|
|
|
More "Lithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these celebrated persons who did not in his secret soul condemn the folly to which he lent himself. The bonds of reason, though iron-strong, are easily burst through; but those of folly, though lithe and frail as the rushes by a stream, defy the stoutest heart to snap them asunder. Colonel Thomas, an officer in the Guards, who was killed in a duel, added the following clause to his will the night before he died:—"In the first place, I commit ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... lithe as wildcats, those Syrians, and fully awake to the advantage that the narrow door gave them. One man struggled with Narayan Singh and kept him busy with his bulk so wedged across the opening that Grim ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... accustom us to. I remember one especially that burned itself deeply into my memory. It was of a young man not over twenty-five, who a few weeks ago—his clothes looked comparatively new —had evidently been the picture of manly beauty and youthful vigor. He had had a well-knit, lithe form; dark curling hair fell over a forehead which had once been fair, and his eyes still showed that they had gleamed with a bold, adventurous spirit. The red clover leaf on his cap showed that he belonged to the First Division of the Second Corps, the three chevrons on his ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of rage Karl reached the table with a bound and snatched up the revolver. But Millar, with a spring as lithe and agile as a cat, was there beside him, holding the arm with which he would have shot down the man who was pouring insidious poison into his ears—into ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... strange look and manner. She could see her sister-in-law—the long, lithe form, the small, graceful head, with its thick, soft, waving hair, the oval face, the skin as fine as the petals at the heart of a rose, the arched brows and golden-brown eyes; that look, that air, as of buoyant life locked in the spell of an icy trance, mysterious, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... jumped and exclaimed, and clasped their hands. Fairy leaned over the fence, and stared intently at this, their parsonage home. Then the serious little girl scrambled under the fence, followed closely by the lithe-limbed twins. A pause, a very short one,—and then Prudence, too, was ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... stairs, but a few feet from the door of his room. Stooping down, he uttered a sudden exclamation of pained surprise, for it was upon the pallid, unconscious face of Berene Dumont that his eyes fell. He lifted the lithe figure in his sinewy arms, and with light, rapid steps bore her up the stairs and in through the open door of ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in the Hindoo Trinity] sits, in the shape of a tiny infant, on a leaf of the pipala (fig-tree), and floats on the sea of milk, sucking the toe of his right foot" (440. 366), and, as Mrs. Emerson points out, "the feat that Manabozho sought in vain to perform is accomplished by the more flexible and lithe Hindoo god, Narayana" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... head was turned toward the fiery fete on shore, and his busy thoughts were with that lithe, dripping figure he had seen through the sea-glasses, climbing into a distant boat. For the figure reminded him of a girl he had known very well when the world was younger; and the memory was not ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... and divinely rounded as any Madonna's. The shape of her head was superb; and she wore her hair, which was truly a glory in itself, somewhat like a crown, which left her finely curved ear liberty to show itself and to hear everything that was going on. Many would have rhapsodised over her lithe, slender form. Not we. More admirable that faithful approach to those olden models of the human form that exist in artists' studios and adorn grand rooms ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... West was prominent as a frontier scout. Rev. J. M. McWhorter, who saw him frequently, gives this description of him: "A tall, spare-built man, very erect, strong, lithe, and active; dark-skinned, prominent Roman nose, black hair, very keen eyes; not handsome, rather raw-boned, but with an air and mien that commanded the attention and respect of those with whom he associated. Never aggressive, he lifted his arm against the Indians ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of thirty, perhaps a thought under the middle size, but very neatly made,—a sunburnt Corporal with a brown peaked beard,—faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss or awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble Corporal, quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white gaiters. The very image and presentment of a Corporal of his country's army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... at him, even though her thoughts were full of him. But when he was there, life to her was more radiant, more full, more glowing with colour and fragrance. The books he touched, the chair he had at breakfast, his young, lithe body in its golfing knickerbockers, or his sleek black head above the dull black of evening wear, haunted her oddly. He troubled her, but she had neither quite the power nor quite the desire ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... action of the burning rays. They came to him like brothers and he rejoiced in their company. To-day, as he descended to Marechiaro, he revelled in the sun. Its ruthlessness made him feel ruthless. He was conscious of that. At this moment he was in absolutely perfect physical health. His body was lithe and supple, yet his legs and arms were hard with springing muscle. His warm blood sang through his veins like music through the pipes of an organ. His eyes shone with the superb animation of youth that is radiantly sound. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... over ocean home.[18] As when devouring flames some forest seize On the high mountains, splendid from afar 550 The blaze appears, so, moving on the plain, The steel-clad host innumerous flash'd to heaven. And as a multitude of fowls in flocks Assembled various, geese, or cranes, or swans Lithe-neck'd, long hovering o'er Cayster's banks 555 On wanton plumes, successive on the mead Alight at last, and with a clang so loud That all the hollow vale of Asius rings; In number such from ships and tents effused, They cover'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the drift covering Wisconsin and Minnesota and some of the larger moraines of the residual glaciers in the California Sierra. I found a pit eight or ten feet deep with raw shifting sides countersunk abruptly in the rough moraine material, and at the bottom, on sliding down by the aid of a lithe spruce tree that was being undermined, I discovered, after digging down a foot or two, that the bottom was resting on a block of solid blue ice which had been buried in the moraine perhaps a century or more, judging by the age of the tree that had grown above it. Probably more than ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... him one of those bright-looking New York women, brains to the finger tips, nerves all over, with the most miraculously small feet, and costumes just as wonderful. Or it will be some large-eyed, slow-moving, long, lithe Southern girl who will look like a great white lily turned into a woman. I do not think seriously that Theodora has the slenderest chance of becoming Allan's wife, and, would you believe it, uncle, I am ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... down and await his return, he slipped quietly away, his lithe, black body gliding like a snake through the dense jungle which clothed ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... to dinner dressed in pale green, with something yellow on her head. Mr. Kilroy admired her immensely; she was the only subject upon which he ever became poetical, and somehow the combination of colours she wore on this occasion, with her lithe young figure and milk-white skin, made him think of an arum lily, and he told her so, and was very pleased with the pretty compliment when he had paid it, and with the dinner, and everything. The fatal age ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the vision of an instant only; the lithe figure, the face full of careless power, the deep-set blue eyes, startling into black as they met his, while the slender brows met above them in angry amazement; then one hand reached back to the willow branch, the girl dropped from sight, and he heard her rustle from branch to branch, ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... mapped out before you. Your fox, too, one of a litter you came upon two springs ago, in a little spinney not half a mile from where you are standing now, stub-bred and of the greyhound stamp, fleet of foot and lithe of limb. Each time the hounds had come to draw he was at home in the covert on the brow of the hill which shelters the old manor house you inhabit from the cold blast of winter. Here he loved to dwell, and hunt moorhens and dabchicks and water-rats all night long ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... see it to this day, that radiant panorama, that wilderness of rich color, that incomparable dissolving-view of harmonious tints, and lithe half-covered forms, and beautiful brown faces, and gracious and graceful gestures and attitudes and movements, free, unstudied, barren of stiffness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Her lithe, blithe form outbraves the storm That spreads disaster in its shadow, And when it clears, her form appears A flower upon the greening meadow; And if, for fame, you'll have me name The land of most bewitching daughters, My heart replies, with softening sighs, The ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... stood with her hand on the flap, turning a hasty look behind her, when a shot out of the dark from the direction of the river-bank struck her ears with a suddenness and a portent which seemed to carry the pain of death. She was facing that way; she saw the flash of it; she saw Jerry Boyle leap with lithe agility, as if springing from the scourge of flames, and sling his pistol from ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... cold touch of its scaly body against his bare hand was of some great weight, and when it rapidly compressed his fingers with its folds, to give itself power to strike, and struck twice, the concussion of the lithe neck and jaws felt like two tremendous blows which paralysed him, so that he stood there as if turned to stone, with his arm outstretched staring down at the—as it seemed to him—gigantic head, which ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... of her cabin the Girl, her cheeks aglow and eyes as bright, almost, as the red cape that enveloped her lithe, girlish figure, paused, and swinging her lantern high above her head so that its light was reflected in the room, she endeavoured to imagine what would be the impression that a stranger would receive coming suddenly ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... that these little vaquero girls were not the ordinary Texas product, fed on corn-meal and bred in the chaparral, but the much looked after darlings of a fond mother. They are taken South every winter, that their bodies may be made lithe and healthy, but at the same time two or more governesses crowd their minds with French, German, and other things with which proper young girls should be acquainted. But their infant minds did not ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... A lithe and beautiful creature, she swayed and bent, with arms extended, her feet, now slow as the pinions of a sailing hawk, now swift as the wings of a tilting sparrow. She stopped suddenly, her form proudly erect, looking at her lover. Now she had the dignity ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... other. He was struck, too, with the gracefulness of Isa's figure. Her face was not handsome, but the good genius that gave her the feeling of an artist must have molded her own form, and every lithe motion was full of poetry. You have seen some people who made upon you the impression that they were beautiful, and yet the beauty was all in a statuesque figure and a graceful carriage. For it makes every difference how a face ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... rivers, Hyphasis or Hydaspes,[35] when, high up By their dark springs, the wind in winter-time 410 Has made in Himalayan forests wrack,[36] And strewn the channels with torn boughs; so huge The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club came 415 Thundering to earth and leapt from Rustum's hand. And Rustum follow'd his own blow and fell To his knees, and with his fingers clutch'd the sand: And now might Sohrab have unsheath'd ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... companion. His features were as finely shaped, cast in an even stronger though similar mould. His eyes were bright and full of fire, his mouth and chin firm, bespeaking a man of deeds, his tall figure lithe and supple. He had the air of being in perfect health, in perfect mental and physical condition, a man who lived with dignity and some measure of content, notwithstanding the slight gravity ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... passed through his fervid fancy during so many years of absence from his native land. Something there was of the features of the young girl who had ridden with flying locks, like a sprite, through the woods of Tilly. But comparing his recollection of that slight girl with the tall, lithe, perfect womanhood of the half-blushing girl before him, he hesitated, although intuitively aware that it could be no other than the idol of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... determined to make a thorough long day's journey of it. So, as soon as we had left the glen entirely and disappeared among the sand dunes, we let our horses have their heads, the capataz Gaucho riding on ahead on a splendid mule as strong as a stallion and as lithe ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... and he sometimes demeans himself by condescending to what may be considered as bordering too much upon buffoonery, for the amusement of the company. Those lines of Milton were admirably applied to him by some one—"The elephant to make them sport wreathed his proboscis lithe." The truth is, that he was out of his place in the House of Commons; he was eminently qualified to shine as a man of genius, as the instructor of mankind, as the brightest luminary of his age: but he had nothing in common with that motley crew of knights, citizens, and burgesses. He could ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. 45 Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue 50 That pricks deep ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... little after midnight. Indeed thus I argued with myself, whereby I admit that at sight of that figure I had experienced a sensation which was compounded not only of alarm and curiosity but also of some other emotion which even now I find it hard to define. Instantly I knew that the lithe shape, glimpsed but instantaneously, was that of no chance pedestrian—was indeed that of no ordinary being. At the same moment I heard again, unmistakably, the howling ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... as these; Nor e'er hath trod or shall upon the earth A race like ours of true Dakota birth. Our chiefs and sages, who so wise as they To counsel or to lead in peace or war, And heal the sick by deep mysterious law. Our beauteous warriors, lithe of limb and strong, Fierce to avenge their own and others' wrong, What gasping terror smites their battle song When, night-birds gathering near the dawn of day, Or wolves in chorus ravening for the prey, They burst upon the sleeping Chippeway;[11] ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... sky, and against the shimmer of azure and gold the tall, dark poplars ranked beside the road struck a sombre note of relief. But the man himself seemed unconscious of the heat. He covered the ground with the lithe, long-limbed stride of youth and supple muscles, and presently swung aside into a garden where, betwixt the spread arms of chestnut and linden and almond tree, gleamed the pink-stuccoed walls of a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... I follow their movements, The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms, Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure, They do not hasten, each man hits in ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... youth, turning, caught the Queen In a rapturous caress, While his lithe form towered in lordly mien, As he said in a brief address:— "My fair bride's mother is this; and, lo, As you stare in your royal awe, By this pure kiss do I proudly show ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... national prohibition. These things left her with no temperature. She was cold; she even shivered, slightly, but grace fully withal, as she went swinging along on her toes, her silk sweater clinging like an outer skin to her slim lithe body, walking like a girl of sixteen. And constantly she was at target practice with her eyes with all her might and main. She managed to steer the conversation to a place where she could bemoan the cruel war; and ask what the poor women ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... close to Gray Wolf. He was unafraid—and mightily curious. And Kazan, too, was curious. He sniffed. In the gloom his ears were alert. After a little Baree began to move. An inch at a time he dragged himself away from Gray Wolf's side. Every muscle in her lithe body tensed. Again her wolf blood was warning her. There was danger for Baree. Her lips drew back, baring her fangs. Her throat trembled, but the note in it never came. Out of the darkness ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... where the man had been seen. He was there still. A young man, in excellent health, brown, muscular, lithe. He had an old coverlet around his loins—that was all. He looked ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... they started. It was hard work, for the way was very rough, and poor Hannah weak. But Ann had a good deal of strength in her lithe young frame, and she half-carried Hannah over the worst places. Still both of the girls were pretty well spent when they came to the last of the bits of wool on the border of Bear Swamp. However, they kept on a little farther; then they had to ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... in the first place that she was very lovely;—much more so, indeed, now than when she had fascinated Sir Florian. She was small, but taller than she looked to be,—for her form was perfectly symmetrical. Her feet and hands might have been taken as models by a sculptor. Her figure was lithe, and soft, and slim, and slender. If it had a fault it was this,—that it had in it too much of movement. There were some who said that she was almost snake-like in her rapid bendings and the almost too easy gestures of her body; for she was much given ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... seen Irene Lawrence in the carriage and on horseback; but as she stepped into the room now, and stood there rather surprised, she might have been a daughter of Juno. Tall, slender, arrowy straight, but lithe and faultlessly rounded, her fleecy white shawl like a gossamer web falling off her shoulders, her haughty carriage, her wealth of purple-black hair coiled about her shapely head, a hundred times handsomer ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... bright-faced young cowboy who had stepped up to him. Andy White was older than Pete, heavier and taller, with keen blue eyes and an expression as frank and fearless as the morning itself. In contrast, Young Pete was lithe and dark, his face was more mature, more serious, and his black eyes seemed to see everything at a glance—a quick, indifferent glance that told no one what was behind the expression. Andy was light-skinned and ruddy. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... angry for long, and neither was capable of harshness or rancour. Their endearing grace of manner made a pleasant warmth in any society which they entered; and since this gentleness was joined to a perpetual glow of enthusiasm the effect was triumphant. One's recollection was of something lithe, alert, eager, like a finely-bred greyhound." Those of us who were not personally acquainted with FRANCIS and RIVERSDALE GRENFELL will, after reading this Memoir and the Preface by their uncle, Field-Marshal Lord GRENFELL, seem to know them intimately. FRANCIS won the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... saw no enemy as they stood in the ranks to load and shoot; in a moment, without warning, dark faces frowned through the haze, the war-axes gleamed, and on the frozen ground the weapons clattered as the soldiers fell. As the comrades of the fallen sprang forward to avenge them, the lithe warriors vanished as rapidly as they had appeared; and once more the soldiers saw before them only the dim forest and the shifting smoke wreaths, with vague half glimpses of the hidden foe, while the steady singing of the Indian bullets never ceased, and on every hand the bravest and steadiest ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and vehicles of the latest design to drive home their trade-weary fathers or brothers, relatives or friends. The air was gay with a social hope, a promise of youth and affection, and that fine flush of material life that recreates itself in delight. Lithe, handsome, well-bred animals, singly and in jingling pairs, paced each other down the long, wide, grass-lined street, its fine homes agleam with a ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... mind weather; the steamer hurled herself up on the bulge of a sea, and then you could get a glimpse of a tall, lithe figure, straining in the small boat alongside the rearing iron hulk. That splendid, lithe young lad performed prodigies of strength and courage; the hulk and the little boat sank down,—down until the steamer's mast-head disappeared; then with ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... for the slender chain of a scarred line of trees between her and some other woman. A healthy, firm outline of face, wholly unacquainted with nervousness; quiet, self-reliant, hard-working; perhaps of a Dutch type of character. Her husband was a sturdy broad-set man, with lithe limbs, and quick senses looking out from his clear-featured countenance: he had a roving unsubdued eye, befitting the hunter ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... equal in force to the sun. With him was La Robe Noire, of grave aspect and few words, mighty in stature and shoulder power. There were five or six others, whose names in the clangor of voices I did not hear. Of these, one was a tall, lithe, swift-moving man, whose cunning eyes seemed to gleam with the malice of a serpent. This canoeman silently twisted into ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the church on a certain Sunday morning, he tapped my shoulder as we entered the little gate, and called my attention to a lithe young Indian girl, who had strolled down from the campment on the plains, and was standing proudly erect upon the church-porch, with finger to her lips, scanning curiously the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... tangled wicked head betwixt its forefeet, and now pawing eight feet high in the air, with scarlet, furious nostrils and maddened eyes, the yellow horse was a thing of terror and of beauty. But the lithe figure on his back, bending like a reed in the wind to every movement, firm below, pliant above, with calm inexorable face, and eyes which danced and gleamed with the joy of contest, still held its masterful ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Lithe and listen, gentlemen, To sing a song I will beginne; It is of a lord of faire Scotland, Which was the unthrifty ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... ill luck would happen to her. But she thought of no such thing, and certainly not of any risk there might be for her cousin. If she had thought of him, it would have struck her as a droll picture that he should be gradually falling behind, and looking round in search of gates: a fine lithe youth, whose heart must be panting with all the spirit of a beagle, stuck as if under a wizard's spell on a stiff clerical hackney, would have made her laugh with a sense of fun much too strong for her to reflect on his mortification. But Gwendolen was apt to think rather ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... scanned the waiting train, glanced at him, then at each other, and, apparently without the slightest reason, burst into unrestrained merriment. Percival continued to survey them calmly and haughtily through his monocle. His first glance had revealed the fact that the girl was strikingly pretty. Her lithe young body showed round and comely in its khaki suit and brown leggings. Her black mane was braided in two short, thick plaits with a dash of scarlet ribbons at the ends. Blue eyes, full of daring, danced under the blackest of brows, and ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... The delicate shape, the deep hollow of the ball of the foot, the round cup which marked the heel, and, between them, the narrow, shallow indentation which formed the high-arched instep. In fancy he built over the marks the tall, lithe, straight-limbed creature Victor had told them of. He saw the long flowing hair which fell in a shower upon her shoulders; and the beautiful eyes blue as the summer sky. In a moment his tanned face was transformed ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... board. He then took an exquisite little saw he had invented for this work, and fell upon the board with a rapidity that, contrasted with his previous nonchalance, looked like fury. But he was one of your fast workmen. The lithe saw seemed to twist in his hand like a serpent, and in a very short time he had turned four feet of the board into open-work. He finished the edges off with his cutting tools, and there was a transformation as complete as of ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... on the arrival of these excursions were occasionally almost indescribable. One scribe invokes the loan of the pencil of Hogarth adequately to portray it. "From a cover of stones close by springs an urchin lithe and swift; another and another, ten, twelve or more, 'naked as unto earth they came,' and away in single file across the beach into the sea. The vans move ponderously on, pushed by mermen and mermaids, and out spring ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... a county or two. Still the village factory, being on the spot, has plenty of local work, and the clatter of hammers, the roar of the blast, and the hum of wheels never cease at the shed. Busy workmen pass to and fro, lithe men, quick of step and motion, who come from Leeds, or some similar manufacturing town, and whose very step distinguishes them in a moment from ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... fathers, but tingling with life to their finger-tips, ready for anything, and impossible of control except by one whom they feared as well as reverenced. And such a man was Alexander Murray, for they knew well that, lithe and brawny as they were, there was not a man of them but he could fling out of the door and over the fence if he so wished; and they knew, too, that he would be prompt to do it if occasion arose. Hence they waited for the word of God with ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... from the inner room a trim, lithe, almost boyishly slim figure attired in a bewitchingly skittish-looking garment consisting of knickerbockers and snug brassiere of king's blue satin messaline. Dainty black silk stockings and tiny buckled slippers set off the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... when he spoke, showing that she knew he was there and that this was only her way of attending to him. It was the fashion of the cat she followed. Even in the dining-room of the inn, the be-whiskered and courteous waiter, lithe and silent in all his movements, never seemed able to come straight to his table for an order or a dish. He came by zigzags, indirectly, vaguely, so that he appeared to be going to another table altogether, and only turned suddenly at the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Cuban, his lithe body was quivering in an ecstasy of the muscles. His face radiant with a savage joy, he fastened his glance upon Patsy, his eyes gleaming with a gloating, murderous light. A most unspeakable, animal-like rage ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... glance up at him. With his lean, strong face to the sun, his lithe body swinging rhythmically to his stride, he looked like an Indian chieftain. So he would have stalked through virgin forests. So, under different conditions, she might have been following his lead. But conditions were as they were. ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... answered, with her dark eyes brightened. And I went in, and looked at her. She was altered by time, as much as I was. The slight and graceful shape was gone; not that I remembered anything of her figure, if you please; for boys of twelve are not yet prone to note the shapes of women; but that her lithe straight gait had struck me as being so unlike our people. Now her time for walking so was past, and transmitted to her children. Yet her face was comely still, and full of strong intelligence. I gazed at her, and she at me; and we ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... and at an astonishing pace, and the way he moved somehow inspired me with a fresh horror, for it did not seem the natural movement of a human being at all, but more, as I have said, like that of some lithe wild animal. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... over the hop-country together. Chatham, Rochester, Cobham Park, Maidstone,—anywhere, out under the open sky and into the free air! Then Dickens was at his best, and talked. Swinging his blackthorn stick, his lithe figure sprang forward over the ground, and it took a practised pair of legs to keep alongside of his voice. In these expeditions I heard from his own lips delightful reminiscences of his early days in the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... freely for their love; * And risk of life the least of ills shall be. Allah ne'er punish eye that saw those charms * Enshrined, and passing full moon's brilliancy! I found me felled by fair wide-opened eyes, * Which pierced my heart with stringless archery: And soft, lithe, swaying shape enraptured me * As sway the branches of the willow-tree: Wi' them I covet union that I win, * O'er love-pains cark and care, a mastery. For love of them aye, morn and eve I pine, * And doubt all came to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... mustache showed both corners of a thin-lipped mouth. He had the Prussian head, shaped square whichever way you viewed it. There was strength in the jaw-bones—strength in the deep-set bright eyes—strength in the shoulders that were square as box-corners without any padding—strength in the lean lithe figure; but it was always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... as if the alien officer had read his thoughts, for the warrior uncrossed his black legs and got nimbly to his feet with a lithe movement, which Raf, cramped by sitting in the unfamiliar posture, could not emulate. No one appeared to notice their withdrawal. And when Raf hesitated, trying to catch Hobart's eye and make some explanation, the ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Fielding gripped the firm, lithe hand, looking at him hard and straight. "You're very cussed," he said slowly. "I wish I'd had the upbringing ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... retreat. He slipped aside, however, and let all the lesser game pass by uncaught; his soul soared higher than even Uncle John, who looked on exceedingly amused at the small man's stratagem, and at the long dodging that took place between him and his father, the quick lithe Captain skipping hither and thither, and trying to pop in one side while his enemy was on the other; and the square, determined, little, puffing, panting boy, guarding his door, hands on knees, ever ready for a dart wherever the attempt was made. ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... circumstance; but even a child as young as I was could not have stood in the presence of this superb and magnetic actor without being indelibly impressed with the scene. His son, Edwin, was then just born. We first met when he was a handsome youth of sixteen. A lithe and graceful figure, buoyant in spirits, and with the loveliest eyes I ever looked upon. We were friends from the first, and it is a comfort to me to know that our friendship lasted nearly half a century, unbroken by a single act or word. His early performances ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... discussed the matter most seriously with Araminta. "A situation of unparalleled gravity has arisen," I said, "with regard to the wedding of William. It is going to be carried out at Whittlehampton in top-hats. Picture to yourself the scene. Waterloo Station full of lithe young athletes of either sex arrayed for sports on flood and field, carrying their golf-clubs, their diabolo spools and their butterfly nets, and there, in the midst of them, me with my miserable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... some solitude Were ours, in woodlands deep, Where, with lucent eyes, Living lithe and limber-thewed, Our life's shape might arise ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... face; The collarless neck and the coal-black paws And the bit grasp'd tight in the massive jaws; The delicate curve of the legs, that seem Too slight for their burden—and, O, the gleam Of that eye, so sombre and yet so gay! Still away, my lithe Arab, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the man made his way toward the horses, and as Endicott approached with an armful of firewood, the contrast between the men was brought sharply to the girl's notice. The Texan, easy and lithe of movement as an animal born to the wild, the very tilt of his soft-brimmed hat and the set of his clothing bespeaking conscious mastery of his environment—a mastery that the girl knew was not confined ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... old man, with a face somewhat of the type of Lord Derby's. There was Professor Huxley, young in years, dark, heavy-browed, alert and resolute, but not moulded after any high ideal; and there was Professor Tyndall, also young, lithe of limb, and nonchalant in manner. When his name was called he sat as if he had no concern in what was going on, and then rose with an easy smile, partly of modesty, but in great ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... were no more uncomfortable silences in the Harte cabin. Thornton found a lamp, lighted it and placed it on the table. And with the act he seemed to take upon himself the part of host, playing it with a quiet courtesy and gentleness fitting well with the unconscious grace of his lithe body and with the kindliness softening his dark eyes. He told her of his ranch, of the cowboys working for him, of the cattle they were running, of little incidents of everyday life on the range, seeking to make her forget that ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Boston that night Wilson passed the girl twice, and each time, though he caught only a glimpse of her lithe form bent against the whipping rain, the merest sketch of her somber features, he was distinctly conscious of the impress of her personality. As she was absorbed by the voracious horde which shuffled interminably and inexplicably up and down the street, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... through his absorption, danger prickled the short hairs of his neck. A lithe, sinuous shadow close ahead was wavering, and large, placid brown eyes were staring at him. A sealman! He was discovered! And instinctively, immediately, Ken Torrence brought the ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... zigzagging back and forth across the road, and approaching the Fort with marvelous rapidity. Now its motion was like the wide swinging of a lighted lantern on a dark night. A moment more of breathless suspense and the lithe form of an Indian brave could be seen behind the light. He was running with almost incredible swiftness down the road in the direction of the Fort. Passing at full speed within seventy-five yards of the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... they approached to No. 34, in the more life-like colors did the enchanting vision of Miss Schrappe stand before his eyes; the blonde hair curling over the forehead, the lithe figure, and then ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... hands feet, I tried to turn Mary over me, but she was strong and lithe as a cat. Both bums now caught it hot, the stinging thuds helped us to roll over one another, so that neither escaped the incessant attack of dear Mamma. After a few minutes the painful novelty wore off, and I awakened to the awfully nice sensations I was experiencing, for although ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... passed so stately by, they all walked so gracefully, Balancing their bodies on lithe unstable hips, As if music moved them that swelled in their bosoms And was pizzicatti at ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... paused, for they made a striking picture. Her little silk hat sat daintily on her hair, which would be rebellious and fluffy; the dark green riding habit with its tight sleeves revealed the perfect lines of her lithe figure, which swayed gracefully as the mare pawed and backed and plunged, impatient for the morning gallop. She seemed quite indifferent to the protests of the big brute, and talked merrily to Jim, who stood looking up at her in bewildered admiration. At last she shook hands again and rode ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... think, On fields of sainfoin, ruddy pink, On dells deep down and rocks upreared, On lad's-love and on old-man's-beard, On spearmint and on silver sages, On colewort and on saxifrages! Then think on pools in dimmest haunts, Unwhipped of any wind that rages, Where the lithe flag her purple flaunts, Where frogs go plopping round the edge And gnats are humming through the sedge, And on the leaf of each wide lily The scaly newts do lay their eggs And the small people dip their legs To shatter the moonshine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... head, and her face had the colour of the sea-shell. In her large brown eyes, sleepily veiled by long lashes, smouldered a hidden fire: her step was proud and fearless, and she was as strong as a beautiful lithe young animal. The brothers brought her gay prints and woollens and rows of beads when they came home with the fishing fleet, and with these she adorned her beauty—a beauty so brilliant that ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... as Mark had pictured him. Instead of the lithe enthusiast with flaming eyes he saw a heavily built man with blunted features, wearing powerful horn spectacles, his expression morose, his movements ungainly. He had, however, a mellow and strangely sympathetic voice, in which Mark fancied that he perceived the power he was reputed to wield over ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... be dark in a short tune, Ned remained crouched low in the bushes, hoping to escape detection in that way, but footsteps came closer and closer to his hiding place, and he sprang up just in time to see a lithe figure hurtling toward him, the figure of a tall, slender man with ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and she was the daughter of Samuel Sherrell, one of the first settlers on the Watauga. In age she was verging upon twenty, and she was tall, straight as an arrow, and lithe as a hickory sapling. I know of no portrait of her in existence, but tradition describes her as having dark eyes, flexible nostrils, regular features, a clear, transparent skin, a neck like a swan, and a wealth of wavy brown hair, which was a wonder to look at and was in striking contrast to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... repressing a desire to sing; and young Dwight, receiving permission, seated himself on the grass at Mrs. Groome's feet. He was lithe and graceful and as he threw back his head and looked up at his hostess with his straight, honest glance the good impression he had made was visibly enhanced. Mrs. Groome gave him the warm and gracious smile that only her intimate friends and paid ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... not too tall, lithe and slim and sinuous as a mermaid, yet well enough rounded to make each delicate curve a charm, not merely of promise but of fulfilment. She wore a flowing morning-gown that made negligee seem to the suddenly intoxicated secretary the glorified ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... rail and gazing steadily through the field glasses in the direction of the bungalow. They held back and watched her, unseen. The soft light of early evening fell upon her figure as she stood erect, lithe and sinuous in the open space between the ivy-clad posts; her face and hands were soft tinted by the glow from the reflecting east, her hair was like a bronze relief against the dark green of the mountain. She was dressed in white—a modish gown of rich Irish lace. One instantly ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mary Brown. The light-brown ringlets were reduced to a white stratum of thin hair; the blue eyes were grey, without light and without speculation; the roses on the cheeks were replaced by a pallor, the forerunner of the colour of death; the lithe and sprightly form was a thin spectral body, where the sinews appeared as strong cords, and the skin seemed only to cover a skeleton. Yet, withal, he saw in her that identical Mary Brown. That wreck was dear to him; it was a relic ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... spoken a true word when she described Swan as a handsome man. Almost seven feet tall, Mackenzie took him to be, so tall that he must stoop to enter the door; lithe and sinewy of limbs, a lightness in them as of an athlete bred; broad in the shoulders, long of arms. His face was stern, his red hair long about the ears, his Viking mustache long-drooping at the ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... gazed at her. She was a lithe, supple-looking woman, at once graceful and fully developed; a dark beauty of the style peculiar to the South, with wonderful animation in her face, and dark flashing eyes. At the same time the play of her features was not ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... playful); and, laughing heartily as he went, he took the road to Tom Tot's, where he had found food and housing for a time. I watched him from the turn in the road, as he went lightly down the slope towards South Tickle—his trim-clad, straight, graceful figure, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, lithe in action, as compared with our lumbering gait; inefficient, 'tis true, but potentially strong. As I walked home, I straightened my own shoulders, held my head high, lifted my feet from the ground, flung bold glances to right and left, as I ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... least to me there sweeps no rugged ring That girds the forest king, No immemorial stain, or awful rent (The mark of tempest spent), No delicate leaf, no lithe bough, vine-o'ergrown, No ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... at her side no miner rough was he, If we may believe the shapely hands as a woman's fair to see; But his tall, lithe form, so strongly knit, firm mouth and look of pride, Told of iron will, resolved to win a home ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... and shaking as it was, broke the spell; with a sudden lithe movement she twisted herself out of his arms. Before he realized what was happening she had run across the room, snatched the key from the door and locked it on the other side. He heard her run ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... well I recollect a fugitive impression left on me by an early morning in Benares, now many years ago. I threaded its extraordinary streets, narrower than the needle's eye, and crowded with strange, lithe, nearly naked human beings, with black, straight, long wet hair, and brown shining skins, jostled at every step by holy bulls or cows, roaming at their own sweet will with large placid lustrous eyes, in an atmosphere heavy with ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... human interest in a topic to which all living interest seems alien. There is scarcely a page in all De Quincey's writings that taken by itself is actually dull. In each, one receives a vivid impression of the same lithe and active mind, examining with lively curiosity even a recondite subject: cracking a joke here and dropping a tear there, and never intermitting the smooth flow of acute but often irrelevant observation. The generation ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... more than a dozen dancing women swept into the room from behind the silk hangings in a concerted movement that was all lithe slumberous grace. Wood-wind music called to them from the great deep window as snakes are summoned from their holes, and as cobras answer the charmer's call the women glided to the center and stood ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... light, yet might serve me very well, I turned with intent to step the mast. And now I saw the sail was ill-stowed, the canvas lying all abroad and as I rose I beheld this canvas stirred as by a greater wind; then as I stared me this, it lifted, and from beneath it crept a shape that rose up very lithe and graceful and stood with hands reached out towards me, and then as I staggered ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... robes; big fat "mammies" in well-washed linen like the washerwomen of Jamaica, each balancing on her head her tightly rolled umbrella, and in the gardens slim young girls, with only a strip of blue and white linen from the waist to the knees, lithe, erect, with glistening teeth and eyes, and their sisters, after two years in the mission schools, demurely and correctly dressed like British school marms. Sierra Leone has all the hall marks of the crown colony of the tropics; ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... appearance which Barber's old clothes gave him, and which was so misleading. On the other hand, his thin arms and pipelike legs were concealed, respectively, by becoming cloth and canvas. As for his body, it was slender, and lithe. And how straight he stood! And how smart was his appearance! And how tall ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... boys stood petrified and then Billy hastily slipped a cartridge into the rifle he had taken from the dead slave-trader. But even as he did so the lioness curved her lithe body, as if her backbone had been a steel spring, and launched her great form ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... foreigner to understand; he does things which make the Briton squirm; has a habit of kissing the ugly, male members of his troupe with big, resounding smacks on both cheeks, and in a loving fashion pats them like a Graeco-Roman wrestler; but there is always the extraordinarily graceful, lithe movement and, with curious exceptions, a supreme unconsciousness of the audience; whilst the passionate volubility and the almost brutal ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... delicate and regular, and her mouth was small and red. Steady grey eyes. She was wearing a soft blue dress of linen, and her brown arms were bare to the elbow. In her hand she had a posy of wild flowers. Little shoes of blue, untanned leather, I think it is. She was slender and lithe to look at, and the flush of ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... came Levina, one of the Countess's dressers, and two sturdy varlets, carrying the pedlar's heavy pack between them. The pedlar himself followed in the rear. He was a very respectable-looking old man, with strongly-marked aquiline features and long white beard; and he brought with him a lithe, olive-complexioned youth of about eighteen years ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the cantina and called for a drink. The lithe, dark riders of the south, grouped round a table in one corner of the room, glanced up, answered his general nod of salutation indifferently, and turned to talk among themselves. Catering to authority, the Mexican proprietor proffered a second drink ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... fiercely cunning, and immoderately sensual, her first salutation was expressed in a phrase such as a Corinthian soul might be greeted with on entering that portion of the after-world devoted to the fastest of the fair. With her came a tall, lithe, younger sorceress; and verily the giant fat sow for her majesty, and the broom for the attendant, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... a tall and lithe figure stepped swiftly, and with a sort of athletic certainty, out of the omnibus, turned at once towards it, and, with a movement eloquent of affection and almost tender reverence, stretched forth an arm and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... I look about me. The first object that attracts my attention is the lithe form of my pursuer who is running up and down the bank lashing his tail in fury, and occasionally breaking forth in the most savage roars. In its yellow coat and cat-like movements I recognize the dreaded cougar—the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... from vengeance and from death is a thing that brings a strong motive to exertion, but there are other things sometimes which may give an equal impulse. Gualtier was lithe, sinewy, and agile, nimble of foot too, and inspired by the consciousness of danger; but the man who pursued him was one whose mighty thews and sinews had been formed under the shadows of the Alleghanies, and trained by years of early experience ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... understood that these little vaquero girls were not the ordinary Texas product, fed on corn-meal and bred in the chaparral, but the much looked after darlings of a fond mother. They are taken South every winter, that their bodies may be made lithe and healthy, but at the same time two or more governesses crowd their minds with French, German, and other things with which proper young girls should be acquainted. But their infant minds did not carry back to the days when they had not felt a horse ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... hall discussing guns, dogs, and guides; then Hamil mounted the stairs, and Malcourt went with him, talking all the while in that easy, fluent, amusing manner which, if he chose, could be as agreeably graceful as every attitude and movement of his lithe body. His voice, too, had that engagingly caressing quality characteristic of him when in good-humour; he really had little to say to Hamil, but being on such excellent terms with himself he said a great deal about nothing in particular; and as he persistently ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... at Borth on the arrival of these excursions were occasionally almost indescribable. One scribe invokes the loan of the pencil of Hogarth adequately to portray it. "From a cover of stones close by springs an urchin lithe and swift; another and another, ten, twelve or more, 'naked as unto earth they came,' and away in single file across the beach into the sea. The vans move ponderously on, pushed by mermen and mermaids, and out spring any quantity of live Hercules. Very curious ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... there were two arrivals on the scene, one joyfully welcomed by all and the other rather unexpected but not less welcome to many of the boys. 'Siah Bolderwood entered the clearing from a forest-path at almost the same instant that a lithe young figure appeared from the direction of the creek. Enoch ran to his old friend and hugged him in his delight. "Ain't I glad you've come, 'Siah! We got most of the work done; we're goin' to get lots of nice ashes, ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... myself, whereby I admit that at sight of that figure I had experienced a sensation which was compounded not only of alarm and curiosity but also of some other emotion which even now I find it hard to define. Instantly I knew that the lithe shape, glimpsed but instantaneously, was that of no chance pedestrian—was indeed that of no ordinary being. At the same moment I heard again, unmistakably, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... great roomy, clean kitchen of the deacon's house might be seen the lithe, comely form of Diana Pitkin presiding over the roaring great oven which was to engulf the armies of pies and cakes which were in due course of preparation ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... back and forth, a splendidly lithe, glowing creature of beauty and passion, every movement a grace, each grace such as befitted a royal woman conscious of mental and physical perfection. Her hair surrounded her face and shoulders in a lustrous, rippling cloud, through which peeped a bare arm and breast stolen from the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... bets, their guttural grunts of disapproval with the judges' decisions, their roars of satisfaction when the right horse won. She watched the cowgirls, walking unconcernedly about the ring, flapping their riding-whips against their leather boots. She watched the lithe-limbed cowboys slouching not ungracefully around the nervous ponies, waving their hats in greeting to their friends, calling loud jests to their fellows in the cowboy band. How strange they were, how startlingly human, and ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... greet the lithe, familiar form, Amid the surging smoke, with deaf'ning cheer; No more shall soar above the iron storm, Thy ringing voice in accents sweet ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... warm and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... of adaptive build. It was forty-five feet long, not quite four feet wide, and somewhat over two feet deep. These proportions and the character of the wood made it exceeding lithe, so that it bent like a willow before necessity. In the stern stood the head man, wielding for rudder an oar half as long again as those the others used. There was very little rowing done, nor was there need; the current itself took us ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... was in every look and motion of that young man's fine eyes and lithe body. He would have bought wings at any price had that been possible; but, none being yet in the market, he made the most of his wheel—a fifty-eight inch one, by the way, for the young man's legs were long, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... realised that the moving shadow was the half-caste Oola, shrouded in the dark blue blanket she had given her, and that the gin had halted at the casement window of Maule's bedroom. Now, Oola, with her hands on the sill, curved her lithe body, drew her bare feet to the window ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... finest quality, and perfectly aligned. The haori (cloak) was of the corrugated Akashi crape. In his girdle he wore the narrow swords then coming into fashion, with finely lacquered scabbards. In person he was tall, fair, with high forehead and big nose. Slender and sinewy every movement was lithe as that of a cat. Kondo[u] gasped as he made the accustomed salutations. "This man for O'Iwa! Bah! A fox has stolen a jewel." All his compunction and discretion vanished before this unusual presence. Kazuma gracefully ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... same road ahead of me there walked a lithe maiden of middle size, whose unexpected sight took my breath away and robbed my knees of their strength. In a dark-green woolen dress, as I had last seen her in Germany, she walked apparently absent-minded whithersoever her footsteps carried her. How many a time I had seen before ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... craning my head to the left, I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face, sketchy in the moonlight, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... It was hard work, for the way was very rough, and poor Hannah weak. But Ann had a good deal of strength in her lithe young frame, and she half-carried Hannah over the worst places. Still both of the girls were pretty well spent when they came to the last of the bits of wool on the border of Bear Swamp. However, they kept on a little farther; ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... content with their captivity, others restless, and passing to and fro in front of the wires, eager for escape. Strong inclosures, containing both rats and ferrets, were ranged along the sides of the small room; the latter, long, yellow, pink-eyed, and pink-nosed creatures, lithe as a willow wand, courting notice; while the rats, on the contrary, moved their whiskers in defiance, and, with bright, black, determined eyes, sat lumped up in the distant corners of their dens, ready 'to die game,' if die they must. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... tie up their back hair, slap their muscles, rub a little earth over their shoulders and arms, so that their adversary may have a fair grip, then step by step slowly and gradually they near each other. A few quick passages are now interchanged; the lithe supple fingers twist and intertwine, grips are formed on arm and neck. The postures change each moment, and are a study for an anatomist or sculptor. As they warm to their work they get more reckless; they are ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... chief characteristics of the family. For the rest we may notice that they have but a rudimentary clavicle imbedded among the muscles; the limbs are comparatively short, but immensely muscular; the body lithe and active; the foot-fall noiseless; the tongue armed with rough papillae, which enables them to rasp the flesh off bones, and their vision is adapted for both night ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of human interest in a topic to which all living interest seems alien. There is scarcely a page in all De Quincey's writings that taken by itself is actually dull. In each, one receives a vivid impression of the same lithe and active mind, examining with lively curiosity even a recondite subject: cracking a joke here and dropping a tear there, and never intermitting the smooth flow of acute but often irrelevant observation. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a light-haired, blue-eyed youth who came from England to the South Seas in search of adventure. Tanned like a native and as lithe as a tiger, he became a real son of the sun. The life appealed to him and he remained and ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Lithe, brown, sinuous, she crept rapidly away, and presently was hid where the grass grew taller in the flat beyond. The bull moved forward a little also, and I lost sight of both for what seemed to me an unconscionable time. She told ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... was useless to suggest any other mode of treatment, either of horse or dogs. The General laughed at my ignorance, and challenged me to a game of backgammon. Occasionally gymnastics or jumping were the order of the day, and he was so lithe and active that few could compete with him ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... with Araminta. "A situation of unparalleled gravity has arisen," I said, "with regard to the wedding of William. It is going to be carried out at Whittlehampton in top-hats. Picture to yourself the scene. Waterloo Station full of lithe young athletes of either sex arrayed for sports on flood and field, carrying their golf-clubs, their diabolo spools and their butterfly nets, and there, in the midst of them, me with my miserable coat-tails, the June sun glaring on my burnished topper, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... ever-brightening sunlight I could see the lithe figure swaying; no rags imaginable could mask its beauty. I could see the red lips and gleaming teeth. Then—and it was music good to hear, despite its taunt—she laughed defiantly, turned, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... of the tame eagles in the gardens of the palace should be brought to him with cords five hundred ells long attached to their claws. Then he selected four youths, lithe of figure, and trained them to sit on the backs of the eagles and soar aloft. This done, he set out for Egypt with a big caravan and a long ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the humble visitor, the footman threw open both battants of the door, and in the opening there stood a lithe, wiry lad, with a thick head of hair, standing out in every direction, as if stirred by some electrical current, a short, brown face, red now from affright and excitement, wide, resolute mouth, and bright, deep-set eyes, which glanced keenly and rapidly round the ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... times the cloak of one was pierced by the sword of the other, more than once the words "Die then!" rang out. But each time the seemingly vanquished combatant sprang up unwounded, as agile and as lithe and as quick as ever, while he in his turn pressed the enemy home. There was neither truce nor pause, no clever feints nor fencer's tricks could be employed on either side; it was a mortal combat, but chance, not skill, would deal the death-blow. Sometimes a rapid pass ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... truly strange that all these dances should be under arms; and the Mysians, seeing their astonishment persuaded one of the Arcadians who had got a dancing girl to let him introduce her, which he did after dressing her up magnificently and giving her a light shield. When, lithe of limb, she danced the Pyrrhic (4), loud clapping followed; and the Paphlagonians asked, "If these women fought by their side in battle?" to which they answered, "To be sure, it was the women who ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... a clean-cut, well set up youth of about sixteen years. His form was lithe and muscular, his hair black, and his eyes frank and friendly. His speech showed education, and his manners were ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... not alone; Harold, who had ceased to gambol, but who had gained in stature, majesty and weight what he had lost of lithe and frolick grace, was by her side. He no longer danced before his mistress, coursed away and then returned, or vented his exuberant life in a thousand feats of playful vigour; but sedate and observant, he was always at ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... I recollect a fugitive impression left on me by an early morning in Benares, now many years ago. I threaded its extraordinary streets, narrower than the needle's eye, and crowded with strange, lithe, nearly naked human beings, with black, straight, long wet hair, and brown shining skins, jostled at every step by holy bulls or cows, roaming at their own sweet will with large placid lustrous eyes, in an atmosphere heavy with the half-delicious, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... mouth. He had the Prussian head, shaped square whichever way you viewed it. There was strength in the jaw-bones—strength in the deep-set bright eyes—strength in the shoulders that were square as box-corners without any padding—strength in the lean lithe figure; but it was always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward over the table, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... reasonably have thought, when he might have been employing his time so much more pleasantly in the very room. For, flitting in and out of the bar during the game, and every now and then stooping over the old lady's shoulder to examine her hand, and exchange knowing looks with her, was the lithe little figure of Miss Patty, with her oval race, and merry eyes, and bright brown hair, and jaunty little cap, with fresh blue ribbons of the shade of the St. Ambrose colors. However, there is no accounting for tastes, and it is fortunate that some like ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... called Wangara. This race of warmen and horsemen surprisingly resembles the Somal, who hold the same parallels of latitude in Eastern Africa, as to small heads, semi-Caucasian features, Asiatic above the nose-tip and African below; tall lithe figures, high shoulders, and long limbs, especially ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... saw two natives standing at the edge of the wood quietly watching us. One of them I at once recognised as the lithe and active leader, whom I had seen upon the shore in swift pursuit of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... me very well, I turned with intent to step the mast. And now I saw the sail was ill-stowed, the canvas lying all abroad and as I rose I beheld this canvas stirred as by a greater wind; then as I stared me this, it lifted, and from beneath it crept a shape that rose up very lithe and graceful and stood with hands reached out towards me, and then as I ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... companion was a young girl whom I shall call Teresa. She was very young, I remember now with sorrow, and very beautiful; though beautiful is not so much the word to describe her as charming—magnetic, graceful, intelligent. A lithe, rather tall figure, a high-bred, sensitive, fine face, and pleasing manners. She seemed older than she really was, on account of her commanding physique ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... flamed in the vividly blue Italian sky, and against the shimmer of azure and gold the tall, dark poplars ranked beside the road struck a sombre note of relief. But the man himself seemed unconscious of the heat. He covered the ground with the lithe, long-limbed stride of youth and supple muscles, and presently swung aside into a garden where, betwixt the spread arms of chestnut and linden and almond tree, gleamed the pink-stuccoed walls of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the worn rungs of the narrow ladder with a lithe, active step. He was quite sure of her now. She would not fail ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... were yellow-brown and dark-lashed; the skin was creamy and smooth and the features irregular—eyes and mouth a bit prominent in the thin face. Joan was thin, not slim. You were conscious of her bones—but they were pretty bones, and every muscle of her lithe young body was as flexible and strong as a boy's. She could change from awkwardness to grace by a turn of thought. Joan was subject to outside control, while Nancy seemed possessed by innate inheritance. Both girls were in white, and while Nancy's appearance was immaculate, Joan's ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... like the ordinary run of Lindsay people. The boy, in particular, had a distinctly foreign appearance, in spite of the gingham shirt and homespun trousers, which seemed to be the regulation, work-a-day outfit for the Lindsay farmer lads. He had a lithe, supple body, with sloping shoulders, and a lean, satiny brown throat above his open shirt collar. His head was covered with thick, silky, black curls, and the hand that hung down by the side of ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... falter or turn. He switched on the flashlight beneath his gun barrel and leaped out of the Tube himself. The light swept about. Evelyn's lithe figure kept moving away from him. Then his heart stood still. There were eyes beyond her in the darkness, huge, monstrous, steady eyes, half a yard apart in a head like something out of hell. And he could not fire because Evelyn ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Charles Edward landed in the Den. In his bonnet was the white cockade, and round his waist a tartan sash; though he had long passed man's allotted span his face was still full of fire, his figure lithe and even boyish. For state reasons he had assumed the name of Captain Stroke. As he leapt ashore from the bark, the Dancing Shovel, he was received right loyally by Corp and other faithful adherents, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... and two sturdy varlets, carrying the pedlar's heavy pack between them. The pedlar himself followed in the rear. He was a very respectable-looking old man, with strongly-marked aquiline features and long white beard; and he brought with him a lithe, olive-complexioned youth of about ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the conflict which was to end in the destruction of the system that had so long cursed his race.... He was more than six feet in height; and his majestic form, as he rose to speak, straight as an arrow, muscular yet lithe and graceful, his flashing eye, and more than all his voice, that rivalled Webster's in its richness and in the depth and sonorousness of its cadences, made up such an ideal of an orator as the listeners never forgot. And they never forgot his burning ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... forward a chair, and the light from the high, barred window falling full on his head, betrayed the fact that his hair, close cut as an English soldier's, was touched and flecked with grey. His lithe youthfulness of frame rather surprised Eve, who knew him to be a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the hands of Adam, the famous Scotch henchman of the Regent. In his family, now resident in Glasgow, it is treasured as an heirloom. I myself have been privileged to look at all these locks of hair, and I have seen a clairvoyante take them one by one, and, pinching them between her lithe fingers, tell of the love that each symbolised. I have heard her tell of long rides by night, of a boudoir hung with grass-green satin, and of a tryst at Windsor; of one, the wife of a hussar at York, whose little lap-dog used to bark angrily whenever the Regent came near ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... in, and only three passengers got out. But among them was the man for whom Varick was waiting. And, at the sight of the lithe, alert figure of Dr. Panton, and of the one-time familiar form of good old Span, Varick's troubled, uncomfortable thoughts took wings ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... round her; they propelled her towards the house. They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... had lost that curious chunky appearance which Barber's old clothes gave him, and which was so misleading. On the other hand, his thin arms and pipelike legs were concealed, respectively, by becoming cloth and canvas. As for his body, it was slender, and lithe. And how straight he stood! And how smart was his appearance! ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Father Ignatius missed him sadly—all the life and fire seemed to have gone out of the mission. Even Marie moved about her work in a listless, languid way, which contrasted markedly with her once lithe and rapid movements. They had not once heard from the explorers, and Father Ignatius shook his head sadly, and feared that he would never see his energetic colleague again. The Black Beaver had slept through the last months of winter, and, as with the general awakening of spring the bears ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... sent away her plate untouched, but drank two glasses of champagne. The light came back to her eyes, she found courage again. After all, she was independent of this man, independent even of his name. She looked across the table at him appraisingly. He was still sufficiently good-looking, lithe of frame and muscular, with features well-cut although a little irregular in outline. Time, however, and anxious work were beginning to leave their marks. His hair was grey at the sides, there were deep lines in his face, he seemed to her ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reach'd: Fair forms, smooth with the ruddy glow of health, And ripening time, whose every motion seemed The wak'ning of ethereal gracefulness To life, and on whose lineaments the light Of a seraphic imagery play'd; Forms lithe and rounded by the art of youth To be the shrines of spirit excellence, And hold the fusion of immortal grace Unblemish'd by corporeal defect. What found he then? Flower-wreathed chalices Tinted with rosy dyes, bright elegance Of shape and garniture, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... too glad to obey her father's summons. She had a lithe, graceful figure, her eyes were of surpassing brilliancy, her features exquisite, her mouth charming; but taken altogether I did not like her so well as before. In return, my poor brother became enamoured of her to such an extent ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... acquaintance with the extraordinary language of the blacks, and had many a chat with the woman, who also picked up a few words of comical English from me. She was a woman of average height, lithe and supple, with an intelligent face and sparkling eyes. She was a very interesting companion, and as I grew more proficient in her queer language of signs, and slaps, and clicks, I learnt from her many wonderful things about the habits and customs of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the feeling of horror which chilled the boy, he could not help admiring the beauty of the magnificent beast before him, with its full flowing mane, and sunny, yellowish eyeballs intently watching him, as the long lithe tail, with its black tuft of long hairs at the tip, swung to and fro, now seen upon the left side, now upon the right, in other respects the great animal being as motionless as ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... official of the Kahal—the small, lithe Reb Jankiel, with his white, freckled face and fiery red beard, and David Calman, one of the dignitaries of the town. Morejne, a rich cattle merchant, tall, stiff, and dignified, with hands in the pockets of his satin halat and a sweet smile of satisfaction on his fat lips, walked ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... Murphy looked after the lithe swaying figure. She paused, plucked a yellow flower, looked over her shoulder. Her eyes, yellow as the flower, lucent as water-jewels, held his. Her face was utterly expressionless. She turned, tossed away the flower with a jaunty gesture, and continued, ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... The lithe and curving form of the girl—for she was only twenty, although already a wife—was tense now as she stood there in her own drawing-room, stoutly battling to bring order out of chaos. Usually the creamy pallor of ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... me,' he returned quickly. 'Besides, I am doing nothing. Sit down, dear, and then we shall talk more comfortably.' For he noticed that she spoke with an air of lassitude that was unusual to her, and her strong lithe figure swayed a little, as though ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... awoke and uncoiling her figure, rolled softly over on her back and stretched like some drowsy feline of the jungle; then sitting up with lithe grace she looked down at the print of her head on the pillow and deftly smoothed it out. The action was characteristic: she was careful to hide the traces of her behavior, and the habit was so strong that it extended to things innocent ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... "His long, lithe figure straightened from its servile stoop, and a palpable degree of the authority which appeared gradually to fade from the fine countenance before him found an equally congenial residence in the expression of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... of a big blue canvas bag; a professor or doctor person, who gave me one keen glance, briefly said "Good day," and went on with his occupation. A second bed, already neatly set up and equipped, stood in another corner. Its owner, lithe and keen, a fellow of about twenty-five, was watching a third, man-sized but boy-faced, who was struggling with a cot in its chrysalis stage, being apparently quite unable to unfold it. I knew the lad at a glance, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... place where the man had been seen. He was there still. A young man, in excellent health, brown, muscular, lithe. He had an old coverlet around his loins—that was ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... defied, Struck down the maiden of artistic pride, Who, all distraught with terror and despair, Suspended her lithe body in mid-air; Deeming, if thus she innocently died, The sacred vengeance would be pacified. Not so: implacable the goddess cried— "Live on! hang on! and from this hour begin Out of thy loathsome self new threads ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Washington streets. Ross was a magnetic-looking person of about fifty years of age, tall, black-bearded, black-eyed, an arched, wide-nostriled nose, and hair that curled naturally, almost electrically. Lester was impressed with his lithe, cat-like figure, and his long, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... think we are playing a game of deception with you. But tell me,—what would tempt me and my son to such a thing? Does he not love Ingeborg? Where could he choose him a better bride? Is she not fair and lithe? Is her father not rich and mighty? Is not her family mentioned with honor as far as ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... silent till after its settlement, and I doubt if the Indians heard the wood thrush as we hear him. Where did the bobolink disport himself before there were meadows in the North and rice fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And the sparrow, the lark, and the goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous to the open fields and so adverse to the woods,—we cannot conceive of their existence in a vast ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... passed over with a glance, his neat, lithe figure was quite familiar to him, he knew his powers to a fraction, and was perfectly aware that he would give ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... instep she was as white as Cynthia. Something above the medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees, a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and her temples,—her arms, ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... rushing together, return to the fray. One against the other rides, and so fiercely they smite each other that both lances break and the horses fall beneath them. But they, being seated on their steeds, sustain no harm; so they quickly rise, for they were strong and lithe. They stand on foot in the middle of the garden, and straightway attack each other with their green swords of German steel, and deal great wicked blows upon their bright and gleaming helmets, so that they hew them into bits, and their eyes shoot ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... that ached at first, from the work, had now grown too well seasoned to ache. Every member of the squad was conscious of a new, growing muscular power. Hard, bumpy muscles were not being cultivated. The long, smooth, lithe and active "Indian" muscle, built more for endurance than for great strength, was the ideal of ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... of these things. He had camped in the town, he had sought her, and in this seeking lay something more than chance. His second meeting was an acknowledgment of his youth and her beauty. She had held him in the village day by day, because she was lithe of body and fair of face and because her eyes were unaccountably wistful. Yes, he had sought her that night when the river sang with joyous, immemorial clamor, and the lamp beckoned like a hand. He had gone to her for diversion—that he now acknowledged—and ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... then marched straight to Mrs. Farrington's chair. Resting his hands on her shoulders, he bent down and laid his cheek against hers, and Theodora, regardless of the people about her, turned and cast herself into his arms. Tall and lithe and singularly alike in face, it scarcely needed a second glance to show that they were not only brother and sister, but twins as well. Moreover, in spite of Hubert's successful business life and Theodora's devotion to her husband, the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the Vermilion river. The Kickapoo warriors were generally tall and sinewy, while the Potawatomi were shorter and more thickly set, very dark and squalid. Numbers of the women of the Kickapoos were described as being lithe, "and many of them by no means lacking in beauty." The Potawatomi women were inclined to greasiness and obesity. The Potawatomi had little regard for their women. Polygamy was common among them when visited by the early missionaries. The warriors were always gamblers, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... eighty than seventy years of age—a mild-looking, full-eyed old man, with a face somewhat of the type of Lord Derby's. There was Professor Huxley, young in years, dark, heavy-browed, alert and resolute, but not moulded after any high ideal; and there was Professor Tyndall, also young, lithe of limb, and nonchalant in manner. When his name was called he sat as if he had no concern in what was going on, and then rose with an easy smile, partly of modesty, but in great measure ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... and, at the same instant, she sprang at him, striking the drawn revolver from his hand, tearing the sabre free and flinging it into the gulf. White-faced, desperate, she clung to him with the tenacity of a lynx, winding her lithe limbs around and under his, tripping ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... had been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and she had not yet revolted. Seated on the couch, she gazed out of the window at the flying snow, her brain too much on fire for thought, passion beating like a pulse in all her lithe and graceful young body, which had known the storms of life and time for only ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... gave way at last, Perhaps some sudden whine Of the lithe quest-hounds startled him, Or timepiece striking nine; "Fill for thyself, forgotten Boy," He said, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... same thing, but it's Black Jack, well enough. He started out when he was sixteen, they say, and he's been raising the devil ever since. You should have seen them pick him up—as if he were asleep, and not dead. What a body! Lithe as a panther. No larger than I am, but they say he was a giant with ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... patriarchal procession of old men with white beards leading their asthmatic horses that drew huge country carts piled with clothes, furniture, food, and pets. Frightened cows with heavy swinging udders were being piloted by lithe middle-aged women. There was one girl demurely leading goats. In the full crudity of curve and distinctness of line she might have sat for Steinlen,—there was a brownness, too, in the atmosphere. Her face was olive and of perfect proportions; her eyelashes long ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... beheld an apparition coming towards him, a figure lithe and stalwart as a sylvian god, the water shining on the ivory whiteness of his skin and glistening in his sable hair as ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... the world. No hat disfigured the coiled and braided masses of coppery hair that circled her shapely head. A healthy tan on face and arms and open throat bespoke her keen devotion to all outdoor life. Her fingers, lithe and strong, were graced by but two rings—a monogram, of gold, and the betrothal ring that Maxim Waldron had put there, only ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... hymned The writhing maid, lithe-limbed, Quivering on amaranthine asphodel, How can he paint her woes, Knowing, as well he knows, That all can be ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... troubled and anxious, arose, and, with lagging steps, followed his friend; as he noted with a new curiosity the tall, lithe, well knit figure striding on before him, the handsome, haughtily poised head, and the careless indifference of mien, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of cats, the four lean Colonials followed him. Six paces on, and under the shelter of a rock appear the forms of two men, asleep, and rolled in their blankets. It is not necessary to describe what followed. A leap forward by four lithe figures with shortened arms, a sinuous flash of steel, a sickening thud and gurgle, one choking wail, and all was over, and two farmer-soldiers had paid the extreme penalty for the betrayal of the trust their comrades had placed ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... judicious, in which many a ball outside the off-stump was allowed to pass unmolested, and a few were unfortunate in just beating the edge of the bat. On the tricky wicket Teddy's work was cut out for him, and beautifully he did it. It was a treat to see his lithe form crouching behind the bails, to rise next instant with the rising ball; his great gloves were always in the right place, always adhesive. Once only he held them up prematurely, and a fine ball brushed the wicket on its way for four byes; it ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... my first love. And the gay old city of Paris smiled, and in that bantering way of hers she brought to me in a cafe one night a perfect young tigress of a girl, a lithe, dusky beauty ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... rule he objects to it on principle, as so much physical exertion for very little result; he has only fatigued himself to-night as a matter of abstract duty. He stands and watches Edith dance—this country girl has the lithe, willowy grace of a Bayadere, and she is laughing now, and looking very bright and animated. It dawns upon him, that she is by all odds the prettiest girl in the house, and that slowly but surely, for the hundred-and-fiftieth ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... nearer, Outrivaling rivalry with clearer Sweetness incredibly fine! Is it oriole, redbird, or bluebird, Or some strange, un-Auduboned new bird? All one, sir, both this bird and that bird, The whole flight are all the same catbird! The whole visible and invisible choir you see On one lithe twig of yon green tree. Flitting, feathery Blondel! Listen to his rondel! To his lay romantical! To his sacred canticle! Hear him lilting, See him tilting His saucy head and tail, and fluttering While uttering All the difficult ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... slender young cowboy. A look of contempt and derision was in his eyes. The Greek was no taller, but full eighty pounds heavier than the other. But he forgot that the other's lithe body moving with the calm, undulating grace of a panther preparing to spring was all clean youth, muscle and courage, unbroken by ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... sung under Venice's moonlight of gold, You would hear the old voice of its mother, the pine, Murmur sealike and northern through every line, And the verses should grow, self-sustained and free, Round the vibrating stem of the melody, Like the lithe moonlit limbs ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a tall and powerful youth of twenty-four or five years; yet, though his limbs were sinewy and lithe, and though his deep round chest, thin flanks, and muscular shoulders gave token of much growing strength, it was still evident that, his stature having been prematurely gained, he lacked much of that degree of power of which his frame gave promise. For though his limbs were well formed they ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... are not beautiful. Their faces are aquiline, their cheek bones high, and their lips coarse. Their figures are lithe and they walk well, with a sinuous swagger. But there is a sharp, harsh tone about them and one could imagine them very accomplished in bitter speeches. Their eyes are their best feature, but they contain an expression that is hard, restless and challenging. They mess themselves about ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... the colonel, pointing out to the eastward where some lithe-limbed hounds were coursing over the prairie with Ralph on his fleet sorrel racing in pursuit. "Look at young McCrea out there where there are no telegraph poles to help you judge the distance. If he were an ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... made an expedition from Farnborough, with the Longmans, to Selborne. Lunch with T. Bell. [Footnote: The editor of White's Selborne] Walked to the Lithe and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Standing beside the Elgin marbles in the British Museum, the sculptor must bathe and soak himself in the Greek ideal and spirit, until the Greek thought throbs in his brain, and he feels the Greek enthusiasm for strength in round, lithe arms, and limbs made ready ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... left me; she died in my house, in my arms, loving to the last. Well, when I think of her, it is with a feeling of rage. If I strive to recall her, the same as I ever saw her during those five years, in all the radiance of love, with her lithe yielding figure, the gilded pallor of her cheeks, her oriental Jewish features, regular and delicate in the soft roundness of her face, her slow speech as velvety as her glance, if I seek to embody that charming vision, it is only in order ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... head and the feet of the animal; or a smart-looking "Jacket" man from the country districts would go whistling by, Asturians, Murcians, Gallegos, gypsies, toreros in their brilliant traje Andaluz—always to be recognised by their tiny pigtails of hair, and by their splendidly lithe and graceful carriage—all these jostling, singing, chaffing each other, while the jingling bells on innumerable horses, mules, donkeys, rang through the sunlit air, and made the Puerta de Sol and the ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... The manicurist was a lithe, tall girl, with a small young, wicked face; and meekly demure. Her hair was sleeked down provocatively over her ears, in which emerald drops dangled. She was an Enemy. As she took her client's hand and dabbled the finger-tips in a tiny red bowl of orange-flower water, Marie wondered, without charity, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Peter, very lithe, very big, gloriously happy, played in one set, and, winning, came to throw himself on the grass at Susan's feet, panting and hot. This made Susan the very nucleus of the gathering group, the girls strolled up under their lazily twirling parasols, the men ranged themselves beside ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... to those with which the reader became familiar long ago, and the sun had not yet reached the horizon when the lithe warrior had climbed to the crest of the ridge, and was scanning the wilderness which opened to the south and west. He was in a region where he was warranted in looking for Indian villages, and his penetrating eyes traveled over the area with ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him, and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where she had fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her, almost in the water of the little spring ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... looking at. She was plump, but not too plump; and she was quick in her movements, while her lithe and graceful figure showed that she possessed not only health, but great vitality. Her hair was of a beautiful bright brown color, was thick, and curled just ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... Aura, her lithe, young body in perfect condition, ran lightly and easily as a fawn. She made a pretty picture as she ran, with her long, black hair streaming out behind her, and the short silk tunic flapping about her lean, ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... too; and as the lithe, graceful figure of the handsome and fascinating Mr. Abel Newt bent in passing, Arthur Merlin, who felt, at the instant Abel passed, as if his own feet were very large, and his clothes ugly, and his movement stupidly ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... imperial building. A dozen men, officers, chairmen of the Soldiers' Committees and speakers, were perched on top of the car, and from the central turret a soldier was speaking. This was Khanjunov, who had been president of last summer's all-Russian Congress of Brunnoviki. A lithe, handsome figure in his leather coat with lieutenant's shoulder-straps, he stood ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... to the lantern," said the old man. Old, but lithe, strong, and keen-eyed. He is particularly fond of this lantern, and was remarkably lucid in explaining everything concerning the ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... on unsuspectingly. Lithe as panthers the boys leaped upon him, Bart grasping the gun, while Frank's sinewy hands fastened ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... wood-cutter. He was very poor and sad also, for no child had Heaven sent to cheer his old age, and in his heart there was no hope of rest from work till he died and was laid in the quiet grave. Every morning he went forth into the woods and hills wherever the bamboo reared its lithe green plumes against the sky. When he had made his choice, he would cut down these feathers of the forest, and splitting them lengthwise, or cutting them into joints, would carry the bamboo wood home and make it into various articles for the household, ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... "Patsy" Raymond and against the wall near the door. He was obviously unconscious of himself, of the possibility that he might be observed. His eyes were pouncing from blaze of jewels to white neck, to laughing, sensuous face, to jewels again or to lithe, young form, scantily clad and swaying in masculine arm in rhythm with the waltz. It gave Arkwright a qualm of something very like terror to note the contrast between his passive figure and his roving eyes with their wolfish gleam—like Blucher, when he looked out over London and said: "God! ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... smile. The change of expression in the eyes when playing, or stirred by any deep emotion, was most striking; 'they would dilate and become nearly twice their ordinary size, the brown pupil changing to a vivid black.' His lithe, muscular frame showed expression in all its movements corresponding with the actions of the mind; when he thoroughly agreed with a speaker he nodded so vigorously as to bring the black curls down over his face; his ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... passed down the street. For a moment Torrance forgot office detail in a general appreciation of the Western rider, who, once in the saddle, despite age or physical attributes, bears himself with a subconscious ease that is a delight to behold, be he lean Indian, lithe Mexican, or bed-rock American with a girth, say, of fifty-two inches and weighing perhaps not less than two ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... I held the little devil. Now grip hard and try to crush the pencils and you'll have something of the same sensation as I had. Holding it thus, I could feel its head jerking this way and that, violently, and its tail, long and lithe, lashing at my wrist. The little claws were trying to tear, but they were evidently softish. I could hear, or thought I could, the snap of its little jaws. It was about the nastiest sensation that I ever experienced. I don't know why I thought that it was venomous, but I did. I tried to smash ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wealthiest of the county. "Lucky dog" and "war romance," the men said. Nevertheless, six weeks ago he had returned with his chevrons well-earned, and fifty years of square living later proved his unquestioned worth. Elizabeth at twenty, on her bridal day, was slender, lithe, fair-skinned; of Scotch-Irish descent, her gray eyes bespoke her efficiency—to-day, they spoke her pride, though neither to-day nor in years to come were they often softened by love. But it was a great ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... the court, he had for Udal's learning and office a reverence that neither the printer nor his grandfather could share. He unfastened his grey cloak at the neck and cast it into a corner after his hat. His figure flashed out, lithe, young, a blaze of scarlet with a crowned rose embroidered upon a chest rendered enormous by much wadding. He was serving his apprenticeship as ensign in the gentlemen of the King's guard, and because his dead ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... heartily as he went, he took the road to Tom Tot's, where he had found food and housing for a time. I watched him from the turn in the road, as he went lightly down the slope towards South Tickle—his trim-clad, straight, graceful figure, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, lithe in action, as compared with our lumbering gait; inefficient, 'tis true, but potentially strong. As I walked home, I straightened my own shoulders, held my head high, lifted my feet from the ground, flung bold glances to right and left, as I had seen him do: for, even ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... weather leech of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... themselves in the form of a crescent, these men of scarred limbs and fierce visage fasten their eyes curiously upon a white man who, standing against the bole of the elm, comes to them as white man never came before. He is a young man of about eight and thirty, wearing about his lithe and well-knit figure a sash of skyblue silk. He is tall, handsome and of commanding presence. His movements are easy, agile and athletic; his manner is courtly, graceful and pleasing; his voice, whilst ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... delicate-scented wood-flowers. It is Theocritus again, with the civilization of the added centuries contributing its spangles of reason, philosophy, and grace. Who among all the short-kirtled damsels of all the eclogues will match us this fair, lithe, witty, capricious, mirthful, buxom Rosalind? Nowhere in books have we met with her like,—but only at some long-gone picnic in the woods, where we worshipped "blushing sixteen" in dainty boots and white muslin. There, too, we met a match for sighing Orlando,—mirrored in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... evil smile as he swept off his broad sombrero to her. Above her suddenly beating heart she sought to chat gayly, while the quick eyes of the outlaw took in the details of the smart riding costume that revealed every line of her lithe young figure. But suddenly she chilled under his hot glance that now spoke all ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... naughty, and no doubt often is; but then so can many another form of innocent amusement. The Nautch dance is a decorous and artistic performance when properly danced; the graceful motions and elegant proportions of the human form, as revealed by lithe and graceful dancers, are to be viewed with an eye as purely artistic and critical as that with which one regards a Venus or other production of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... faces—horrible as antique masks—wrought by the magic of the moon from the gigantic flowers that adorned the narrow strip of carpet by the bedside. Her dresses, suspended from a row of hooks in the corner—and showing, in gentle swells and curves, the lithe, graceful form of the little wearer, like moulds,—would have looked to any open eye, that dreadful night, like women hanging against the wall. This startling idea would have been helped along by two or three shadowy bonnets depending ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... had wriggled clear, and countered with a gouging thrust that would have torn out the eyes of a slower man, following it up instantly with a savage kick for the groin. No automaton this, geared and set to perform certain fixed duties with mechanical precision, but a lithe, strong man in hard training, fighting with every foul trick known to his ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... nearest trees were trilling audibly. Then came a sudden gust that swept the fronds of the taller ferns into their faces, and laid the thin, lithe whips of alder over their horses' flanks sharply. It was followed by the distant sea-like roaring ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... ideal soldier of Egypt. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but otherwise lean and lithe. In countenance, he was dark,—browner than most Egyptians, but with that peculiar ruddy swarthiness that is never the negro hue. His duskiness was accentuated by low and intensely black brows, and deep-set, heavy-lidded eyes. Although ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Britton stood alone on one of the mountain terraces, his tall, lithe form silhouetted against the evening sky, his arms folded, his face lifted upward. It was a face of marvellous strength and sweetness combined. Sorrow had set its unmistakable seal upon his features; here and there pain had traced its ineffaceable lines; but the firmly ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... clad in a tunic of mail which sets off to perfect advantage the lithe figure. Over his short curls is worn a jaunty cap with a long feather; he is a veritable fairy prince. The boyish face accords well with the legend, which relates that he was only a youth when the incident occurred. It is said that ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... at him more closely. He was superlatively well-built, light, and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that he was of a dusky hue, and inclined ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to it, or that his mother, guessing the truth, was in pain with terror, or to feel that a rescuing party coming at the wrong time would bring on a fight in which the girls would be killed. Only the picture of Jane Mason, fine and lithe and strong, with the pink cheeks of twenty, and the soft curves of childhood still playing about her chin and throat as he saw it from the ground at her feet,—that picture was etched into his heart, and with it the recollection of her eyes when she ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... filed rapidly into the yard, but this time there was another in their ranks. A man in his shirt sleeves with his hands bound behind his back marched with head erect between the two middle ranks. He was a tall, muscular man, broad of shoulder and lithe of limb. His face was pale, but the expression was calm and determined. His step was firm and the soldiers at his back found no need to urge him on. They marched straight to the wall of the yard that faced the jail, and at a command from the officer, the soldiers parted, leaving the man ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... woods behind them and all about them the great wilderness of rock and river and lake. You did not see it all, but you felt it. They had markedly Indian faces and those of the older men showed plainly the battle for life they had been fighting. They were tall, lithe, and active looking, with a certain air of self-possession and dignity which almost all Indians seem to have. They wore dressed deer-skin breeches and moccasins and over the breeches were drawn bright red cloth leggings ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... 'muggers,' from the fact that they sell mugs), baskets made of rushes, and horn spoons, both of which they manufacture themselves. I have a distinct recollection of Will Faa, the then King of the Gipsies. He was 95 when I knew him, and was lithe and strong. He had a keen hawk eye, which was not dimmed at that extreme age. He was considered both a good shot and a famous fisher. There was hardly a trout hole in the Bowmont Water but he knew, and his company used to be eagerly sought by the fly-fishers who ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... When I would fain view the world as a whole, it rushes into vision—man, beast, bird, reptile, fly, sky, ocean, mountains, plain, rock, pebble. The warmth of life, the reality of creation is over all—the throb of human hands, glossiness of fur, lithe windings of long bodies, poignant buzzing of insects, the ruggedness of the steeps as I climb them, the liquid mobility and boom of waves upon the rocks. Strange to say, try as I may, I cannot force my touch to pervade this universe in all directions. The moment I try, the whole ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... seems fastened On thy words, compelling me, How I know not, to regard thee With strange reverence and fear, Thinking thou must be that vassal — That poor slave whom in my dream I beheld outbreathing flashes, Saw outflashing living fire, In whose flame, so lithe and lambent, My Polonia and my Lesbia Like poor moths were ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... first time a few hours before, when his friend and classmate, Jack Strawn, had presented him to his sister. No comrade knew Dru better than Strawn, and no one admired him so much. Therefore, Gloria, ever seeking a closer contact with life, had come to West Point eager to meet the lithe young Kentuckian, and to measure him by the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... day would stand a giant among dogs, powerful as a timber-wolf, lithe as a cat, as dangerous to foes as an angry tiger; a dog without fear or treachery; a dog of uncanny brain and great lovingly loyal heart and, withal, a dancing sense of fun. A ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... neck of the blouse her deeply tanned throat rose like a bronze column; the roses in her cheeks and on her lips relieved the sun-darkened skin. Her hair was in two great plaits and it was evident that she seldom troubled about a hat. She was lithe, graceful as she could be, and bubbling over with good health if not ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... I, nor Burd so blithe Had driven them in this haste; But the old, old man, so lean and lithe, That afar behind us paced; So lean and lithe, with shoulder'd scythe, And a whetstone at ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... Histoire' is the title of Miss Mary Shepard Greene's graceful canvas. The lithe and youthful figure of a girl is extended upon a straight-backed settle in somewhat of a Recamier pose. She is intently occupied in the perusal of a book. The turn of the head, the careless attitude, and the flesh tints of throat and face are all admirably rendered. The diaphanous quality ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... hospice; and as we sallied out for a walk over the hills, we heard a violent scratching at an adjoining door, which being opened, out burst the pups. They were perfect monsters, though very young, with huge paws, lithe and graceful but compact forms, full of life and activity, and faces beaming with instinct. Darting out with us, they seemed frantic with joy, snuffed the keen air as they rushed about, sometimes tumbling over each other, and at times bursting against ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... an amorous sun caressed, From lifted brow to amber breast She gleamed in vivid loveliness— And lithe as any leopardess— And verily, one blames thee not If thine own proverbs were forgot, O Solomon, ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... thrown about his neck. Even the rifle which he carried jauntily over his shoulder was green in color, so that he seemed to Tom to have that general hue which things assume when seen through green spectacles. He was lithe and agile, gliding through the bushes as if he were a part of them, and he came straight toward Tom, with a nimbleness which almost rivalled that of ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... his wife, except for the fierce remonstrances of his heirs. He could write clever verse, he was a devotee of belles-lettres, and a sceptic in the fashion of the time. Self-indulgent, he was likewise bitterly opposed to all family discipline. His figure was slight and lithe, his expression alert and intelligent, his eyes gray blue and his head large. He was ambitious, indefatigable as a place-hunter, suave, elegant, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Hugh Warrington out of it; fair and golden, Saxon and strong; ruddy and stalwart; lithe and long. Now sit still, Hugh, and I will do my best. If you had black eyes I would not paint you; black eyes are snaky; that's the reason ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... old familiar streets which led to his former home. He found Mrs. Johnson, but she had aged very fast since the war. She was no longer the lithe, active woman, with her proud manner and resolute bearing. Her eye had lost its brightness, her step its elasticity, and her whole appearance indicated that she was slowly sinking beneath a weight of sorrow which was heavier far than her weight ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... at him. An eager flush lit his still boyish face—Guy was twenty-eight—and his blue eyes were very bright. His lithe, muscular figure bent toward her pleadingly; all his arguments were aimed at her. Oliver sat back in his impassive way and watched them both. It could not be denied that it was Marian's decisions which usually ruled in matters of ...
— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond
... boarded her in the midst of the ocean, with no one to introduce us to each other. Her guns alone are worth going off to see, and everything about her speaks highly for the seamanship and discipline of the commander and his officers. She has a very large crew, fine, lithe-looking fellows, the very picture ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... the young captain whose personal affairs had been a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair; his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his eyes were like blue-steel points, but with humorous wrinkles at the outer ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... falling, and before the eavesdroppers realized it, she was speeding down the hill, the long braids dangling over her shoulders, and her perpetual white dress soon climbing like a veritable swaddling cloth about her lithe form. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... that the holiday-makers were wending their way: young men and maidens, and such elders as had vigour enough to traverse the rough tracks leading from the interior. They were a small race, lithe and active, with strong black hair and dark eyes now twinkling with merriment They poured over the wooden bridges into the precincts of the towering oak, under which the elders seated themselves with the musicians, the younger people ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... his free ancestors seemed to be in the lithe, tall Highlander's feet. There was no dancer equal to him in that room. A thistle on the wind was not lighter, nor a wheeling swallow ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... she gazed, until their lustre seemed opaline rather than spiritual, and with her slender white hands wreathed together like the interlacing marble snakes in the grasp of the Laocoon, so long, and lithe, and sinuous, seemed the polished, flexile fingers. Her lips were livid, but on her cheek burned two flame-like spots, indicative ever with her of intense excitement. Surely the god Mammon has rarely possessed so sincere a worshiper! Let us do her this justice, at least. So far she was consistent; ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... we commenced to build a raft. There were logs enough of every size and length in the forest, and we selected those only which we could drag with ease to the water's edge. Lithe vines, of which there were plenty hanging to the trees, served instead of ropes, and with these we bound our logs together. As the pine-wood was heavy, we formed a platform on the top of the logs with smaller poles and lighter branches, interwoven, and bound together ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... intertwine Their arms about each other, Like the lithe tendrils of the vine Around its nearest brother; And ever and anon, As gayly they ran on, Each looked into the other's ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... he. "I was in England, waiting for a little affair that happened in Barcelona to blow over. By chance I saw her in her father's shop. Ah, you may find it difficult to believe now, Madam, but she was quite charming,—cheeks flushed like dawn on the desert, eyes like the sea, and limbs as lithe as an Arab maiden's! I talked. She listened. My English was poor; but it is not always words that win. These British girls, though! They cannot fully understand romance. It was she who insisted on marriage. I cared not a green fig. What to me was the mumbling of ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... him like fingers. As he prowled, wondering what splendor this could have been which was so misplaced in so dull a town and drooping into so early a neglect, birds took alarm and went crying through the branches. There were lithe escapes through the grass, and from the rim of the lake ugly toads plounced into the pool and set the water-spiders scurrying on their ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... bonny a lass as ever the old world produced—lithe, with a body like that of a boy, strong and pleasant of face, with a haunting beauty in the eyes, a majesty of the neck and chin, and a carriage which had made Michael ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was as white as Cynthia. Something above the medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees, a few escaping locks eddying lightly ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... as she walked he noticed that all the lithe grace, all the youth and spring to her step had vanished. She moved wearily; her body under the gray garb was thin; blue veins showed faintly in temple and wrist; only her superb hair and eyes ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... no more have committed the dreadful act than have exhibited herself to a public assembly in a badly fitting garment! Zenobia, I have often thought, was not quite simple in her death. She had seen pictures, I suppose, of drowned persons in lithe and graceful attitudes. And she deemed it well and decorous to die as so many village maidens have, wronged in their first love, and seeking peace in the bosom of the old familiar stream,—so familiar that they could not dread ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... commanding figure in buff and blue. The tall, lithe frame sat the saddle with the graceful ease of the hard-riding Virginia fox-hunter. The stern, smooth-shaven face, reddened and roughened by exposure to all weathers, lighted with an amiable curiosity at sight of this motley ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... all her children these that cling to her the closest are uncouth in body and as leaden of gait as if their very hearts were loaded with chains. But here on this same road you might have seen amongst these heavy men a being lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straight like a pine with something striving upwards in his appearance as though the heart within him had been buoyant. Perhaps it was only the force of the contrast, but when he was passing one of these villagers here, the soles of his feet did not seem to me to ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... embroidered slit for the head. Leading the rapid procession, his left hand resting significantly on his sword, he was a fine specimen of the young California grandee, dark and dashing and reckless, lithe of figure, thoroughbred, ardent. His eyes were sparkling at the prospect of excitement; not only had the Russians, by their nefarious appropriation of the northwestern corner of the continent and a recent piratical excursion ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... like him? Fleet as an arrow, Strong as a bison, Lithe as a panther, Soft as the south-wind, Who was like Wawah? There is one other Stronger and fleeter, Bearing no wampum, Wearing no war-paint, Ruler of councils, Chief of the war-path,— Who can gainsay him, Who can defy him? His is the lightning, His is the whirlwind. Let us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... says, "her figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement she made was instinct with melody. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with excitement, for she felt that I was willing to admire her.... As she swept round the stage, her slender waist ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... government at Pole Cat Springs, Alabama, in 1804, leaned across the pine table to extend a cordial hand to his visitor. Abram Mordecai, who stood before him, although almost fifty, gave one the impression of a much younger man. Lean and lithe as a panther, with shaggy black hair and keen eyes, his distinctly Jewish features were so tanned and weather-beaten that he looked far more the Indian than the Jew. He nodded gayly to his employer before he flung himself into a chair, his gun-stock between his knees, his great brown hands clasped ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... the confused panorama of a dream. The horses stopped; a lithe figure leaped, unaided, to the ground; I heard that dear word ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... the personage thus sketched might be somewhere about seventeen; but his gait, his air, his lithe, vigorous frame, showed a manliness at variance with the boyish bloom of his face. He struck the eye much more than his elder comrade. Not that he was regularly handsome,—far from it; yet it is no paradox to say that he was beautiful, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... terrible, so white and worn it was. Yet it was a young man's face. There was not a wrinkle about the haggard blue eyes, for all their tale of strain and desperate fatigue. As the two approached each other, Trent noted with admiration the man's breadth of shoulder and lithe, strong figure. In his carriage, inelastic as weariness had made it, in his handsome, regular features, in his short, smooth yellow hair and in his voice as he addressed Trent, the influence of a special sort of training was confessed. "Oxford was your playground, ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... the struggling maid was dragged forward—even as Pertolepe, smiling, settled chin on fist to watch the lithe play of her writhing limbs, the willows behind him swayed and parted to a sudden panther-like leap, and a mail-clad arm was about Sir Pertolepe—a mighty arm that bore him from the saddle and hurled him headlong; ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... at her. She was a lithe, supple-looking woman, at once graceful and fully developed; a dark beauty of the style peculiar to the South, with wonderful animation in her face, and dark flashing eyes. At the same time the play of her features was not pleasing, Salve thought. It reminded him too much of her brother—it ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... walked home that night with Elizabeth. She was a tall blonde girl, lithe and graceful, and with a calculated coquetry in ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven. Nearly twenty years have passed since men heard his voice, looked on his strong, lithe, active form, saw the gleam of his honest eyes, and felt the presence of a man—a man who wanted nothing and gave everything—a man ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... we saw two natives standing at the edge of the wood quietly watching us. One of them I at once recognised as the lithe and active leader, whom I had seen upon the shore in swift pursuit of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... dinner dressed in pale green, with something yellow on her head. Mr. Kilroy admired her immensely; she was the only subject upon which he ever became poetical, and somehow the combination of colours she wore on this occasion, with her lithe young figure and milk-white skin, made him think of an arum lily, and he told her so, and was very pleased with the pretty compliment when he had paid it, and with the dinner, and everything. The fatal age was forgotten, and he allowed himself to be cheered by hopes ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of the hill came stealing a stealthy band of savages. On they came, crouching against the rocks and moving forward with the lithe, gliding motion of serpents. The men sank down behind the brush, weapons in hand, and waited. On came the bloodthirsty Indians. Then, just when the destruction of the travelers seemed certain, onto the stage galloped a company of cowboys. Immediately ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... thirty canoes, uncouth, shapeless things, each hewed out of a great cypress log. In the end of each an Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe and supple as panthers. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... from one of these visits, however, the old gentleman brought with him a beautiful young girl. She was little more than a child in appearance, and had the soft eyes, olive complexion and lithe, graceful figure of a Spaniard. She was never seen alive after she passed the shadow of the old man's doorway. A few weeks later the old gentleman disappeared as mysteriously as if he had been snatched up into ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the thirties. From the long eyebrows and sensitive mouth to the small hands and feet, everything about him was too much chiseled, overdelicate. Sitting still, he might have been taken for a very pretty girl masquerading in male attire; but when he moved, his lithe agility suggested a tame panther ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... upper gallery, leaning against the stone rail and gazing steadily through the field glasses in the direction of the bungalow. They held back and watched her, unseen. The soft light of early evening fell upon her figure as she stood erect, lithe and sinuous in the open space between the ivy-clad posts; her face and hands were soft tinted by the glow from the reflecting east, her hair was like a bronze relief against the dark green of the mountain. She was dressed in white—a modish gown of rich Irish ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... orchards intermixed with other fruit-trees, as pomegranates and figs. In the latter they are trained upon tall trees resembling firs, round whose stems they twine themselves, and from which their rich clusters droop. Sometimes the long lithe boughs pass across from tree to tree, forming a canopy under which the monarch and his ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... is Shirley. Who else has a shape so lithe, and proud, and graceful? And her face, too, is visible—her countenance careless and pensive, and musing and mirthful, and mocking and tender. Not fearing the dew, she has not covered her head; her curls are free—they ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the forest silence seemed cheerful there in the flecked sunlight. The spotted wood-gnats gyrated merrily, chased by dragon-flies; the shy wood-birds hopped from branch to twig, peering at us in friendly inquiry; a lithe, gray squirrel, plumy tail undulating, rambled serenely around the cage, sniffing at ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... was passable, lithe, sinewy, with a faint hint of rib and a wonderful bust; her brain was good, intuitive in its non-educated state, and subtle from inheritance; her ambition was superb, it knew no ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... golden feather gleamed therein— 200 Feather and scale, inextricably blended. The Serpent's mailed and many-coloured skin Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within By many a swoln and knotted fold, and high And far, the neck, receding lithe and thin, 205 Sustained a crested head, which warily Shifted and glanced before ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... coils. In vain the rattle-snake attempted to get down the squirrel so as to use its fangs, the animal sticking in its throat could neither be swallowed nor ejected. The struggle was truly fearful to look at. Round and round they twisted and turned their lithe bodies. In the excitement of the moment we cheered on the combatants, who appeared perfectly heedless of our cries. By the most wonderful movements the rattle-snake managed to prevent the black snake from ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... had adjusted his leggings, he stood lithe and erect at the bedside, and with his fist at her face, delivered a short charge, the point of which was, that unless she lay like a mouse till morning he'd have her life, though he hanged for it. And with that he drew ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... changed into a whip. Jean-Christophe mounted on horseback and leaped precipices. Sometimes his mount would slip, and the horseman would find himself at the bottom of the ditch, sorrily looking at his dirty hands and barked knees. If the wand were lithe, then Jean-Christophe would make himself the conductor of an orchestra: he would be both conductor and orchestra; he conducted and he sang; and then he would salute the bushes, with their little green heads stirring in ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... one could find anywhere, is lapped round the back and held tight in front. The hats are not of the inverted saucepan-lid type that are always depicted in bull-fight pictures, but big black furry structures, bulging at the sides. The men are short, but well made, and carry themselves with a lithe swing that at times savours distinctly ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... him a lingering good-by, with many blessings upon his young head, and many prayers for success in the hard fight upon which he was entering. They walked a short way with him, and stood watching the straight, lithe young figure, SO full of courage and hope until it disappeared down the valley. They knew only too well the dangers and trials ahead of him, but they knew also that he was not going into the fight alone. For the Captain was going with ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... the library. By the fire stood a keen-featured, sharp-eyed man of middle height and lithe figure, whose manner and first movements as the door opened showed alertness and energy of character. There was a certain likeness to his brother in the features and dark complexion as well as in a suggestion of unpleasant aggressiveness in the expression of his face, but ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... equipments had yet been seen in that country, nor indeed in any other, where the Normans were still strangers. As the Knights advanced on horseback, in their metal coating, they looked more like iron cylinders filled with flesh and blood, than like lithe and limber human combatants. The man-at-arms, whether Knight or Squire, was almost invariably mounted; his war-horse was usually led, while he rode a hackney, to spare the destrier. The body armour was a hauberk of netted iron or steel, to which were joined a hood, sleeves, breeches, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Then Kells, in lithe and savage swiftness, came between them. He swung his gun, hitting Bill full in the face. The man fell, limp and heavy, and he lay there, with a bloody gash across his brow. Kells stood over him a moment, slowly lowering the gun. Joan feared he ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... well matched. Saxham knows himself the more muscular, but Beauvayse has the advantage of him in years, and is lithe, and strong, and supple as the Greek wrestler who served the sculptor Polycleitos as a model for the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... hours in the endeavor to devise means by which he might turn her frank gaze upon himself. In fancy he imaged her clothed in fitting garments, walking with that free, beautiful, lithe and swinging gait into the splendor of ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... foot over the mare's crest, rode like an Amazon, at ease, and with mastery. The same moment the mare was away, up hill and down dale, almost at racing speed. Had the coming moon been above the horizon, the Amazon farm-girl would have been worth meeting! So perfectly did she yield her lithe, strong body to every motion of the mare, abrupt or undulant, that neither ever felt a jar, and their movements seemed the outcome of a vital force common to the two. Kirsty never thought whether she was riding well or ill, gracefully or otherwise, but the mare knew that all ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... directly in front of them leaped a lithe spotted form, and without glancing to right or left, the creature shot into the sea. It swam quite a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Then he sprang up lithe and graceful. He was of medium size but so well proportioned that he might have been modeled from the old Greeks. His hair was black and straight but had a certain softness, and his skin was like fine bronze, while his features were clearly ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the Presidio just before they were hurried off to that fatal Modoc war. Harris, caring little for the affair, and possibly hearing little of what she was saying, sat as though drinking in every word, and gazing enthralled upon the beauty of her sweet young face. He, too, was bending forward, his lithe, slender, supple frame clad in the trim undress uniform of the day, his clear-cut face, with its thin, almost hollow cheeks, tanned brown by the blazing suns of the southern desert, his hair cropped close to his shapely head, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... interest in our discourse Fill'd me with love, and seem'd to enhance Her beauty with pathetic force, As, through the flowery mazes sweet, Fronting the wind that flutter'd blythe, And loved her shape, and kiss'd her feet, Shown to their insteps proud and lithe, She approach'd, all mildness and young trust, And ever her chaste and noble air Gave to love's feast its choicest gust, A vague, faint augury ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... savage appeared nearer the land and George could see his lithe, sinewy form and the grace and rapidity with which he urged his gossamer bark along. It was like a hawk—half a dozen rapid strokes of his wings and then a smooth ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... evince taste and a balanced mind, it is the hair and complexion, and, above all, those remarkable eyes,—deep-searching, seen and seeing from afar,—that reveal the passions of the father in their heights and depths of power. The form is taller than either that of the elder Booth or Kean, lithe, and disposed in symmetry; with broad shoulders, slender hips, and comely tapering limbs, all supple, and knit together with harmonious grace. We have mentioned personal fitness as a chief badge of the actor's peerage, and it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... as I left the mess-room that night I ran against Tom Jones of Cresap's old company of riflemen from the mountains of the West, the most daring and desperate spy in all our army. He was a man of powerful strength, as lithe and active as a panther, while his face was as immovable as that of an Indian, with never a sign thereon of the thoughts and passions of the man within. He was clad for the moment in the dress of the riflemen, a ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... far-stretched palm. It fell with the faintest splash, and there was a little puff of spray as his head dipped and the water washed across his lips. Then the white limbs flashed amidst the green shining of the river, and the long, lithe form contracted, gleaming as a salmon gleams when it breaks the surface with the straining line. The still river rippled, and a sun-bronzed face shot half-clear again. Miss Kinnaird watched the swimmer's ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... get near her. She was only one; and there were at least a dozen active, cooped-up young men taking lithe, imprisoned exercise in long, swift steps up and down the deck, ready for any sort of enterprise, bursting with energy and sea-air and spirits. So that at last the left-overs, those of the young men the lady of the rosy ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... rose to his feet and the girl gazed at him in silence, seeing how bronzed and manly he looked in his light well-polished eastern armour, which had not the cumbrous massiveness of western mail, but, while amply protecting the body, bestowed upon it lithe freedom for quick action; and unconsciously she compared him, not to his disadvantage, with the cravens on the Rhine, who, while sympathising with her, dared not raise weapon on her behalf against so powerful an over-lord ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... figure in a scarlet cloak. The vigour of her gait deceived me at first, for it was the light trip of a girl in her teens, and then I saw that it was Mrs. Carville. I did not speak, but watched her, with lithe figure and features aglow, cross the street to her home. It seemed to me that I had no right to call attention to what I saw or imagined. Even if it were true, as my friend had said, as Mr. Carville ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... was now zigzagging back and forth across the road, and approaching the Fort with marvelous rapidity. Now its motion was like the wide swinging of a lighted lantern on a dark night. A moment more of breathless suspense and the lithe form of an Indian brave could be seen behind the light. He was running with almost incredible swiftness down the road in the direction of the Fort. Passing at full speed within seventy-five yards of the stockade-fence the Indian ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the car, and turned her head to look at him. He saw that she was younger even than he had thought. She seemed quite mature when she was still, but when she moved she had the lithe motions of immaturity. As a boy, he now infallibly recognized ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... certain tribes, offshoots, and clans remained impassive either to Iroquois threats or proffered friendship. They, like certain lithe, proud forest animals to whom restriction means death, were untamable. Their necks could endure no yoke, political or purely ornamental. And so they perished far from the Onondaga firelight, far from the open doors of the Long House, self-exiled, self-sufficient, irreconcilable, and foredoomed. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... running of the water and hang for a moment, as if irresolute, uncertain whether it would turn its bow upstream or be swerved broadside. The moment it hung there seemed minutes in duration. They saw Henry Burns, lithe and agile, but cool and self-possessed, strike his pole into the slope of the water where he had seen a shallow ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... as one coming out of a dream. His eyes swooped down upon the lithe, active figure at his side. They held a smile—a fiery smile that gleamed meteor-like ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... the thud of hoofs and the heavy breathing of the two horses. Bud's slim, lithe figure had slumped a little in the saddle, and his eyes were fixed unseeingly on the wide, flat sweep of prairie unfolding before them, dim and ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... above were bright and fair, All things were glad and free; Lithe squirrels darted here and there, And wild birds filled the echoing air With ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... shadow. Steel clashed on steel, the feet of the adversaries touched each other, several times the cloak of one was pierced by the sword of the other, more than once the words "Die then!" rang out. But each time the seemingly vanquished combatant sprang up unwounded, as agile and as lithe and as quick as ever, while he in his turn pressed the enemy home. There was neither truce nor pause, no clever feints nor fencer's tricks could be employed on either side; it was a mortal combat, but chance, not skill, would deal the death-blow. Sometimes a rapid pass encountered only empty air; ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in five minutes 'an mine ever heerd on." His eyes followed the boy as he went out to stand by Jack's elbow and ply this slow-witted gentleman with quick, eager questions. He was slender and rather tall for one of his age, but lithe and agile, as the skipper noted. "One o' mine could jes' trip him with a turn o' his hand," thought he; yet he regarded the lad with a mixture of kindness and respect, after all. There were other things in the world ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather; he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... the spell of a snake's eye, yet for a moment I was held by the subtle, masterful face that had risen so unexpectedly, so coolly before me. It was lifted a foot out of the grass. The head upon its lithe, round neck was poised motionless, but set as with a hair-spring. The flat, pointed face was turned upon me, so that I could see a patch of white upon the throat. Evidently the snake had just sloughed an old skin, for the sunlight gleamed iridescent on the shining jet ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... meet his gaze calmly. This was the first time Jane had had opportunity to regard Tako closely. She saw now the aspect of power which was upon him. His gigantic stature was not clumsy, for there was a lean, lithe grace in his movements. His face was handsome in a strange foreign fashion. He was smiling now; but in the set of his jaw, his wide mouth, there was an undeniable cruelty, a ruthless dominance of purpose. And suddenly she ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... thirteen, yet he was by far the cleverest of the gang. He was the favorite of his crowd, and its leader. Though there were a number older than he, they acknowledged his chieftaincy. He was a beautiful boy, a lithe young god in breathing bronze, eyes wide apart, intelligent and daring, a bubble, a mote, a beautiful flash and sparkle of life. You have seen wonderful glorious creatures—animals, anything, a leopard, a horse-restless, eager, ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Lyle stood by a statue that glittered in the sun, surrounded by a group of cavaliers; among them Lord Beaumanoir, Lord Mil-ford, Lord Eugene de Vere. Her figure was not less lithe and graceful since her marriage, a little more voluptuous; her rich complexion, her radiant and abounding hair, and her long grey eye, now melting with pathos, and now twinkling with mockery, presented one of those faces of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... walking below in the freshest of white flannels; his step so light and elastic; his every movement so lithe and graceful; the only sign of his blindness the Malacca cane he held in his hand, with which he occasionally touched the grass border, or the wall of the house. She could only see the top of his dark head. It might have been on the terrace ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Where thou hast dipped thy finger-tips; Just, just beyond, forever burn Gleams of a grace without return; Upon thy shade I plant my foot, And through my frame strange raptures shoot; All of thee but thyself I grasp; I seem to fold thy luring shape, And vague air to my bosom clasp, Thou lithe, perpetual Escape! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is before the city a certain steep mound apart in the plain, with a clear way about it on this side and on that; and men indeed call this "Batieia," but the immortals call it "The tomb of lithe Myrine." There did the Trojans and their allies ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... an English country district, two lads romped on the same lea and chased the same butterflies. One was a little brown-eyed boy, with red cheeks, fine round form, and fiery temper. The other was a gentle child, tall, lithe, and blonde. The one was the son of a man of wealth and a noble lady, and carried his captive butterflies to a mansion-house, and kept them in a crystal case. The other ran from the fields to a farm-house, and thought of the lea as a grain field. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... the Mediterranean Sea, hemmed in by the Libyan and Arabian deserts, whence there came to the rest of the world so much of art, science, and philosophy. The fellah or peasant, he who tills the soil, is of a fine and industrious race, well built, broad chested, and lithe of frame. He is the same figure that his ancestors were of old, as represented on the tombs and temples of Thebes, and on the slabs one sees from Gizeh, in the museum of Cairo. He still performs his work in the nineteenth century just as he did before the ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... His was the wisdom of the serpent combined with the gentleness—I will not say of the dove, but rather of the cat, our little tiger on the hearthrug, the most beautiful of four-footed things, so lithe, so soft, of so affectionate a disposition, yet capable when suddenly roused to anger of striking with lightning rapidity and rending the offender's flesh ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... Onund and his folk laid the ship close to the wind, the yard was sprung; then they took in sail, and therewith were driven off to sea; but Asmund got under the lee of Brakeisle, and there lay till a fair wind brought him into Islefirth; Helgi the Lean gave him all Kraeklings' lithe, and he dwelt at South Glass-river; Asgrim his brother came out some winters later and abode at North Glass-river; he was the father of Ellida-Grim, the ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... sound of the horse's hoofs the reader marked his page with his apple, and with a single movement of his lithe body was on his feet, a-stare to see a visitor where for many days visitors had been none. Declining autumn and snowy winter and greening spring, he could count upon the fingers of one hand the number of those who had come that ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... weapon spinning to the ceiling. Peter struck his assailant in the mouth, but the blow seemed scarcely to check him. They rolled on the floor together, their arms around one another's necks. It was an affair, that, but of a moment. Peter, as lithe as a cat, was on his feet again almost at once, with a torn collar and an ugly mark on his face. There were strangers in the room now and the servants had mostly slipped away during the confusion. It was Sir John Dory himself who locked the door. Bernadine struggled slowly to his feet. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... horse, nor a cow—nothing upon four legs. This creature had only two; but they were long, straight and strong. And it had a lithe active body, and a curly head of black hair. It was a boy about the Prince's own age—but, oh! so different. His face was almost as red as his hands, and his shaggy hair was matted like the backs of the ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... Pond, then through the oak grove below White Lodge, and came galloping up the long side of the slope, straight for the nets. Then the brace of deerhounds, which, like the keeper, seemed to know the game thoroughly, were slipped, and most beautiful they looked, one laying out, lithe and low, just parallel with the haunch of one stag, the other driving the brace below. The single stag charged the nets and was enveloped as before, but the other ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... doorway they encountered a girl of lithe and robust figure, quick in her movements. Carley was swift to see the youth and grace of her; and then a face that struck Carley as neither pretty nor ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... as I called her, amused me with her letcherous postures; she was as lithe as a willow branch, and was willing to please. I was fond of making her kneel on the bed with bum towards me, and her legs nearly close together, and then the backward pout of her cunt was charming to me, so much so that I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... his personal appearance we have no trustworthy account. It may safely be asserted that his feelings were strong, his affections warm, his partisanship fervent, and his organ of humour decidedly developed. I picture him lithe and quick, with ready tongue and brilliant eyes; but perhaps I am as much mistaken as Isoult was concerning Alice Wikes. If the mania "de faire son portrait" which was so much the fashion in France in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth had pervaded England in the sixteenth century, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... narrowed in confidence of victory, came boring in, on his toes, quick for all of his bulk. Joe turned sideways, his movements lithe. He lashed out with his right foot, at this angle getting double the leverage he would have otherwise, and caught the other on the kneecap. The pugilist bent forward in agony, his mouth opening ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... put the brush under her arm, still further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—which quickly became a genuine inability to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... to them and speak among them thus: "There were no greater grief than to recall, Down in the rotting grave where the lithe worms crawl, Green fields above that smiled ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... more years without showing signs of age, and the prejudices of her time must have weighed heavily on the mind of a young girl to prevent her from seeing that Germain had a fresh complexion, eyes sparkling and blue as skies in May, ruddy lips, fine teeth, and a body well shaped and lithe as a young horse that has never yet ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... knot 110 Of every tortured limb—that now he lies As if mere sleep possessed him underneath These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer, Divine presenter of the healing rod, Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye, Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer! Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies! And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs, Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves That strew the turf around the twain! While I 120 Await, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... of Bermondsey and Redriffe. The street was already crammed and thronged with porters, carts, and wheelbarrows; it was full of noise; there were sailors and merchants from foreign parts. Already the Levantine was here, lithe and supple, black of eye, ready of tongue, quick with his dagger; and the Italian, passionate and eager; and the Spaniard, the Fleming, the Frenchman, and the Dutchman. All nations were here, as now, but they were ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... and Mr. Pincornet stepped, bent, and postured with the gravity of Indian sachems. The one moved through the minuet in top-boots and riding-coat, the other taught in what had been a red brocade. Rand, though tall and largely built, moved with the step and carriage, light and lithe, of one who has used the woods; the Frenchman had the suppleness of his profession and of an ancient courtier. Now they bowed one to the other, now each to an imaginary lady. Mr. Pincornet issued directions in the tone of a general ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... a good basis to start from. He was 5ft. 11 ins.—tall enough for anything on two legs, as the old ring men used to say—lithe and spare, with the activity of a panther, and a strength which had hardly yet ever found its limitations. His muscular development was finely hard, but his power came rather from that higher nerve-energy which counts for nothing upon a measuring tape. He had the well-curved nose and ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trumpet-flower, and her eyes were blue like little scraps of sky. Her heavy, brown-red hair fell down over her shoulders in loose profusion. The coarse dress was freshly briar-torn, and in many places patched; and it hung to the lithe curves of her body in a fashion which told that she wore little else. She had no hat, but the same spirit of childlike whimsey that caused her eyes to dance as she answered the partridge's call had led her to fashion for her own crowning a headgear of laurel leaves and wild roses. As she ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... under thirty, tall and spare of form, with the lithe and active limbs that are capable of hard and prolonged action, had stood for a time by the tough door of his little shack. It was a single-roomed affair, quite large enough for a lone man, which he had carefully built of peeled logs. Within ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... or feminine task, and to steal her eyes every now and then away from her employment, in order to watch his motions or provide for whatever her vigilant kindness of heart imagined he desired. And often, when he saw her fairy and lithe form hovering about him and attending on his wants, or her beautiful countenance glow with pleasure, when she fancied she supplied them, he almost believed that Isabel yet lived, though in another form, and that a love ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the soul through the face. Ah! that is another thing! That still remains when the dusky hair is changed to white, when the glow is turned to shadows in the eyes, when the lithe form is bent. That is a bit of the eternal, and forever young like its Creator. You have got that beauty, my dear, as well as ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... prominent as a frontier scout. Rev. J. M. McWhorter, who saw him frequently, gives this description of him: "A tall, spare-built man, very erect, strong, lithe, and active; dark-skinned, prominent Roman nose, black hair, very keen eyes; not handsome, rather raw-boned, but with an air and mien that commanded the attention and respect of those with whom he associated. Never ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... intense delight of my childhood (even when a tiny boy in a nurse's charge) was to watch acrobats and riders at the circus. This was not so much for the skillful feats as on account of the beauty of their persons. Even then I cared chiefly for the more lithe and graceful fellows. People told me that circus actors were wicked, and would steal little boys, and so I came to look upon my favorites as half-devil and half-angel. When I was older and could go about alone, I would often hang around the tents of travelling shows ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... opening in the tangle, groping a stumbling way through the close dark of the matted trees. He fell over an exposed root, blundered into a chill, wet trunk, and finally emerged at the side of the desolate mansion. Here his way led through saw grass, waist high, and the blades cut at him like lithe, vindictive knives. No light showed from the face of the house toward him, and he came abruptly against the bay window ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and powerful youth of twenty-four or five years; yet, though his limbs were sinewy and lithe, and though his deep round chest, thin flanks, and muscular shoulders gave token of much growing strength, it was still evident that, his stature having been prematurely gained, he lacked much of that degree of power of which his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... he was not at Crownlands she could laugh at him, even though her thoughts were full of him. But when he was there, life to her was more radiant, more full, more glowing with colour and fragrance. The books he touched, the chair he had at breakfast, his young, lithe body in its golfing knickerbockers, or his sleek black head above the dull black of evening wear, haunted her oddly. He troubled her, but she had neither quite the power nor quite ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... upon his head—his long, black hair with the luxuriant growth of two years curling over his shoulders, and his beard, like the wing of night fluttering in the breeze, waving down from his chin to his breast in ringlets, glossy and beautiful. He was lithe as a savage, and seemed to be one. In his heart were kindling soft emotions, and memories of maidens he had known—now far, far away—came crowding upon that heart. Before him stood the embodiment of beauty and grace, attired with ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... through the quiet evening shadows. Night deepens: the stars come out one by one, and are reflected in the smooth dark water below in dreamy, dusky splendor. We brush the dew from the heavy foliage as we pass along. Lithe alders and heavy vines trail in the cool flood, and the fresh evening air is filled with grateful harvest-scents and the perfume of unseen flowers. And now our pretty painted lamp-board is fixed in its place in the bow. The bright lamp throws its rich golden splendor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... and middle size, but compact, lithe, and muscular, with a not unkindly face, which, however, showed but too plainly the marks of habitual dissipation. A rigger by occupation, a sailor and pilot at need, a skilful fisherman, and ready shot, with a roving experience, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... her in undisguised, ardent admiration. I saw it, and if I remember well, a vague wish was creeping into my heart at the time, that I had been as lithe and fair a creature as Alice Merivale. Before I had dwelt much upon it however, silence was again restored and our charming hostess had appeared ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... second Indian, who seemed to take but a couple of bounds from the tree near which he was standing when he landed on the spot. The infuriated Winnebago was in the act of clambering to his feet, when he caught sight of the lithe, graceful warrior, standing only a couple of steps away, with loaded ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... was clad, like his comrades, in a trapper's hunting-shirt and leggings; but he scorned to use a cap of any kind, conceiving that his thick, straight, black hair was a sufficient covering, as undoubtedly it was. He was as courageous as most men; a fair average shot, and, when occasion required, as lithe and agile as a panther; but he was not a hero—few savages are. He possessed one good quality, however, beyond his kinsmen—he preferred mercy to revenge, and did not gloat over the idea of tearing the scalps off his enemies, and fringing his ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... to step the mast. And now I saw the sail was ill-stowed, the canvas lying all abroad and as I rose I beheld this canvas stirred as by a greater wind; then as I stared me this, it lifted, and from beneath it crept a shape that rose up very lithe and graceful and stood with hands reached out towards me, and then as I staggered back came ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... he looked! He had lost that curious chunky appearance which Barber's old clothes gave him, and which was so misleading. On the other hand, his thin arms and pipelike legs were concealed, respectively, by becoming cloth and canvas. As for his body, it was slender, and lithe. And how straight he stood! And how smart was his appearance! And ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Dicky is slender, lithe, with merry brown eyes and thick, brown hair, with a touch of auburn in it, and just enough suspicion of a curl to give him several minutes' hard brushing each day trying to keep it down. Harry Underwood, taller even than Dicky, who is above the medium height, is massive in frame, well built, ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... every look and motion of that young man's fine eyes and lithe body. He would have bought wings at any price had that been possible; but, none being yet in the market, he made the most of his wheel—a fifty-eight inch one, by the way, for the young man's legs were long, as well ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... and held out his hand and his eyes were encouraging. The hands of the two men tightened. Carl stumbled blindly away at the heels of the Indian girl. Philip watched them go—watched Keela lead the way with the lithe, soft tread of a wild animal, and mount—watched Carl swing heavily into the saddle and follow. Silhouetted darkly against the watery moon, the silent riders filed off into the swamp-world to the south. For an instant Philip experienced ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... to his loss, and he held tight to the horny hand of his comforter. After Barnabas had driven away there came trudging down the road the little, lithe figure of an old man, who was carrying a large box. His mildly blue, inquiring eyes looked out from beneath their hedge of shaggy eyebrows. His hair and his beard were thick and bushy. Joe Forbes maintained that Uncle Larimy ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... finished, but I did not glance at him. At the other end of the piano, leaning against it, and apparently lost in thought, was the young fellow I had seen in the other room. His cloak was thrown back from his throat, and the red lining gave a picturesque touch to his small, lithe figure. His face was partly in the shadow, but I could see that his expression was one of profound melancholy. He aroused himself at last, and, looking toward me, said with a smile that had no heart in it, "If all the ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... while, placing his hat on the floor, he settled himself more comfortably in his chair. His face was unusually animated, that day, and his trim new uniform and his carefully-wound putties added inches to his height and showed his lithe, lean figure at ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... men in the free outer world seldom care to speak; and I, who knew no barriers, looked now on Valerian's gaunt figure, and brave but prematurely old face, now on poor Zaluski, who, in his weary imprisonment, had wasted away till one could scarcely believe that he was indeed the same lithe, active fellow who had played tennis at Mrs. ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... for the first time. The day before, in the shipping office, what with the bad light and his excitement at this berth obtained as if by a brusque and unscrupulous miracle, did not count. He had then seemed to him much older and heavier. He was surprised at the lithe figure, broad of shoulder, narrow at the hips, the fire of the deep-set eyes, the springiness of the walk. The captain gave him a steady stare, nodded slightly, and went on pacing the poop with an air of not being aware ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... not being beaten was quite intoxicating. There is such a curious sight of a crowd of men carrying huge blocks of stone up out of a boat. One sees exactly how the stones were carried in ancient times; they sway their bodies all together like one great lithe animal with many legs, and hum a low chant to keep time. It is quite unlike any carrying heavy ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... rocks, a great many groups of men began carrying away black objects. A trickle of independent dots dispersed itself. Then we groaned. There had been a check. The distant drama continued. The huddling figures began to move again—lithe, active forms moved about rearranging things—officers, we knew, even at the distance. Then the whole wave started again full of impetus—started—went forward, and never came back. And at this we were all delighted, and praised the valour of our unequalled infantry, and wished we were ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... he gloried in the look of them, in the trained, springy strides, in the lithe, erect forms, in the assurance in every move. Every detail of that practice photographed itself upon Ken Ward's memory, and he knew ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... offered her a deck-chair with a characteristic gesture. Nella was obliged to acknowledge, in spite of herself, that the fellow had distinction, an air of breeding. No one would have guessed that for twenty years he had been an hotel waiter. His long, lithe figure, and easy, careless carriage seemed to be the figure and carriage of an aristocrat, and his voice ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... foundations of the earth. The thistle-down floats secure upon the same summer zephyrs that are woven into the tornado. The dew-drop holds within its transparent cell the same electric fire which charges the thunder-cloud. In the softest tree or the airiest waterfall, the fundamental lines are as lithe and muscular as the crouching haunches of a leopard; and without a pencil vigorous enough to render these, no mere mass of foam or foliage, however exquisitely finished, can tell the story. Lightness of touch is the crowning test ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... matter of fact, though Arthur had not been sincere, Dory did look "all right." It would have been hard for any drapery not to have set well on that strong, lithe figure. And his face—especially the eyes—was so compelling that he would have had to be most elaborately overdressed to distract attention from what he was to what ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Irish descent, and middle size, but compact, lithe, and muscular, with a not unkindly face, which, however, showed but too plainly the marks of habitual dissipation. A rigger by occupation, a sailor and pilot at need, a skilful fisherman, and ready shot, with a roving experience, which had given him a smattering ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... paroxysms of rabies; its deadly eyes, staring, unearthly yellow in the lantern light. Within two yards of Clay, who stood helpless with fear and uncertainty, it crouched to spring, growling and snapping at its own sides, and Helen screamed again as she saw Travis's quick, lithe figure spring forward and, grasping the dog by the throat from behind, fling himself with crushing force on the brute, choking it ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... glowing sun, And tints from warm, sweet human flesh, for fair And subtly lithe and beautiful, leans one— A goddess with a wealth of ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... a subject by its handle and poise it on its centre is perhaps the consummation of merely intellectual culture. When all its nutriment has been converted into bone and muscle and sinew and nerve, then the mind bounds to its work, lithe and strong, like a hunting leopard on its game. It was exactly the power with which our Webster handled his case, till it seemed to the farmer too simple to require a great man to argue. It was the quality that Lincoln so toiled at through ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the sight of thee is a life-giving thing." Katherine's face flamed with his warm words, and the consciousness of the beauty of her new adornment; for she stood before him in an amber shimmering stuff that clung to her lithe limbs, hiding not her slender ankle and her arched satin shoe, as her dress caught about a stool that held it. The short round waist betrayed the fulness of her form, and Cedric turned his eyes away from sheer ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the house of the baroness, where he was evidently expected, for the servant asked his name and immediately ushered him into her presence. She was one of those lithe, dark women of good race, that are to be met with all over the world, and she has broken many a heart. But she was not like a snake at all, as Nino had thought at first. She was simply a very fine lady who did exactly what she pleased, and if she did ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... would, dear. So it's just as well—all things considered—that you are not going to meet. Well, I must go and get respectable." He rose with a quick, lithe movement, but paused, looking down at her quizzically to ask: "What did you think of my friend the moonstone-seller? ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Association. The Woman's Journal said: "Those of us who have for years admired Mrs. Stetson's remarkably bright poems were delighted to meet her, and to find her even more interesting than her writings. She is still a young woman, tall, lithe and graceful, with fine dark eyes, and spirit and originality flashing from her at every turn like light from a diamond. She read several poems to the convention, made an address one evening and preached twice on Sunday; and the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... unquestionably some mission of witchcraft. For small naked brown boys, as a rule, do not go alone and unarmed into the thick bamboos. Too many things can happen to prevent them ever coming out again; too many brown silent ribbons crawl in the grass, or too many yellow, striped creatures, no less lithe, lurk in the thickets. But the strangest thing of all—and the surest sign of witchcraft—was that he had always come safely out again, yet with never any satisfactory explanations as to why he had gone. He had always looked some way very joyful and tremulous—and perhaps even pale if from ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... century, in an English country district, two lads romped on the same lea and chased the same butterflies. One was a little brown-eyed boy, with red cheeks, fine round form, and fiery temper. The other was a gentle child, tall, lithe, and blonde. The one was the son of a man of wealth and a noble lady, and carried his captive butterflies to a mansion-house, and kept them in a crystal case. The other ran from the fields to a farm-house, and thought of the lea as ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... not mind weather; the steamer hurled herself up on the bulge of a sea, and then you could get a glimpse of a tall, lithe figure, straining in the small boat alongside the rearing iron hulk. That splendid, lithe young lad performed prodigies of strength and courage; the hulk and the little boat sank down,—down until the steamer's mast-head disappeared; then with a rush the wave slid away, and the craft ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... no finer sight than that of these lithe, vigorous specimens of a free, uncorrupted manhood, taking like sport the rude labor which was at once their destiny and their guard of safety against the assaults of the senses. As they bent to their work, prying, rolling, and lifting the huge sills to their places on the foundation-wall, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... part of a leg. Hurriedly he pursued, entering the strip of woodland towards the brook, when something fell upon him, and two keen qualms of pain shot through his breast. Then he lay insensible. Meanwhile, a lithe active form, leaving a horse tethered at the gate, had sprung to meet a second intruder, issuing from the front door of Bridesdale. The opposing forces met, and Mr. Bangs had his hands upon the younger gaol breaker. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... near unwelcomed—a lithe, alert figure in European attire, bare-headed, eager-faced. He was smiling to himself as he came, but when he reached her the smile ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... her dressing about completed when Nora O'Day entered. She was dressed in a handsome traveling suit, the product of a city importer. As usual, she carried her lithe, slender body proudly, as though no one was quite her equal. Elizabeth understood the girl now and knew that her defiant attitude ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... with a lithe figure and smooth black hair brushed straight back from his forehead had paused at the table on his way ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... but well I recollect a fugitive impression left on me by an early morning in Benares, now many years ago. I threaded its extraordinary streets, narrower than the needle's eye, and crowded with strange, lithe, nearly naked human beings, with black, straight, long wet hair, and brown shining skins, jostled at every step by holy bulls or cows, roaming at their own sweet will with large placid lustrous eyes, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... of battle, is seen to divide; The pathway of victory cleaves the dark flood;— And the foe is o'erwhelmed in a deluge of blood! The spirit of Alice no longer is bowed By the troubles, and tumults, and terrors, that crowd So closely around her:—the willow's lithe form Bends meekly to meet the wild rush of ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... Anson's closed hand. His clothes, unbrushed and unpressed, flapped about his huge figure. His throat bagged with flabby dewlaps. His head was bullet-shaped, his eyes fierce, his mouth loose-lipped and brutal. He made a strange contrast to his companion. Druce was lithe, well made and gifted with a sort of Satanic ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... - "O maiden lithe and lone, what may Thy name and lineage be, Who so resemblest by this ray My darling?—Art ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... spirited as the Athenaeum cast. S. C—— thought the difference was one of size. This work may be seen at a glance; yet does not tire one after survey. It has the freshness of the woods, and of morning dew. I admire those long lithe limbs, and that column of a throat. The Diana is a woman's ideal of beauty; its elegance, its spirit, its graceful, peremptory air, are what we like in our own sex: the Venus is for men. The sleeping ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sitting on a cot in one corner, exploring the interior of a big blue canvas bag; a professor or doctor person, who gave me one keen glance, briefly said "Good day," and went on with his occupation. A second bed, already neatly set up and equipped, stood in another corner. Its owner, lithe and keen, a fellow of about twenty-five, was watching a third, man-sized but boy-faced, who was struggling with a cot in its chrysalis stage, being apparently quite unable to unfold it. I knew the lad at a glance, young David Ridgway Farnham ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... have often taken part in merry-makings such as he describes, on flying visits that are not recorded in Forster, before he sat down to write about them during his honeymoon at Chalk. As the Master of Gadshill, his lithe, upright figure, clad in loose-fitting garments, and rather dilapidated shoes, was a familiar sight to all the country neighbours, as he swung along the shady lanes, banked high with hedges that were ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... thee how to die, my sweet—torn 'twixt pimento trees or Tressady's hook—thou shalt choose the manner of't. And now, unveil, unveil, my goddess of the isle—so shall—' Ha, Martin! My stone took him 'neath the ear, and as he swayed reeling to the blow, lithe and swift as any panther this tortured woman sprang, and I saw the flash of steel ere it was buried in his breast. Even then he didn't fall, but, staggering to a pimento tree, leans him there and falls a-laughing, a strange, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a very pretty sight; and the broken English with which Marie, on behalf of the villagers, presented the little creature to Hetty, was prettier still. When they reached Hetty's gate, all the women who had hold of the long pine wreath gave their places to men; and, in the twinkling of an eye, the lithe vigorous fellows were on the fences, on the posts of the porch, nailing the wreath in festoons everywhere; from the gateway to the door in long swinging loops, above the porch, in festoons over the windows, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... It was a pretty sight. Kitty, with her floating locks, flushed face, trim, light figure, and unerring accuracy of eye, was well measured against Hugo's lithe grace and dexterity. The two went on until eight hundred and twenty had been reached; then the shuttlecock fell to the ground. Kitty had glanced aside and missed ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... alone should be the guide for the young girl's costume. The dewy bloom of the cheek, the clear young eyes, the soft rosebud lips, the sweet curves of the lithe form that come but once in a lifetime, are what we want ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... she was as white as Cynthia. Something above the medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees, a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and her temples,—her ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... of age, with kind bright eyes and the drawn but ruddy face of one whose strength seems to have been acquired more from athletic sports than by hard work. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim- waisted, big-hipped and handsome; he stepped along through the clinging sand with the lithe careless grace of a mountain lion. An old greasy wide-brimmed gray felt hat, pinched to a "Montana peak," was shoved back on his curly black head; his shirt, of light gray wool, had the sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing powerful forearms tanned to the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... horse, the drunken carrier, the engaged couple, the female student of the bicycle and her staggering instructor, the pig, the perambulator, and the infant school (where it disembogued yelping on cross-roads), with the grace of Nellie Farren (upon whom be the Peace) and the lithe abandon of all the Vokes family. But at heart she was ever Judic as I remember that Judic long ago—Judic clad in bourgeois black from wrist to ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... she is working away, copying a bunch of scarlet rock-columbine which is in a wine-glass of water before her; every few moments stopping and holding her work at a distance, to contemplate its effect. At this moment there steps behind her chair a tall, lithe figure, a face with a rich Spanish complexion, large black eyes, glowing cheeks, marked eyebrows, and lustrous black hair arranged in shining braids around her head. It is our old friend, Sally ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in presence of this complete specimen of dissipation, of turbulence, of futility, and finally of worldly extravagance that bears the name of Countess de Palme, and the nickname of the Little Countess; a rather ill-fitting nickname, by the way, for the lady is not small, but simply slender and lithe. Madame de Palme is twenty-five years of age; she is a widow; she spends the winter in Paris with her sister, and the summer in an old Norman manor-house, with her aunt, Madame de Pontbrian. Let me get rid ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... particularly attracted to a man who daily, in fact almost hourly, stood at an opposite corner, and who frequently arrived, or drove away, in a buggy drawn by two rather small, black, spirited horses. He was a tall, lithe, dark-complexioned man, with black eyes, rather long black hair, and a full beard; extremely restless, and constantly moving back and forth. He addressed many passers-by, a fair proportion of whom stopped to exchange a word with him. In the latter instance, however, the exchange was scarcely equitable, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His lithe ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... full of Sunday pleasure-seekers. I swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Some one overtook and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his white profile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could see him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step that carried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Through the woods to the right, by paths nearer yet to the far-flung Federal front, paced ten guardian squadrons. All went silently, all went swiftly. In the Confederate service there were no automata. These thousands of lithe, bronzed, bright-eyed, tattered men knew that something, something, something was being done! Something important that they must all help Old Jack with. Forbidden to talk, they speculated inwardly. "South by west. 'T isn't a Thoroughfare Gap march. They're all here in the Wilderness. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... let her wash it with her handkerchief dipped in the glass of water, and bind it with his own. Her touch was light and skilful, and it would have been absurd to refuse to let her do it. But, as holding his wrist she raised it a little higher to turn her bandage under it, her small, lithe, thin hand was close to his face, and he gave it the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... do lack, and suffer hunger.' They are taken as the type of violent effort and struggle, as well as of supreme strength, but for all their teeth and claws, and lithe spring, 'they lack, and suffer hunger.' The suggestion is, that the men whose lives are one long fight to appropriate to themselves more and more of outward good, are living a kind of life that is fitter for beasts than for men. A fierce struggle ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The whirr of the rattle went on for a second or two, then gradually subsided. Bob lay white-faced, and still as death. Jeremy drew a step closer and then gave a choked cry of relief. The snake's smooth, diamond-marked body remained coiled for the spring. Its lithe forepart was thrust forward from the top coil and the venemous, blunt head—but the head was no more. Jeremy's ball had taken it ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... was the son of a rich merchant of Lyons, who had offered the sub-officer charged with his deportation sixty thousand francs to permit his escape. He was at once the Achilles and the Paris of the band. He was of medium height but well formed, lithe, and of graceful and pleasing address. His eyes were never without animation nor his lips without a smile. His was one of those countenances which are never forgotten, and which present an inexpressible blending of sweetness and strength, tenderness ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather; he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... rise to hand it to him, so he was obliged to get up and take it from where she sat. She perceived then that though extremely thin he was lithe and well-shaped. And in spite of her unconquered prejudice, she was obliged to own she liked his steely gray hawk-like eyes and his fine, rather ascetic, clean-shaven face. He did not look at her specially. He may have taken in a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... He was now sitting in European fashion beside her on the divan, and his posture made it more difficult for her to accept his strange mentality; for he looked like a tremendously robust, yet very lithe and extremely handsome and determined young man, who might belong to a race of Southern Europe. Even with the tarbush upon his head his ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the poet hath hymned The writhing maid, lithe-limbed, Quivering on amaranthine asphodel, How can he paint her woes, Knowing, as well he knows, That all can ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the Commandant while this happens, standing by one of the writing-tables in the lounge. Ursula Dearmer (she grows more mature every day) and the War Correspondents and a few Generals have melted somewhere into the background. The long, lithe pigskin belt lies between us on the table—between my friend and me—like a pale snake. It exerts some malign and poisonous influence. It makes me say things, things that I should not have thought it possible to say. And it is all about the ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... open neck of the blouse her deeply tanned throat rose like a bronze column; the roses in her cheeks and on her lips relieved the sun-darkened skin. Her hair was in two great plaits and it was evident that she seldom troubled about a hat. She was lithe, graceful as she could be, and bubbling over with good health if ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the storm. The leafless trees Lash their lithe limbs, and, with majestic voice, Call to each other through the deepening gloom; And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion; and the oak, Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered frosts, Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... of the blackness behind him a lithe figure shot like a wildcat. One arm encircled the neck of the astounded guard, the hand pressing tightly over his mouth. The other hand caught his right wrist and twisted it backward, causing him to drop his revolver. The ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... unwise to whistle before you are out of the wood, and Brady's triumph was short-lived. Swift as a shadow, a lithe figure darted out from among the trees and planted itself ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... said—about forty years of age, with a daughter of sixteen, an only child. Of course the first time I saw her at church I fell desperately in love: boys always do that with a new face. She was a sprightly girl, with soft blue eyes, dark hair, fair complexion, white teeth, a lithe figure and a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... and her pretty brown feet went catlike over the sharp stones, as she led the way down a rocky path to the shore. Her garments were scanty and torn, and her hair blew tangled in the wind. She seemed about five-and-twenty, lithe and small. Her long fingers kept clutching and pulling nervously at her skirts as she went. Her face was very gray in complexion, and very worn, but delicately formed, and smooth-skinned. Her thin nostrils ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... professional. They put him up against Slovatsky, the giant Russian, one day. Slovatsky put up his two huge hands, like hams, and his great arms, like iron beams and looked down on this lithe, agile bantam that was hopping about at his feet. Suddenly the bantam crouched, sprang, and recoiled like a steel trap. Something had crashed up against Slovatsky's chin. Red rage shook him. He raised his sledge-hammer right for a slashing blow. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... whatever refuse stuff they found in the streets or received as charity. Their figures are generally superb; and their Eastern costume, to which they adhere as far as their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets off their lithe and graceful forms to great advantage. Their faces are almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illuminated by pairs of those dark swimming and propitiatory eyes, which exhaust the language of tenderness and passion ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... she fled down the quiet Sunday street, leaving the family hanging in open-mouthed amazement over the picket fence, staring after her. And the last glimpse they caught of their transported Peace as she whisked around the corner was a pair of lithe, brown-clad legs climbing aboard a northbound car. She was on her way to tell St. John and Elspeth the ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... statue, and, except for a slight stiffening of his tall lithe figure, remained absolutely motionless, after the Indian manner. For some time they ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... the ice without a gaff. A gaff is a lithe, ironshod pole, eight or ten feet in length. Doctor Rolfe was as cunning and sure with a gaff as any old hand of the sealing fleet. He employed it now to advantage. It was a vaulting pole. He walked less than he leaped. This was no work for the half light of an obscured moon. Sometimes ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... one of his knives high up into the air. As it turned in its descent he flung a second knife, then caught the first and again threw it high—higher even than the vane on the ship's tall mast. He stood with his bare feet firmly gripping the plank, and his head thrown back, and his lithe, well balanced body swaying in regular movement with his arms. Then as the two gleaming weapons were well in play, rising and falling in quick succession, one of his hands went to his belt, and he drew yet a third knife and plied it in ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... Then he wore a dark suit that showed the lithe movement of his body. There was a clean, clear-cut look about him. He went on with his thinking to her. Suddenly he reached for a Bible. Miriam liked the way he reached up—so sharp, straight to the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... have been employing his time so much more pleasantly in the very room. For, flitting in and out of the bar during the game, and every now and then stooping over the old lady's shoulder to examine her hand, and exchange knowing looks with her, was the lithe little figure of Miss Patty, with her oval race, and merry eyes, and bright brown hair, and jaunty little cap, with fresh blue ribbons of the shade of the St. Ambrose colors. However, there is no accounting for tastes, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... few minutes later, as Doctor Mayberry was unsaddling his horse in the barn a lithe figure enveloped as to head and shoulders in one of Cindy's kitchen aprons darted under the dripping eaves and stood breathless and laughing in ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... yellow, but Gretel,—Gretel, the fleetest sprite of a girl that ever skated. She was but playing in the earlier race: now she is in earnest, or, rather, something within her has determined to win. That lithe little form makes no effort; but it cannot stop,—not until ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... hidden by the rags, foul with the dirt of what we miscall civilisation. But take them to the pure stream, strip off the ugly, shapeless rags, wash the young limbs again, and you shall find them, body and soul, fresh and lithe, graceful and capable—capable of how much, God alone who made them knows. Well said of such, the great Christian ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... trembled with great rapidity. This state perhaps would be followed by general convulsive movements in which she would put herself into the most grotesque postures and make the most unlovely grimaces. At last the fit ended, and exhausted and in tears she was put to bed. The patient was a lithe, muscular woman and to restrain her movements during the attack with the assistance at hand was a matter of impossibility, so all that could be done was to prevent her injuring herself and to sprinkle her freely with cold water. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... so." Therewith Lily threw down the book, sprang to her feet, wound her arm round Mrs. Cameron's neck, and kissed her fondly. "There! is that wasting time? I love you so, aunty. In a day like this I think I love everybody and everything!" As she said this, she drew up her lithe form, looked into the blue sky, and with parted lips seemed to drink in air and sunshine. Then she woke up the dozing cat, and began chasing it round ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the narrow opening between the rocks, his lithe, half-nude figure dark against the crimson west, and with a smile upon his evil lips and in his evil eyes, stood Luiz Sebastian. In the dead silence that succeeded he looked with a smiling; countenance from the musket, now useless ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... referred to her late mistress's wardrobes. The ruby dress, however, drew forth many little cries of admiration. Then an argument was started concerning the colour of hair, and, before the glass with hairpins and lithe movements of the back and loins, the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... was a dominating personality. There was no cowardice in his nature—at least no physical cowardice. Doubtless, had it come to a struggle where agility was required, he would have fallen an easy prey to his lithe companion; but with him, somehow, it never did come to a struggle. He had a way with him that chilled any such thought that a would-be assailant might have. Will and unflinching courage are splendid assets. And, amongst others, this ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... select one from each branch," said Ralph: "the friendly, pathetic, poetical, and so forth. Lithe ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... draws first the eye of a man, then his intellect, then his heart, and sometimes all three at once. The face was as lovely as a rose of Taormina. Dark brown were her eyes, dark brown was her hair. She was tall and lithe, too, with the subtle hint of the woman. There were good taste and sense in her garments. A bunch of Parma violets was pinned against ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... can be that she was his own daughter, he often wondered whence she got herself—her red-gold hair, now greyed into a special colour; her direct, spirited face, so different from his own rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little lithe figure, when he and most of the Forsytes were tall. And he would dwell on the origin of species, and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic, he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs. It was not too much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... by, they all walked so gracefully, Balancing their bodies on lithe unstable hips, As if music moved them that swelled in their bosoms And was pizzicatti ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... brilliant vocation and of an impassioned resolve, refrained from the discussion, and the sense of her ineffable superiority bore hard on that lithe, mercurial youthfulness. The 'Signal,' in praising Millicent's performance at the opera, had predicted for her a career, and had thoughtfully quoted instances of well-born amateurs who had become professionals and made great ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... that I saw in Queensland were for the most part lithe and fairly well built, but they were stamped always with repulsive features, and their women were, if ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... The soft footfall reached the threshold. The maiden retreated half a step more. Behind her sounded a faint patter of crinoline coming down the hall stairs. And then there came into view from the porch, bending forward with caressing arms, a slim, lithe negress of about nineteen years. Her flimsy dress was torn by thorns, and her hands were pitifully scratched. Her skirt was gone, the petticoat bemired, and her naked ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... looking straight at his fellow-creatures when he speaks to them. If this man was honest, his eyes showed a singular perversity in looking away and denying it. Possibly they were affected in some degree by a nervous restlessness in his organization, which appeared to pervade every fiber in his lean, lithe body. The rector's healthy Anglo-Saxon flesh crept responsively at every casual movement of the usher's supple brown fingers, and every passing distortion of the usher's haggard yellow face. "God forgive me!" thought ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of many kinds in the air, but John promptly picked out one which seemed to be coming with the flight of an eagle out of its uppermost heights. He seemed to know its slim, lithe shape, and the rapidity and decision of its approach. His heart thrilled, as it had thrilled when he saw the Arrow coming for the first time on that spur of the Alps ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... he suddenly, to my astonishment, opened the door and slipped in, closing it instantly behind him. At the sound of his voice the huge, lithe creature rose, yawned and rubbed its round, black head affectionately against his side, while he ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... passable, lithe, sinewy, with a faint hint of rib and a wonderful bust; her brain was good, intuitive in its non-educated state, and subtle from inheritance; her ambition was superb, it knew no ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Come with me, Now that, through vanishing veil, Shimmers the dew on lawn and lea, And milk foams in the pail; Now that June's sweltering sunlight bathes With sweat the striplings lithe, As fall the long straight scented swathes Over the crescent scythe; Now that the throstle never stops His self-sufficing strain, And woodbine-trails festoon the copse, And eglantine the lane; Now rustic labour seems as sweet As leisure, and blithe herds Wend homeward with ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... a girl about fifteen years of age. The animal was a little mouse-colored beastie with white markings and eyes which gave a pretty strong hint of a good bit of broncho disposition to which the markings also pointed. He was lithe and agile as a cat and moved with something of the sinuous gliding of that animal, rather than the bounding motions of his eastern-bred mates. The two horses running neck and neck behind him were evidently blooded ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Dollops lighted a spark of great interest in the servants' hall. The newly engaged maids accepted him for his youth and sharp manners, as an innovation which they rather fancied than otherwise. Borkins alone stood aloof. It seemed to the man that here, in Dollops' lithe, young form, in the very ginger of his carrotty hair, in the stridency of this cockney accent—which Cleek had endeavoured to eradicate without a particle of success—was the reembodiment of the older, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... Vermilion river. The Kickapoo warriors were generally tall and sinewy, while the Potawatomi were shorter and more thickly set, very dark and squalid. Numbers of the women of the Kickapoos were described as being lithe, "and many of them by no means lacking in beauty." The Potawatomi women were inclined to greasiness and obesity. The Potawatomi had little regard for their women. Polygamy was common among them when visited by the early missionaries. The warriors were always ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... Province, were present. Conspicuous among them was the brilliant but unscrupulous Christoper Alexander Hagerman, who had already taken high rank at the bar, and was destined to be one of the most active and intolerant directors of the oligarchical policy. Archibald McLean, tall and lithe of limb, had then been more than four years at the bar, and he had already given evidence of the high abilities which were to gain for him an honoured seat upon the judicial bench. He had been retained to defend two prisoners at the Niagara assizes, and his presence in the court-room was ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... an expression of surprise flitted over his face, but his eyes were always fixed on Kitchener, who would now and again stoop and whisper something in Lord Wolseley's ear. Once he raised his voice. The prisoner heard its intonation and recognized him. With a fierce bound the long, lithe Arab made a spring and was over the table, and had seized Kitchener by the throat. There was a short, swift struggle, Wolseley's eye glistened, and he half drew his sword. Kitchener, athletic as he was, was being overpowered, and the Arab ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... to sprinkle the ground with it; and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn, and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white, as always—a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if you might have passed it through your ring, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... drink, seeing himself in the mirror behind the refreshment stand; a tall teen-ager, looking older than his seventeen years. He was lithe and well muscled from five years of sports and acrobatics at the Space Academy, he had curling red hair and gray eyes, and he was almost as tall as ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... furnaces; yet all seemed well, Hope dreamed rich music in the rattling mills. 'Ye foundries, ye shall cast my church a bell,' Loud cried the Future from the farthest hills: 'Ye groaning forces, crack me every shell Of customs, old constraints, and narrow ills; Thou, lithe Invention, wake and pry and guess, Till thy ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
