for our messages. You need not grope around. Put your hand to the right corner of the furnace, and our parcel will be there. In case you can get out without our help, here ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... one in the sleeping mews; and doubling back noiselessly through the passage, I took up my station beside the one low window which opened upon it from the blank back premises of the house. Even with the glimmer of snow to help me, I had to grope for the window-sill to make sure of my bearings. The minutes crawled by, and the only sound came from a stall where one of the horses had kicked through his thin straw bedding and was shuffling an uneasy hoof upon the cobbles. Then just as ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and then a fire-fly made a spot of light in the blackness, only to leave a deeper spot of blackness when he shut off his intermittent ray. And when at last Julia found herself at the place where the path entered the woods, the blackness ahead seemed still more frightful. She had to grope, recognizing every deviation from the well-beaten path by the rustle of the dead leaves which lay, even in summer, half a foot deep upon the ground. The "fox-fire," rotting logs glowing with a faint luminosity, startled her several times, and the hooting-owl's shuddering bass—hoo! ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... was heard, branches caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank in front ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... not scream at what she found there. Vic, sleeping on the couch behind a screen in the living room, yawned himself awake and proceeded reluctantly to set his feet upon the floor and grope, sleepy-eyed, for his clothes, absolutely unconscious that in the night sometime Peter had passed a certain mountain of difficulty and had reached out unafraid and pulled wide open the door of ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... real value of the judgments of the Pagans. He knew how little she understood them. With every premise upon which her conclusions were founded he disagreed, yet he said to himself that Edith was right; that the Pagans were quite too infallible about every thing. They would have him grope along poor and unknown, he argued with himself, simply for the sake of standing in the position of chronic rebuke to established authorities; with only now and then a chance to get a hearing upon what they assumed to be the true theory of art. What they believed—ah! there after ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... excellent and nutritious article of food, and would be highly prized by the epicure. It is caught by the women who wade into the water in a long close line, stooping down and walking backwards, whilst they grope with their hands and feet, presenting a singular, and to the uninitiated, an incomprehensible spectacle, as they thus move slowly backwards, but keep the line regular and well preserved, as all generally occupy the same position ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... will not behold the light thereof, not for that must the sun be blamed, or scorned by others: still less shall the glory of his brightness be dishonoured through their silliness. But while they, self-deprived of light, grope like blind men along a wall, and fall into many a ditch, and scratch out their eyes on many a bramble bush, the sun, firmly established on his own glory, shall illuminate them that gaze upon his beams with unveiled face. Even so shineth the light of Christ on all men ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... and falling into a boat. More strange than all are men who, like the cormorants, dive into the water and emerge with fish—sometimes with one in either hand. These fishermen when in the water always have their feet on the ground and grope along the shore. The first time I saw this method in practice I ran to the brink of the river to save, as I thought, the life of a poor man. He no sooner raised his head out of the water, however, than down it went again; and ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... many small tributaries flowing through deep valleys and from all points of the compass; and secondly, because the general horizon was so level that no point commanding any extensive view over the country could be found. Thus while our main object was to pursue the river, we were obliged to grope our way round the heads of ravines often very remote from it, but which were very perplexing from their similarity to the ravine in which the main stream flowed. A more bountiful distribution of the waters ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... to grope her way toward the door, holding out her white, expressive hands in front of her. It was pitiful and beautiful to see her, and my emotions welled up in my throat till I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... boulder are many dark recesses among the overlying stones. Strip back your sleeve, thrust in your hand, and grope carefully about. In this way I once grasped a prickly thing that startled me. Drawing it to light, it proved to be an Echinus, Sea-Urchin, or Sea-Egg. That one was not larger than a walnut, was shaped like a brioche, and resembled a chestnut-burr. Its color ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... He clung to her fiercely when she would have risen to fetch milk, overwhelming her with a rush of disjointed questions varied by snatches of enthusiasm for Desmond, till exhaustion reduced him to incoherent mutterings; and she was free at last to grope for milk and brandy and a fresh packing ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the result? Watchman! what of the night? The night is stormy and dark; men's hearts are failing them for fear; those who see clearly in the day time, now grope helplessly in the dark; the blind are leading the blind; society is at a stand still, waiting and watching for the coming day. Yet afar off in the east the patriot's eye may even now see the first faint streaks of that light which shall usher ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... deception, which was tormented by its own gnawings and cravings to such an extent that it had lost the function of suspecting. Suspicion of a low, distorted sort might come later; but at its present ebb this mind was far too greedy to gain its own small ends to grope beyond. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... bridge in the world runs from Lambeth to the Horseferry Road, and takes the place of the old British trackway which here crossed the Thames. About the middle of it, if you will grope in the mud, you may or may not find the great Seal of England which James II there cast into the flood. If it was fished up again, why then it is not there. The most beautiful bridge in London is Waterloo Bridge; the most historic is London Bridge; and ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... have a small opinion of a man who does not treat them with respect. They are the symbols of an innocence that once was ours, the tokens of a contact with the unseen world for which we in our blindness grope longingly in vain. ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... wonderful processes in the special temples for initiation,—processes which give them a guarantee of eternal life, but "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Even if at first they grope in the dark, the light may nevertheless come to them later. Nothing is to be withheld from any one; the way is to be ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... not only to suffer his company, but to suffer it willingly. And here, as she passed through the darkling garden under the solid blackness of the yews, was an opportunity of making a further advance. She would have to grope her way, a reason for taking her hand might offer, and—his head grew ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... hand of dawn is on the door That seals the dolorous arch of night; Dim gardens and hushed groves once more Dream of the half-forgotten light; Yet all the ancient fires are cold On altars battered and forlorn, And men grope still for gauds of gold, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... almost impossible. They had to grope with their hands before them like blind men. Stumbling and falling against the rock, their fingers were soon throbbing and raw from brushing against the rough walls. Ulv followed the scent of the magter that hung in the air where they ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... ... Mr. Wright pulled himself to his feet, and with one shaking hand on the table felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table for his hat ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... from error, founded as it is upon a principle new to the world, or only known as having totally failed in the past through the clumsiness of its originators and subsequent custodians—a system which had little aid from the experiences of the past, and must necessarily grope in the darkness which surrounds all new experiments of this kind, lighted only by the few, meagre, a priori truths of deductive reasoning. Our ancestors, hampered as they were by the lack of this great experience of social life, legislated for the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from laws and statutes and consider the ordinary life and social intercourse of the Negro, we shall find more than one contradiction, for in the colonial era codes affecting slaves and free Negroes had to grope their way to uniformity. Especially is it necessary to distinguish between the earlier and the later years of the period, for as early as 1760 the liberalism of the Revolutionary era began to be felt. If we consider what was strictly the colonial epoch, we may find it necessary to make a division ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms below. Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into darkness. Gifted with a pair of enormous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that time forward the spirit of music spoke to him with an unprecedented spiritual charm. As though he had just risen from a long illness and had for the first time gone into the open, he scarcely trusted his hand and his eye, and seemed to grope along his way. Thus it was an almost delightful surprise to him to find that he was still a musician and an artist, and perhaps then ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... now in amongst a number of low bushes, which gave them cover, while it made the surrounding country less black than when they were in the jungle-path. There they could only grope their way with outstretched hands; here they could have gone on at a respectable foot pace without danger of running against some impediment ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the mizzen with the severed stays and shrouds dangling from the bowsprit, the French marines ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Fenger stood up. "I'm not going to load you down with instructions, or advice. I think I'll let you grope your own way around, and bump your head a few times. Then you'll learn where the low places are. And, Miss Brandeis, remember that suggestions are welcome in this plant. We take suggestions all the way from the elevator starter ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the primal lot. Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps in its cot, The mother singing; at her marriage bell The bride weeps; and before the oracle Of high-faned hills, the poet has forgot Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place, And touch but tombs,—look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... dare disturb him," she replied. "Nature may know best; it may be Nature that cries to be alone; and we grope in the dark. O yes, I would leave him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the night the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which Havelock essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness, it was Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in his vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached, unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves until it was possible ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... tell you? You look fagged to death, and as cross as two sticks. Five shillings wasted on taxis, and nothing for it but getting thoroughly upset. Next time I hope you will take my advice!" said Cecil, and took up her candle to grope her way up the dark ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... rotten as it was in the other place," cautioned Lindsay. The passage smelled dank and close. The air in it had probably been unstirred for many years. The faint light which entered it from the treasure room was soon lost, and they were obliged to grope their way by feeling along the walls. On and on they went for what appeared to be a considerable distance, sometimes turning sharp corners, and sometimes going up or ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... this evening.... We must learn to do without them.... I grope my way along the passages, where the wind is muttering, to the great staircase. Here there is a fitful lamp which makes one prefer the darkness. I see the steps, which are white and smeared with mud, pictures and tapestries, a sumptuous ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... down the lane, and in a minute she was at the gate and his eyes were laughing in hers. They walked back through the long grass, and pushed open the door behind the house. The room at first seemed quite dark and they had to grope their way in hand in hand. Through the window-frame the sky looked light by contrast, and above the black mass of asters in the earthen jar one white star glimmered ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... knot had better be cut at once?" advised Dora. "I won't change my mind, and you know I've always been an obstinate thing. There are important things for both of us to achieve, somewhere. I must grope about to find my share of them, for I feel like the ship that did not find itself till it encountered a storm or two. If I promised to meet you next week you would keep on hoping. Do plunge right in now instead ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... Cosmo, laughing. "I am a Scotchman, and so I call things by old-fashioned names. That is what we call a three or four-pronged fork in my country. The word comes from the same root as the German greifen, and our own grip, and gripe, and grope, and grab—and grub too!" he added, "which in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... evidently roofed. It was better than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my way to Hotchkiss. That was how I found the open window. I had passed perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand grope for the next one, and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was startling, to ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Chateau, cousin, to locate it on the road to Hell. But we will let it pass. For, between us, it is a good road and an easy; and they, who travel it, are a finer lot than the superstitious dreamers who grope, in darkness, along the bleak and stony path they fancy leads upward ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... the animal to its feet; but the poor thing either could not or would not move. It was clear that I must leave it, and though hating to do so, I walked a few paces down the narrow path. The fall had shaken me considerably. My head ached, and I had much ado to grope my way along. Three several times in the course of a short distance I stumbled, and the third time fell heavily to the ground, twisting my left foot underneath me. I tried to rise, but could not. Now, what should I do? I dared not call for help, ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... to full height and, with one arm pointing toward the southwest, spoke deliberately as if realizing his importance, seeming to choose his words—seeming, rather, to grope for them. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... formed by heaps of earth and rock, out of which masses of wet fern and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain glimmer of the stars by which to grope one's way. Helmsley's age and over-wrought condition made his movements nervous and faltering at this point, and nothing could exceed the firm care and delicate solicitude with which his guide helped him over this last difficulty of the road. She was indeed strong, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... they entered the house and began to grope their way up the narrow, winding staircase. They could make only slow progress, not only because of the absence of light, but owing to the rotten condition of the stairs. Indescribably filthy and littered with all sorts of rubbish and broken glass, in some places the ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... came up and hit him in the face, that was all. Funny floor! Funny roof! No place to hold a prizefight. And where was Holliday, anyway? Holliday'd been playing for his good eye, till that was practically closed, too, and he couldn't see distinctly, couldn't see much of anything. He'd grope for him—he did ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... a dark night, and the woods were so profoundly obscured, that Roy had to grope about for some time before he found a suitable tree. Cutting it down with the axe which always hung at his girdle, he returned to camp with it on his shoulder, and cut off the small soft branches, which Nelly spread over the ground to the depth of nearly half a foot. This "pine-brush," as it is called, ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... off in the direction of his horse; which happens to be nearest, like Cypriano's cowering in a crevice of the rock. Soon beside it, he is again seen to plunge his hand into the alparejas, and grope about, just as when searching ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... keen vision and resplendence One that gives lights should not be an object of jealousy with others. Lights, again, should not be stolen, nor extinguished when given by others. One that steals a light becomes blind. Such a man has to grope through darkness (in the next world) and becomes destitute of resplendence. One that gives lights shines in beauty in the celestial regions like a row of lights. Among lights, the best are those in which ghee is burnt. Next in order are those in which the juice of (the fruits yielded by) deciduous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Land if Jordan did not roll between. Rolling had long ceased to be a pleasant figure of speech with me. How frail are all things here below, how false, and yet how fair! My mind is naturally picturesque. In the midst of my sadness the force of nature compelled me to grope after an illustration. I could only think that my own foothold was frail, that the Jane Moseley was false, that the Pretty Girl was fair. A dizziness of brain resulted from this rhetorical effort. I silently confided my sorrows to the sympathizing bosom of the sea. I ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... an Emperor, as Chief Pontiff, such is not at all the case. I feel a fumbler, a bungler. I grope. I suspect that the judgment of my advisers is better than mine. What is worse, I know that they think so. I am surrounded by men pre-eminent in their specialties, who look on me as a green boy placed by mere chance in a position ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher, into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the dripping walls and grope along in order to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... enough for one to get in with ease. Madame de Venelle was so used to her trade of watching us, that she rose even in her sleep to see what we were doing. One night, as my sister lay asleep with her mouth open, Madame de Venelle, after her accustomed manner, coming, asleep as she was, to grope in the dark, happened to thrust her finger into her mouth so far that my sister, starting out of her sleep, made her teeth almost meet in her finger. Judge you the amazement they both were in to find themselves in this posture ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... knees. He could not at once answer her, but could only grope toward her blindly. Presently her ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... do at first," agreed the senator, "but I found on closer examination that the theory would not hold water. In the first place, Goddard, being blind, had, and has, to feel his way about—probably had to grope around Lloyd's body to locate his face—which would undoubtedly ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... was empty and the lights were out when they emerged from the dressing-room. They had to grope their way in darkness. It was raining when they reached the street, and the only signs of life were a moist policeman and the distant glare of ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... just set, leaving the desolate scene in deep gloom, so that they could scarcely find their way to the forest; and when they did at last reach its shelter, the night became so intensely dark that they had almost to grope their way, and would certainly have lost it altogether were it not for the accountant's thorough knowledge of the locality. To add to their discomfort, as they stumbled on, snow began to fall, and ere long a pretty steady ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... cheeks, persisted in putting her fingers in her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them moving over her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear little digits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was as if her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From time to time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the little one's head, and would call to him: "Do ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... in his walk and pressed his clenched fingers against his lips. She had always believed in him. Through all the hell in which the Fates had cast his destiny, she had been one star towards which he could grope. But now—a drunkard—a renegade soldier of a renegade battalion—to be shot. He had killed her trust! The horrors of the night closed on him like hounds on ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Deus Opt. Max. of these idols and quacks Is now thrust in a corner for children to flout, And the red thunder-brand he still grasps in his hand. Lights not Jupiter Tonans to grope his way out. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... Circumstances had forced it on him, partly. Sitting now in his room, where he was counting the cost of becoming a merchant prince, he could look back to the time of a boyhood passed in the depths of ignorance and vice. He knew what this Self within him was; he knew how it had forced him to grope his way up, to give this hungry, insatiate soul air and freedom and knowledge. All men around him were doing the same,—thrusting and jostling and struggling, up, up. It was the American motto, Go ahead; mothers taught it to their children; the whole system was a scale of glittering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair. I am speaking of comparative strangers, people who are forced to stay a certain time by the eccentricities of trains, and in whose presence you grope about after common interests and shrink back into your shell on finding that you have none. Then a frost slowly settles down on me and I grow each minute more benumbed and speechless, and the babies feel the frost in the air and look vacant, and the callers ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... Passing through Nature and the soul and mind. It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze, That had it not, at intervals, a haze, Grading both Angel and the Human-kind, The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind, To grope in ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... beginning of vine-planting is like the beginning of mining for the precious metals: the wine-grower also "prospects." One corner of land after another is tried with one kind of grape after another. This is a failure; that is better; a third best. So, bit by bit, they grope about for their Clos Vougeot and Lafitte. Those lodes and pockets of earth, more precious than the precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance and soft fire; those virtuous Bonanzas, where the soil has sublimated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calls and speaks Till sots and lovers from one string Dangle and dance in the same ring. Tom, of your piping I've heard said And seen—that you can rouse the dead, Dead-drunken men awash who lie In stinking gutters hear your cry, I've seen them twitch, draw breath, grope, sigh, Heave up, sway, stand; grotesquely then You set them dancing, these dead men. They stamp and prance with sobbing breath, Victims of wine or love or death, In ragged time they jump, they shake Their heads, sweating to overtake The impetuous tune ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... learned from his videttes that a force of the enemy were in front, and that several men had been observed going into the woods on the right. A search was made of the bush, but as the shades of night had fallen fast it was impossible to grope through the woods, and fearing an ambuscade Col. Peacocke resolved to halt his column for the night. In the meantime he had sent two companies of the 16th Regiment to scour the woods, but owing to the darkness ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... windows went the obscene crew, with such hideous screeches as startled the whole neighbourhood. He gave one last desperate lunge as a parting remembrance, and felt that his weapon had made a hit. Something fell on the floor, but the light was extinguished in the scuffle, and in vain he attempted to grope out ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... connected thought that Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out of his shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next that the sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned in a flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent either to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... but, with submission, your chronicles are more wild than my cantos. I deal in pure conceits of my own; which have a shapeliness and a unity, however unsubstantial; but you, Braid-Beard, deal in mangled realities. In all your chapters, you yourself grope in the dark. Much truth is not in thee, historian. Besides, Mohi: my songs perpetuate many things which you sage scribes entirely overlook. Have you not oftentimes come to me, and my ever dewy ballads for information, in which you and your ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... looked up to say epigrammatically, 'Well, young muster, what Ned is, I was. And what I am, Ned will be! There! D'ye take my meaning? 'Cos I, when a b'y, was like Ned, free as any lark in the air, so when I came to be a man without no book-larnin' in the pockets o' my brain, I had to grope my way about in the world. Many's the time it's bin all dark, round and round, 'cept in the faces of other folk where I seed the light o' understanding shinin' about them things as I couldn't make out. 'Tain't so to say ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... who were free to do beautiful things, free to be curious about the others, free to follow clues of greatness, free to go up the streams of Society to the still, faint little springs and beginnings of things. It would soon be a memorable city. A world would watch it, and other cities would grope toward it. Instead of this we have these big, hollow, unmanned libraries of Mr. Carnegie's everywhere, with no people practically to go with them, no great hive of happy living men and women in and out all ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and you to us? I have seen individual specimens of nearly all the races differing from our own, except the primeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of uncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as do many creeping, crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be a member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... discovered in the obscurest recesses of monasteries; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required not less ingenuity to find out places where to grope in, than to understand the value of the acquisition. An universal ignorance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... incredible ill-luck seemed to dog his footsteps, compelling him to grope about at random, without permitting him to use the elements of success which his own persistency or the very force of things placed within his grasp. Gilbert gave him the crystal stopper. Gilbert sent him a letter. And both had disappeared at ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... loose on that bad night. The sea jumped up like magic, and hurried before the lash of the wind. Then, with a darkening swoop, came the snowstorm, hurled along on wide wings; the last remnants of light fled; the vessel was shut in, and the devoted company on board could only grope in the murk on deck. No one would stay below, for the sudden, unexampled assault of the hurricane had touched ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... to the top of the stairs which I saw led down into the vaults below," he said to himself, "and I can easily grope my way down-stairs, and find out what these ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... heartlessly? Are they hands that drag downward? Are they hands that pull backward? Are they hands that strike in cruelty? Are they hands that slap insultingly? Are they hands that tear pitilessly? Are they hands that grope into the dark places and do more harm than good? Think ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... aspirating tube (Fig. 9) rather than by swabbing or sponge-pumping, when the bronchoscopic tube-mouth is close to the foreign body. It is inadvisable, however, to insert a forceps into a mass of granulations to grope blindly for a foreign body, with no knowledge of the presentation, the forceps spaces, or the location of branch-bronchial orifices into which one blade of the forceps may go. Dilatation of a stricture may be necessary, and may be accomplished by the forms of ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... arcades, indistinct amidst the gloom. However, they came to a narrow passage without a door, and he let go her hand. She could hear him trying to strike some matches, and swearing. They were all damp. It was necessary for them to grope their way upstairs. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... again, that on this account she wished to spare me a great deal of trouble, which she thinks I am not suited for, and which I really don't know myself that I AM suited for; and isn't she up early and late, and going to and fro continually—and doesn't she do all sorts of things, and grope into all sorts of places, coal-holes and pantries and I don't know where, that can't be very agreeable—and do you mean to insinuate that there is not a ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... I waxed old, The blynd boy, Venus baby, For want of cunning, made me bold In bitter hyve to grope for honny: But when he saw me stung and cry, He tooke his wings and away ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough; for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... was right, and Peter, hearing his opinion, volunteered again to do down and grope about until he could discover it. The same precautions were taken to save ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... dark we grope along, And if we go amiss We learn at least which path is wrong, And there is ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... blind, giddy, and confused, listened to the uproar around him with something of the affrighted compassion that a stranger in Hell might be supposed to feel when hearkening to the ceaseless plaints of the self-tortured wicked. He endeavored to grope his way to Sah-luma's side,—and just then lights appeared, . . lights that were not of earth's kindling, . . strange, wandering flames that danced and flitted along the tapestried walls like will-o'-the- wisps on a dark morass, and flung a ghastly blue glare on the pale, uneasy faces of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing; you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward; you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon, and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice; ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... this day they make more history in Secessia than here. Jeff. Davis overshadows Lincoln. Jeff. Davis and his gang of malefactors are pushed into the whirlpool of action by the nature of their crime; here, our leaders dread action, and grope. The rebels have a clear, decisive, almost palpable aim; but ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... financial sceptre, either mix the dulcet cocktail, swing the pick, or else light with the miner's candle the Aladdin caves to which they grope and burrow in daily danger, deep hidden from public view. These "silver kings" ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... tone. Julian began to look doubtful. Could it be that all was changed, that there was only danger in this act, that to grope thus in the darkness for lost hope, lost safety, a lost Valentine, with love, trust, beauty, still clinging about him, was to stumble further into a deepening night? It might be ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... as yet no tree, nor grass, nor anything that would serve for food, in this gloomy abyss. But when the Giant Ymir began to grope around for something to satisfy his hunger, he heard a sound as of some animal chewing the cud; and there among the ice-hills he saw a gigantic cow, from whose udder flowed four great streams of milk, and with this his craving ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... felt his way around until he stood directly in front of her; he put his face close to hers and stared into her eyes, his lower lip opening and closing in silence. Then, without speaking, he began to grope about on the table ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... was, not Captain Jules, who dropped down on her hands and knees to grope for the ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... bit on his coat and panted and breathed foul air. 'Twas dark as a wolf's mouth, of course, and he didn't know from Adam what dangers lay around him; but he couldn't bide still long and so rose up and began to grope with feet and hands. He kicked a few of the big stones that Ernest Gregory had thrown down, as he thought atop of him; and then he found the bottom of the hole was bigger than he guessed. And then he kicked a soft object and a great wonder happened. Kneeling to see what it might be, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... all appearance, untenanted. He drew a long breath. Here he was, home again in safety, and this should be his last folly as certainly as it had been his first. The matches stood on a little table by the bed, and he began to grope his way in that direction. As he moved, his apprehensions grew upon him once more, and he was pleased, when his foot encountered an obstacle, to find it nothing more alarming than a chair. At last he touched curtains. From the position of the window, which was faintly visible, he knew he ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heroism, she was surprised to find herself rather faint when she finished her ironing. However, she took heart to believe that the clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched places; and she carried them upstairs to her husband's room before increasing blindness forced her to grope for the nearest chair. Then, trying to rise and walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit down again; but after a little while she was able to get upon her feet; and, keeping her hand against the wall, moved successfully to the door of her own room. Here she wavered; ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... caught us in the face, and the boat stopped. To our questions the owner replied that we were on an island covered with willows and poplars, of which the flood had nearly reached the top. We had to grope about with our hatchets to clear a passage through the branches, and when we had succeeded in passing the obstacle, we found the stream much less furious than in the middle of the river, and finally reached the left bank ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... and science grope when they would explain to us the strange adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm of "Death's twin brother, Sleep." This story will not attempt to be illuminative; it is no ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... piazza, and out along the street for daily-increasing distances. For Charlie, all this was like coming back into life once more. In spite of the darkness of his room, he could yet see the dim outlines of objects in his narrow line of vision, and grope his way about without being dependent upon his cousins for his every need; and after a month of perfect helplessness, even this was a relief, and he accepted ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the money, and he will be ready for it, which cannot be, I am sure, without Sir G. Carteret's accounts be better understood than they are. He seems to have a great esteem of me and my opinion and thoughts of things. After we had spent an houre thus discoursing and vexed that we do but grope so in the darke as we do, because the people, that should enlighten us, do not helpe us, we resolved fitting some things for another meeting, and so broke up. He shewed me his house, which is yet all unhung, but will be a ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... degrees of distinctness in present society, and the light of experience illumines the pathway before us. It is when we come to the methods of organization and management, the spirit of the economic organization of the future state, that the light fails and we must grope our way into the great unknown with imagination and our sense ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... found a veranda, destitute of chairs and furnishings, but dry and evidently roofed. It was better than the terrace, and so, by groping along the wall, I tried to make my way to Hotchkiss. That was how I found the open window. I had passed perhaps six, all closed, and to have my hand grope for the next one, and to find instead the soft drapery of an inner curtain, was ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the woods were so profoundly obscured, that Roy had to grope about for some time before he found a suitable tree. Cutting it down with the axe which always hung at his girdle, he returned to camp with it on his shoulder, and cut off the small soft branches, which Nelly ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... and cried vehemently, "No, no!" then stretched his lips in a very ghastly grin and turned to take the can from the oven, but his hand missed it, and he appeared to grope as if he were blind, though he looked at the can all the time. Then he catched it and brought it to his mouth, but trembled so much that he spilt as much as he drank, and after putting the can back sat shaking his beard and stroking ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... get hold of ourselves at the same time. Some book might give us help—a fine play, or some form of athletics will start us to thinking. Self-analysis teaches us to see ourselves in a true light without embellishments or undue optimism. We can gauge our chances in no better way. If we grope in the darkness we haven't much of a chance. "Taking stock" throws a searchlight on the dark spots and points the way out ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... very carefully before him, lest he should unguardedly go beyond his depth; at length he reached the blind man, took him very carefully by the hand, and led him out. The blind man then gave him a thousand blessings, and told him he could grope out his way home; and the little Boy ran on as hard as he could, to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... will remember that during all this time I knew nothing of the experience of James Martin with this afflicted trio, but had been compelled to grope my way blindly. As the doctor and son-in-law went out my son came in. He had overheard something about the writing, and said, excitedly: "Don't write, mother; there is no sick man here. That tall man is Elsie's master, and they threatened James's life when ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... desired information, and left to grope for light wherever it might be found, your committee did not deem it either advisable or safe to adopt, without further examination, the suggestions of the President, more especially as he had not deemed it expedient to remove the military force, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... and starting to throw a leg over," Tubby exclaimed in evident rapture. "And if there is a child inside that room, our chum will find it. If it was me now, I'd be so blind with the smoke I'd have to just grope my way around, and p'raps ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... he is still quite a good walker, but that a blind man finds it very troublesome to go anywhere; for at every step he is obliged to grope about, so that he may feel sure of his ground before he firmly plants his foot ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... how to suffer. He will remain a figure for the legends of the future for, running to transmit an order, he received a bullet in the eyes which shattered his optic nerve. He was completely blinded. Nevertheless, he continued to advance, trying to grope his way through the night that had fallen upon him. He encountered something lying on the ground—a something that was a man just as badly wounded. The blind man besought him ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... the edge of the rug, overflowing horror galvanised her into movement, and catching the corners of the rug she threw it violently after the package and over the hand, at the same moment jumping from her seat and on to the footboard, to grope wildly for the switch. Her heart was leaping like a fish just flung into a basket, and every inch of her body winced from an expected grasp upon it. She flung herself over the side and into the seat of the car, found the switch and ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... only worm his way among them, testing each before he trusted it, and finding at times monsters become but mediocre when his hand was on them. More than once he had to rest his hands on cautiously-tried ledges and swing his legs forward and grope with his feet for foothold, and whether the space below was trifling, or whether it ran to incredible depth, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of matter? And in place of cultivating the literae humaniores, which is the true cultivation of the mind, and sets a man, mark you, on a level with princes, to stoop to handle virgin milk and dragon's blood, as they style their vile mixtures; or else grope in dead men's bodies for the thing which killed them. Which is a pure handicraft and cheirergon, unworthy a scholar, who stoops of right to naught but ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... grown blind to grope Over them all, and for three days aloud Call'd on them who were dead. Then fasting got The mastery of grief." Thus ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... you, my fallen brother, as I cannot speak to the foolish people who grope in this miasma of delusion. Silly women, yielding to the natural vanity of their sex, may mistake hysterics for inspiration. Vacillating and vacant men may seek a new sensation by encouraging a revival of the demoniacal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... to recognize the faces round him; not even his favorite Erle, or the daughter who fed and soothed him like an infant; and yet in a dim sort of way he seemed conscious of her presence. He would wail after her if she left him, and his withered hands would grope upon the coverlet in a feeble, restless way, but never once did ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... present are. Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better things beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send out pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the bare stone for the earth by which it must be fed. Let the sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant confidence in what we, even we, may become if we will only take the grace we have. To ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... greediness is immense, and yet they purposely whirl about in business that they might not see themselves. They hide themselves, the devils. Try to free them from this bustle—what will happen? Like blind men they will grope about hither and thither; they'll lose their mind—they'll go mad! I know it! Do you think that business brings happiness into man? No, that's not so—something else is missing here. This is not everything yet! ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... fixed that—nor a castle. It's just a dungeon—that'll do very well, and it's great fun at night when we put out the candles and grope about in the dark. And gaoler will do very well for Miss Burton—some are quite kind, ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... passenger climbed out on the wing and then upon the running gear. To trust yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled aviators came ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... crowding through a gap in a stone fence descended upon the Rockbridge battery. Four regiments of the Stonewall brigade clung desperately to the great uneven field which marked the centre. The musket barrels were burningly hot to the touch of the men, their fingers must grope for the cartridges rattling in the cartridge boxes, their weariness was horrible, their eyes were glazed, their lips baked with thirst. Long ago they had fought in a great, bright, glaring daytime; then again, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... But we grope in darkness! The most ancient Greek book that has come down to us is the Iliad, with its tale of the great war against Troy.[14] Critics will not permit us to call the Iliad a history, because it was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... most of the cafe chantants are situated, is bright with electric light, the back streets of the city are lit by flickering oil-lamps, and here the stranger must almost grope his way about after dark. If wise he will stay at home, for robbery and even murder are of frequent occurrence. A large proportion of the population here consists of time-expired convicts, many of whom haunt the night-houses in quest of prey. During our short ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... from heaven his jovial lot has birth; Nor needs he to strive or toil. The peasant may grope in the bowels of earth, And for treasure may greedily moil He digs and he delves through life for the pelf, And digs till he grubs out ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... place," cautioned Lindsay. The passage smelled dank and close. The air in it had probably been unstirred for many years. The faint light which entered it from the treasure room was soon lost, and they were obliged to grope their way by feeling along the walls. On and on they went for what appeared to be a considerable distance, sometimes turning sharp corners, and sometimes going up or down ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... herein contained, the Government will complete the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the cold, to grope about in the dark as their ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... sacred remnants of our wide domain— With tamp'rings, and delirious feasts of fire, The fruit of your thrice-cursed stills of death, Which make our good men bad, our bad men worse, Aye! blind them till they grope in open day, And stumble into miserable graves. Oh, it is piteous, for none will hear! There is no hand to help, no heart to feel, No tongue to plead for us in all your land. But every hand aims death, and every heart, Ulcered ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... The many kindly burn up for the few; for the minority is selfish and the majority generous. The minority has ruled the world for physical reasons. The physical reasons are being removed by this "converting culture." Webster will not much longer have to grope for the mind of his constituency. The majority—the people—will need no intermediary. Governments will pass from the representative to the direct. The hog-mind is the principal thing that is making this transition slow. The biggest prop ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... A fewe termes knew he, two or three, That he had learned out of some decree; No wonder is, he heard it all the day. And eke ye knowen well, how that a jay Can clepen* "Wat," as well as can the Pope. *call But whoso would in other thing him grope*, *search Then had he spent all his philosophy, Aye, Questio quid juris, would ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... daring policy, had undertaken to attack the Danish defences with a squadron of twelve seventy-fours, and the frigates and bomb-vessels of the fleet. He determined to shun the open way of King's Channel, grope through the uncertain passage called the Dutch Deep, at the back of the Middle Ground, and forcing his way up the narrow channel in front of the shallows, repeat on the anchored batteries and battleships of the Danes the exploit of the Nile. He spent the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... that I may have written; And you, poor woman that I made my wife, You have had more of loneliness, I fear, Than I — though I have been the most alone, Even when the most attended. So it was God set the mark of his inscrutable Necessity on one that was to grope, And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad For what was his, and is, and is to be, When his old bones, that are a burden now, Are saying what the man who carried them Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave, Cover them as they will with choking earth, May shout the truth to men who put them there, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the interesting little bits of architectural antiquity, which are so numerous in Paris, the visit must be performed on foot, as it is sometimes requisite to go into little courts and alleys where no carriage can possibly enter; besides an antiquarian must peep and grope about in places where a vehicle would only be ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... knew.— (O never, more than mine of long ago. How could we know?—) For who should guess The shock and smiting of that perfectness?— The lily-thrust of those ecstatic feet Unpityingly sweet?— Sweet beyond all the blurred blind dreams that grope The upward paths of hope? And who could guess The dulcet holiness, The lilt and gladness of those jocund feet, Unpityingly sweet? Ah, for your coolness that shall change and stir With every glee of her!— Under the fresh amaze That drips and glistens from her wiles ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... reads the riddle right; And we who grope in constant night But serve His will; And when sometime the doubt is gone, And darkness blossoms into dawn,— "God keeps the good," we then will say: " 'Tis but the dross ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Mr. Stacey, a hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the mizzen with the severed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for the only realities, and they may acquire much skill in interpreting the shadows. Turn these men suddenly to the true light, and they will be dazzled and blinded. They will feel as though they had lost the realities, and been plunged into dreams. And in pain and sorrow they will be tempted to grope back ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... ascended to the Staked Plain, and are now nearly across it. Guided by the traitor, they had no need to grope their way, and have made quick time. In a few hours more they will pounce upon the prey for which ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the left, again to the right, and then again to the left on arriving at the entrance on the lower side. Such is its peculiar form, that an observer, standing at a point about midway of its subterranean course, is completely excluded from a view of either entrance, and is left to grope in the dark through a distance of about twenty yards, occupying an intermediate portion of the tunnel. When the sun is near the meridian, and his rays fall upon both entrances, the light reflected from both extremities of the tunnel contributes to mollify the darkness of this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... religious services in his chapel. In the vaulting near the entrance is a small opening communicating with a narrow passage, by means of which Montaigne could leave his bedroom and hear mass without showing himself; but in order to do so he had to grope along his rabbit's burrow almost on hands and knees. To reach his bedroom from the ground, he climbed up the spiral staircase as the visitor does today. The steps are much worn in places, and the boots of the essayist must have had something to do with this, for he probably ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... from arithmetic to geometry, from observation to science, from practice to theory, and play with edged tools long before we know what knives mean. For, like Hop-o'-my-Thumb and his brothers, we are driven out early in the morning to the edge of the forest, and are obliged to grope our way back to the little house whence we come, by the crumbs dropped on the road. Alack! how often the birds have eaten our bread, and we are captured by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... any idea of how stultifying it can be to be forced into school under the supervision of teachers who cannot understand, and among classmates whose grasp of any subject is no stronger than a feeble grope in the ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... storehouse below? She never comes out in a pink head-dress or a yellow gown. No, she always selects what will make the blue. It shows that it has life, intelligence, or else it couldn't think, way down under the ground, and grope in the dark, but always gropin' jest right, always a thinkin' the right thing, never, never in the hundreds and thousands of years makin' a mistake. Why, you couldn't do it, Josiah Allen, nor ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... gases, the shock, the fire, what they had endured and what they had escaped—all these had distracted them. They danced, sang, wept, laughed, shouted in a sort of maudlin frenzy, spun about deliriously until they dropped. They were deafened, and some of them could not see but had to grope their way. I remember one man who sat down and pulled off his boots and socks and threw them away and then hobbled on in his bare feet until he cut the bottoms of them to pieces. I don't care to see anything like that again—even if it is my enemies ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... child is born, the face is alive. And the face communicates direct with both planes of primary consciousness. The moment a child is born, it begins to grope for the breast. And suddenly a new great circuit is established, the four poles all working at once, as the child sucks. There is the profound desirousness of the lower center of sympathy, and the superior avidity of the center of will, and at the same time, the cleaving yearning to the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... tribute to the great Christian doctrine of a divine and human mediator: they have given striking evidence of a felt want in all humanity of a God with men. If it was a deeply conscious want of the human heart which led the heathen of distant India to grope their way from the cheerless service of remorseless deities to one who could be touched with a feeling of their infirmities, and could walk these earthly paths as a counsellor by their side, how striking is the analogy to essential ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... hands that longing grope And straining eyes that search to pierce the doom, I creep the path-ways of my only Hope, And seek the Loved One passed ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... with pygmy hands, Not in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel god To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not dare disturb him," she replied. "Nature may know best; it may be Nature that cries to be alone; and we grope in the dark. O yes, I would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as Chief Pontiff, such is not at all the case. I feel a fumbler, a bungler. I grope. I suspect that the judgment of my advisers is better than mine. What is worse, I know that they think so. I am surrounded by men pre-eminent in their specialties, who look on me as a green boy placed by mere chance in a position which I fail to fill adequately. They watch me like hawks, they ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... light grows dim, the vision fades, Myself seems to myself a distant goal, I grope among the bodies' drowsy shades, Once more the Old Illusion rocks ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... praiseworthy deeds. Thousands have plunged into atheism. Of those who have not gone this length, the great body are dissatisfied, ill at ease, without confidence in the doctrines of Rome, but ignorant of a more excellent way. Straitly shut up, they grope blindfolded round the walls of their prison-house, wistfully turning their eyes to any ray of light that strikes in through its crevices. How this state of things may end is known only to God;—whether in the gradual spread of Gospel light, and the peaceful fall of that system which ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... beginning to shimmer in moonlight. But he could not, for a time, get himself beyond the pounding of that name in his brain. It was not merely that he had heard the name before. There was something significant about it. Something that made him grope back in his memory of things. Boulain! He whispered it to himself, his eyes on the slender figure of the woman ahead of him, swaying gently to the steady sweep of the paddle in her hands. Yet he could think of nothing. A feeling of irritation ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... country Jack's towering height really became of great use, enabling him frequently to walk along with his head above the surrounding herbage, while we were compelled to grope along, ignorant of all that was around us save the tall grass at our sides. Occasionally, however, we came upon more open ground, where the grass was short, and then we enjoyed the lovely scenery to the full. We met with a great variety of new plants and trees in this ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... were a Satan! Already has the Incarnation of goodness appeared to mankind, and, though the world be moved to virtue only slowly and with reluctance, mark how mighty has been his influence! What think you, then, would be the power of a Christ of evil, showing to men the path they already grope for? I tell you, the human race would be his only; Hell, full to bursting with their hurrying souls, would outweigh Heaven in the balance; the teller of the secret would ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... tapping with a stick. He could not think. He could attend to things; he could notice things; he could perform necessary actions; but "Effie is dead." "Effie has killed herself." "Effie has killed herself and her child—now what?" In pursuit of these his mind could only grope with outstretched hands; these, in the dark room of his calamity, eluded his mind. He groped and stumbled after them. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... as he had appeared, and with this solemn warning ringing in his ears, the Baron found himself in inky darkness again. This time he did not hesitate to grope madly for the door, but hardly had he reached it, when, with a fresh sensation of horror, he stumbled upon a writhing form that seemed to be pawing the panels. He was, fortunately; as quickly reassured by hearing the voice of Mr. Gallosh exclaim in ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... remembering the shock experienced by a suddenly awakened somnambulist, and remembering that the Chinese ladder hung from the window at my feet, I changed my mind. Checking the cry upon my lips, I got astride of the window ledge, and began to grope for the bamboo rungs beneath me. I had found the first of these, and, turning, ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... providence, The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The All-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemned before commission. In these things we grope and flounder; and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatched from vice (no great compliment to it, by the by), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... shall never turn grey, Never. We will never doubt the world and shut our eyes to ponder. Never. We will not grope in the maze of our mind. We flow with the flood of things, from the mountain to the sea, We will never be lost in ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... began to grope with the toe of her right pump for the slight bulge under the rug which indicated the position of the bell used for summoning the maid ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... find the meaning out That lies in wrong and pain and strife; I know not why we grope through grief, Tear-blind, to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... answer, he began to grope around for the other assailant. But no sign of him could he find. He had evidently been able to get away, and Douglas was thankful that he had not killed him, no matter how much he ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... these things in these terms. He found himself becoming involved in a maze of speculation, in which he could only grope feebly for words to define the unrest that was ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... all the boat's lights revealed was a yellow circle of fog that traveled with us. Wet and chilled, we two stood at the wheel together, in such hard conditions that no navigator and no pilot could have done much more than grope. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... who seemed to be a little bolder than the others, went with him for some distance as his guide with a lighted lantern. As the sky was cloudy, and it was quite dark, the barn-keeper was obliged to grope his way. The whistling of the wind and the screeching of the owls were terrible to hear, but could not frighten his bold heart. As soon as he was able to strike a light under the shelter of the masonry, he lit a splinter and looked about ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... not crawl away; far from it. The man in the reptile house, who "looked puzzled" and grinned, and had to grope about the sand at the bottom of the case to find the snake for the edification of the Westminster Gazette interviewer, did not grin to that purpose for long. Never before in the history of the Zoo was the reptile house so crowded. Day after ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... own good providence or his arbitrary will. How grand the description of this magnificent universe written by the Omnipotent hand! Of man it should set forth his relations to other living beings, his place among them, his privileges, and responsibilities. It should not leave him to grope his way through the vestiges of Greek philosophy, and to miss the truth at last; but it should teach him wherein true knowledge consists, anticipating the physical science, physical power, and physical well-being of our own times, nay, even unfolding for our benefit ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... aside, that he nearly tripped her up; and he almost tore her arm from her body as he tried to assist her over the brooks. Their joy was great when they came to the three other streams. The first flowed over a bed of pebbles, between two rows of willows, so closely planted that they had to grope between the branches with the risk of falling into some deep part of the water. It only rose to Serge's knees, however, and having caught Albine in his arms he carried her to the opposite bank, to save her from a wetting. The next stream flowed black with shade beneath a lofty canopy of ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... motley wanderers seek, Pilgrims of life upon the field of scorn, Mocking and mock'd; with plague and hunger weak, And haggard faces bleach'd as those who mourn, And footsteps redden'd with the trodden thorn; Blind stretching hands that grope for truth in vain, Across a ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... shuts the sight, We should no more admire, perchance, That these found truth out at a glance, Than marvel how the bat discerns Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns, Led by a finer tact, a gift He boasts, which other birds must shift Without, and grope as best they can." No, freely I would praise the man,— Nor one whit more, if he contended That gift of his, from God descended. Ah friend, what gift of man's does not? No nearer something, by a jot, Rise an infinity of nothings ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... in the kitchen. It was dangerous to grope about in the dark, for some article of furniture might be overturned, and that would probably create an alarm which would be fatal to their plans. The first thing, therefore, was ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... Sara. I had no idea that I should miss her so much! Indeed, we all missed her: it seemed to me now that I had undervalued her. True, she had not been a congenial companion to me in my dark days; but even then I had wronged her. Why should I have expected her to grope among the shadows with me, instead of following her into the sunshine? Sara could not act contrary to her nature. Sad things depressed her. She wanted to cause every one to ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... beyond recovery. Still, he felt convinced that he was in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where the cave had been, and, bidding Flora to sit down and rest while he further investigated, he began to grope about here and there among the confused mass of rocks, studying them intently as he did so. For upwards of two hours Leslie searched and toiled in vain; but at length he came upon a piece of rock face that seemed familiar to him, and upon removing ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... hoarded letters, that have been preserved only to blast the memory of the dead! What precious words, again, have been destroyed, that might have lightened for a whole heavy lifetime the doubt and anguish of the living! In this, as in all we do, we grope about in darkness, and the one and the other course must often enough have been bitterly lamented by those who "did for the best" in keeping or destroying ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... monstrous inequality with which the penal codes of slave states treat slaves and their masters. When we consider that guilt is in proportion to intelligence, and that these masters have by law doomed their slaves to ignorance, and then, as they darkle and grope along their blind way, inflict penalties upon them for a variety of acts regarded as praise worthy in whites; killing them for crimes, when whites are only fined or imprisoned—to call such a 'public opinion' inhuman, savage, murderous, diabolical, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... deep, and he was wondering whether his old cap were worth wading for, and had almost decided to abandon it, when he saw a skinny yellow arm, like a frog's leg, stretch up through the water, and a hand that dripped with slime grope for his cap. With three strides he was in the pond, and he caught the cap and the hand together in his fist. The hand writhed in his, but Hobb was too strong for it; and with a mighty tug he dragged first the shoulder ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
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