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More "Lightning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... told me your cousin's name was Darrell: not that I should have been much wiser if you had; but, thunder and lightning, Lionel! do you know that your cousin Darrell is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strange and blackened pillar, which once stood in the middle of the Forum of Constantine; and this too was there in the days of Theodoric. It is called the Burnt Column, because it has been more than once struck by lightning, and is blackened with the smoke of the frequent fires which have consumed the wooden ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... two—Lindsley and his daughter. The old man had tried to make a fortune in many ways. There was no sort of useless invention that he had not attempted, and you will find in the Patent Office models without number of beehives and cannons, steam cut-offs and baby jumpers, lightning churns and flying machines on which he had taken out patents, assured of making a fortune from each one. He had raised fancy chickens, figured himself rich on two swarms of bees, traveled with a magic lantern, written a philosophic novel, and started a newspaper. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... earth; and it seemed to Oriana's troubled spirit that the wrath of heaven was poured upon her benighted race. Peal after peal resounded in quick succession, and reverberated from the distant kills; while flashes of forked lightning followed one another rapidly, and dispelled, for a moment, the unnatural darkness. The young Indian clung trembling and terrified to her companion, and hid her face on his shoulder, to shut out the fearful scene, while Henrich spoke to her words of comfort and encouragement, and at length succeeded ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... so that they should not hurt us, and went up into the oaks and whistled such beautiful sweet low whistles. Not in those oaks, dear, where the blackbirds whistle to-day; even the very oaks have gone, though they were so strong that one of them defied the lightning, and lived years and years after it struck him. One of the very oldest of the old oaks in the copse, dear, is his grandchild. If you go into the copse you will find an oak which has only one branch; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... interval of silence. Bit by bit the sky became overcast. Vague, fleecy rifts of clouds appeared in the heavens. A wind sprang up, murmuring about them, there came a distant roll of thunder, while along the horizon the lightning rushed in broken, jagged lines of fire. In the east there was a pale flush that showed the black, hurrying clouds the winds had summoned out ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... on the way I showed you yesterday, till you come to a tree scathed and blasted by lightning. To the right of it is a thicket; on the farther side, midway down it, you will find some dried brambles; remove them, and you will perceive a narrow passage. Half-way down it the ground beneath your feet will sound hollow. On your right hand, by bending aside the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... north-wind with his airy forces, Bears up the Baltic to a foaming fury; And the red lightning with a storm of ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... half revealed. He does not see those things in the eyes of women he is not in love with; but when in after years he is carelessly regarding this or the other woman, some chance look, some brief and sudden turn of expression, will recall to him, as with a stroke of lightning, all the old wonder-time, and his heart will go nigh to breaking to think that he has grown old, that he has forgotten so much, and that the fair, wild days of romance and longing are passed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... for some hours after nightfall. A night bombardment is a stirring scene. The passionate and spiteful glare of the cannon-flashes; the unceasing roar of the explosions; the demoniac shriek of the shells in the air, followed by their explosion with a lightning flash, and crash like thunder; the volumes of gray smoke rising upon the dark air,—make up a wonderful and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... did you come here to the Temple of Death?" Paullinus had a sudden access of dread at the words. "Is this the Temple?" he said; "it is the place I was bidden to avoid." At this the man gave a fearful kind of smile, like a flash of lightning out of a sombre cloud, and he said, with a certain dark pride, "Ay, there are few that come willingly; but now you must abide with me to-night—unless," he added, with a savage look, "you have a ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him on the floor of the dining-room, and he was too exhausted to move for a while. By degrees, however, he recovered sufficiently to stand; and as soon as he could do so by himself, with devilish cunning he made for the lamp, which he struck, quick as lightning, with a stick that had been lying on the table. In an instant the great round globe fell to pieces, but luckily the chimney was not broken, and the lamp remained alight, and before he could strike another blow at it I had grappled with him again. This time he struggled violently for ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... over the slippery rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in the unresponsive trout. The way grew wilder and more grewsome. The thunder began again, rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge: the lightning also darted down into the darkening passage, and then the rain. Every enlightened being, even if he is in a fisherman's dress of shirt and pantaloons, hates to get wet; and I ignominiously crept under the edge of a sloping ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... often necessary to follow them forward from behind by means of map and compass. Seen by pale moonlight, these derelict roads, in places pitted with huge craters or flanked by shattered trees, wore a mysterious charm. More eloquent of catastrophe than those thrown down by gale or struck by lightning are trees which shells have hit direct and sent, splintered, in headlong crash from the ranks of an avenue. If wood and earth could speak, what tales the sunken roads of France could find ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... jeje-panari, properly, the ears (panari) of a tree (jeje); the veins of the hand, amgna-mitti, properly, the ramified roots; leaves, prutpe-jareri, properly, the hair at the top of the tree; puirene-veju, properly, the sun (veju), straight or perpendicular; lightning, kinemeru-uaptori, properly, the fire (uapto) of the thunder, or of the storm. (I recognise in kinemeru, thunder or storm, the root kineme black.) In Biscayan, becoquia, the forehead, what belongs (co and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... power of letters on character could be missed by no historian and by no biographer who had his wits about him—even if he had less striking examples at hand than that letter of the Emperor Tiberius to the Senate which is one of the Tacitean flashes of lightning through the dark of history. But the credit of using letters as a main constituent of biography—of originating the "Life-and-Letters" class of books which fills so large a part of modern library-shelves—has been given, as ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... tiny butter plate, and should properly match the meat set. A touch of gold with any china decoration gives it a certain character and richness. The chop platter—among the nice-to-haves and bought as an odd piece—belongs in the lightning change category, for it may serve us our chops and peas during the first course, our molded jelly salad during the second, and our brick of ice cream or other dessert during the third. The range in price is from $1 up to $5 and $6 for ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... also, I entreat you, whether it is credible that Inspiration should be a thing of such a nature, that it comes and goes,—is here and is gone,—once and again in the course of a single page. What? does it vanish, like lightning, when the Evangelist's pen has to record the title on the Cross,—to re-appear the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... symptoms of silent awe and astonishment during the storm, and man's ultimate source of confidence is in the divine protection. In every quarter you meet with the blasted trees of the forest, which wither and decay at the lightning's stroke. No earthquakes, such as are commonly known in the West-India islands, have ever been felt here; but whirlwinds sometimes have made avenues through the thick forest, by levelling the loftiest trees, or sweeping them ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... Chimaera, in which there is an under story about the vain subduing of passion and treachery, and the end of life in fading melancholy,—which, I hope, not many of you could understand even were I to show it you (the merely physical meaning of the Chimaera is the cloud of volcanic lightning connected wholly with earth-fire, but resembling the heavenly cloud in its height and its thunder). Finally, in the AEolic group, there is the legend of Sisypus, which I mean to work out thoroughly by itself; its root is in the position ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... steeds of fairy fable, that could, transport a single favoured rider over wide distances in little time. The subjugated, serviceable nature-power Steam, with its fellow-servant the tamed and tutored Lightning, has wonderfully contracted distance during these fifty years, making the earth, once so vast to human imagination, appear as a globe shrunken to a tenth of its ancient size, and bringing nations divided by half the ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... however, they kept their feet constantly on the watch for any disturbance on the webs; and the instant any unhappy little fly got entangled in their meshes, the ever-watchful spider was out like a flash of lightning, and down at once in full force upon that incautious intruder. I was convinced after many observations that it is by touch alone the spider recognizes the presence of prey in its web, and that it hardly derives any indications worth speaking of from its numerous little eyes, at least as ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... inner self could not ignore, however much her living mind might cancel it. She could run for shelter from it, but the storm would come. She flinched from hearing another word of Mr. Barlow's woundy chatter, and fled into the house, actually bearing in her hand the lightning-flash whose thunder-clap was in a moment to shake ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... in the earth, into which he threw many heated stones, the while muttering many words, which no one but himself understood. Then he filled his pipe with tobacco, kindling it with the rays from a flash of lightning. When this was done, he bowed once to the rising sun, twice to the North Star, blew thrice in a conch-shell, muttered more unintelligible words, and commenced smoking at a great rate. In a few minutes it was as dark as the darkest night, and a terrible ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... thing was over so quickly that the rifle fire had practically ceased before the Artillery behind had time to get to work, and by the time they had flung a few shells to burst in thunder and lightning roar and flash over the German parapet, the storm of rifle fire had slackened and passed. Hearing it die away, the gunners also stopped, reloaded, and laid their pieces, waited the reports of their Forward Officers, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... I said reassuringly, "and he's going too fast to hear me if I did call him. If you can stop the dog, Mr. Bennett, I'll guarantee to make William Adolphus listen to reason, but there's no use trying to argue with a lightning flash." ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... faith in the people, and because he cherished it he never flattered the mob, nor hung upon its neck, nor pandered to its passion, nor suffered its foaming hate or its exulting enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of his regnant soul. He moved in solitary majesty, and if from his smooth speech a lightning flash of satire or of scorn struck a cherished lie, or an honored character, or a dogma of the party creed, and the crowd burst into a furious tempest of dissent, he beat it into silence with uncompromising iteration. If it tried to drown ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... Quick as lightning there was another order as we began to leave the three low vessels behind, and I involuntarily grasped the rail before me as all the men on board lay down—crews of the guns, marines, and those who had doubled forward under the command ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... having prayed, spat upon the enemy. By God's will that drop of his saliva was followed by all the raindrops in the sky. A tempest arose: the rain fell in such torrents on the barbarians that their camp was flooded; their tents were overturned by the power of the winds, and many among them perished by lightning. The rain lasted for three days, after which time Attila assailed the ramparts with powerful engines of war. When they saw the walls fall down the inhabitants were terrified. All hope of resistance being at an end, the holy bishop, clad in his episcopal robes, went ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... belched water without end, till everything had been beaten down as with sledge hammers! She had used every morning to go to mass and had diligently prayed for divine protection against flood. Now the thunder might crash and the lightning strike and hailstones come rattling down as big as hen's eggs—why did not ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... something like the twentieth century before Christ. Priority, however, belongs beyond all doubt to T'ien, which it would have been more natural to find meaning, first the visible heavens, and secondly the Deity, whose existence beyond the sky would be inferred from such phenomena as lightning, thunder, wind, and rain. But the process appears to have been the other way, so far at any rate as the written language is concerned. The Chinese script, when it first came into existence, was purely pictorial, and confined ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... may feast your eye on gloriously illuminated manuscripts and wonder at the ingenious inventions of one or other good brother who sojourned here a while on his way to the "Abiding City." There is, for instance, a model of the first lightning-conductor. Country folk, when they first saw it, crossed themselves, thinking this the work of the devil. The visitors' book in the library shows signatures of men famous in history, among them our Nelson, who, in company of Sir William and Lady Hamilton, visited Strahov on September 29, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... it always comes in a lion hunt, unerringly, unexpectedly, and with lightning swiftness. The three men were nearing the bottom of the second hollow, well spread out, lassos taut, facing one another. Jones stumbled and the lioness leaped his way. The weight of both brought Jim over, sliding and slipping, with his rope slackening. The leap of the lioness carried ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... of her frenzy was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Andrew's, Holborn. It became necessary for Charles and his father to make an immediate change of residence, and they took lodgings at Pentonville. There is a pregnant sentence in one of Lamb's letters that flashes with the vividness of lightning into the darkest recesses of those early troubles and embarrassments. "We are," he wrote to Coleridge, "in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... regarding the status of certain spirits. In the village of Manabo, thunder is known as Kidol; in Likuan and Bakaok, as Kido-ol; and in each place he is recognized as a powerful spirit. In Ba-ay, two types of lightning are known to be spirits. The flash from the sky is Salit, that "from the ground" is Kilawit. Here thunder is Kadaklan, but the sun is the all powerful being. He is male, and is "so powerful that he does not need or desire ceremonies ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... forward. Lead out the Graces, Call Artemis out; Then her brother, the Dancer of Skies, That gracious Apollo. Invoke with a shout Dionysus out of whose eyes Breaks fire on the maenads that follow; And Zeus with his flares of quick lightning, and call, Happy Hera, Queen of all, And all the Daimons summon hither to be Witnesses of our revelry And of the noble Peace we have made, Aphrodite our aid. Io Paieon, Io, cry— For victory, leap! Attained by me, leap! Euoi Euoi ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... lips were vain indeed, Nor word nor even kiss could e'er confess What sighs and joy and grief and happiness Would flash from me to you with lightning speed. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... gets there, he'll just toss the letter bag to the next man, who is sitting on a fresh horse waiting for it, and away he'll go like lightning. That's the way the news is carried to the very end of the empire ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... the swords of the men behind the prisoners gleamed in the afternoon sunshine, they drew back the white sleeves from their dark arms, and one by one, and in nearly every case at a single blow, following what seemed like a lightning flash, head after head dropped upon the sand, and the quivering bodies fell forward amidst the triumphant shouts of the ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Ferdinand and Isabella was first raised, in token of the Spanish conquest of Granada, on the 2nd of January 1492. A turret containing a huge bell was added in the 18th century, and restored after being injured by lightning in 1881. Beyond the Alcazaba is the palace of the Moorish kings, or Alhambra properly so-called; and beyond this, again, is the Alhambra Alta (Upper Alhambra), originally tenanted by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the countess for a sign of maternal weakness, saw none, and understood that a duel was down in the morrow's bill of entertainments, as well as a riot possibly before dawn. The house had revealed its temper in that short outburst, as a quivering of quick lightning-flame betrays the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the old struggle of man against the wild beast for his meat, against the stern earth for his bread, against the cold that cracks his skin and wracks his bones, against the wind that whirls his ship over in the sea, the wave that drowns him, the lightning that ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... life straight. The one pooh-poohed the enthusiasm of the other, derided his belief in humanity and assured him of failure: the other felt as if he had been taken behind the scenes and shown the blue fire of which the awful lightning of his youth was made. Mr. Birkett could not quite forbid the greater faith, the more loving endeavor which the young man threw into his ministrations, but he was the Sadducee who scoffed and made the work heavy and uphill throughout. He gave a grudging assent to the Bible-classes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... had fallen into decay. It stood gaunt against the hillside upon a natural plateau, the pathway to it, long and zig-zag, cut out in the hillside. Vegetation had taken root in the crevices of its broken walls, and some of the stonework, shivered by the lightning stroke perhaps, lay in the roadway at the foot of the hill. Silence reigned, and an eagle hovering on the heights above doubtless had his eyrie there. A thin stream of water trickled down the hillside, finding its way from the snow on the mountains, which reared ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Suddenly, as if by magic, from all quarters came hurrying up dark lowering clouds, covering the whole concave of heaven, a lurid light only gleaming out from near the horizon. Then, amidst the most terrific roars of thunder, the brightest flashes of lightning, and the rushing, rattling, crashing sound of the tempest, there burst upon us a wind, which made the ship reel like a drunken man, and sent the white foam, torn off the surface of the harbour, flying over the deck in sheets, which drenched us through and through. In an instant, the surrounding ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Like lightning this wonderful news spread through the crowd, and in the delirious joy that followed there was much disorder which the Germans scarcely tried to suppress. They were stunned by the catastrophe. The Crown Prince a prisoner! Von Hindenburg a prisoner! By what miracle ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... meanwhile the sea became rougher and rougher. The whole surface of the ocean seemed a vast plain furrowed with huge blackish waves fringed with white foam. The thunder growled around us, and the lightning discovered to our eyes all that our imagination could conceive most horrible. Our boat, beset on all sides by the winds, and at every instant tossed on the summit of mountains of water, was very nearly sunk in spite of our every effort in baling it, when we discovered a large ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... spoke, the still and vast features of the goddess seemed suddenly to glow with life; through the black marble, as through a transparent veil, flushed luminously a crimson and burning hue; around the head played and darted coruscations of livid lightning; the eyes became like balls of lurid fire, and seemed fixed in withering and intolerable wrath upon the countenance of the Greek. Awed and appalled by this sudden and mystic answer to the prayer of his ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... bed, as I had asked her to do. But after a while I had to put out my candle, for Grandmamma is rather particular about it, and then I was so sleepy I fell asleep. I was awakened by a noise and a sort of a flashing, and I thought it was thunder and lightning, but it was only Jael; she had come stumping in, and was flashing the Rushlight about before my eyes to see if I was asleep, and when she saw I was, she wanted to take it away again, but I begged and prayed, and then I said Grandmamma had promised, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of attention, I saw his mind traveling at lightning speed in search of my hidden purpose along every avenue ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... herd of these tremendous animals came to the Big-bone Licks, and began a universal destruction of the bear, deer, elk, buffalo, and other animals, which had been created for the use of the Indians. The Great Man above, looking down and seeing this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighbouring mountain, on a rock, (on which his seat and the prints of his feet are to be seen to this day) and hurled his bolts among them, till the whole ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... but when heaven breathed free. Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out into light From the rims of the storm to the sea's dark edge with flames that were flowerlike and white. The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that laugh as they fade From the cloud's black base to the black wave's brim rejoiced in the light they made. Far westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous tune, Shone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast smile of ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... together. The two ladies huddled together under an inadequate parasol. There was a lightning flash, and Miss Lavish who was nervous, screamed from the carriage in front. At the next flash, Lucy screamed also. Mr. Eager addressed ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Near day—with a record crowd, and hot, bright summer weather. The track was well known to be lightning fast, and the entry list was so big and puzzling that the Far and Near might well prove anybody's race. There were favorites, of course, also rank outsiders. One heard their names everywhere in the massed throng that ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... many years ago, but cannot recollect the authority, "That, when Alexander besieged a certain city in India, the Brachmans, by the power of magic, raised a cloud of smoke around the walls, whence broke frequent flashes of lightning, with thunder, and the thunderbolts slew many of his soldiers." This would infer the very ancient use of fire-arms of some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Wildfire broke that silence with a whistle which to Slone's overstrained faculties seemed a blast as piercing as the splitting sound of lightning. And with the whistle Wildfire plunged up toward the pass. Slone yelled at the top of his lungs and fired his gun before he could terrorize the stallion and drive him back down the slope. Soon Wildfire became again a running black ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... add, in connection with this most important subject, that in order to increase security against the effects of lightning, a magazine should be placed, if practicable, so as not to include a ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... The lightning shone playfully round us; The thunder ferociously growled; The hail beat upon us in bullets; And the wind everlastingly howled. We turned to descend to the Scheideck, Eyes blinded, ears deafened, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... first object below us as the succession of deep columns which I had seen some hours before, and which appeared to have been rooted to the ground ever since. But an aide-de-camp from the circle where the count stood, darted down on the plain, and, as if a flash of lightning had awoke them, all were instantly in motion. The columns on the right now made a sudden rush forward, and to my surprise, four or five strong brigades, which rapidly followed from the centre, took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... a great bunch of the flaming paper and flung it on the serpent's shining coils. In practically the same gesture he reached with lightning quickness ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Bonijol of Geneva[A] is said to have constructed very delicate apparatus for the decomposition of water by common electricity. By connecting an insulated lightning rod with his apparatus, the decomposition of the water proceeded in a continuous and rapid manner even when the electricity of the atmosphere was not very powerful. The apparatus is not described; but ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... and a mile to either side. The road is lined with poplars three feet across and as high as a five-story building. For the four miles the road was piled with branches of these trees. The trees themselves were split as by lightning, or torn in half, as with your hands you could tear apart a loaf of bread. Through some, solid shell had passed, leaving clean holes. Others looked as though drunken woodsmen with axes from roots to topmost branches had slashed them in crazy fury. Some shells had broken ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... Old World.... The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader." This statement will do at least to set against Buffon's account of this part of the ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... streams of gray bleating sheep. Here ungreased bullock carts screamed. From the blue-grass pampas they drove them, where the birds sang, and water rippled, where was the gentleness of summer rain, where was the majesty of great storms, clouds magnificently black and jagged lightning, where were great white moons and life-giving suns, where was the serpent in the grass, and the unique tree, where were swift horses.... Beeves that had once been red awkward calves, and then sullen, stupid little bullocks, and then proud ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... they're coming this way fast now?" observed Bristles, tightening his grip on the club he had selected from many that lay under a tree shattered by a bolt of lightning the ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... I crossed the old bridge, in the opening murmur of a coming storm, I had an illumination which came as suddenly as the first flash of lightning that followed just afterwards. It had been a matter of astonishment to me all day long that nobody, with the exception of the one man at East Ord, had noticed Maisie as she went along the road between Berwick and Mindrum on the previous evening—now I remembered, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... small fore stay-sail, and a close-reefed main top-sail were left standing. The bank of cloud to the south had risen considerably and, when darkness closed in, the upper edge was lit up by the almost incessant flicker of lightning. The upper spars were sent down on deck and then, there being nothing more to be done, the crew, who had all donned ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... Mr. Shaw. Open up and let us in. It's Dave Bank and Ed Hunter. We can't make the cabin before the rain." Shaw could see their faces now and then by the flashes of lightning and he recognized the two woodsmen, who doubtless had been ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... in fact, gone up the lightning-conductor, which runs down a bell-tower remarkably high, Colmoor having been built during the Napoleonic wars for French prisoners at a time when the theory was accepted that a lightning-conductor protects a space whose radius is double the height of the conductor. The tower is a five-sided structure ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... scene was gathering while the sun shone so brightly in the tower apartment. An electric shock will gather and burst a cloud large enough to bring midnight and deluge at noonday. Mr. Gibson understood the importance of lightning arresters, but was not prepared to apply them in his home. The women could do nothing; and, of course, I, the only person in the world who might have transformed the current to a harmless voltage, had been shunned as ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... compelled it to stand. This seemed to him a new and terrible sorcery; but Helga likewise leaped from the saddle, and stood on the ground. The child's short garment reached only to her knee. She plucked the sharp knife from her girdle, and quick as lightning she rushed in ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Aetius abandoned the possession of Pannonia to his faithful confederates. The Romans of the East were not less apprehensive of the arms of Rugilas, which threatened the provinces, or even the capital. Some ecclesiastical historians have destroyed the Barbarians with lightning and pestilence; [3] but Theodosius was reduced to the more humble expedient of stipulating an annual payment of three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, and of disguising this dishonorable tribute by the title of general, which the king of the Huns ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Milt!" he called, cordially, as he came forward with extended hand. His greeting was sincere, but the lightning glance he shot over Dale was not born of his pleasure. Seen in daylight, Beasley was a big, bold, bluff man, with strong, dark features. His aggressive presence suggested that he was a good friend and a ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... the direction of the sky. Instantly the sound of the fluttering and swish of wings was heard, and in a moment a splendid eagle landed gracefully at their feet. Taking their seats upon its back, they found themselves flashing at lightning speed away through the darkness of the night. Higher and higher they rose, till they had pierced the heavy masses of clouds which hung hovering in the sky. Swift as an arrow the eagle still cleft its ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the powder-ship, the Morning Star, where she swung at her moorings off from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that shook ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was any telling what the artistic temperament would do next!" Had we announced an air-ship voyage to the moon, they would have regarded us as comparatively reasonable, but to walk—to walk—some four or five hundred miles in America, of all countries, a country of palace cars and, lightning limited expresses, not to mention homicidal touring automobiles, seemed like—what shall I say?—well, as though one should start out for New Zealand in a row-boat, or make the trip to ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... doors and the shattering of window panes. A violent storm had suddenly blown up and the wind was working havoc with unfastened blinds and shutters. There was no use thinking of holding a candle or a lamp. Besides, the lightning flashed so brightly that I was able to grope my way through the long line of empty rooms, tighten the fastenings, and shut the windows. I had reached the second story without mishap and without hearing the slightest footstep within doors. All my little servants were so exhausted ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... causes inscrutable, she would always re-appear smiling; but, as to any conscience of wrong, she seemed to have no more than Nature herself, who looks out with her smiling face after hours of thunder, lightning, and rain; and, although this treatment brought her out of them sooner, the fits themselves came ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... of lightning, followed immediately by a clap of thunder, startled them. Maurice went to the door and looked out. "It is going to be a ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... little girl you were," the Captain went on. "You have forgotten, I dare say, the old-fashioned sea-songs that he used to be so fond of teaching you. It was the strangest and prettiest contrast, to hear your small piping child's voice singing of storms and shipwrecks, and thunder and lightning, and reefing sails in cold and darkness, without the least idea of what it all meant. Your mother was strict in those days; you never amused her as you used to amuse your father and me. When she caught you searching my pockets for sweetmeats, she accused me of destroying your digestion ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... trunks of trees, and the poor goddess does not want to go with them in the least. All the other gods declare, too, that she shall not go with them, and the giants insist that she shall. The Thunder God is there and he has a wonderful hammer, a blow of which is like a stroke of lightning. He is about to strike the giants with it, and that, you may be sure, would settle the whole matter, big as they are, but the Father of the Gods will not let him harm them. He has promised, and whatever happens ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... for luck: the lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And I never saw a boat ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and Mishutka came back from fishing and had breakfast. At two o'clock they had dinner, and at four o'clock they drove off somewhere in a carriage. The white horses bore them away with the swiftness of lightning. At seven o'clock visitors came to see them—all of them men. They were playing cards on two tables in the verandah till midnight. One of the men played superbly on the piano. The visitors played, ate, drank, and laughed. Ivan Petrovitch ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... servants of the good shepherd who took the lost lamb with double tenderness into his arms! O thou good Shepherd, how have your words been perverted; How have your eternal truths been falsified into their exact contrary. But to-day when I sat amidst the flash of lightning and the roll of thunder in the Tiergarten and certain Berlin hyaenas were prowling about me, I felt the crushed and restless soul of my sister close beside me. How many nights, in her poor life, may she not have sat shelterless on such ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... sorts not far from it. Obsession. Brain-storm. Supernormal excitement. Passing commotion of the senses. Comes as suddenly as a summer tempest—thunder and lightning and ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... to the maid in order to tell her this. Instantly the suspicious stranger drew his dagger; but I had time to explain the matter to the woman, who explained in a word or two to him in a low voice. On hearing my opinion, a quick, slight shudder ran through him from head to foot like a lightning flash; I fancied I could see him turn pale under his ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... mountains of Gilboa, never may dew Descend on your verdure so green; Loud thunder may roar, and fierce lightning may glow But never ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... lightning, in the silence which followed, he went back to his original criticism of himself, that he was a fool. Naturally she would request him to leave. She would ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... lo and behold! Meg was gone and the Beauty too. So I run across here, and found Meg and the Beauty getting their supper as quiet as possible. Meg had heard the toff talking to the policeman—though I didn't know she was standing so near—and whisked her off and away as quick as lightning.' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... poured over the land the crops are stunted and uncertain. For six or seven months in the year scarcely any rain falls, and scarcely a cloud darkens the sky. In October the early rain commences, with much thunder and lightning; and in April the latter rain becomes light and uncertain, and generally ceases altogether. Then the sky becomes intensely blue, and the sun comes out in all his glory, or rather in all her glory, for with the Arabs the sun is feminine. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... looking on from the bank, I do think I should be lucky this time. Henley is a long way from Barkington, but it is a pretty place; all the ladies admire it, and like to see both the universities out and a stunning race.' Oh, well, there is an epithet. One would think thunder was going to race lightning, instead of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... soon burst, and it grew so dark that, except when the lightning flashed, I could not see my hand before my face. Yet on I went, though wondering that the path along which I groped my way led upward, until the lightning showed me that, by mistake, I had taken the road to Greifenstein. I turned back, and while ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... removed, under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the group; and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair and eyes and suit of sables made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves into his stories, while the shifting presence of the Brook-Farmer played like heat-lightning ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... than the darkness. It moved at a great rate, and the loud vibrations followed it. For a moment or two, touched by one of the long rays of light it was revealed—a death-ship, white from stem to stern and crossing the sky like a streak of lightning. It went into the darkness again and its passage could only be seen now by some little flames which seemed to fall from it. They went out like French matches, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... silvery light, almost, swifter in its motion than his instrument could follow. But even in that swift flight Danny's eyes observed one fact: the enemy ship was coming down; it slanted in on that long volplane that must have ripped the air apart like a bolt of lightning. And Danny's red rocket swept out and around in a long, looping flight, while he laid the ship on the ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... roof, and doors And windows in it, and veranda-floors And balusters all 'round it—yes, and at Each end a chimney—painted red at that And penciled white, to look like little bricks; And, to cap all the builder's cunning tricks, Two tiny little lightning-rods were run Straight up their sides, and twinkled in the sun. Who built it? Nay, no answer but a smile.— It may be you can guess who, afterwhile. Home in his stall, "Old Sorrel" munched his hay And oats and corn, and switched the flies away, In a repose of patience good to see, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... the occasional sleepy chirp and flutter of a bird. Off somewhere in the gathering dusk a lonely owl hooted eerily. Still there was storm in the warm, sweet air to-night and back yonder over the hills to the north, the sky brightened fitfully with lightning. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the fellers with the guns, if they have quit," commented Vittum. "They might as well try to lick the lightning in a thundercloud." ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... "we must look to our conduct in the presence of one who talked with Sir William Wyndham and was a visitor in the house of Sir Hans Sloane before we were born; whose tireless intellect has been a confidant of Nature, a playmate of the Lightning and an inventor of ingenious and useful things; whose wisdom has given to Philadelphia a public library, a work house, good paving, excellent schools, a protection against fire as efficient as any in the world and the best newspaper in the colonies. Good health and long life to him ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... with my friend a fortnight, studying the midnight effects of the iron-foundries, and cultivating the acquaintance of Julia. In these two congenial occupations the time passed like lightning, and I woke as from a pleasant dream, to the knowledge of the fact, that my visit was expected to be brought to a close. I had been asked, I remembered, for a week, and I had doubled my furlough. I hinted at breakfast, that I was afraid I must leave my kind friends ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... some twelve thousand years to neolithic man. Squatting in his rude hovel or gloomy cave, he listens to the sounds of a storm without. The howling of the wind, the flashes of lightning, and crashing of thunder give rise to that elemental emotion—fear. Fear was always with him, as he thought of the huge stones that fell and crushed him, and the beasts which were so eager to devour him. All things about him seemed to conspire for his death: the wind, lightning, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... dining-room, imperceptibly smiling. At the door the sight of his wife halted him. The face of that precious and adorable woman flamed out lightning and all menace and offence. Her louring eyes showed what a triumph of dissimulation she must have achieved in the presence of Mr. Duncalf, but now ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... perfect, and every faculty of his mind free from that which would degrade; yet how many drag their purity through the filth of masturbation, revel in the orgies of the debauchee, and worship at the shrine of the prostitute, until, like a tree blighted by the livid lightning, they stand with all their outward form ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... England, France, and Germany, the three great lights of modern civilization, are with us, and every American traveler learns to regret the existence of slavery in his country. The growth of intelligence, the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and lightning are our allies. It would be easy to amplify this summary, and to swell the vast conglomeration of our material forces; but there is a deeper and truer method of measuring the power of our cause, and of comprehending its vitality. This is ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of the species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and Nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... grand and acceptable work in the cause of human enlightenment, and the soul's redemption. The whole vast aura of the earth, the illimitable ether trembles and thrills with the majesty of the word. High above the thunder-roll of human discontent and awful pain, blazes the lightning of thought, and the undying aspiration of the soul. And thus shall we tell our story—thus record the history of the now oncoming race. Not in material emblems only, consecrated to the forces of nature; but in the spiritual records which tell of the freeing ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... is the swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note. Corneille is the eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the lightning of the god. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... this point that the atmosphere, surcharged all day with the electricity of a fierce storm, found relief in a dancing flash of brilliant lightning simultaneously with a crash of loudest thunder. For five seconds every article in the room was visible to me with amazing distinctness, and through the windows I saw the tree trunks standing in solemn ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... with a powder-puff—histronic to the last; she was showing me how she had to resort to this to cover up the marks of my assault. I have failed in my picture of her if I have not portrayed her as a woman of moods and lightning changes. There was no trace of the late volcanic outburst in her manner when she greeted me and handed me a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to the Denver chief ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the most ancient tree in the Forest, and probably four or five hundred years old. It is of the Quercus robur kind, or old English oak, the stalks of its acorns being long, with rarely more than one acorn on a stalk, and the stalks of its leaves short. A few years back it was struck by lightning, which has left a deep groove on its trunk. In 1830 it measured, at 6 feet from the ground, 17 feet 8.75 inches; and in 1846 upwards of 18 feet 3.5 inches: but it has long since passed its prime. {208} Two other oaks, similar in form, and fully as large in girth, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... rout! Let thunder break, Let lightning blast me by the way! Invulnerable Love shall shake His aegis o'er my ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... captain looked wrathful. "Oh, you paid ten shillings as well, did you? And what the thunder and lightning have you tried to steal a passage for when you'd ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... paths the tangled clue He taught the nations to unravel; And mapped the track where safely through The lightning-footed thought might travel. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... rebels refused and shot one of the Osages dead. The Osages then fired on them. They ran and a running fight was kept up for some 15 miles. The rebel guide was killed early in the action. After crossing Lightning Creek, the rebels turned up the creek toward the camp of the Big Hill Camp. The Little Osages had sent a runner to aprise the Big Hills of the presence of the rebels and they were coming down the creek 400 strong, and met the rebels, drove them to the creek and surrounded them. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... give a darn for storms," Bert declared. "—Pass them frijoles, Pedro.—Remember that time it blowed the hay derrick down and he wouldn't come to the house, just stayed out and watched the wind and lightning?" ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... obscure'' (connected with achlus, "mist''); "snakeborn'' (echis), the snake being one of the chief forms taken by Thetis. The most generally received view makes him a god of light, especially of the sun or of the lightning. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... gate-post to recover he breath. His face was colorless, and the crimson line defined itself sharply against the pallor; but the rage was dead within him. It had been one of his own kind of rages,—like lightning out of a blue sky. As he stood there a smile was slowly gathering on ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to the stern, making one after another of the excursionists deliver his valuables, and then slipped quietly over the stern of the barge; the pirate craft began to spit and sputter furiously; and the next moment it was tearing through the water like a streak of lightning. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... dashes among the rocks below, the eye of one fastens on something clinging to a rock, caught on the very verge of the Falls. Scarcely willing to believe his own vision, he directs the attention of his companions. The terrible news spreads like lightning, and in a few minutes the bridge and the surrounding shore are covered with thousands of spectators. "Who is he?" "How did he get there?" are questions every person proposed, but answered by none. No voice is heard above the awful flood, but a spy-glass shows frequent ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... light-hearted folk, who live in beautiful houses of pure crystal, where they can rest themselves and play their games and go in when it rains. For it rains in Mo as it does everywhere else, only it rains lemonade; and the lightning in the sky resembles the most beautiful fireworks; and the thunder is usually a chorus from the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... folded again its scared wings over the world; and the trees rustled their leaves with one wavy sweep, and were still. And again the rain came down in a tumult—warm, genial summer rain, full of the life of lightning. Alec stood staring through the dull dark, as if he would see Kate by the force of his will alone. The tempest in the heavens had awaked a like tempest in his bosom: would the bosom beside his receive his lightning and calm his pent-up storm by giving it space to rave? His hand took ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... from something else if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to see the far-off lustre of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in a thunder-storm will light a candle that they may not see the lightning, so many Christians have their hearts filled with the twinkling light of some miserable tapers of earthly care and pursuits, which, though they be dim and smoky, are bright enough to make it hard to see the silent depths of Heaven, though it blaze with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... gives a word picture of a thunderstorm. He describes the furious blast, the crashing thunder, the vivid lightning. Many times as a young lad he had watched the black storm-clouds gather over the hills and valleys of Bethlehem. He had no fear of the tempest. God's voice was in the wind; God's voice divided the lightning-flashes; God's voice shook the wilderness. ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... is recollecting Shakespeare (Winter's Tale, 4. 4), not looking at the primrose. The pine is not "rooted deep as high" (P.R. 4416), but sends its roots along the surface. The elm, one of the thinnest foliaged trees of the forest, is inappropriately named starproof (Arc. 89). Lightning does not singe the tops of trees (P.L. i. 613), but either shivers them, or cuts a groove down the stem to the ground. These and other such like inaccuracies must be set down partly to conventional language used without meaning, the vice ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... for his diamond trousers; but suddenly, as he raised his hand to push away the chair on which the despised brown knickerbockers lay, he dropped the sea-flower! Instantly everything about Patty and the diamond trousers passed out of his mind like a flash of lightning, and looking up at his mother, he said: 'What was I crying about, Mamma? Isn't it time to get up?' And his mother said: 'Yes, my darling, it is high time to get up, and I think you have had ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... which was held in a little ruined stone hut, situated behind some trees on a dreary hill just outside Bosekop. It was a miserable place, barren of foliage,—the ground was dry and yellow, and the hut itself looked as if it had been struck by lightning. The friends, whose taste had led them to select this dilapidated dwelling as a place of conference, were two in number, both women,—one of them no other than the minister's servant, the drear-faced Ulrika. She was crouched on the earth-floor in an attitude of utter abasement, at the feet ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... this huge Castle, standing here sublime, 1 love to see the look with which it braves, 50 Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, The lightning, the fierce wind, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... to a beautiful spot. He climbed a mountain, and from there proceeded to produce lightning, thunder and wind, which exterminated the rest of the tribe in the aldeia. That is why, when the Bororos see lightning, they say that it is someone's vengeance coming ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side. Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, 325 A river ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had listened to George's speech in open-mouthed amazement, and some little contempt for what he regarded as the young man's ignorance; but even his dense intellect could not at last fail to grasp the inward meaning and intention of the speaker; a lightning flash of intelligence revealed to him that it was not ignorance but a desire to spare his mother the anguish of long-drawn-out anxiety and the agony resulting from the mental pictures drawn by a woman's too vivid imagination; and forthwith he rose nobly to the exigencies of the occasion by chiming ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... lips are set, cheeks grow pale, quite often. Great coolness, vast powers, are continually displayed; yet they are well displayed, after the fashion of gentlemen, not of bravoes or villains or highwaymen. He handles thunder and lightning, the terrific weapons of the mighty Jove himself, in a very haughty, Jove-like manner, it must be confessed. He isn't afraid of singing his fingers with the thunderbolts, but seizes them with the familiar gripe of unquestionable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... moment forked lightning plays across the sky in a great ragged streak, and immediately there is another display as if answering it, but we can hear ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... that a man set in authority over other men should exercise his power in a spirit of clemency and should consider whether the conditions of the world is more beauteous and pleasant to the eyes on a fine calm day, or when everything is shaken with frequent thunder-claps and when lightning flashes on all sides! Yet the appearance of a peaceful and constitutional reign is the same as that of the calm and brilliant sky. A cruel reign is disordered and hidden in darkness, and while all shake with terror at the sudden explosions, not even he who caused all this disturbance ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... likely kill one, but the other would certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent as well as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely in Denys's face, and, turning, jobbed with the steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back covered with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning, and, just as the axe turned to descend on him, drove his sword so fiercely through the giant's body, that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his friend, saw a steel point come ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... upon an ocean whipped into mighty white-crowned waves. Rain beat down in sheets from low dense clouds; vivid violet lightnings flashed before us. It seemed very strange to see such lightning and hear not the faintest whisper of thunder—but no sound came from anything we saw through the blue-rimmed ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... an instant she was off, lying along it light as a feather, but holding the runners in a grip of steel. In a moment more she was nothing but a traveling black dot far down the valley, lifting to the banks, swirling lightning swift back into the straight in a series of curves and flashes, till at the end the toboggan, girl and all, swung high into the air, and subsided safely ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... the parapet and once more looked up the stream. Once more, as on a memorable day in August, the sun was upon the water. Then the heat was intense, and the heavy cumulus clouds were charged with thunder and lightning. Now the sun shone with nothing more than warmth, and though the clouds, the same clouds, hung in the south-west, there was no fire in them, nothing but soft, warm showers. She looked and looked, and tears came into her ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Dantesque cloud of love and destiny, around his forehead, through that motley mock-heroic band of burghers. Manfredi, consumed by an unholy passion for his sister, burns for one moment, like a face revealed by lightning, on our vision and is gone. Finally, when the mood seizes him (for Tassoni persuades us into thinking he is but the creature of caprice), he tunes the soft idyllic harp and sings Endymion's love-tale ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... when the Egyptians were cutting stones for the pyramids. Everybody knows, or should know, what the great Ben. Franklin did by means of a kite, though the kite through which he learned the nature of lightning was of a model that is not often seen at this time. This was the old bow kite, the kind that every beginner learns to make, and which ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the flock of sheep broke and hurried back to the open plain. At the same instant Dot could hear the sharp barking of a sheep-dog, a noise that produced an instant effect on the creatures she was with. With lightning speed the Kangaroo had popped her into her pouch and was hopping away, and the Emu was striding with its long legs as fast as it could for the cover of ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... went on in the house much as usual, with a little more silence where had been much. The wind lay moveless on the frozen earth; the sun shone cold as a diamond; and the fresh snow glittered and gleamed and sparkled like a dead sea of lightning. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... immediately afterwards by a lightning play that amazed the Belleville spectators. He dodged all interference and when finally too hard pressed, managed to send the rubber disc across to Dugdale, who continued the good work by shooting it into the charge of Hobson; and, almost before Leonard could try to stop its flight, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... end of Langley Lane) the young rooks have not yet all flown, though it is the end of the first week in June. There is a little pond near the rookeries, and by it a row of elms. From one of these a heavy bough has just fallen without the least apparent cause. There is no sign of lightning, nor does it even look decayed; the wood has fractured short off; it came down with such force that the ends of the lesser branches are broken and turned up, though, as it was the lowest limb, it had not far to fall, showing the weight ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... country is on fire, that a terrible struggle begins. (Wrote in this sense an article for the National Intelligencer; insertion refused.) They, the leaders, look to create engines for their own political security, but no one seems to look over Mason and Dixon's line to the terrible and with lightning-like velocity spreading ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... trident. Pallas, with the nine Muses, stands wondering what horrible thing this may be, and Pan, embracing a Nymph who is trembling with fear, seems to wish to save her from the glowing fires and the lightning-flashes with which the heavens are filled. Apollo stands in the chariot of the sun, and some of the Hours seem to be seeking to restrain the course of his horses. Bacchus and Silenus, with Satyrs and Nymphs, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... trappers found him they were delighted to have caught a curiosity, and they immediately dragged him to the palace courtyard. There he heard the whole court buzzing with gossip. Prince Cherry had been struck by lightning and killed, was the news, and the five favourite courtiers had struggled to make themselves rulers, but the people had refused them, and offered the crown to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... powder. Now this powder used to be, and I believe still is, employed for two objects which seem, at first sight, to have no particular connection with one another. It is, or was, employed in making lightning, and in making pills. The coats of the spores contain so much resinous matter, that a pinch of Lycopodium powder, thrown through the flame of a candle, burns with an instantaneous flash, which has long done duty for lightning on the stage. And the same character makes it ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... common with his auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addison's Cato is a specimen of the one; and would it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... more than two years. "Since his death was to bring about many calamities," says Niccolo Macchiavelli, "it was the will of Heaven to show this by omens only too certain: the dome of the church of Santa Regarata was struck by lightning, and Roderigo ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there the temperature rose to 105 degrees in the shade, but in the evening a cool breeze stirred the dust and I sat outside the Albergo Rosa d'Oro, talking with various passers-by. About nine o'clock bright lightning began to fill the sky, but, as yet, no rain. And then about eleven, just after I had gone to bed, came a tremendous drenching thunderstorm and a great whirlwind. And then, very suddenly, all became quiet again, save for ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... general chorus. We hardly know a sound which is further removed from pleasant harmony than their yells. The sudden burst of the long-protracted scream, succeeding immediately to the opening note, is scarcely less impressive than the roll of the thunder clap after a flash of lightning. The effect of this music is very much increased when the first note is heard in the distance—a circumstance which frequently occurs—and the answering yell bursts out from several points at once, within a few yards of the place where the auditors ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... collected in the church square, and then to the beautiful meadows glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. "Ah!" she said, "let me see the benediction of God in the strange atmospheric condition to which we owe the safety of our harvest. Around us, on all sides, tempests, hail, lightning, have struck incessantly and pitilessly. The common people think thus, why not I? I do so need to see in this a happy augury for what awaits me ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... and never meeting a soul or seeing a house, it is surprising to be told that on such a day you took such a drive and were at such a spot; yet this has happened to me more than once. And if even this is watched and noted, with what lightning rapidity would the news spread that I had been seen stalking down the garden path with a hoe over my shoulder and a basket in my hand, and weeding written large on every feature! Yet ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... preaching and sermons and schemes and institutions and organisations when we have the divine Lord Himself for our strength? 'Jehovah is my Banner,' and Moses' rod is only a symbol. At most it is like a lightning-conductor, but it is not the lightning. The lightning will come without the rod, if our eyes are to the heaven, for the true power that brings God down to men is that forsaking of externals and waiting upon Him which He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... anti-slavery men who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous abhorrence of slavery, but also by hatred of the slaveholder. What he himself seemed to enjoy most in his talk was his sardonic humor, which he made play upon men and things like lurid freaks of lightning. He shot out such sallies with a fearfully serious mien, or at least he accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham Lincoln's hearty ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... ranger! dark, forlorn, mysterious stranger! Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore! Tell us of that world of wonder—of that famed unfading "Yonder!" Rend—oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... the revealing light should shine down upon us, and like the sunshine on wet linen, melt away the foulness which it touches, than that we should huddle the ugly thing up in a corner, to be one day revealed and transfixed by the flash of the light turned into lightning. 'He that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his deeds ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Granville, took or destroyed about forty ships and their convoy. Yet this damage was inconsiderable, when compared to that which the English navy sustained from the dreadful tempest that began to blow on the twenty-seventh day of November, accompanied with such flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder, as overwhelmed the whole kingdom with consternation. The houses in London shook from their foundations, and some of them falling buried the inhabitants in their ruins. The water overflowed several streets, and rose to a considerable height in Westminster-hall. London ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of the present day, his heart smote him a little for his injustice. He certainly did know one girl who was eminently faithful and true; who worked hard, and, as he had just found out, suffered greatly—a girl whose true nobility of mind and life was revealed to him as if by a lightning ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Now whosoever hath it, it is perpetual, the Spirit dwells in them. It is not a sojourning for a season, not a lodging for a night,—as some have fits and starts of seeking God, and some transient motions of conviction or joy, but return again to the puddle, these go through them as lightning, and do not warm them or change them but this is a constant residence; where the Spirit takes up house he will dwell, "he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you," and abide for ever, John xiv. 16, 17. If the Son abide in the house for ever, (John viii. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... confident, however, that it signified a man[-i]d[-o] who controls the fog, one different from one of the a-na-mi-ki, or Thunderers, who would be shown by the figure of an eagle, or a hawk, when it would also denote the thunder, and perhaps lightning, neither of which occurs ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... mourn the dead, I break the lightning, I announce the Sabbath, I excite the slothful, I disperse the winds, I ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... great clouds which throw dense changeable shadows on the waters: in places these are as black as night, and bring to mind images of tempests and horrible shipwrecks; in other parts the sky is lighted up by patches and wavy streaks of bright light, which seem like motionless lightning or an illumination from mysterious stars. The ceaseless waves gnaw the shore in wild fury, with a prolonged roar which seems like a cry of defiance or the wailing of an infinite crowd. Sea, sky, and earth regard each other gloomily, as though they were ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... our Blessed Lady sent that Cloud That saved me when the Boche came up behind. I made a lightning turn, only to find The Boche on top of me. It seemed a kind Of miracle to see that Cloud—I swear A moment past the sky was everywhere As clear as clear; there was no Cloud in sight. It looked to me, floating there calm and white. Like a great mother hen, and I a chick. She seemed ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... be wondered at that the wits of the fugitives were at once set to work in lightning-like manner. If they were to escape, indeed, and were to avoid the police officials waiting for them at the station so near at hand, they must act instantly, must find some loophole, must alter their plans ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... hillside. He was not handsome, but he was strong. His shoulders were broad, and his chest was deep, and he was armed to the teeth. Spear points stuck from every one of his pockets, and in each hand he carried a lance as sharp as lightning. ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the Indians, denied the existence of a Great Spirit. When they heard the thunder or saw the lightning, they laughed and declared that they were greater than either. This so displeased the Great Spirit that he caused a deluge. The water rose higher and higher till it drove these proud giants from the low grounds to the hills and thence to the mountains. At last even the mountaintops ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... joyous smile hovered about D'Ossuna's lips. This joy was but natural, for the young man was of the blood of the Gusmans, and his cousin, the condemned prisoner, was his dearest friend. The King perceived the smile, and his eye shot forth lightning. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... mind the unfortunate are always objects of respect. As the ancients held sacred those places which had been blasted by lightning, so the feeling heart considers the afflicted as having been touched by the hand of God Himself. Such were the sensations with which Mary found herself in the presence of the venerable Mrs. Lennox—venerable rather through affliction than age; for sorrow, more than time, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... arrived in this country there are other phenomena, equally curious; as fire-flies, night-hawks &c.; but, above all, such tremendous peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, as can be conceived only by those who have ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... front; the swift blows continually threatening to crush his guard; the fierce, cruel faces glaring at him eye to eye, and his own desperate efforts to drive and kill. It all abides in fevered memory not unlike those pictures of horror coming of a dark night when lightning leaps from the black void. I mind the first man to reach me, a burly ruffian, whose shining spear-point missed my throat by so narrow a margin it tasted blood ere my rifle-stock crushed the side of his head ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... command to some who stood near her person, and in a moment, as if by a flash of lightning, the cowering, terrified Demon had vanished, carried away to be confined in one of the dungeons where persistent haters of mankind are kept imprisoned, until their hearts are changed by some noble sentiment of compassion and the Goddess sees that they are ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... Satan, the king of the evil spirits, falling down like lightning from heaven. I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and nothing shall harm you. Still, do not rejoice because the evil spirits obey you; but rejoice that your ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... matter of minutes, whirlpools being plentiful, and then M'bo and Pierre, provided with our surviving poles, stood in the bows to fend us off rocks, as we shot towards them; while we midship paddles sat, helping to steer, and when occasion arose, which occasion did with lightning rapidity, to whack the whirlpools with the flat of our paddles, to break their force. Cook crouched in the stern concentrating his mind on steering only. A most excellent arrangement in theory and the safest practical one no doubt, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... The affair happened like a flash of lightning. We had been to Capri one afternoon, and I was tired. I went to my room to rest for a couple of hours, fell asleep, and awoke to find Giovanni staring at me in the most terrifying manner. There was a fierce scene. We are both hot-tempered, and when he accused me of a ridiculous ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... him still, and her father felt like one who was beating back the spring. Her mother was torn with the torment of an armed neutrality. Further, my beautiful church had been scarred by the explosive riot of that ordination day, stricken with a soul's lightning; and the whole tragedy of our home life had been laid bare ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... trencher, because, as she said, she feared lest we should break them and anger the ghosts, who liked their food to be well served. So we started, and presently entered the mouth of that awful valley which, Martina told me, looked as though it had been riven through the mountain by lightning strokes and ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... brightly where we were. As the cloud continued to circle, it increased in size, momentum, and density of color, spreading out like a huge umbrella. Soon thunder could be heard, growing louder and more frequent until it became one continuous roar, fairly shaking the earth. Long, vivid flashes of lightning chased each other in rapid succession over the crags and lost themselves in crevice and ravine. All work was forgotten. In fact, one would as soon think of making saddles in the immediate presence of the Almighty as in the presence ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... from the West and winds from the North; then strong wind from East (something Turkish here); light breeze from Scotland (Highland Fling); Anticyclonic movement; "Depression" on the hautbois; increase of wind; then thunder, lightning, rain—all the elements at it! Grand effect!! Crash!!! and ... for finale, calm sea, sun shining, joyful chorus, Harvest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... heard was a voice asking if I was hurt, and saying, 'You'll pardon me, sir.'" He chuckled with his first sign of mirth. "When I got my senses back there was a big feller sitting on me, nearly choking off my wind. He brung out one of them lightning-bug flashlights and turned it full on me, and then shouted like a maniac, 'Why, it's Cap'n Pott!' 'That's me, but who in hell be you?' I'm telling you just as I said it. He told me his name was Mack McGowan. Well, I was real glad to see him till he told me he was the new preacher and was going ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... giving way beneath his feet. Another glance from those green eyes! But, alas, this time it was cold and menacing, a livid flash of lightning refracted from ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... raised up, and shall show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. [24:25]Behold, I have told you before. [24:26]If, therefore, they say to you, Behold he is in the wilderness, go not forth; Behold he is in private rooms, believe it not. [24:27]For as the lightning comes forth from the East, and shines even to the West, so shall the coming of the Son of man be. [24:28] Wherever the dead body is, there will the eagles ...
— The New Testament • Various
... a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes silently, it's quicker than its ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... had been cited as a model of social correctness by Aunt Jamsiah stood upon the doorstep looking eagerly up into Pee-wee's face and wagging his tail with vigorous and lightning rapidity. Wiggle's tail was easily the fastest thing in Everdoze. His head vibrated in unison with it and his look of intentness carried with it all sorts of friendly expectations. He fairly shook with excitement and cordiality. ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the Prophet, the averter of our ills, While the lightning flasheth bright o'er the ocean ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... The heavens are lighted up across their broad expanse by a continuous sheet of lightning, playing relentlessly over the doomed lines. Now a faint light of dawn shimmers in the east and soon blots out the fireworks. A lark rises high, carolling. . ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... recounted, as we sat here talking that night. It was just a matter of old Horace MacNair's coming in on them once during a thunder-storm. The family were sitting in the big hall; the ladies with their feet up on chairs to insulate them from the lightning; young Vincent Ezekiel teasing them by putting his on the mantelpiece. At one point in the storm came a terrible crash, and Auber jumped up, starting toward the door. Then he came back and sat down quietly. They laughed, and asked if ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... very evil turn,' he said. 'Ye spoke stiff-necked folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I be the flail of the monks I may be a hail, a lightning, a bolt from heaven upon ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... whitened, and bent towards the stream; and muttered threats of the strife-breeding spirits in nature seemed to issue from caverns half hidden by sombre foliage. As the gorge darkened, the gusts grew stronger, and the moaning rose at times to a shriek. Now the thunder groaned, the lightning flashed, and the face of the river gleamed. I returned to the inn just as the hissing rain began to fall. I was by this time alone, for the party from Severac had left at ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... him. He jumped like lightning from his horse, threw the reins over the animal's head so he would stand, and ran ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... no ground, no sound and sufficient ground, to build a charge against the child upon, I mean, as to eternal condemnation; for that is the thing contended for; then, as I said, Satan must fall "like lightning to the ground," and be cast over the bar, as a corrupt and illegal pleader. But this is so, as in part is proved already, and will be further made out by that which follows. They that have indeed Christ ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... spring. Their thoughts of home. Preparations to continue their journey. Escape of the Wild Man. They suffer from want of water. A party of Indians. A beautiful Landscape. A terrific storm. The chief rendered insensible by a stroke of lightning. He recovers and returns to the ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... borrowed no doubt from the current mystical theology of his day, makes this absence of any suggested object a criterion of "consolation" coming from God alone—a criterion always difficult to apply owing to the lightning subtlety of thoughts that flash across the soul and are forgotten even while their emotional reverberation yet remains. Where there was a preceding thought to account for the emotion, he held that the "consolation" might be the work of spirits (good or evil) who could not ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... gay ribbons fluttering from a booth. She was flying from worse than death, with dim projects of begging her way to the North, to the brother she had parted from when a child; and ghastly suggestions, too, like lightning flashes, of seizing a knife from the first butcher's block and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... and then, quick as lightning, for she had seen displeasure on his face, she broke into a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... may reveal itself under a plurality of aspects to those who seek it, strange to say, the world knows very little about it. We speak of it as of some regretted treasure that has been long lost to humanity. We are half convinced that the lightning speed of modern civilization has been too much for it, and that it is destined for time to come, to creep on apace within the range of our backward glance, but never within reach ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... himself? But before I could make any comment on my companion's information, my attention to the subject was diverted. All that afternoon the weather had been threatening to break—there was thunder about. And now, with startling suddenness, a flash of lightning was followed by a sharp crack, and that on the instant by a heavy downpour of rain. I glanced at Miss Raven's light dress—early spring though it was, the weather had been warm for more than a week, and she had come out in things that would be soaked through in a moment. But just ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... I found the outfit in the saddle, ironing up a big calf crop, while the improved herd was the joy and pride of my foreman. An altitude of about four thousand feet above sea-level had proved congenial to the thoroughbreds, who had acclimated nicely, the only loss being one from lightning. Two men were easily holding the isolated herd in their canon home, the sheltering bluffs affording them ample protection from wintry weather, and there was nothing henceforth to fear in regard to the experiment. I spent a week with the outfit; my ranch foreman ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... obscured, and, as they proceeded, rain set in, followed by thunder and lightning; then a fearful tempest ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... a good deal about this Mysterious Pete. He was a killer of the most deadly kind because he never gave warning of his purpose. The man was said to be a crack shot, quick as chain lightning, without the slightest regard for human life. He moved furtively, spoke little when sober, and had no scruples against assassination from ambush. Nobody in the Southwest was more ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... watched in agonized suspense, he saw the shark's jaws open and shut in a lightning snap at Mel's outstretched arm. Its razor-sharp teeth missed ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... birds with terror. When it approaches its victim its scream changes to a quick kik-kak-kak, resembling the barking of a dog, and gradually sinking until sufficiently near, it darts in a straight line with the rapidity of lightning upon its prey. None of the smaller birds and beasts are safe from its clutches. Fawns, rabbits, and hares, young sheep and goats, wild birds of all kinds, fall helpless victims, for neither the swiftest running nor the most rapid flight ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... playing, Tancred cometh forth, and draweth Gismunda's curtains, and lies down upon her bed; then from under the stage ascendeth Guiscard, and he helpeth up Gismunda: they amorously embrace and depart. The king ariseth enraged. Then was heard and seen a storm of thunder and lightning, in which the furies rise up, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... discharging the obligation, by mounting guard over the hereditary tailor of Sliochd nan Ivor; and, as he expressed himself, 'targed him tightly' till the finishing of the job. To rid himself of this restraint, Shemus's needle flew through the tartan like lightning; and as the artist kept chanting some dreadful skirmish of Fin Macoul, he accomplished at least three stitches to the death of every hero. The dress was, therefore, soon ready, for the short coat fitted the wearer, and the rest of the apparel ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... dark emblems of mortality were reflected, as it were, on the sky, from the terrible work of pestilence and famine, which was going forward on the earth beneath them. To all this, the thunder and lightning too, were constantly adding their angry peals, and flashing, as if uttering the indignation of Heaven against our devoted people; and what rendered such fearful manifestations ominous and alarming to the superstitious, was the fact of their ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... is far more convenient to blame some supernatural source for them than to take the blame upon ourselves. In support of this, take the attitude of employers toward strikes and lockouts, their most outbreaking and violent troubles. These are named in all of our contracts along with lightning, tornadoes, floods, and other "acts of God," if not directly, at least by inference It is plain enough, at any rate, that those who draw up the contract consider strikes and lockouts as wholly outside of their control, as they do the elements. It is the same old ignorance, the same desire ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... guards round the Temple, so that none could issue out thence to communicate with the Idumeans. At night a terrible storm set in, with lightning, thunder, and rain, so that the very earth seemed to shake. A great awe fell upon all, within and without the city. To all, it seemed a sign of the wrath of God at the civil discords; but though, doubtless, it was the voice of the ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... to infer that they paid a superstitious respect to the winds and the other elements. But why should this feeling pass beyond that which even the Christian experiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as well as the supernatural order? The awe-struck pagan saw the lightning leap, the tempest gather and break over him in majestic fury; heard the great voice of the mighty ocean which laved or lashed his shores: he witnessed these wonderful effects; he knew not whence the tempests or the lightnings came, or the voice of the ocean; he trembled at the unseen ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... repeated day after day, for some time, seeming to enjoy the fun of disappointing her so nicely and easily. But after a while the little fellow thought he would like a play-mate nearer his own size, and went off to find one. But he came back all alone, and perched himself on the very tip-top of a lightning-rod on a high barn at the back of the yard; and there he would sing his sweet little trilling song, hour after hour, hardly stopping long enough to find food for his meals. We wondered that he ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... the world? I have wondered in what kind of exaltation Shakespeare wrote his storm in 'Lear.' There must have been a first conception greater even than his accomplishment. Did he look from his windows at a winter tempest and see miserable old men and women running hard for shelter? Did a flash of lightning bare his soul to the misery, the betrayal and the madness of the world? His supreme moment was not when he flung the completed manuscript aside, or when he heard the actors mouth his lines, but in the flash and throb of creation—in the moment when he knew ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the man, and disappeared in the muddy water. He rose to the surface under the ship's quarter, and the mate, quick as lightning, dumped the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on to the top of him. In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the mate and the steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung with the tenacity and somewhat the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... so soon leave the outer air. He remained gazing out at the wild scene about him, at the rolling waves dashing on the shore, their crests whitening in the glare of the lightning, now approaching more closely. He harkened to the roll of the far-off thunder reenforced by the thunder of the waves upon the shore, and noted the sweep of the black forest about, of the black sky overhead, unlit save for one ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... to that previously fought by Fadrique with Lucila's husband. The two young soldiers well understood their weapons, and strove with each other with equal boldness, their swords flashing like rays of light as now this one now that one hurled a lightning thrust at his adversary, which was with similar speed and dexterity turned aside. Firmly they pressed the left foot, as if rooted in the ground, while the right advanced to the bold onset and then again they quickly retired to the safer attitude ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... heaviest volume from the southeast in parallel lines, like lines of battle swooping over the city. There were at the same time shorter and fuller lines from the southwest, and others from the north. The meeting of these was followed by tremendous clashes of lightning and thunder; and between the pauses of the artillery of the elements above, the thunder of artillery on earth could be distinctly heard. Oh that the strife were ended! But Richmond is to be defended at ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... as if a sharp blow had struck me. I had been thinking far less of my mother than of Julia; but I saw, as with a flash of lightning, what a complete uprooting of all her old habits and long-cherished hopes this would prove to my mother, whose heart was so set upon this marriage. Would Julia marry me if she once heard of my unfortunate love for Olivia? And, if not, what would become of our home? My mother ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword— ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... April in that year, commenced an extraordinary series of storms. They occurred daily, and sometimes twice a day, accompanied by the most vivid lightning, and awful peals of thunder; the rain poured down in a deluge until it seemed as if another flood was coming to purify the earth. For more than sixty days those terrible scenes recurred, and blighted the whole face of the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... waved their heads on high, And shrunk from the storm's fierce stroke; The lightning flash'd as from GOD'S own eye, The thunderbolt crash'd through the startled sky, As it ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... wild words, when the door of the banquet hall opens, and we see the head of an old man, wearing a bonnet and a garment of rough cloth; we see the dust and sweat trickling down his tanned cheeks. The bridegroom, with a terrible glance, like the lightning flash of a fearful storm, turns suddenly pale, and seeks to stop him; but he, whom the glance cannot harm, calmly, impassively, like God when he clothes himself like a poor man, to confound sometimes some rich evil-doer, slowly ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... dripping trees surrounding the hollow jumped into view to be blotted from sight as the succeeding crash of thunder diminished to far titanic echoes. Where Soper's cabin had stood there was a wet, glistening heap of fallen logs and rafters, charred and twisted. The lightning flash had revealed more to the rider than the desolation of the burned and abandoned homestead. He saw with instant vividness the wrecked framework of his own plans. He heard the echo of Fadeaway's sneering laugh in the fury of the wind. He told himself that he had been duped ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... a journey. She was standing before a mirror, dabbing her neck with a powder-puff—histronic to the last; she was showing me how she had to resort to this to cover up the marks of my assault. I have failed in my picture of her if I have not portrayed her as a woman of moods and lightning changes. There was no trace of the late volcanic outburst in her manner when she greeted me and handed me a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to the Denver chief ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... She was speared to death before Hearne's eyes. On that scene of indescribable horror the white man could no longer bear to look. He turned toward the river, and there was a spectacle like a nightmare. Some of the Eskimo were escaping by leaping to their hide boats and with lightning strokes of the double-bladed paddles dashing down the current to the far bank of the river; but sitting motionless as stone was an old, old woman—probably a witch of the tribe—red-eyed as if she were blind, deaf to all ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... suspicious stranger drew his dagger; but I had time to explain the matter to the woman, who explained in a word or two to him in a low voice. On hearing my opinion, a quick, slight shudder ran through him from head to foot like a lightning flash; I fancied I could see him turn pale ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... not get to his home because the bird Wochowsen blew so hard that he could make no progress against it. As the Thunder-Bird is an Indian, the lightning from him never ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... beautiful face darkened with a baleful cloud. "No fury like a woman scorned," wrote one who seemed to know. Her face darkened like a thunder-storm, and from its cloud her eyes shot forked lightning. She set her teeth, and clinched her little fist and shook ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... when he was in the depths, regarding his life as practically finished, had given him the greatest happiness he had ever known. Memory flashed away at lightning speed over their travels together, their adventures. Somerled's wife would not write novels. And deep in his heart Basil knew that Aline's soul was not in the books, as his was. He would not acknowledge this difference between them, but ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... suddenly the cry ran, fore and aft that the captain was lost overboard! This added to the general gloom; and now a cry was heard "there goes the Flying Dutchman," as was seen by several on board the Indiaman, during the interval of the vivid lightning, a large ship dash by them almost within cable's length, with a single topsail close reefed running before the gale with the speed of the wind. It did indeed look like a phantom craft. All was snug on board, not a soul was in sight, everything battened down, save ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes PECULIAR TO HIM; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself—but ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... link us sometimes with the agitated reservoirs of electricity trembling in the bosom of yet distant clouds? Do not our own highly charged nervous batteries occasionally give the first premonition of coming thunderstorms? Long before the low angry growl that came suddenly from some lightning lair in the far south, below the sky-line, Regina anticipated the approaching war of elements, and settled ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... he said. 'An angel need not necessarily be a mystic, else Fan were no angel, but even to angels it adds something. It is not that splendour of virtue and immortality which makes their faces shine like lightning and gives whiteness to their raiment; but it is the rainbow tint on their wings, the spiritual melody which they eternally make, which the old masters symbolised by placing harps and divers strange instruments in their hands—that ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... returned to the two women. From their feet two long streaks of black shadow darted back into the room, and vanished. Overhead an octopus of lightning snatched the whole heavens in its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... well as of men are constituted. Orderly and harmoniously they worked together. Out of the same fiery globe, from the same throne of God, they came forth all alike. They turned not when they went; whithersoever the Spirit was to go, they went, and ran and returned like a flash of lightning. Nay, in one place he speaks as if all the four creatures were but one creature: 'This is the living creature which I saw by the river ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and delight he might have been expected to display, but next moment the light died out of his face, and he knew that the bolt had fallen. Even those who blamed him most must have commiserated the man upon whom fell that lightning glance of unutterable loathing ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... sufficiently explicable. But the third has its roots apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, and strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, like a man, I trust, with your feminine intuition, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... being gone, though rain still fell and the wind whistled in his ears, Jean climbed across bent or broken saplings nearer the bluff's edge to look at Kaskaskia. The rows of lights were partially blotted; and lightning, by its swift unrollings, showed him a town standing in a lake. The Mississippi and the Okaw had become one water, spreading as far as the eye could see. Now bells began to clamor from that valley of foam. The ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of a heat-lightning flash, Kitty wickedly entertained the thought of marrying Mr. Arbuton for the sake of a bridal trip to Europe, and bade love and the fitness of things and the incompatibility of Boston and Eriecreek traditions take care of themselves. But then she ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... outer lake beneath the lash Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing, And the incessant hail with stony clash Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash 445 Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering Fragment of inky thunder-smoke—this haven Was as a ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... for rain (rain comes to Asisi only from that direction). In vain were prayers in the churches, processions and promises. We saw the gray showers sail around the horizon, heard their far-off thunders, saw the lightning zigzag down through the slanting torrents, and almost saw the hills grow green under them. The only tempests we had were those we saw brooding on the brows of scowling contadini. They talked openly of a republic, they were sick of the devouring taxes, they regretted the papacy: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... for the result of this remark, but with a sudden dart he passed like a streak of lightning through the doorway, and fled into ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... eagle closes its wings and falls through space like a rocket from some unknown world, uttering a scream that resounds like a crash of lightning. The Big Horn, proudly perched on yonder crag, bids defiance to all living creatures. For fifteen miles this box canyon has cut through the backbone of the mountains and holds the clear waters as in the palm of one's hand. At the mouth of the canyon, where the waters flow calm as a summer lake, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... and lightning bugs to school," spoke Uncle Wiggily, and Billy smiled. He was beginning to see that there were more things in the woods than he had dreamed of, even if he had scampered here and there among the trees ever since he was ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... and Harley saw his great figure gather as if for a spring. But Harley, quick as lightning, seized the man in a powerful grasp, and cried in his ear: "Not now, Mr. Plummer, not now, for God's sake! Wait until ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... England for several days after Napoleon's overthrow. Now ocean leviathans keep pace with the storms that move across the waters, and the cable and the wireless flash their messages with the speed of the lightning. Power to put a girdle around the earth in a few minutes has made modern news agencies possible, and they have made the modern newspaper essential. The newspaper requires the railroad and the steamship for its distribution, and business men depend upon them all to carry out their plans. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... replied Robert, "there is not the least doubt in my mind that my dream was a vision of what will happen. There is no question but that after Sunday I shall not be with you. This is Wednesday. How lightning-like the days have flown! How precious the moments are! How many of them I have wasted in foolish selfishness! Mary, I should go mad with the thought if I did not feel the necessity of making this week the best week of all my life; only, I do not know what is most important ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... and also of the other Evangelists, was an Angel of God. And therefore Matthew said: "The Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow." The Angel is this Nobility of ours which comes from God, as it has been said, of which our argument speaks, and says to each one of these sects, that is, to whoever seeks perfect Happiness in the Active ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... tears of his audience might compose the eulogy of his sermons. We shall find in the tears of Felix occasion to applaud the eloquence of our apostle. We shall find that his discourses were thunder and lightning in the congregation, as the Greeks used to say concerning one of their orators. While St. Paul preached, Felix felt I know not what agitations in his mind. The recollection of his past life; the sight of his present sins; Drusilla, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... to be sympathy, not vulgar praise,) that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we were talking; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and the thunder broke; but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those of my companions. Women are the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... singer says that the gods generated him to be a light for the Aryans, another that he is the father of the gods. This multiple origin becomes more definite in the theory of Agni's three births: he is born on earth from the friction of fire sticks, in the clouds as lightning, and in the highest heavens as the Sun or celestial light. In virtue of this triple birth he assumes a triune character: his heads, tongues, bodies and dwellings are three, and this threefold nature has perhaps something to do with the triads of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... life. Not that Stingaree had much opinion of the police; he had slipped through their hands too often; but it was an unfortunate circumstance that two of the present trio were among those whom he had eluded most recently, and who therefore would be least likely to give him another chance. A lightning student of his kind, he based his only hope upon an accurate estimate of these men, and applied his whole mind to the triple task. But it was a single task almost from the first; for the policeman in charge of him was none other than his credulous old friend, Sergeant Cameron from Clear Corner; ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... and the vertical ascent. The anapesmata were cords for the sudden appearance of furies, when fastened to the lowest steps; and to the ascension of rivers, when attached to the stage. The ceraunoscopium was a kind of moveable tower, whence Jupiter darted lightning, supposed to be the Greek fire, as in Ajax Oielus. The machine for thunder (bronton) was a brazen vase, concealed under the stage, in which they rolled stones. Festus calls it the Claudian thunder, from Claudius Pulcher, the inventor. The most dreadful machines were, however, the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... wounded and slain were being removed. The combat was as fierce as before, and precisely similar. The African was agile, the Batavian cautious. But finally the former made a desperate thrust; the Batavian parried it, and returned a stroke like lightning. The African sprang back and dropped his sword. But he was too late, for the stroke of his foe had pierced his left arm. As he fell a roar of joy arose from one hundred thousand human beings. But this was not to be the end, for even while the conqueror stood over his victim the ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... charming petulance, she would break off in the middle of the piece, lay down her violin, and, with a pretty imperiousness, command a younger sister to fetch her zither, on which to complete the subjugation of her adorers. And then her caricatures—summer-lightning flashes of pencilled wit, as I heard the Reverend SIMEON COPE describe them in a moment of enthusiasm after she had shown us her sketch of his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... Flag (navy) flago. Flagon botelego. Flagstone sxtonplato. Flagrant flagranta. Flail drasxilo. Flake negxero, floko. Flambeau torcxo. Flame flami. Flame flamo. Flank flanko. Flannel flanelo. Flap klapo. Flare brilego. Flash (lightning) fulmo. Flash (of wit) spritajxo. Flask boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... flames of the distant storm still lighted everything at intervals with an intensity now greater and now less. When the sheet lightning flashed strong, the square cage formed by the wire outside the window-seat and the fish-net within stood out clear against the northern sky. With dilated pupils I began to examine the inclosed cube of air. During one particularly ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... man who thought, lived, and acted on a very high plane. He was, in other words, an idealist, but unlike too many idealists he was sternly practical. His mind worked with the rapidity of flashes of lightning, particularly when he was aroused. This led him at times to feel and show impatience in dealing with slower-minded people, particularly his subordinates. He was often stirred to righteous indignation by injustice, but always ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... interest from the moment he had first caught sight of it, seeing the fugitive make for an opening in a wall, ran along at the foot of the wall on the other side, and, just as Francezet dashed through the opening like a flash of lightning, struck him such a heavy blow on the head with his hoe that the skull was laid open, and he fell ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... than by actual vision, Maude flew like lightning to his side, and kneeling before him hid her face in his lap, while he bent fondly over her, beseeching her to say if she could see. It was a most touching sight, and drawing near, Maude Glendower mingled her tears with those of the unfortunate ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side. No amount of calamity which merely befell a man, descending from the clouds like lightning, or stealing from the darkness like pestilence, could alone provide the substance of its story. Job was the greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions were well-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... hers which might not have been intended for him, but which Amelie suffered him to intercept and hide away among the secret treasures of his heart. A glance of true affection—brief, it may be, as a flash of lightning—becomes, when caught by the eyes of love, a real thing, fixed and imperishable forever. A tender smile, a fond word of love's creation, contains a universe of light and life and immortality,—small things, and of little value to others, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... engineers had repaired the torn-up right-of-way and installed a complete acetylene outfit, and already they were dispatching trains of troops and munitions clear across southeastern Belgium to and from the German frontier. When we heard this we quit marveling. We had by now ceased to wonder at the lightning rapidity and un-human efficiency of the German military ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... can spell it.' 'Draw a straight line, then,' said I. 'I'll be content with a single line an inch long.' She laughingly retorted: 'It's hard to draw a straight line.' 'Very well, draw a crooked line. Draw a zigzag—like a stroke of lightning. Draw it in yellow. Draw a circle.' She said no more, but became silent, and we waited without change of position. Remember that I was holding the slate during all this talk. It did not ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... nature. For what is a master? Man is not the master of man; but death is, and life and pleasure and pain; for if he comes without these things, bring Caesar to me and you will see how firm I am. But when he shall come with these things, thundering and lightning, and when I am afraid of them, what do I do then except to recognize my master like the runaway slave? But so long as I have any respite from these terrors, as a runaway slave stands in the theatre, so do I. I bathe, I drink, I sing; but all this ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... of the world besides, should alone be alive to one, and that, too, a sound which is likely to sooth the sleep of the citizens, or at most, to set them dreaming of their loves. But so it is: the first note of the melodious bugle places the soldier on his legs, like lightning; when, muttering a few curses at the unseasonableness of the hour, he plants himself on his alarm post, without knowing or caring ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... objective of United States foreign policy is to build and preserve a just peace. The peace we seek is not peace for twenty years. It is permanent peace. At a time when massive changes are occurring with lightning speed throughout the world, it is often difficult to perceive how this central objective is best served in one isolated complex situation or another. Despite this very real difficulty, there are certain basic propositions ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen the lightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim, airless little room with ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... with a very curious sensation. I don't believe that I am in love with Wanda; I am sure that at our first meeting, I felt nothing of the lightning-like flashes of passion. But I feel how her extraordinary, really divine beauty is gradually winding magic snares about me. It isn't any spiritual sympathy which is growing in me; it is a physical subjection, coming on slowly, but for that ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... The only distinction between the periods is, that one gave the impulse, and that the other only continues it. When peril comes again, we shall again see the development of power. We might as well doubt the existence of lightning, because the day is serene, the sun shining, and no cloud rolls across the heaven. But when the balance of the elements demands to be restored, we shall again be dazzled by the flash, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... "In fact, a fair dame at whose shrine I, the priest of the Nine, offer up the incense of Parnassus; a dame whom the Graces have attired in witchcraft, and whom the Loves have armed with lightning; a fair one, herself the heroine of the song, insists on the amendment, and dispute her ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... I do think I should be lucky this time. Henley is a long way from Barkington, but it is a pretty place; all the ladies admire it, and like to see both the universities out and a stunning race.' Oh, well, there is an epithet. One would think thunder was going to race lightning, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pretty long residence in India I have heard of only one instance of an Englishman being killed by a snake. It was in Manipur, and I read of it in the newspapers. During the same time I have heard of only one death by lightning and one by falling into the fermenting vat of a brewery, so I suppose these accidents are equally uncommon. Eating oysters is much more fatal: I have heard of at least four or five ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... retreating party, who slowly returned towards the camp, and were soon apparently in safety. But suddenly a fresh party of the enemy appeared upon the wall, and the instant afterwards three retainers dropped, as if struck by lightning. They had been hit by sling stones, whirled with great force by practised slingers. These rounded pebbles come with such impetus as to stun a man at two hundred yards. The aim, it is true, is uncertain, but where there is a body of troops they are sure to strike some one. Hastening on, leaving the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... words, the maiden sank to the ground as if struck by lightning, and, writhing like a worm, crept to her father's feet, and laid hold of his garment. He pushed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... appears more probable that the water is condensed into clouds by the eduction of its heat, and that then the surplus of electricity prevents their coalescence into larger drops, which immediately succeeds the departure of the lightning. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... came to her, the wildest idea conceivable, not one chance in a million of its succeeding, yet now, in the face of extinction, anything was worth trying. She had nothing to lose. Quick as lightning she seized the needle, squirted its contents on the floor back of the bed, then with the same speed refilled it from the tumbler. She laid it down again exactly where it had been before, looked to see that there were no drops spilled. Then once more she lay down, trying ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... in the tones of his voice, a despair in the expression of his face, and a lurid glare in his eyes, that explained all his previous conduct, and revealed to the unhappy girl the full danger of her situation; even as in a dark night a sudden flash of lightning apprises the startled traveller of a precipice over which his foot has already advanced, and the gleam serves only to show ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... said, I was in a particularly bad temper, and went up on the roof to cool off. Heavy black clouds hung low overhead, and lightning flickered ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... with a swift and ductile power of appreciation, that made her feel to the quick the varying moods of different speakers, and yet the while with coolest self-possession. Now and then a slight smile, flickering over her countenance, as lightning plays on the surface of a cloud, marked the inward process whereby she was harmonizing in equilibrium opposing thoughts. And, as occasion offered, a felicitous quotation, pungent apothegm, or symbolic epithet, dropped unawares in undertone, showed how swiftly scattered ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the powder-ship, the Morning Star, where she swung at her moorings off from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that shook the shoreward ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... quantity of electricity necessary to produce a strong flash of lightning would result from the decomposition of a single grain of water, and Dr. de la Rue's experiments confirm this extraordinary statement. He has calculated that this quantity of electricity would be 5,000 times ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... amongst the Swiss mountains. When he sent the book of the Ring to Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is. The Rhinegold ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in each Act of the Valkyrie there is a storm; the Third Act of Siegfried opens with a storm; there is one storm in the Dusk of the Gods. Wind screaming through the pines, the plash of rain, the driving of thunder-clouds—these are the pictorial inspiration ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a little cup (without which no one should ever take a journey), and was just about to dip it in the water, when a lovely little green frog, much prettier than frogs generally are, jumped into the cup. Far from admiring its beauty, Saphir shook it impatiently off; but it was no good, for quick as lightning the frog jumped back again. Saphir, who was raging with thirst, was just about to shake it off anew, when the little creature fixed upon him the most beautiful eyes in the world, and said, 'I am a friend of the bird ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... upon the distress of Joseph, and He sent darkness to enshroud the land once more. A storm raged, the lightning flashed, and from the thunderbolts the whole earth trembled, and the Ishmaelites lost their way in their terror. The beasts and the camels stood still, and, beat them as their drivers would, they refused to budge from the spot, but crouched down upon the ground. Then the Ishmaelites spake ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of Nature. He boasts loudly of conquering it; the earth gives a little shiver and his cities collapse like the house of cards a child sets up. A French panegyrist said of our own Franklin: "He snatched the scepter from tyrants and the lightning from the skies," but the lightning strikes man dead and consumes his home. He thinks he has mastered the ocean, but the records of Lloyds refute him. He declares his independence of the winds upon the ocean, and the winds upon the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... reaching out to them in his moaning. Then, of a sudden, he gave a strange cry, as if defiance had taken the place of grief, and he hurried across the meadow and disappeared into the timber where a great lightning-riven spruce gleamed dully white through the settling veil ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... gushing ecstacies of song For these wild headlands and the sea mew's clang— With thee beneath my window, pleasant Sea, I long not to o'erlook Earth's fairest glades And green savannahs—Earth has not a plain So boundless or so beautiful as thine; The eagle's vision cannot take it in. The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;— It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their host within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can see themselves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... MAIL has new editions, but never a new idea. Everything in a newspaper that is not the old human love of altar or fatherland is the old human love of gossip. Modern writers have often made game of the old chronicles because they chiefly record accidents and prodigies; a church struck by lightning, or a calf with six legs. They do not seem to realise that this old barbaric history is the same as new democratic journalism. It is not that the savage chronicle has disappeared. It is merely that the savage chronicle now ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... being unlike each other; yet each have their peculiar merits, which should entitle them to each other's esteem. The French intellect is quick and active. It flashes its way into a subject with the rapidity of lightning; seizes upon remote conclusions with a sudden bound, and its deductions are almost intuitive. The English intellect is less rapid, but more persevering; less sudden, but more sure in its deductions. The quickness and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... met us at the front door. She has a trick of doing things by lightning. We started; Barbara and Jaffery at the back, I sideways to them on one of the little chair seats. We had the car open, as it was a muggy day. . . . It is astonishing how such trivial matters stick in one's mind. . . . We went, as I had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... peal of thunder interrupted our conversation and caused us to glance towards the west. There we saw a mass of dark clouds rolling down upon us. Bolt after bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky and from sky to earth, and peal after peal of thunder crashed upon ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... day after this we had an awful thunderstorm, in which the lightning flashed from all points of the compass, and heaven's artillery pealed as if the sky was ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... wood, when Donald and Allen suddenly came over the bank, as they had done on the morning before. Their packs were as large as ever, and they had Hubbard's rifle. I knew at once that the worst had happened. "His wife and mother!"—like lightning the thought flashed through my mind. A dizziness came over me, and for a moment I could not breathe. ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Silvius by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or superior of Jupiter. To support his pretensions and overawe his subjects, he constructed machines whereby he mimicked the clap of thunder and the flash of lightning. Diodorus relates that in the season of fruitage, when thunder is loud and frequent, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of heaven's artillery by clashing their swords against their shields. But he paid the penalty of his impiety, for he perished, he and his house, struck by a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... might have been misled. One can hear him explaining the thing to Watson in one of those lightning flashes of inductive reasoning of his. "It is the only explanation, my dear Watson. If the lady were merely complimenting the gardener on his rose-garden, and if her smile were merely caused by the excellent appearance of that rose-garden, there would be an answering smile ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... strange hiding place—tucked into a leather sheath sewn to the inside of his shirt collar, between his shoulder blades. That knife had rescued Kid Wolf from many a tight situation, and he had practiced until he could draw it with all the speed of heat lightning. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... again, the jets of spray all beaten down, and regular waves, of dull lead-color, breaking higher on the shore. All the depth of blackness had left the sky, and there remained only an obscure and ominous gray, through which the lightning flashed white, not red. Boats came driving in from the mouth of the bay with a rag of sail up; the men got them moored with difficulty, and when they sculled ashore in the skiffs, a dozen comrades stood ready to grasp and haul them in. Others launched skiffs in sheltered places, and pulled out ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... hermits of this name, often confounded; and all alike famous (as were Julian, Daniel, and other Stylites) for standing for many years on pillars. One of the Simeons is said by Moschus to have been struck by lightning, and his death to have been miraculously revealed to Julian the Stylite, who lived twenty-four miles off. More than one Stylite, belonging to the Monophysite heresy of Severus Acephalus, was to be found, according to Moschus, in the East at the beginning of the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... rear, had caught the scent, and leaving their original object of pursuit, were now in rapid chase of the frightened stags. In vain his grooms exerted themselves to the utmost, the terrified animals bounded away with the swiftness of lightning, and entered Newmarket at full speed. They made immediately for the Ram Inn, to which his lordship was in the habit of driving, and, having fortunately entered the yard without any accident, the stable-keepers huddled his lordship, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... thousand trees to obtain a passage through the impenetrable thickets. All these difficulties, however, were surmounted, and the engineer had at last the satisfaction of seeing the trees descend from the mountain with the rapidity of lightning. The larger pines, which were about a hundred feet long, and ten inches thick at their smaller extremity, ran through the space of three leagues, or nearly nine miles, in two minutes and a half, and during their descent, they appeared to be only a ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... struggling spirit. The slow notes of the clock fell upon the multitude; peal on peal, peal on peal, rolled over the prostrate throng, in tones of angels' voices, thrilling among the desolate chords and weary heart strings. Scarce had the clock sounded its last note, when the lightning flashed vividly around, and a loud peal of thunder roared along the sky—God's pillar of fire, and trump of jubilee! A moment of profoundest silence passed—then came the burst—they broke forth in prayer; they shouted, they sung, "Glory," ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... feed therewith your beggars; kings are we!' The Bishop answered, 'Be, like them, baptized, Sons of God's Church, His Sacrament with man, For that cause Mother of Christ's Sacraments, So shall ye share her Feast.' With lightning speed Their swords leaped forth; contemptuous next they cried, 'For once we spare to sweep a witless head From worthless shoulders. Ere to-morrow's dawn Hence, nor return!' He sped to Rochester: Her bishop, like himself, was under ban: The twain to Canterbury ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the King and Madame de Maintenon, did not appear to me to be favourable. I was confirmed in this view by what had just happened with regard to her sovereignty; but I was a thousand leagues from the thunderbolt which this lightning announced, and which only declared itself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... can be poured over the land the crops are stunted and uncertain. For six or seven months in the year scarcely any rain falls, and scarcely a cloud darkens the sky. In October the early rain commences, with much thunder and lightning; and in April the latter rain becomes light and uncertain, and generally ceases altogether. Then the sky becomes intensely blue, and the sun comes out in all his glory, or rather in all her glory, for with the Arabs the sun is feminine. Suddenly ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of - Drummond Street. It came on me like a flash of lightning: I simply returned thither, and into the past. And when I remember all I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford's in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far less ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished into so many months. By branching out the candlestick into seven parts, he intimated the seven divisions of the planets.... The vestments of the high priest, being made of linen, signified the earth, the blue color thereof denoted the sky, the pomegranates symbolized lightning, and the noise of the bells resembled thunder. And the fashion of the ephod showed that God had made the world of ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... back—as in lightning, his love came back! Not the love of one that he had known—that was good, inevitable, even the restless agony of it. Through the love of one, comes the love of many.... But this was love of the world! It surged over, through him—like the fire of the burning bush—that did not devour.... He ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... it move like a line of silvery light, almost, swifter in its motion than his instrument could follow. But even in that swift flight Danny's eyes observed one fact: the enemy ship was coming down; it slanted in on that long volplane that must have ripped the air apart like a bolt of lightning. And Danny's red rocket swept out and around in a long, looping flight, while he laid the ship on the course ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... thunder succeeded. It was one long, continuous roll, for an hour or more, without pause, and the rain poured down as he never saw it in any shower east; it seemed as if the heavy clouds were literally emptying their contents upon prairie and forest, while flash followed flash of vivid lightning. Throughout the whole night it rained, and the next day, and the next; and, were it not for the ancient promise, one might have thought that a second flood was to sweep the inhabitants of the world away. About midnight of the third day ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... together, when out he burst in a fury from behind a bush. With his huge club he aimed a terrific blow at Narcissus, which must certainly have killed him but for the adroitness of the Fairy Melinette, who arrived upon the scene just in time to snatch him up and carry him off at lightning speed to her castle in the air. Poor Potentilla, however, had not the comfort of knowing this, for at the sight of the Enchanter threatening her beloved Prince she had given one shriek and fallen back insensible. When she recovered her senses she was more than ever convinced ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... blowing his shrill whistle," all of which so terrified his horse, he had great difficulty in keeping his seat, but yet, how tremendously impressed he was by the "gallant way in which the gentlemen seated in the coach raised their stovepipe hats in greeting as they passed by like a streak of lightning." ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... the surface at High Wycombe, and very strong language has been used in the locality concerning this gross example of food-hoarding. The weather, too, has been behaving oddly. On one day of Eastertide there was an inch of snow in Liverpool, followed by hailstones, lightning, thunder, and a gale of wind. Summer has certainly arrived very early. But at least we are to be spared a General Election this year—for fear that it might clash with ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... down as I tottered across it to the vestibule. A strapping door-girl guarded the entrance. Grouped upon the long flight of marble steps two men impatiently awaited me. The one with the twitching mustache was Dr. Denbigh. But he, oh, he with the lightning in his eyes, he was ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... with a single flash About the summit of the hill, and heads And arms are sliver'd off and splinter'd by Their lightning—and they fly—the Norman flies. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... plan lie by for a day or two, some of the children will come to the teacher, and say, "Please, sir, may we say the picture alphabet up in the gallery?" If the other children overhear the question, it will go through the school like lightning: "Oh yes—yes—yes, sir, if you please, do let us say the letters in the gallery." Thus a desire is created in the children's minds, and it is then especially that they may be ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... about it, it was just twenty minutes after nine, Monday morning, April the eighth, 1912, the day after Easter, and it was raining something fierce outside. The whirling raindrops pattered against our second-story windows, and occasional thunder and lightning ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... that when the lightning begins on deadly work; a surging, helpless tossing from side to side, when the hands strike blindly out on either side for something to cling to; a sudden fall, down, down, to unknown depths; a confused medley of shouts, and ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... once patriarchally respectable old man. I feel even more abashed at the incredible audacity, I should almost say sacrilegious madness, of the vile old creature. But still the coincidence is strange and uncomfortable. Last week the lightning struck a huge olive in the orchard of Sor Agostino's house above Sarzana. Under the olive was Sor Agostino himself, who was killed on the spot; and opposite, not twenty paces off, drawing water from the well, unhurt and calm, was Dionea. It ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... will see the effect. We saw a cloud of flame, apparently in one body; but that rushing noise [referring to the sound produced by the burning] was a proof that the combustion was not a continuous or regular one. This is the lightning of the pantomimes, and a very good imitation. [The experiment was twice repeated by blowing lycopodium from a glass tube through a spirit-flame.] This is not an example of combustion like that of the filings I have been speaking of, to ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... his soul, "Go on!" So on he went, not in unreflecting exaltation, but in exaltation based on knowledge and on skill. Like Cromwell, he might well have said, "Trust in the Lord and keep your powder dry!" For he had done all that naval foresight could have done to ensure success. And now, in one lightning flash of genius, he reviewed the situation. He knew the torpedoes of his day were often unreliable, that they exploded only on a special kind of shock, that those which did explode could not be replaced in action, that they were all fixed to their own spots, and that ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... moment heard that it is reported at the Institute you are about to return to France, taking with you Monge, Berthollet, Berthier, Lannes, and Murat. This news has spread like lightning through the city, and I should not be at all surprised if it produce an unfavourable effect, which, however, I ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... laws ever stop to consider the misery, crime and destruction that flow out of the liquor traffic? I have done all I could to induce him to abstain, and he has abstained several months at a time and then suddenly like a flash of lightning the temptation returns and all his resolutions are scattered like chaff before the wind. I have been blamed for living with him, but Miss Belle were you to see him in his moments of remorse, and hear his bitter self reproach, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... mistress, do not scold the lightning. She is your friend, This golden cord that trembles on the breast Of great Airavata; upon the crest Of rocky hills this banner all ablaze; This lamp tn Indra's palace; but most blest As telling where your most ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... hands. It was a threat, but how much of it he meant to be taken literally she did not know. Again every ghastly detail of the afternoon passed with lightning speed through her mind. When he punished he punished mercilessly. To what lengths would he go? The Arab standards were not those of the men amongst whom she had lived. The position of a woman in the desert was a very ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... lie, or at least exaggerate. Only to his watchers did his actions appear to take place that fast; they were older, and less alert, and had not had the advantage of Pyrran survival training. So to their point of view the sacred portal was opened and Jason vanished in a flurry of activity. Two lightning blows sent his guardians spinning, and before they had fallen to the floor their supposed captive was through the door and it was slammed in their faces. Before the first dumfounded Persson could jump forward the bolt grated home inside and ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... were being quickly handed. The officer had ordered topgallant-yards to be sent down, and topgallant-masts struck, when a vivid flash of forked lightning darted close ahead, across the ship's course, followed by a terrific crash of thunder, which startled all on board. Many thought the electric fluid had struck the ship. The captain sprang on deck. He was just in time to see the ship taken aback by the long threatening ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... sweet As when green leaves and raindrops meet. I'll hear the Nightingale's fine mood, Rattling with thunder in the wood, Made bolder by each mighty crash; Who drives her notes with every flash Of lightning through the summer's night. No more I'll walk in that pale light That shows the homeless man awake, Ragged and cold; harlot and rake, That have their hearts in rags, and die Before that poor wretch they pass by. Nay, I have found a life so fine That every moment seems divine; ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... Sekeletu and I, with about forty young men, waited outside the tsetse till dark. We then went forward, and about ten o'clock it became so pitchy dark that both horses and men were completely blinded. The lightning spread over the sky, forming eight or ten branches at a time, in shape exactly like those of a tree. This, with great volumes of sheet-lightning, enabled us at times to see the whole country. The intervals between the flashes were so densely ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Germanicus: the atmosphere that made him fall into a syncope exhaled from the head of a wild boar. A live, complete, whole wild boar produced no effect; but on perceiving the head of the animal detached from the body, the Marechal was struck as if with lightning. You see, gentlemen, to what sad trials military men would be exposed, if the Mesmerian theory of atmospheric conflicts were to regain favour. We ought to be carefully on our guard against a ruse de guerre, of which no one till then had ever thought,—that is, against cocks, wild boars, &c.,—for ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... so, for he had seen the peril. The road immediately in front was filled with heavy smoke, which, as it rolled forward, caused them to cough almost to the strangulation point. At the same time, a crimson streak of flame shot in and out of the murky vapor, like the flashing of lightning: the fire was burning immediately in front and it would not do ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is most probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had Franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at the hazard of expiring for ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... night of his career,—having seen him a laborer, a deserter, a General, a Dictator, a fugitive; but much remains to be narrated. Passing over, with the barest mention, his temporary return to power, which he accomplished by one of those lightning-like expeditions that even among Gaucho horsemen rendered him conspicuous, let us hasten on to the great dramatic crisis of his history; and taking no notice of the five years of marching and countermarching, scheming, fighting, and negotiating, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... go out if you like," Eyre said, "but I shall take very good care to run in before the squall comes, if there's any about. I don't think there will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash of lightning about half an hour ago down in the south, but nothing has come of it. There are some curlew about, and the guillemots are in thousands. You don't seem to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... permission to go over to Holland to see her. But on May 14 he forwarded to Temple one of her letters. 'Could,' he said, 'any actress at any of the theatres attack me with a keener—what is the word? not fury, something softer. The lightning that flashes with so much brilliance may scorch, and does not her esprit do so?' Letters ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the bird perch on his finger. It looked about for an instant, and then expanding its glossy wings, off it flew, its long tail gleaming like a flash of lightning in the air, and was in an instant lost to sight. Isoro had, I believe, caught the little creature by the bill, with a sort of bird-lime, placed in the lower part of a flower, where it was held captive long enough to enable him ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... seeing a house, it is surprising to be told that on such a day you took such a drive and were at such a spot; yet this has happened to me more than once. And if even this is watched and noted, with what lightning rapidity would the news spread that I had been seen stalking down the garden path with a hoe over my shoulder and a basket in my hand, and weeding written large on every feature! Yet I should love ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... which Egypt was liable: drought, flood, flies, lice, frogs, disease. The Israelites very naturally declared that these things were sent as a punishment by the Israelitish god. I remember a farmer, in my childhood days, who was accounted by his neighbors as an infidel. He was struck by lightning and instantly killed, while standing in his doorway. The Sunday before, this man had worked in the fields, and just before he was killed he had said, "dammit," or something quite as bad. Our preacher explained at length that this man's ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... trade and travel, peace and harmony among nations. It would be in line with the civilization of our age. It is by such measures statesmen may keep pace with the marvellous inventions, improvements, and discoveries which have quadrupled the capacity of man for production, made lightning subservient to his will, revealed to him new agencies of power hidden in the earth, and opened up to his enterprise all the dark places of the world. The people of the United States boast that they have done their full share in all this development; that they have grown in population, wealth, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... muses the fire burns, and, like the Psalmist, he speaks with his tongue. Dates and details, facts and traditions, cantos and poetry, reams of prose, English and Latin and Greek and French, come tumbling out in headlong but not disorderly array. He jumps at an opening, seizes an illusion, replies with lightning quickness to a conversational challenge, and is ready at a moment's notice to decide any literary or historical controversy in a measured tone of deliberate emphasis which is not wholly free from exaggeration. Like his uncle ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
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