"Antic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the gall of bitterness, With rage which words can ill express, With unforgiving rage, which springs From a false zeal for holy things, 1710 Wearing such robes as prophets wear, False prophets placed in Peter's chair, On which, in characters of fire, Shapes antic, horrible, and dire Inwoven flamed, where, to the view, In groups appear'd a rabble crew Of sainted devils; where, all round, Vile relics of vile men were found, Who, worse than devils, from the birth Perform'd the work of hell on earth, 1720 Jugglers, Inquisitors, and Popes, Pointing at axes, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... that in life's late day, With tottering step, and locks of gray, Essay'st each trick of antic glee, Oh! my heart bleeds at sight ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... it may almost be said, "keeps death his antic court." It comprises biographies of celebrated persons, who have died within the year, as well as a General Biographical List of others lower in the roll of fame. The biographies are 31 in number: among them are memoirs of Henry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... papers at this period daily; but from some general dread and fear, that was begotten, like a vapour out of the fermentation of all sorts of opinions; most people of any sagacity thinking that the state of things in France being so much of an antic, poetical, and playactor-like guise, that it would never obtain that respect, far less that reverence from the world, which is necessary to the maintenance of all beneficial government. The consequence of this was a great distrust between man and man, and an aching restlessness among those who had ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... happened—she became more quiet, placed herself beside him, stroked his face with caressing fondness, whispered something smilingly in his ear, and in this manner smoothed the wrinkles that were gathering on his brow. But the moment after, some wild whim would make her resume her antic movements; and all went ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... it did not appear as if the huge walrus realised the danger approaching so steadily, for every now and then, while performing some antic, the bear continued to lessen the distance between it and its prey, while simulating the greatest innocence and assuming to be thinking of anything but making an attack. So playful a creature, enjoying itself thoroughly in ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... that since dinner her mental processes had undergone some subtle change. For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her own; the giant with ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... outside by an arm and can hardly tell what he has to say because it's so funny he has to laugh when he thinks of it. They go up an alley where they won't be overheard, and Herman at last manages to keep his laughter down long enough to tell it. It's a comical antic he wants ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... brought out for my lady's amusement!" said the stranger, smiling; "you make rare sport with your antic tricks, at the fort yonder, I ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... whippoorwills in the dusk of evening; now the first mocking-bird sang long before day, very sweetly and softly, and again before moonrise; hours of sun he filled with bolder rejoicings, condescending in his more antic humour to mimic the hens that began to cackle around the barn. Every thicket by the water-courses blushed with azaleas; all the banks were gay ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... for mirth! O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic attitude! O Earth, With your wild ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... in the antic whirl I have a special exhibit to show you outside the ballroom. Spare ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the game he had procured (a ring-tailed opossum), making signs for us to take it up: in a short time another native came towards us, when the other descended from the tree. They trembled excessively, and, if the expression may be used, were absolutely INTOXICATED with fear, displayed in a thousand antic motions, convulsive laughing, and singular motions of the head. They were both youths not exceeding twenty years of age, of good countenance and figure, but most horribly marked by the skin and flesh being raised in long stripes all over the back and body; ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,— As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on,— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would," Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and having, in tender infancy, been suddenly seized upon in Sunday school by the superintendent, and placed in a conspicuous situation of disgrace for looking at a companion who was performing some strange antic, but who possessed one of those india-rubber faces that, after twisting themselves into all possible, or rather impossible shapes, immediately become straight the moment any one observes them—having, I say, met with this mortifying exposure, it gave me a shock which I have not to this day recovered; ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... several such late or last chapters that one would gladly cut away: that of Mercy Pecksniff's pathos, for example; that of Mr. Dombey's installation in his daughter's home; that which undeceives us as to Mr. Boffin's antic disposition. But how true and how whole a heart it was that urged these unlucky conclusions! How shall we venture to complain? The hand that made its Pecksniff in pure wit, has it not the right to belabour ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... carried to the high mass, where for almost an hour they are subjected to the heat and the human smells from so many crowding, perspiring people, and if they are not made to recite the rosary they must remain quiet, bored, or asleep. At each movement or antic that may soil their clothing they are pinched and scolded, so the fact is that they do not laugh or feel happy, while in their round eyes can be read a protest against so much embroidery and a longing for ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... suppose you have heard, long ago, How the snakes, in a manner quite antic, He marched from the County Mayo And trundled them into the Atlantic. So not to use water for drink, The people of Ireland determined. And for a mighty good reason, I think, Since St. Patrick has filled it with vermin And vipers and other ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... array themselves with ought, as many times they do, why, the spirit of their wildness or frenzy appears even in the mode and way in which they do it. Either the things themselves which they make use of for that purpose are very toys and trifles; or if they seem to be better, they are put on after an antic manner, rather to the rendering of them ridiculous, than to bespeak them sober, judicious, or wise; and so do natural men array themselves with what they would be accepted in with God. Would one in his wits think to make himself fine or acceptable ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that when a man is buried, some of his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, must be broken and buried with him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of antic scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... for whose sake I plod through miry ways Of antic wit, and quibbling mazes drear, Let not thy shade malignant censure fear, If aught of inward mirth my search betrays. Long slept that mirth in dust of ancient days, Erewhile to Guise or ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... shame it ends. Love makes thee cunning; thou art current now, By being counterfeit: thy broken vow Deceit with her pied garters must rejoin, And with her stamp thou countenances must coin; Coyness, and pure deceits, for purities, And still a maid wilt seem in cozen'd eyes, And have an antic face to laugh within, While thy smooth looks make men digest thy sin, But since thy lips (least thought forsworn) forswore, Be never virgin's vow worth trusting more!" When Beauty's dearest did her goddess hear Breathe such rebukes 'gainst that ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... field, in which arts, sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many Wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, around, and above ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... he had been her brother. One night he came home just a trifle tipsy. She noted at last what was wrong with him, and her heart yearned over the sinner. There were five or six glasses inside of him, and each was the father of an antic. He was an opera company, a gymnasium, and a menagerie at once, all tinged with a certain hilarious unsteadiness which was fascinating. But at last he got to his bed, which was more than ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... little town; all looks poor and low; yet it seems like a place that has seen better days. Houses, now used as paltry shops, have, some of them, carved oaken doors, with antic freaks of architecture, which seem to signify that their former owners were able to make a figure in the world. In fact, the houses seem a sort of phantasmagoria of decayed gentlefolk, in the faded, tarnished, old-fashioned finery of the past. Our guide halts her trot ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it, wench," said the Queen, laughing. "But we will have this same Sir Nicholas sent to Ireland or Scotland, or somewhere, to rid our court of so antic a chevalier; he may be a good soldier in the field, though a preposterous ass ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... highly ornamented, embattled, and having turrets at the four corners. These gatehouses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself; but the upper one was of wood, "richly adorned and set forth and garnished with variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of excellent art and workmanship, and of no small cost:" all which ornaments, it seems, were made of rye dough. In modern language the "pictures" would probably be called basso-relievos. From the eastern and western angles of the inner court rose ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... queen was to be conducted, but the uproar and confusion was indescribable; strange and antic figures hurrying to and fro, seeking their companions, and crying lustily for their places. Sir John Finett and Sir George Goring fulfilled the office of whippers-in, attempting to establish order out of these undisciplined elements. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Mathewson could or could not dance the "Irish Washerwoman," or any other antic dance improvised to that live air; she had only to yield herself to Red Pepper Burns's hands and steps, and let him disport himself around her. A most startlingly hilarious performance was immediately and effectively produced. At the height of ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... she, "I will not; I will not skip like an antic, and show thee my poor little spindle legs. If I were a woman grown I should scarce show so much as the ankle of my foot. Besides, thou laughest at my hopping and jumping amongst these foolish woolly beasts, and I would not have ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... arrived. Although I was at work within sound of his voice, these came nearly always in the form of a note, delivered with an unvarying grin by the office-boy, who would drop any other errand, however pressing, to do Field's antic bidding. These notes were generally flung into the waste-paper basket, much to my present regret, for of themselves they would have made a most remarkable exhibit. Sometimes the summons would be in the form of a bar of music ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the stitches on her needles, the big shadow of her cap-ruffles bobbing on the daubed and chinked log walls in antic mimicry, while down Ethelinda's pink cheeks the slow tears coursed at the prospect ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... war; Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd; Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kili'd; All murder'd:—for within the hollow crown, That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp! Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit— As if this flesh, which ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Mary, with tearful pleasantness. "If you'll do as I say, I'll do as you say; and that will be final proof to you that I believe you're"—she fell back a step, laughingly—"'the clean sand!'" She thought the man would have perpetrated some small antic; but he did not. He did not even smile, but lifted the rein a little till the horse stepped forward, and, putting out ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... varying stages of liquor—from two or three who had to be hauled over the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of spirits—speaking truly in the ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... crest and gorgeous splashes of tints and shades are fresh and shining with the gloss of health, then the feathered lover may hope, indeed, that the little brown mate may look with favour upon dance, song, or antic—and the home is become a reality. In some instances this home is for only one short season, when the two part, probably forever; but in other cases ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... is a rhythm to this chaos of crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I cannot solve it. But Mr. Pike knows it. Again and again, as we paced up and down this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt, snap-of-the-whip effect ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... against the hills, kept on With their reverberations. And these spots The neighbouring country-side doth feign to be Haunts of the goat-foot satyrs and the nymphs; And tells ye there be fauns, by whose night noise And antic revels yonder they declare The voiceless silences are broken oft, And tones of strings are made and wailings sweet Which the pipe, beat by players' finger-tips, Pours out; and far and wide the farmer-race Begins to ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... distilled by a complexion naturally adust, mounted into an occiput already prepared to kindle by long seclusion and the fervor of strict Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood he was assailed by illusions similar in kind to those which are related of the famous Anthony of Padua. Wild antic faces would ever and anon protrude themselves upon his sensorium. Whether he shut his eyes or kept them open, the same illusions operated. The darker and more profound were his cogitations, the droller and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... him know he was being managed. There was a widow in the East, acknowledged his niece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter was still free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow he emulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the most absurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. The widow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle's eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life might in the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... popular writer, ten times more virulent than anything Mr. Ruskin wrote of Mr. Whistler: yet neither he, nor any other man of letters, thinks of flying to his mother's apron-string, or of setting in motion old Father Antic, the Law. Perhaps it is that we have no money, or perhaps, like the judicious author of whom I have spoken, we abstain from reading unpleasant things. I wish to goodness we could abstain from hearing of them; but the 'd——d good-natured friend' ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's death ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Vatican, seeking for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriage-entrance of the palace; there is an entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen,—a party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds,—were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the eldest, watched during the first two hours of the night, and was considerably alarmed by observing, upon the opposite bank of the glen, or valley, a huge fire surrounded by some figures that appeared to wheel around it with antic gestures. Max at first bethought him of calling up his brothers; but recollecting the daring character of the youngest, and finding it impossible to wake the elder without also disturbing Martinconceiving also what he saw to be an illusion ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... ordinary labours. Every house had its inmate; but I could not perceive them. If I could have deluded myself into a belief of this kind, I should have been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its reason, refused to lend itself to such imaginations—and though I endeavoured to play the antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of man, during long years one among many—now remained sole ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... bearing the mark of every age and nation, silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of nothing, good thoughts, impish thoughts, and large, gracious thoughts. There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashion. An antic jester in green and gold led the dance. The guests followed no order or precedent. No two thoughts were related to each other even by the fortieth cousinship. There was not so much as an international alliance between them. Each thought behaved ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out; ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... blinking of its great bright eye, that seemed to say, "Well, Uncle Juvinell, what shall we do for the entertainment or instruction of these little people to-night? Shall we tell them of that crew of antic goblins we wot of, who are wont to meet by moonlight, to play at football with the hanged man's head, among the tombstones of an old graveyard? Or may be that dreadful ogre, with the one fiery eye in the middle of his forehead, who was in the habit of roasting ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... soldiers, and was teaching them in his own tongue from apparently vague recollections of the manual of arms. I do not insist that we profited by the occasion; I only say that life likes a motley wear, and that he who rejects the antic aspects it so often inappropriately puts on is no ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... This entertainment, which might be considered as a school of military virtue, was succeeded by a farce, that debased the dignity of human nature. A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators, by their deformed figure, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange, unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intemperate riot, Attila alone, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... this point that another notion came into my mind, so antic, so impish, so fiendish, that if there were still any Evil One, in a world which gets on so poorly without him, I should attribute it to his suggestion; and this was that the procession which Jan saw ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by the pavement linger Under the rooms where once she played, Who from the feast would rise to fling her One poor sou for her serenade? One short laugh for the antic finger ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... Fairies, blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards frisk and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... describes: "It was performed by three dancing-masters, who were painted all over of various colors, with long sticks in their hands, upon the ends of which were fastened long feathers of swans and other birds, neatly woven in the shape of a fowl's wing; in this disguise they performed many antic tricks, waving their sticks and feathers about with great skill, to imitate the flying and fluttering of birds, keeping exact time with their music." This music was the measured thumping of an Indian drum. From time to time, a warrior would leap up, and the drum and the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... passion, and called to him with curses to come down. The figure drew back at the first cry, with an agitated movement so abrupt as almost to be called an antic. The next moment the man seemed to reconsider and collect himself, and began to come down the zigzag garden path, but with obvious reluctance, his feet falling in slower and slower rhythm. Through March's mind were throbbing the phrases that this man himself had used, about going ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... TALBOT. Thou antic Death, which laugh'st us here to scorn, Anon, from thy insulting tyranny, Coupled in bonds of perpetuity, Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky, In thy despite shall 'scape mortality. O thou, whose wounds become hard-favor'd death, Speak to thy father ere thou yield thy breath! Brave death by ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... white, and her brow was ornamented with a sparkling Diadem. After her appeared St. Genevieve, surrounded by a number of Imps, who putting themselves into grotesque attitudes, drawing her by the robe, and sporting round her with antic gestures, endeavoured to distract her attention from the Book, on which her eyes were constantly fixed. These merry Devils greatly entertained the Spectators, who testified their pleasure by repeated bursts of Laughter. The Prioress had been careful to select ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... he found the subject too absorbing to allow of his giving much attention to old Father Antic the Law. At any rate, he was never called to the Bar, and posterity cannot be too thankful that his great mind was not lost in 'the abyss of legal eminence' which has received so many men who might have adorned their country. That he was fitted for a brilliant legal career can ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... tear-drops, unashamed. He turned sharply aside, and for some moments neither spoke. Cornelia was seeing, as in a picture, the lonely ranch, with the solitary figure, sitting with his face towards the East, thinking, thinking. ... Guest was reflecting with amaze on the strange antic of fate, which ordained that it should be in the eyes of this Yankee stranger that he should see the first woman's tears shed on his behalf! She cried like a child; simply, involuntarily, without thought of appearance; the tears rising from a pure ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... bought it, and I told him like a dutiful son—"Tom Carrodus's in Church Green." He summoned my mother and asked: "Mally, what dos'ta think o' this lot?" She—good woman—said it was only another antic of her boy's, and "let him have his own way." But my father, on the contrary, got rather nasty about the matter, remarking that if I didn't take the thing away he would put it into the fire. He said he was sure it would only turn out a public house "touch," and informed ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... breathless, flushed, and over-heated Babette, who was so ill the next day, as to be unable to quit her bed; nor can we detail the jokes, the merriment, and the songs which went round, the peals of laughter, the loud choruses, the antic feats performed by the company; still more impossible would it be to give an idea of the three tremendous cheers, which shook the Lust Haus to its foundations, when Corporal and Mistress Van Spitter, upon their retiring, bade ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... mine eyes . . . And lo! A flickering snatch of memory that floats Upon the face of a pool of darkness five And thirty dead years deep, Antic in girlish broideries And skirts and silly shoes with straps And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks Plain in the shadow of a church (St. Michael's: in whose brazen call To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed), Sedate for all his haste To be ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... the foot of a tree, seemed inspired by the sound of their own instruments, which were chiefly flutes and a kind of long guitar. Behind, stood a boy, flourishing a tamborine, and dancing a solo, except that, as he sometimes gaily tossed the instrument, he tripped among the other dancers, when his antic gestures called forth a broader laugh, and heightened the rustic ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... company made the best of it. Mlle. Frahender grew pale and ill, and her hair flew about in the most comic disarray. Cosily ensconced in a corner, Maurice sketched the various attitudes his companions assumed with every antic of the lightly-laden, wave-tossed Soulacroup. Hunched up on the seat, Esperance clung to the rigging. Genevieve clutched at her when a wave pitched the boat too far over. The others, well muffled up, waited in silence. Jean Perliez sighted the ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... eyelids laid; And, as I wake, sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, Or the unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antic pillars massy-proof And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced quire below, In service high, and anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all Heaven before mine ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... alive, I re-opened my eyes, and saw a man kneeling above me, rubbing me all over with his hands, and pushing my belly up under my ribs, and blowing into my mouth, and tickling my nostrils with a feather, and performing a great variety of such antic manoeuvres upon me. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... smoke-grimed, cobwebbed, and having the look of a cold-storage plant or a car barn fallen into disuse; dusty, neglected, almost eerie. Yet within it lurks Romance, and her sombre sister Tragedy, and their antic brother Comedy, the cut-up. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... them, its attendant, Pride, gave the wink to Delusion, who was walking near. He seized a wooden trumpet, and sounded a dance. No sooner did the mummy hear the noise than it took Pride by the hand, and danced about with antic gambols; but its thin withered legs could not bear this long, and it soon sunk ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... to press me for further particulars of the Amalgamated subscriptions. We all know the story of the comedian informed in the midst of a performance of his beloved wife's death, who yet must laugh and antic to the end of the play. I appreciated the heavy-hearted actor's plight as I surveyed the little throng so vitally interested in their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part to feign ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... particularly if it relate to their religion. Thus the sacrifice, the rocks, and the sacred groves where they imagine their deities dwell, are all called Fetish: also, their priests, or priestesses, when they are going through any antic ceremonies, are said to be making Fetish, and are consequently called Fetish men or Fetish women. Some have regarded the Fetish as an object of worship to the natives of Africa; it ought, however, more properly to be considered ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... own average experience,—that besides these gloomy associations, the name of Venice will conjure up scenes of brilliant and wanton gayety, and that in the foreground of the brightest picture will be the Carnival of Venice, full of antic delight, romantic adventure, and lawless prank. But the carnival, with all the old merry- making life of the city, is now utterly obsolete, and, in this way, the conventional, masquerading, pleasure-loving Venice is become as gross a fiction as if, like that other conventional Venice of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... are some of you who had a great deal rather see me stand on my head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to. . . . ,—on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of autograph-hunters to address ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... invade, With so much furious vigour, as if it Had lived o'er each of them, and each had quit, Yet with such happy sleight and careless skill, As, like the serpent, doth with laughter kill, So that although his noble leaves appear Antic and Gottish, and dull souls forbear To turn them o'er, lest they should only find Nothing but savage monsters of a mind,— No shapen beauteous thoughts; yet when the wise Seriously strip him of his wild disguise, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... hours of this trying day Clark had kept up the spirits of his men in every way he could. In telling about it later, he said: "I received much help from a little antic drummer, a boy with such a fun-loving spirit that he made the men laugh, in spite of their weariness, at ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... a network of gnarled and knotted roots. The black limbs grapple with each other; here one has dragged his neighbour over, and he lies with arms outstretched, writhen into antic twists and curves, as if he had died in torment; there, in singular contrast, are two friends,—oaks, were they once?—who have fallen into one another's arms, and, dead, seem still to embrace ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... the lover at his exit from his mistress. He found him so elevated with his success, so enamoured with his daughter, and so satisfied with her reception of him, that the old gentleman began to caper and dance about his hall, and by many other antic actions to express the extravagance of his joy; for he had not the least command over any of his passions; and that which had at any time the ascendant in his mind hurried him to the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Tiber's brink; Ye mighty names—what d'ye think? The Pope has sanctioned Railway Bills! And so the lofty Aventine, And your six other famous hills Will soon look down upon a 'Line.' Oh! if so be that hills could turn Their noses up, with gesture antic, Thus would the seven deride and spurn A Roman work so unromantic: 'Was ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... again to dream The Dream, His faith new-stablished would stand, and be No longer vext of this infirmity. And so that night, ere lying down to sleep, There came on him, half making him to weep And half to laugh that such a thing should be, A mad conceit and antic fantasy (And yet more sad than merry was the whim) To crave this boon of Sleep, beseeching him To send the dream of dreams most coveted. And ere he lay him down upon his bed, A soft sweet song was born within his thought; But if he sang the song, or if ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... went, running over names at random, and then stumbled with ludicrous misspelling on Kornelius, and had nearly laughed aloud. I have never been more childish; I suppose (although the deeper voices of my nature seemed all dumb) because I have never been more moved. And at this last incongruous antic of my nerves, I was seized with a panic of remorse and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... seemed as though an accident had happened to her. Her legs absolutely shot from under her as she landed from one terrific buck, and she plunged to the ground. Then her intention became apparent. But luckily the antic had defeated its own end, for Tresler was flung wide, and, as she rolled on the ground, he ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... conveys the beauty of the words and the richness of the packed thought thoughtfully. The complex play of action and motive—the purpose blunted by overmuch thinking, the spurs to dull revenge, the self-contempt, the assumed antic disposition, at times the real mental disturbance—all this was set before us with a fine skill and resource. The "To be or not to be" soliloquy was masterly in its sincerity and restraint; the two broken love passages with Ophelia showed a fine tenderness through the distraught, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... fullest with significance—this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere, and yet his aim in art (it would appear) is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... whose hearts are made dark with infidelity, care not what antic distortions they make in interpreting Scripture, so they bring it to any show of compliance with ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... mirthful eyes that laugh upon the leaves; Where every bush and tree in all the scene, In wind-kiss'd wavings shake their wings of green, And all the objects round about dispense Reviving freshness to the awakened sense; The golden corslet of the humble bee, The antic kid that frolics round the lea; Or purple lance-flies circling round the place, On their light shards of green, an airy race; Or squirrel glancing from the nut-wood shade An arch black eye, half ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... I rose and followed, kicking off my slippers that I might go quietly. He was running, running fast, across the lawns in the direction of the Grove—an odd shapeless antic in the moonlight. I stopped, for there was no cover, and I feared for his reason if he saw me. When I looked again he had disappeared among ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... were struggling desperately to meet modern demands with devices and procedures, conceptions of rights and property and authority and obligation that dated from the rude compromises of relatively barbaric times. The horse-hair wigs and antic dresses of the British judges, their musty courts and overbearing manners, were indeed only the outward and visible intimations of profounder anachronisms. The legal and political organisation of the earth in the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... child to show her how to dance and die, and Najib begins to whirl like a dervish until he falls in the grave; thereupon he folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles a pathetic smile. This by far is the masterpiece of all his feats. And one evening, when he was repeating this strange and weird antic, which in Khalid's strange mind might be made to symbolise something stranger than both, he saw, as he lay in the grave, a star in the sky. It was the first time he saw a star; and he jumped out of his sand-grave exulting in the discovery he had made. He runs to his mother ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... windows, while groans—such was the dark fancy of the author—issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played there a ghostly antic to frighten honest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... thousand antic shapes I take; The stoutest heart at my touch will quake. The miser dreams of a bag of gold, Or a ponderous chest on his bosom rolled. The drunkard groans 'neath a cask of wine; The reveller swelts 'neath a weighty chine. The recreant turns, by his foes assailed, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Let them with simple Whitehead, taught to creep Silent and soft, lay Fontenelle asleep;[214] Let them with Browne contrive, to vulgar trick, To cure the dead, and make the living sick;[215] Let them in charity to Murphy give Some old French piece, that he may steal and live; Let them with antic Foote subscriptions get, And advertise a Summer-house of Wit. Thus, or in any better way they please, With these great men, or with great men like these, Let them their appetite for laughter feed; I on my Journey all alone proceed. If fashionable grown, ...
— English Satires • Various
... a certain interest, even with a certain wonder. The newspapers occasionally mentioned him as a dandy, a fop, a whimsical, irresponsible creature, yet one whose vagaries were not entirely without interest. He had performed some extravagant antic in a cotillon, or worn some extraordinary coat. He had invented a new way of walking one season, and during another season, although in perfect health, he had never left the house, declaring that movement of any kind was ungentlemanly and ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... and crafty, ever encouraged and urged me in my antic course that brought Kim's favour, not alone to me, but through me to Hendrik Hamel and all our company. I here mention Hendrik Hamel as my adviser, for it has a bearing on much that followed at Keijo in the winning of Yunsan's favour, the Lady Om's ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... all. I was yesterday at the French church, and stared very much at their manner of service. The parson clapped on a broad-brimmed hat in the first place, which gave him entirely the air of what d'ye call him, in Bartholomew fair, which he kept up by extraordinary antic gestures, and preaching much such stuff as the other talked to the puppets. However, the congregation seemed to receive it with great devotion; and I was informed by some of his flock, that he is a person of particular fame amongst them. I believe, by this time, you ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... guess frae your manner that ye are no unacquainted wi' the movements o' high life—do you ken how lang the King means to prolong his abode amang our neebors owre the water, his hair-brain'd Irish subjects, whase notions o' loyalty hae excited sae mony preposterously antic exhibitions by ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... girl jumped on a chair and waved her handkerchief, which she had painted red, white, and blue, the unwilling hostess asked Senator North if he thought Betty would be able to keep her head till the end of the evening, or would be excited to some extraordinary antic. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... but characteristic of a leopard and therefore like the movement of no other animal save a leopard or lion or tiger; she leapt daintily clear of the pavement and struck sideways with her forepaws. The antic perfectly ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... around, and dubs them Fools; Bids them be bold, some untry'd path explore, And do such deeds as Fools ne'er did before; 'Twas on that Morn, when Fancy took her stand Beside my couch, and, with fantastic wand, Wav'd, from her airy cells, the Antic Train That play their gay delusions on the brain: And strait, methought, a rude impetuous Throng, With noise and riot, hurried me along, To where a sumptuous Building met my eyes, Whose gilded turrets seem'd to dare the skies. To every Wind it op'd an ample door, From every Wind tumultuous ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... If Bursley was offended, why did it not mark its sense of Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable, all were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a mere trifle of no importance. Besides, nobody could ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... good will, and admirable effect did he lace Mr. Hourigan, that the latter worthy, after cutting some very antic capers, and exhibiting in a good many other respects several proofs of his agility that could scarcely be expected from his heavy and ungainly figure, was at last fairly obliged to sing out,—"Oh, Misther John, Misther John! you will—Misther ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... sits smiling. And what avails reviling? Such pitch without defiling Can "Prince" or "Patriot" touch? This quicksand unromantic Closes on him, the Antic, Whose hands with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... Sosicles sees fit "to put an antic disposition on," we have a scene which, while eminently farcical, is signally clever and dramatically effective. Witness the imitation by Shakespeare in The Comedy of Errors, IV. 4, and in spirit by ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... my goats, which I had in the enclosure just by: when he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble thankful disposition, making many, antic gestures to shew it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how much he would serve me as long ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... now, to please the Faerie King, Full every deal, they laugh and sing, And antic feats devise; Some wind and tumble like an ape, And other some transmute their shape In ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... in his safe return, Whose wanted presence I can only mourn; Your common gift shall two large goblets be Of silver, wrought with curious imagery, And high emboss'd, which, when old Priam reign'd, My conqu'ring sire at sack'd Arisba gain'd; And more, two tripods cast in antic mold, With two great talents of the finest gold; Beside a costly bowl, ingrav'd with art, Which Dido gave, when first she gave her heart. But, if in conquer'd Italy we reign, When spoils by lot the victor shall obtain- Thou saw'st the courser ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... ah yes, let other men Love Elia for his antic pen, And watch with dilettante eyes His page for every quaint surprise, Curious of caviare phrase. Yea; these who will not also praise? We surely must, but which is more The motley that his sorrow wore, Or the great heart whose valorous beat Upheld his brave unfaltering feet Along ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... bird upon the bough divines. No leaf does tremble in the wind, Which I returning cannot find. Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves, Strange prophecies my fancy weaves: What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said, I in this light Mosaic read. Under this antic cope I move, Like some great prelate of the grove; Then, languishing at ease, I toss On pallets thick with velvet moss; While the wind, cooling through the boughs, Flatters with air my panting brows. Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... discovery. "Light of my eyes," said the husband, "didst thou meet with any thing amusing to-day in thy visit to the bath? and if so, divert me with an account of it." "I did, indeed," said the lady, "for I met with four antic creatures, whom" (at hearing this the unfortunate lovers gave themselves over for lost) "I had a great inclination to bring home with me" (here they recovered a little from their alarm) "to divert us, but fearful of your displeasure I did not; however, if agreeable, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... a secret satisfaction in contemplating their helpless condition. He might have forgotten the scene by this time but for that ill-looking man by the fire. Now, while he capered about, boylike, and threw himself with an antic into his bed, he inwardly hoped that the voetspoelen would ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... conclusion—to which the late Lord Salisbury also jumped years ago at a very memorable British Association meeting—that a species is modified by the sudden appearance of eccentric individuals here and there in the general mass who interbreed—preferentially. Helped by a streak of antic egotism in themselves, they conceived of the superman as a posturing personage, misunderstood by the vulgar, fantastic, wonderful. But the antic Personage, the thing I have called the Effigy, is not new but old, the oldest thing in history, the departing thing. It depends not upon the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... ceremony, which was taken to be a kind of idolatry, ended, mats were brought from the houses, whereon the guests were seated, and given to eat bread made of maize, and tobacco to smoke. The savages also entertained them with dancing and singing and antic tricks and grimaces. They were naked except a covering of skins about the loins, and many were painted in black and red, with artificial knots of lovely colors, beautiful and pleasing to the eye. The 4th of May they were entertained by the chief of Paspika, who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... difficult task, as the packages were so awkward and heavy, the object being to make them secure against any antic on the part of the mules if they became restive, and also to guard against the corners of the plates ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... my old Spad through every antic we two had ever done together. The observers in the balloons must have thought me crazy, a pilot running amuck from aerial shell shock. I had discovered a new meaning for that "grand and glorious feeling" which is so often the subject of ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... In saying this, I design to cast no slur on the moral character of masculine dancers. It is unquestionably above reproach; but let an angel put on the black coat and trousers which constitute the "full-dress" of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the "Lancers," and he would simply be ridiculous,—which is all I allege against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute angles. The woman is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... suspense was not so much that the prisoner should go free, as that the prisoner's counsel should win his case. It was as if Charley Steele were on trial instead of the prisoner. He was the imminent figure; it was his fate that was in the balance—such was the antic irony of suggestion. And the truth was, that the fates of both prisoner and counsel had been weighed in the balance ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... straight. The left, whence flowed the hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance of a clown's antic. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... ghastly smile, which reminded us of Dante's devils. He immediately ascended the ladder, dragging his prey after him till they had nearly reached the top; he then placed the rope around the neck of the malefactor with many antic gestures and grimaces highly gratifying and amusing to the mob. To signify to the poor fellow under his fangs that he wished to whisper in his ear, to push him off the ladder, and to jump astride his neck with his heels drumming with violence upon ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... propped in the window-seat of her bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the tents had been pitched, the Indians came forward with their formal salutations. In front advanced, with antic dancings, the "medicine man," bearing in each hand a spread fan of white feathers fastened to a rod hung from top to bottom with little bells; marching behind this jingling symbol of peace and friendship, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... our love-birds pine For post-impressionistic dwellings, With all the windows out of line And curious humps and antic swellings, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... always puzzled her. She would clean up a kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the squirrels and wash it, but rarely, if ever, completing the work because of some disconcerting un-catlike antic. As the squirrels grew older they also grew friskier, and soon took the washing as the signal for a frolic. As well try to wash a bubble. They were bundles of live springs, twisting out of her paws, dancing over her back, leaping, kicking, tumbling ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... two centuries ago, wisely characterized mnemonic systems as "barren and useless." He wrote, "For immediately to repeat a multitude of names or words once repeated before, I esteem no more than rope-dancing, antic postures, and feats of activity; and, indeed, they are nearly the same thing, the one being the abuse of the bodily, as the other is of mental powers; and though they may cause admiration, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... called "Ben Butler" was not so easily subdued. It was "Ben Butler's" special antic to fall over backward. He was a sullen, evil-eyed brute, with a curve in his nose and a droop in his nostrils, which gave him a ridiculous resemblance to the presidential candidate of the Anti-Monopoly Party. He was a great man-killing bronco, with a treacherous ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... dance of death, it may be called—that have got the name, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they got the name from their movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, is more than ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harm which appearingly they have power to do; nor are they perceived to be in great pain, save that they are usually silent and sullen. They are said to have many pleasant toyish books; but the operation of these pieces only appears in some paroxysms of antic, corybantic jollity, as if ravished and prompted by a new spirit entering into them at that instant, lighter and merrier than their own. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosurcian ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... was, for I never knew, led me only a courant, and then asked me if I had a mind to dance an antic—that is to say, whether I would dance the antic as they had danced in masquerade, or anything by myself. I told him anything else rather, if he pleased; so we danced only two French dances, and ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... dance, obey, Temper'd to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day, With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow-melting ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... had got sufficient sea-room, we faced, and advanced upon each other, and retreated by turns, as quick as our rowers could paddle. During this, the warriors on the stages flourished their weapons, and played a hundred antic tricks, which could answer no other end, in my judgment, than to work up their passions, and prepare them for fighting. Otoo stood by the side of our stage, and gave the necessary orders, when to advance, and when ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... start. The hare and tortoise are my witnesses. Said tortoise to the swiftest thing that is, 'I'll bet that you'll not reach, so soon as I The tree on yonder hill we spy.' 'So soon! Why, madam, are you frantic?' Replied the creature, with an antic; 'Pray take, your senses to restore, A grain or two of hellebore.'[13] 'Say,' said the tortoise, 'what you will; I dare you to the wager still.' 'Twas done; the stakes were paid, And near the goal tree laid— Of what, is not a question for this place, Nor who it was ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... The Fool Plough, which consists of a number of sword-dancers dragging a plough with music, was anciently observed in the North of England, not only at Christmas time, but also in the beginning of Lent. Wallis thinks that the Sword Dance is the antic dance, or chorus armatus of the Romans. Brand supposes that it is a composition made up of the gleaning of several obsolete customs anciently followed in England and other countries. The Germans still practise ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... was on Cleopatra's mane, and my off-foot clear of the stirrup; it would be a Christian act to save Foikestone from the father of a batin', and Priestley from that sterner father, namely, old father antic, the law. But imminent as the collision ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... find the boy at eighteen packed off to Heidelberg to study law, with no special preparation in knowledge of the world, of men or books. But old father antic, the law, was not to his taste. Robert liked music and poetry better. His fine, sensitive, emotional spirit found its best exercise in music; and at the house of Professor Carus he used to sing with the professor's wife. This Professor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... trees are growing thereon. This place is the threshold of the Pass of Killicrankie, through the dark and woody chasms of which the impatient waters of the Gary come with hoarse and wrathful mutterings and murmurs. The hills and mountains around are built up in more olden and antic forms than those of our Lowland parts, and a wild and strange solemnity is mingled there with much fantastical beauty, as if, according to the minstrelsy of ancient times, sullen wizards and gamesome fairies had joined their arts and spells ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the name of M——, affects the eccentric, and, as the day approaches for the handing in of his bill, his eccentricity verges upon madness, till at last, when the document is really tendered, he becomes absolutely crazy—shouts, sings, performs in an antic manner, and declares himself to be the king of the Jews, the President of the United States, or something of that sort. He has sufficient method in his madness, however, to gain the advantage of the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... and Hawthorne had never lived. The last delicacy of touch is wanting in all his work, whether verse or prose; yet the reader, though unsatisfied, does not turn from it without respect. If it is second-rate, it is not tricksy; its dulness is not antic, but decorous and quiet; its dignity, while it bores, enforces a sort of reverence which we do not pay to the ineffectual fire-works of our own more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Judas! whom nor friend nor foe may trust, Think'st thou with tears and plaints to answer this? Do I not know thy heart? do I not know That bribes have purchas'd Ely this escape? Never make antic faces, never bend With feigned humblesse thy still crouching knee, But with fix'd eyes unto thy doom attend. Villain! I'll plague thee for abusing me. Go hence; and henceforth never set thy foot In house or field thou didst this day possess. Mark what I say: advise thee to look to't, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... between the fingers of his right hand, which he kept extended above his head, in continual motion; while he held his left in an horizontal direction. They leaped about, and threw themselves into various antic postures, to the measure of their music, bringing their heels close together at every pause. Sometimes the men howled, like wild beasts; and he who continued to howl the longest, appeared to be considered the best performer. The ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... Burke gave Old Father Antic the Law as lavish a letter of recommendation as the Legal Profession ever received, and he gave it for the very natural reason that he had no ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... comprehensive in scope, as those of the most versatile negro minstrel. He cuts as many capers in a lifetime as there are stars in heaven or grains of sand in a barrel of sugar. Everything is fish that comes to his net. If a discovery in science is announced, he will execute you an antic upon it before it gets fairly cold. Is a new theory advanced-ten to one while you are trying to get it through your head he will stand on his own and make mouths at it. A great invention provokes ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... this. Three lads, Antic, Frolic and Fantastic, having lost their way, are given shelter by a countryman, Clunch—a smith, by the way, like our old friend, Adam—whose goodwife, Madge, entertains two of them with a tale while the other sleeps with her husband. She begins correctly enough ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... unicorns, and panthers' breath Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines. Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber; Which we will take, until my roof whirl round With the vertigo: and my dwarf shall dance, My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic. Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales, Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove, Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine: So, of the rest, till we have quite run through, And wearied all the fables of the gods. Then ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... cakes and ale, and antic ring Well tiptoed to the tabor string, And many a buss below the holly, And flout at sable melancholy— So, with a rouse, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... I was the darling of my aunt, the tenderly-beloved of my father, the pet and plaything of the old domestics, the "young master" of the farm-labourers, before whom I played many a lordly antic, assuming a sort of authority which sat oddly enough, I doubt not, on such a ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... so used it that, were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent—but, I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king? And resolution thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the law? Do not thou, when thou art king, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antic of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... somebody to antic with, while I am busy, just as I have Billy, somebody of your own age, only you must always like me best. Now come over to see if papa is in his office and talk things over with him. He can advise you a good deal better than I can, Allyn; but, this time, I think I know about ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... nature cannot be constrained. Irritated at the injustice which places so high in the general scale of values accomplishments which he cannot practise, shrinking from the suave devices of gesture and expression which in his own case might quickly pass into antic or grimace, he withdraws more and more from the places where such arts win esteem to live in a private world of inner sentiment. As he leaves this sure retreat but rarely himself, so he forbids ingress to others; and becoming yearly a greater recluse, he confines himself more and more ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... out a transformer by some careless and exuberant antic; hence the mutual doghouse. Scolding was wasted effort, so Denver merely sighed and made a ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... asthounded at yer ignorance of gogerfy! Thim little fish grow in the Atla-antic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Injun Ocean, the Airctic Ocean, an'—oh, in all them oceans. An' the big fish, such as the whale, the halleybut, the shairk, an' all o' thim, they live off'n eatin' ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... have mentioned, in different persons only; but all the variety would appear, in a short succession of moments, in one and the same person. A man that we saw this minute dumb, and, as it were, stupid and confounded, would the next minute be dancing and hallooing like an antic; and the next moment be tearing his hair, or pulling his clothes to pieces, and stamping them under his feet like a madman; in a few moments after that we would have him all in tears, then sick, swooning, and, had not immediate ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul, when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity, and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay. Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... the halfpence; but several fresh spectators were yet to see the sight; and though the exhausted animals were but little inclined to perform their antic feats, their master twitched the rope, that was fastened round their necks, so violently, that they were compelled ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... wait eternally. For eight years, I have danced willing attendance—following you through nursery, younger-set and debutante stages. In short, with no wish to trumpet too loudly my own virtues, I've been your Fidus Achates." His voice dropped from its pitch of antic whimsey, and became for a moment grave, as he added: "And, because of my love for you, I've lived a life almost as clean as ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Italian masks by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad; My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay; Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape, With hair that gilds the water as it glides Crownets of pearl about his naked arms, And in his sportful hands an olive-tree, To hide those parts which men delight to see, Shall bathe him in a spring; ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... boys had remained quiet spectators at a distance, but by accident the monkey, who used to be perched upon the head of the bear, and was shaken off when the beast broke loose, came running that way, playing a thousand antic grimaces as he passed. Tommy, who was determined not to be outdone by Mr Barlow, ran very resolutely up, and seized a string which was tied round the loins of the animal; but he, not choosing to be taken prisoner, instantly ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... of the tune, the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden—really like balm—what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had given me in the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pixy, and quaint Puck the Antic, Brought Robin Goodfellow, that merry swain; And stealthy Mab, queen of old realms romantic, Came too, from distance, in her tiny wain, Fresh dripping from a cloud—some bloomy rain, Then circling the bright Moon, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... to the tremendous bearings of the case and the importance of the issues, failed to hide in his expression those 'happy thoughts' that flow ceaselessly through his fertile brain. The outward effect was a see-saw antic with his imposing eyebrows—a proof to me that his sense of the ridiculous had got the better of his gravity. 'Put on your gloves at once,' he whispered impressively to me. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because you ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... booty for a moment. Our seamen put on him a jacket and trowsers, which produced great merriment, for he had all the gestures of a monkey newly dressed: We also gave him bread, which he eat with a voracious appetite, and after having played a thousand antic tricks, he leaped overboard, jacket and trowsers and all, and swam back again to his proa; after this several others swam to the ship, ran up the side of the gun-room ports, and having crept in, snatched up whatever lay in their reach, and immediately leaped again into the sea, and swam away ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... "How sayst thou, O my lady? Shall I sell thee to my lord Sharif al-Din here for nine hundred and fifty gold pieces?" She looked at him and, seeing him to be an old man with a dyed beard, said to the broker, "Art thou silly, that thou wouldst sell me to this worn out Father Antic? Am I cotton refuse or threadbare rags that thou marchest me about from greybeard to greybeard, each like a wall ready to fall or an Ifrit smitten down of a fire-ball? As for the first, the poet had him in mind ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... and striking their clubs together, keeping exact time to the music; while one, whimsically crowned with a fox's skin, the tail of which flaunted down his back, kept capering round the skirts of the dance, and rattling a Christmas-box with many antic gesticulations. ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... time began, I have never heard of a runaway boy being chased by a bison bull; and, therefore, can only guess how such a beast would deport himself under the circumstances. But I am rather inclined to think he would hardly do anything more dreadful than play the savage antic just suggested; because, a moment's reflection would show him that to use his horns to a greater length, were to frighten the young runaway out of his wits, and thereby incapacitate him from being made to see and feel the ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... said, come in rattle-boxes, they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... Dancing on the chamber wall, While I sit beside the hearthstone Where the red flames rise and fall. Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, My three antic shadows wear; And no sound they make in playing, For the six small feet ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott |
