"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being cleft and cleansed, and also the brains, boil the head very white and fine, then boil the brains with some sage and other sweet herbs, as tyme and sweet marjoram, chop and boil them in a bag, being boil'd put them out and butter them with butter, salt, and vinegar, serve them in a little dish by themselves ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... small room at the back of the house. Through the wide-flung French windows was a vista of terraced walks, the two sunken tennis lawns, a walled garden leading into an orchard, and beyond, the great wood-hung cleft in the hills, on either side of which the pastoral fields, like little squares, stretched away upwards. From here there was no trace of the more barren, unkinder side of the moorland. The succession of rich colours merged at last into the dim, pearly hue where sky ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... uplift her, as on a pillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink her in with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. In the cleft of her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets of primrose fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shake with the heaving, and marvelled what should so much discompose the girl. And Christina was conscious ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and grey with a little faint blue sky, and, though the coast of Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts, there were no startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooded ridges, deeply cleft, rise from the water's edge, gray, deep-roofed villages cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation, bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a great height among dark masses of upland forest. The populousness of the coast is very ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... feet in length, and its ponderous bulk was supported on legs so short and bowed that it crawled with its belly almost dragging the ground. Its small head, which it carried close to the earth, was lizard-like, shallow-skulled, feeble-looking, and its jaws cleft back past the stupid eyes. In fact, it was an inoffensive-looking head for such an imposing body. At the base of the head began a system of defensive armor that looked as if it might be proof against artillery. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Save me from ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... bombardin' of us to-day?" said one. "'Cos it's Sunday, and they're singin' 'ymns," said another. "Well," said the first, "if they do start bombardin' of us, there ain't only one 'ymn I'll sing, an' that's 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me 'ide myself in thee.'" It was spoken in the broadest Devon without a smile. The British soldier is a class apart. One of the privates in the Liverpools showed me a diary he is keeping of the war. It is a colourless record of getting up, going ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... His hatchet cleft the face of the nearest foe, and he turned instantly to help the girl. A pair of bodies thrashed about on the ground. Then she stood up, and he heard her dry the knife on some grass. It ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis
... of the cavern, giving access to another chamber almost as large as the one which we occupy; while beyond that again there are other passages and chambers—seven of the latter in all—communicating with each other, and ending in a long, tortuous cleft forming a passage which leads out there, behind those bushes. But it is the last chamber of all, the one nearest in this direction, that is the marvel. Unlike the others—all rock chambers—the one about which I am now speaking is a great hollow ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... makes them pleasant in painting, or, in the literal sense, picturesque—is their actual variety of color and form. A broken stone has necessarily more various forms in it than a whole one; a bent roof has more various curves in it than a straight one; every excrescence or cleft involves some additional complexity of light and shade, and every stain of moss on eaves or wall adds to the delightfulness of color. Hence, in a completely picturesque object, as an old cottage ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the air; broad-leaved priyalas, palms And date-trees, and the gold myrobalan, With copper-leaved vibhitikas. All these Crowded the wood; and many a crag it held, With precious ore of metals interveined; And many a creeper-covered cave wherein The spoken word rolled round; and many a cleft Where the thick stems were like a wall to see; And many a winding stream and reedy jheel, And glassy lakelet, where the woodland beasts In free peace gathered. Wandering onward thus, The Princess saw far-gliding forms of dread— Pisachas, Rakshasas, ill sprites and fiends ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... in the sunrise! Oh! I wanted you in the pass of Roncevalles, to hear the echo of Roland's horn. And we saw the cleft made by Roland's sword in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... which modern science has wrested from the unwilling records of the past, that the earliest inhabitants of the islands of the Seine were contemporary with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the auroch, and the rhinoceros with cleft nostrils. ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... filter, which is shown in detail in Figs. 5 to 7, is formed of two semicylindrical cast iron shells, F, that are firmly united, and held by a strong iron band which is cleft at one point in its circumference, and to which there is adapted a mechanism permitting of loosening it slightly so as to facilitate the escape of the oil-cake. Within these shells, F, there are grooves, a, which have the arrangement shown by the partial section in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... little packet contains my letters—all, does it?" he asked, touching the small parcel she had deposited within a cleft of the hollow river-side tree, by which they stood, the post-office of their happier days, where, concealed by thick moss gathered from the bole, those letters had every one been searched for and found—with what a leap of heart, first ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labor. Each was like a Druid rock, Or like a spire of land that stands apart Cleft from the main and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length In matted grass, that with a livelier green Betrays the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... away by the storm, so long as it stands unmoved. I have seen a thin hair-stemmed flower growing on the edge of a cataract and resisting the force of its plunge, and of the wind that always lives in its depths, because its roots are in a cleft of the cliff. The secret of strength for all men is to hold fast by the 'strong Son of God,' and they only are sufficient in whatsoever state they are, to whom this loving and quickening voice has spoken the charter 'My grace is sufficient ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shadows the light on the face of it seen. For softly and surely, as nearer the boat that we gazed from drew, The face of the precipice opened and bade us as birds pass through, And the bark shot sheer to the sea through the strait of the sharp steep cleft, The portal that opens with imminent rampires to right and to left, Sublime as the sky they darken and strange as a spell-struck dream, On the world unconfined of the mountains, the reign of the sea supreme, The kingdom of westward waters, wherein when we swam we knew The waves that ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... southwest face was the front, and was pierced by a Moorish arch fitted with glass doors, which could be secured on occasion by gates of fantastically hammered iron. The arch was enshrined by a Palladian portico, which rose to the roof, and was surmounted by an open pediment, in the cleft of which stood a black-marble figure of an Egyptian, erect, and gazing steadfastly at the midday sun. On the ground beneath was an Italian terrace with two great stone elephants at the ends of the balustrade. The windows on the upper story were, like the entrance, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Sam pulled over, therefore, under the lee of Manhattan Island, and, coasting along, came to a snug nook, just under a steep, beetling rock, where he fastened his skiff to the root of a tree that shot out from a cleft, and spread its broad branches like a canopy over the water. The gust came scouring along, the wind threw up the river in white surges, the rain rattled among the leaves, the thunder bellowed worse than that which is now bellowing, the lightning seemed to lick up the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... they! Giselher stood further back, which irked him sore, in truth. He voided Rudeger, for still he had hope of life. Then the margrave's men rushed at their foes; in knightly wise one saw them follow their lord. In their hands they bare their keen-edged swords, the which cleft there many a helm and lordly shield. The tired warriors dealt the men of Bechelaren many a mighty blow, that cut smooth and deep through the shining mail, down to the ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... day we followed the coast of Malekula southward. There are immense coral reefs attached to the coast, so that often the line of breakers is one or two miles away from the shore. These reefs are a solid mass of cleft coral stones constantly growing seaward. Their surface is more or less flat, about on a level with the water at low tide, so that it then lies nearly dry, and one can walk on the reefs, jumping over the wide crevices in which the sea roars and gurgles with the rise and fall of the breakers outside. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... was just what Lieutenant McClure proposed doing. All hands were ordered below and the hatches sealed. Running on the surface, the oil engines were put to their best endeavor and the Dewey cleft the whitecaps at her ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... beautiful in spite of itself. A rather full small mouth, not loose with sense nor rigid with things controlled, but a mouth that would suck like a bee at the last and tiniest drop of any physical sweet which the chin and the eyes had once decided to want. The eyes measure, the mouth asks, the cleft chin finds the way. A face neither content, nor easily to be contented—in repose it is neither happy nor unhappy but only matured. Louise's friend—that was funny—Louise had such an ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... movement. As for the troop of gazelle, no sooner was the lion down than, throwing up their heads with one accord, they wheeled sharply round to the left and dashed off across the little plain, vanishing a minute later through a cleft of the rocks. ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Gandeleyn bent his good bow, And set therein a flo; He shot through his green kirtle, His heart he cleft ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Swinging now in both hands this weapon, with a peculiar and rapid whirl, which gave it an inconceivable impetus, the Earl let fall the crushing blow: at the first stroke, cut right in the centre, rolled the helm; at the second, through all the woven mail (cleft asunder, as if the slightest filigree work of the goldsmith,) shore the blade, and a great fragment of the stone itself came ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... merrily, I remember, when a military chaplain (Eton, Christ Church, and Christian service) described how an English sergeant stood round the traverse of a German trench, in a night raid, and as the Germans came his way, thinking to escape, he cleft one skull after another with a steel-studded bludgeon—a weapon which he had made with loving craftsmanship on the model of Blunderbore's club in the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... of potash as Chile had a natural monopoly of nitrates. The agriculture of Europe and America has been virtually dependent upon these two sources of plant foods. Now when the world was cleft in twain by the shock of August, 1914, the Allied Powers had the nitrates and the Central Powers had the potash. If Germany had not had up her sleeve a new process for making nitrates she could not long have carried on a war and doubtless would ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... indeed!—the Valley of the Housatonic, locked in by walls of every shape and size, from grassy knolls to bold basaltic cliffs. A beautiful little river wanders singing from side to side in this secluded Paradise, and from every mountain cleft come running crystal springs to join it; it looks only fit for people to be baptized in (though I believe the water is used for ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... commanded less respect than that of the noblest Agrippina that ever trod the French stage since the days of Racine: on the contrary, it evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and fell in love with him at first sight. Her heart was cleft by the mythological arrow,—admirable description of an effect of nature which the Greeks, unable to conceive the chivalric, ideal, and melancholy love begotten of Christianity, could represent in no other way. Flore was too handsome to be disdained, and Max accepted ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... mountains once Achilles found, And captive led, with pliant osiers bound; Then to their sire for ample sums restored; But now to perish by Atrides' sword: Pierced in the breast the base-born Isus bleeds: Cleft through the head his brother's fate succeeds, Swift to the spoil the hasty victor falls, And, stript, their features to his mind recalls. The Trojans see the youths untimely die, But helpless tremble for themselves, and fly. So when a lion ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... prepared himself to fling it round the legs of the first buffalo he met with, and was vexed that he did not see any. For my own part, I was engaged in surveying the chain of rocks, in order to discover that which contained the Grotto Ernestine. It was easy to recognize it, from its summit cleft in two; and I wished to ascertain, as nearly as possible, if the cleft extended to the base of the rock, as this would render our work much easier. This side of the island did not resemble that near the Great Bay, with which Jack and I had been so ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... Must follow where she leads, and kneel at last Upon the summit by her side. And more, Give him my promise that, if he do this, He shall receive from that fair altitude Such a vision of the realm that lies around, Cleft by the river of immortal life, As shall so lift him from his selfishness, And so enlarge his soul, that he shall stand Redeemed from all unworthiness, and saved To ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... for pigeons' eggs. From the top of the hill, they could see for miles and miles in every direction. The cliffs were on a long point of land, and behind the point was a deep bay, where all sorts of things could be picked up, when the tide was low. In a cleft of the rock Firetop found a nest with four eggs in it. He and Firefly were sitting on top of the hill eating them, when Firefly saw a queer black spot part way down ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... only to do all that I bid thee." "Oh, musician," said the wolf, "I will obey thee as a scholar obeys his master." The musician bade him follow, and when they had gone part of the way together, they came to an old oak-tree which was hollow inside, and cleft in the middle. "Look," said the musician, "if thou wilt learn to fiddle, put thy fore paws into this crevice." The wolf obeyed, but the musician quickly picked up a stone and with one blow wedged his two paws so fast that he was ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... quick-darting tongues of flame could be seen spreading through the hazy veil, while the crackle and roar of the fire sounded fiercer and fiercer. Presently, growing bolder in its strength, the fire advanced outwards from the cleft in the rock where it was first kindled, spreading to the right and left of the gully. Next, it began to clamber up the face of the cliff, burning away gaily even right under the waterfall, which seemed powerless to stay ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... newness of the precept is realised, if we think for a moment of the new phenomenon which obedience to it produced. When the words were spoken, the then-known civilised Western world was cleft by great, deep gulfs of separation, like the crevasses in a glacier, by the side of which our racial animosities and class differences are merely superficial cracks on the surface. Language, religion, national animosities, differences of condition, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... bothered him. He wanted to think about the aeropile, to recall every item of his previous experience. He waved the people from him, saw the man in yellow dropping off through the ribs, saw the crowd cleft down the line of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... when he spies A man that's handsome, valiant, wise, If he can kill him, thinks t' inherit 25 His wit, his beauty, and his spirit As if just so much he enjoy'd As in another is destroy'd For when a giant's slain in fight, And mow'd o'erthwart, or cleft down right, 30 It is a heavy case, no doubt; A man should have his brains beat out Because he's tall, and has large bones; As men kill beavers for their stones. But as for our part, we shall tell 35 The naked truth of what befel; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Jesus, who is our Surety and our Advocate, to ourselves, our feelings, our infirmities, our failures; and if he succeeds in this, gloom will fill us, doubts and fears will spring up within us, and we shall soon fail and fall. We must be wise as the conies, and build our nest in the cleft of ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... and very probably conflicting views upon many subjects, to the ultimate peace discussions. It is quite conceivable—it is a very serious danger—that at this discussion skilful diplomacy on the part of the Central Powers may open a cleft among the Allies that has never appeared during the actual war. Have the British settled, for example, with Italy and France for the supply of metallurgical coal after the war? Those countries must ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... his back, as if I had been a sack of coal, and went off with me, striding along pretty near as quick as if I had not been there. It might have been half a mile, when he turned up a narrow ravine that was little more than a cleft in the rock that rose almost straight up from the valley. It did not go in very far, for there had been a slide, and it was blocked up by a pile of rocks and earth, forty or fifty feet high. It was a big job even for the chief to ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... fire. And Samson said unto them, If ye do after this manner, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... cloven asunder, she presents to the eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and participate of the calm ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... have become more active; and it may be hoped that steamboats will facilitate these long voyages on the Lower Orinoco, the Portuguesa, the Rio Santo Domingo, the Orivante, the Meta, and the Guaviare. Magazines of cleft wood might be formed, as on the banks of the great rivers of the United States, sheltering them under sheds. This precaution would be indispensable, as, in the country through which we passed, it is not easy to procure dry fuel fit to keep up a fire beneath ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the vanities of this world, and avoided the converse of mankind, resolving to dedicate herself wholly to God Almighty, that she, by divine inspiration, forsook her father's house, and never was more heard of, till her body was found in that cleft of a rock, on that almost inaccessible mountain, where now the chapel is built; and they affirm she was carried up there by the hands of angels; for that place was not formerly so accessible (as now it is) ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... great beast thundered past within reach of his hand, down flashed the formidable, broad-bladed bangwan, with so sure and strong a stroke that the buffalo crashed headlong to the ground dead, with its fierce heart cleft in twain. ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... eat grass, or pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a man's stomach this hot weather. And I think this word 'sallet' was born to do me good; for many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pain had been cleft with a brown bill; and many a time, when I have been dry and bravely marching, it hath served me instead of a quart pot to drink in; and now the word 'sallet' must serve me to ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... Leigh's will catch it now, the Popish villain!" said Lucy Passmore, aloud. "You lie still there, dear life, and settle your sperrits; you'm so safe as ever was rabbit to burrow. I'll see what happens, if I die for it!" And so saying, she squeezed herself up through a cleft to a higher ledge, from whence she could see what ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... flinging it into the middle of the earth army, saw it strike the breastplate of a gigantic and fierce-looking warrior. Immediately on feeling the blow, he seemed to take it for granted that somebody had struck him; and, uplifting his weapon, he smote his next neighbor a blow that cleft his helmet asunder, and stretched him on the ground. In an instant, those nearest the fallen warrior began to strike at one another with their swords, and stab with their spears. The confusion spread wider and wider. Each man smote down his brother, and was himself smitten ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... (Talim) and Halahala point extends a strait a mile wide and a league long, which the Indians call 'Kinabutasan,' a name that in their language means 'place that was cleft open'; from which it is inferred that in other times the island was joined to the mainland and was separated from it by some severe earthquake, thus leaving this strait: of this there is an old tradition among the Indians."—Fray Martinez de ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... scions kept at home. The McCoy Nursery was about four miles from my place, and located in a sandy soil with a near quicksand sub-soil. At that location they were later reasonably successful in grafting, using the modified cleft graft. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... divided into two hemispheres, by a cleft, or fissure. Into this cleft dips a portion of the dura mater, called the falx cer'e-bri, from its resembling a sickle. The apparent design of this membrane is to relieve the one side from the pressure of the other, when the head is reclining to either side. Upon the superior ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... which is called Herodotus, about twenty-three miles in diameter, with a floor 7000 feet depressed; but this formation is not nearly so bright as its neighbour. That high plateau between them is notable on account of the T-shaped cleft in it, which runs into that other long zig-zag cleft (in some parts two miles wide and 1600 feet in depth), whose direction changes abruptly several times in its length of over ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... a dazed fashion. The match burnt down to my fingers, and I threw it away, as the flame stung me. I had seen something of my surroundings, enough to last my tired brain for a minute or two. I was at the bottom of a sort of crevasse, a narrow cleft in the rocks which continued on in a slanting downward chasm into the darkness. It was a natural corridor, with a floor of white sand. The sand had accounted for my coming off without any ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... unknown as his fish might dwell, But that you seat him in his throne of shell. The thunderers artillery and brand, You fancied Rome in his fantastick hand; And the pale frights, the pains, and fears of hell First from your sullen melancholy fell. Who cleft th' infernal dog's loath'd head in three, And spun out Hydra's fifty necks? by thee As prepossess'd w' enjoy th' Elizian plain, Which but before was flatter'd in our brain. Who ere yet view'd airs child invisible, A hollow voice, but in ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... great trees of the Mariposa grove belong to the gigantea species. The sempervirens, however, reaches the diameter of 16 feet, and some of the greatest trees of this species are in the Bohemian Club grove. It lies in a cleft of the mountains; and up one hillside there runs a natural out of door ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... her husband, still on anxious thought intent, Cleft in two her throbbing bosom, as in silence still ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... said Dave in a very low tone, "but, behind you, through the fork in the cleft rock, the Man with the Haunting Face is staring this way. ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... of the drovers' "RUNS." Shut in by the lofty Apennines, built on the slope of the hill that winds gently down into a green and fruitful valley through which the river Sabato rushes and gleams white against cleft rocks that look like war-worn and deserted castles, a drowsy peace encircles it, and a sort of stateliness, which, compared with the riotous fun and folly of Naples only thirty miles away, is as though the statue of a nude Egeria were placed in rivalry with the painted waxen image of a half-dressed ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... thus uplifted the end came. Thorwald Thorwaldson tottered and went down, for a hurled axe had cleft him between helm and byrnie. With him fell the last hope of Hightown and the famished clan under Sunfell. The Shield-ring was no more. Biorn found himself swept back as the press of numbers overbore the little knot of sorely wounded men. Someone caught ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... gone to Spain—that brown un-European land of "lyrio" flowers, and cries of "Agua!" in the streets, where the men seem cleft to the waist when they are astride of horses, under their wide black hats, and the black-clothed women with wonderful eyes still look as if they missed their Eastern veils. It had been a month of gaiety and glamour, last days of September and early days of October, a revel of enchanted wanderings ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... now found himself was very peculiar. A high rocky wall, seemingly inaccessible, stood up solemnly in front of him, and extended out, on each side, far into the sea. Directly before him was a great cleft or tunnel in the rock, which extended so far back that its other extremity was not visible from where he stood. This rocky avenue was the only passage, in any direction, that the Prince could perceive, and ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... without the organized antagonism between the general idea and the individual existence of man. Consequently a revolution of political souls organizes a ruling clique in society, in accordance with the limited and doubly-cleft nature of these souls, at the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... up saw that they were passing a portion of the coast of Seiland which was more than usually picturesque. Facing them was a great cavernous cleft in the rocks, tinted with a curious violet hue intermingled with bronze,—and in the strong sunlight these colors flashed with the brilliancy of jewels, reflecting themselves in the pale slate-colored sea. By Errington's orders the yacht slackened speed, and glided along with an almost ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... beginning of October the weather became so intensely cold that it was almost impossible to work. The carpenter died before the house was half completed. To dig a grave was impossible, but they laid him in a cleft of the ice, and he was soon covered with the snow. Meantime the sixteen that were left went on as they best might with their task, and on October 2nd they had a house-raising. The frame-work was set up, and in order to comply with the national usage in such cases, they planted, instead of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... never be got rid of; but they have been perpetually enlarged and elevated, and the use of many words has been transferred from the body to the mind. The spiritual and intellectual have thus become separated from the material—there is a cleft between them; and the heart and the conscience of man rise above the dominion of the appetites and create a new language in which they too find expression. As the differences of actions begin to be perceived, more and more names are needed. This ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... name of Ostrog appears often in the glorious annals of Montenegrin history. The oft-told tale of Prince Nicolas' father, Mirko, "The Sword of Montenegro," who was besieged in that inaccessible cleft in a precipice with a handful of men, is one of the most famous feats of Montenegrin arms. The charred cliffs still bear silent witness to the efforts which the Turks made to burn out the little garrison by throwing bundles of ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... excursions from Fowey are full of charm, but so much depends on the state of the tide. The short trip by boat to Golant, a distance of two miles, should not be missed. The village occupies a cleft on the hillside, where the gardens and orchards reach down to the water's edge. Luxulyan, with its deep sylvan valley and large perched blocks of stone, is ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... it for a bellows to blow thy fire up to night." Guiscardo took it, and feeling sure that 'twas not unadvisedly that she made him such a present, accompanied with such words, hied him straight home, where, carefully examining the cane, he observed that it was cleft, and, opening it, found the letter; which he had no sooner read, and learned what he was to do, than, pleased as ne'er another, he fell to devising how to set all in order that he might not ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... springy leaves, probing cautiously for dangerous, loose boulders and treacherous slides. When they emerged, it was upon a narrow plateau; the rugged limestone rocks rose on one side, the precipice plunged down on the other. Against the rocks lay patches of snow, grimy with dirt and pebbles; from a cleft the long greenish white threads of "Peter's beard" waved at them; in a hollow bloomed ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... that had had no incentive to develop, there was the fag end of that family shrewdness which had made the early Palgraves envied and maligned. Tall and well built, with a handsome Anglo-Saxon type of face, small, soft, fair mustache, large, rather bovine gray eyes, and a deep cleft in his chin, he gave at first sight an impression of strength—which left him, however, when he spoke to pretty women. It was not so much the things he said,—light, jesting, personal things,—as the indications they gave of the overweening vanity of the spoiled boy and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... ritual: there is the carrying by women of certain magic charms, fir-cones and snakes and unnameable objects made of paste, to ensure fertility; there is a sacrifice of pigs, who were thrown into a deep cleft of the earth, and their remains afterwards collected and scattered as a charm over the fields. There is more magic ritual, more carrying of sacred objects, a fast followed by a rejoicing, a disappearance of life ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... from a cleft in the sand hills, half a mile from the house; the light being so arranged that it could not be seen from Brownsea Island, though visible to those on the south side, from Studland right away over the hills to Corfe Castle, even to Wareham. It was shown but for half a minute, just as ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... with leaves and branches of the tamarisk tree, and some dry black beans that looked as hard as stones. But the Camels, kneeling round the baggage, scrunched them thankfully, their strong teeth making this an easy matter, and drew in leaves and branches with their cleft lips. Ere long Aleppo, declaring himself refreshed, suggested that Phil should come close beside him, so that they could ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... An Indian, having in his hand a long staff, with a spear in one end, pursuing closely after them, thrust it at Mrs. Freeman with such violence that, entering her back just below the shoulder, it came out at her left breast. With his tomahawk, he cleft the upper part of her head, and carried it ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... found there, bolt upright On my bench, as if I had never left it? —Never flung out on the common at night, Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, Or the laboratory of the Professor! For the Vision, that was true, I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... before. She had fashioned it out of water-worn stones and sea shells, with mosses and ferns in the chinks. Well, as we came in through the gates my eyes fell upon this stone heap, and there was a letter stuck in a cleft stick upon the top of it. I took a step forward to see what it was, but Edie sprang in front of me, and plucking it off she thrust ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was the dry loam, and from their calculations, they deduced that at least four thousand souls had perished in one great massacre. In one skull two flint arrow-heads were found, and many had the appearance of having been fractured and cleft open by a sudden blow. They were piled in regular layers, but with no regard to size or sex. Pieces of pottery were picked up in the pit, and had also been plowed up in the field adjacent. Traces of a log council house were plainly discernable. For, in an ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... was "in a cleft stick"; if she said that Leonard was nothing to her, it might possibly be better for him, though it was doubtful whether Olfan would believe her. If, on the other hand, she said that he was her husband, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... quality, and one description, in particular, has been often quoted—the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge—in which is this poetically imaginative touch: "The mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and {373} tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... pace to a half-run; we were climbing; panting. The amber light grew stronger; the rift above us wider. The tunnel curved; on the left a narrow cleft appeared. The green dwarf leaped toward it, thrust us within, pushed us ahead of him up a steep rocky fissure—well-nigh, indeed, a chimney. Up and up this we scrambled until my lungs were bursting and I thought I could climb ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... unaccountable thing. He began to eat things that he had never touched as food before. He lapped up soft pine needles, and swallowed them. He ate of the dry, pulpy substance of rotted logs. And then he went into a great cleft broken into the heart of a rocky ridge, and found at last the thing for which he had been seeking. It was a ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... bed-ridden. She was afflicted with most frightful ailments, her wounds festered, and worms bred in her putrefying flesh. Erysipelas, that terrible malady of the Middle Ages, consumed her. Her right arm was eaten away, a single muscle held it to the body, her brow was cleft in two, one of her eyes became blind, and the other so weak that it could not ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... bilateral, etc. The anomaly in most cases consists of a malformation of the external genitalia. A prolonged clitoris, prolapsed ovaries, grossness of figure, and hirsute appearance have been accountable for many supposed instances of hermaphrodites. On the other hand, a cleft scrotum, an ill-developed penis, perhaps hypospadias or epispadias, rotundity of the mammae, and feminine contour have also provoked accounts of similar instances. Some cases have been proved by dissection to have been true hermaphrodites, portions or even ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... walked each day for hours, to and fro, to and fro, to keep myself from falling sick or going stupid. But the time passed slower than time had ever gone with me before, and I grew sick to death of that narrow cleft ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... father; the Church holds up her head, whatever happens. Even the vice-regal crown is not lost—the Church has cleft ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... return on the ensuing morning, Chang Tao stood on a rocky eminence to greet him, and the outline of his face, though not altogether free of doubt, was by no means hopeless. Pe-lung still retained the impressive form of a gigantic dragon as he cleft the Middle Air, shining and iridescent, each beat of his majestic wings being as a roll of thunder and the skittering of sand and water from his crepitant scales leaving blights and rain-storms in his ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... one yard and a half distant from the hole in which the foot of the cross was fixed is seen that memorable cleft in the rock, said to have been made by the earthquake which happened at the suffering of the God of nature; when, as St. Matthew witnesseth, the rocks rent and the very graves were opened. This cleft, or what now appears of it, is about a span wide at its upper part, and two deep; after which ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... most. There was no denying it—shorn of his overgrowth of whiskers and put into a correct setting, William was handsome; even more than that, he was interesting. He had that firm, chiselled kind of mouth which women and artists find so attractive, and a delightful cleft in his chin; his hair, which had hitherto always struck me as being so unkempt and disordered, now that it was brushed smoothly back from his brow and curled into the nape of his neck gave him a distinguished appearance. I directed one long look at him and then ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... eyes and now his quid, spat freely on the rich carpet, beat time on one big palm with the other and on the floor with one vast foot, while through the song like a lifeboat through waves, undisturbed and undisturbing, cleft the steady speech of the nurse to the boy. Regardless of the precaution just urged for Ramsey, her arm fell over his ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... and close in front of us a rift opened. Twenty feet in width, it cut the cavern floor and vanished into the blue mist on each side. The cleft was spanned by one solid slab of rock not more than two yards wide. It had neither railing nor ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... of the Havasupais. On returning from the Havasupai village, come out by the Wallapai Trail or ascend the steep cleft of the Hopi Trail. Both ought to be seen and gone over, in order to know something of the engineering skill of these Blue Water Indians. And if you can get hold of it, read Frank Hamilton Cushing's delightful account (in Volume 50 of the Atlantic Monthly) ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... immediately attacked him. The man instinctively threw his left arm forward to receive the bear, who seized it in his mouth and bit the thumb completely off, lacerating the arm and wrist at the same time in a frightful manner. With one blow of the bill-hook the Moorman cleft the bear's skull to the teeth, at the same time gashing his own arm to the bone by the force of the blow; and he never afterwards recovered the proper ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... which is of so rocky a soil that it appears to be a pavement. I was told however that it has a great deal of grass in the interstices. The Laird has it all in his own hands. At this end of the island of Rasay is a cave in a striking situation. It is in a recess of a great cleft, a good way up from the sea. Before it the ocean roars, being dashed against monstrous broken rocks; grand and aweful propugnacula. On the right hand of it is a longitudinal cave, very low at the entrance, but higher as you advance. The sea having scooped ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... embracing one half of the level horizon, a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular .. twin-jets of the Right Whale, which, dividing at top, falls over in two branches, like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist, continually rising and falling away to leeward. Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... frightful precipices beneath them. As soon as Ormond had warmed to the business, he was delighted with the dangerous pursuit; but suddenly, just as he had laid his hand on the egg, and that King Corny shouted in triumph, Harry, leaping back across the cleft in the rock, missed his footing and fell, and must have been dashed to pieces, but for a sort of projecting landing-place, on which he was caught, where he lay for some minutes stunned. The terror of poor Corny was such that he could neither move nor look up, till Moriarty called out ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... made the wall to open from aboue to beneath vnto the plaine ground; howbeit, it fell not, for the mine had vent or breath in two places, by one of the countermines, and by a rocke vnder the Barbican, the which did cleaue, and by that cleft the fury and might of the mine had issue. And if the sayd two vents had not bene, the wall had bene turned vpside downe. And for truth, as it was reported to vs out of the campe, the enemies had great hope ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... person acting is in the pursuit of his object driven into great dangers in order to escape others equally great, then we can only admire his resolution, which still has also its value. If a young man to show his skill in horsemanship leaps across a deep cleft, then he is bold; if he makes the same leap pursued by a troop of head-chopping Janissaries he is only resolute. But the farther off the necessity from the point of action, the greater the number of relations intervening which ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... Lozere? How many English—or for the matter of that French travellers either—have so much as heard of the Causses, [Footnote: From calx, lime] those lofty tablelands of limestone, groups of a veritable archipelago, once an integral whole, now cleft asunder, forming the most picturesque gorges and magnificent defiles; offering contrasts of scenery as striking as they are sublime, and a phenomenon unique in geological history? On the plateau of the typical Causse, wide in extent as Dartmoor, lofty as Helvellyn, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... reckon!" cried Mississip, springing across a small cleft in the rocks, and running toward a dark object lying on the sheltered side of a small cliff. "Good God!" he continued, as he stooped down; "it's Codago! An' he's ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... there is nothing that they can do," said the captain, "except to let out more cable, cautiously, so as to give the anchor a better chance to catch in some cleft or crevice in the bottom. Sometimes it does catch in this manner, and then the ship is stopped, and, for a time, the people on board think they ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... nothing rewarded his curiosity, and after half an hour of diligent endeavor he was compelled to return home no wiser than when he had first stood on the summit of the path and looked down into the rocky cleft. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... set Afar is borne by cruel fate, For evermore is separate. She wanders aimless as a sprite, Into the tangled garden goes But nowhere can she find repose, Nor even tears afford respite, Of consolation all bereft— Well nigh her heart in twain was cleft. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... that this is not the primary use of the tongue, nor of the mechanism which enables it to be exserted to a great length beyond the end of the bill. The tongue, for one-half of its length, is semi-horny and cleft in two, the two halves are laid flat against each other when at rest, but can be separated at the will of the bird and form a delicate pliable pair of forceps, most admirably adapted for picking out minute insects from amongst the stamens ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... bay horse is Cethegus', the conspirator's! Arvina hath sent no message! They are betrayed, I tell you, man. Aulus Fulvius awaits them with a gang of desperadoes in the deep cleft of the hills, where the cross-road comes in by which you reach the Flaminian from the Labican way. Arm yourselves speedily and follow, else will they carry Julia to Catiline's camp in the Appenines, beside Fiesol! What ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... away over Midgard where men lived, away toward the rocks and snows of Joetunheim. Across the river that flows between the World of Men and the Realm of the Giants Iduna was borne. Then the eagle flew into a cleft in a mountain and Iduna was left in a cavernous hall lighted up by columns of fire that ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... hear the plaudits that accompanied an impromptu athletic tournament; but the inhabitants of the nearest chairs were reading or dozing, and the deck about them was very still. Only the throbbing of the mighty screw and the hiss of the cleft ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... leaves are larger in this plant, and are not quite so deep a green. The leaves of fool's parsley are also finer cleft, and appear to end more ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... quietly by a Brook with a little stick in my hand, with which I might easily take these, and consider the curiosity of their composure; and if you shall ever like to do so, then note, that your stick must be cleft, or have a nick at one end of it, by which meanes you may with ease take many of them out of the water, before you have any occasion to use them. These, my honest Scholer, are some observations told to you as they now come suddenly into my memory, of which you may make some use: but ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... proclaim him at the gates, and that the house of Otho and Casimir, the brood of the Wolf, would, like the shadow of the raven as it flits by in the sunshine, pass away. For by that time there would be no Otho. They would find him low enough, with an axe cleft in ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... doleful chart; See, where these mountains meet— The clouds are thick around their head, The mists around their feet: Cast anchor here; 'tis deep and safe Within the rocky cleft; The little anchor on the right, The great ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Susannah had walked far. A squatter's old log-house stood by the green roadside; the wood of the roof and walls was weathered and silver-gray. Before it a clothes-line was stretched, heaved tent-like by a cleft pole, and a few garments were flapping in the wind, chiefly white, but one was vivid pink ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... a bees' nest about ten feet up in a big tree, and of course climbed up to it; but it was one of those cases of which I have spoken, when the game was not worth the trouble. The nest was in a cleft in the tree too narrow for me to get my arm into, and I could smell the honey a foot or so away from my nose without being able to reach it—than which I know nothing more tantalizing. And while you are hanging on to a tree with three ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... summit of the bluff, with the surf in his ears and the cool, salt breeze on his face, and watch the sun flashing from the brown glass toggles near the white lobster-buoys; or, lifting his gaze to the horizon beyond the purple deep, he would trace the low, rolling humps of the mainland hills, the cleft range of Isle au Haut, or the heights of Mount Desert. But no studies or scenery caused him to forget his daily trip ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... congenital defect consisting in a notch or split in the upper lip. It is due to defective development of the embryo and is as a rule found in association with cleft palate. Probably hereditary, but is not common and is not ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... worse," answered Jerry. "We have run right on the cleft of a rock, and we're held there. Can't get off until high tide, I suppose. Say, we seem to be up against it on ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young |
