"Harbinger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... field officer except one fell. Lee and Longstreet had seen from the edge of the woods, with great exultation, the blue flag of Virginia waving over the crest occupied by the Union troops. It seemed the harbinger of great success to Lee. He thought the Union army was conquered at last. The long struggle was over, and peace would soon come, accompanied by the acknowledgment of the independence of the Southern Confederacy. ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... recognized; and, besides, I was following you. At Sevres your postilion told mine that he had brought you here. Will you permit me to act as your harbinger? I will write as soon as I have ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Marrable was not in her best form when her young ladyship arrived, and Benjamin the coachboy came up the garden pathway as her harbinger to see if she should descend from the carriage to interview the old lady. She did not want to do so, as she felt she ought to get Mrs. Prichard home as soon as possible; but wanted, all the same, to fulfil her promise of delivering Sister Nora's parcel with her own hands. She was glad to remain ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... step in." "The abolition of marriage in the form now practiced," wrote Godwin more than a century ago (Political Justice, second edition, 1796, vol. i, p. 248), "will be attended with no evils. We are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity. But it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them." And Professor Lester Ward, in insisting on the strength of the monogamic sentiment in modern society, truly remarks (International ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... state of war with the Makololo, we found the Batoka, or Batonga, as they here call themselves, quite friendly. Great numbers of them came from all the surrounding villages with presents of maize and masuka, and expressed great joy at the first appearance of a white man, and harbinger of peace. The women clothe themselves better than the Balonda, but the men go 'in puris naturalibus'. They walk about without the smallest sense of shame. They have even lost the tradition of the "fig-leaf". I asked a fine, large-bodied old man if he did not think it would be better ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of this long journey, there happened two or three passages, which were sufficiently remarkable. A domestic servant to the ambassador, who rode before as harbinger, to take up lodgings for the train, a violent and brutal man, being reprehended by his lord for having been negligent in his duty, fell into a horrible fit of passion, as soon as he was out of Mascaregnas his presence. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... not direct from the Greek. In the Latin version hirundo stood as hirdo, and the translator, overlooking the mark of contraction, declared to the astonished world on the authority of Plato that the horse- leech instead of the swallow was the harbinger of spring. Hoole, the translator of Tasso and Ariosto, was as confused in his natural history when he rendered "I colubri Viscontei'' or Viscontian snakes, the crest of the Visconti family, as "the ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... bright morning-star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... August he awoke with a splitting headache, the harbinger of an attack of fever, and was obliged to inform the head clerk, by means of a note, of his inability to attend office. An answer was brought by Gyanendra to the effect that three days' leave of absence was granted, but that his work must be carried on by some other clerk. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... when, like many of his respectable brethren, he hailed it at first as the harbinger of national reformation and prosperity. But he had soon reason to find that he had been deceived. However, in the fervour of the moment, and upon the suppression of the monastic and other public libraries, he received a very wide and unqualified commission to search all the libraries in the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the bright morning star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and loads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail beauteous May that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and ...
— Two Festivals • Eliza Lee Follen
... best of me, but I will take her words for a propitious omen. I will consider that in meeting her to-night I have met with one of those birds whose appearance is to the sailor the harbinger of good luck." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... own sisters, and Nernia coming through the starlight, with an old musket slung at her back, which Adone had taught her to use, and her small, bronzed feet leaping over the ground like a young goat's, was a figure which soon became familiar and welcome to the people. She seemed to them like a harbinger of hope; she had few words, but those words reverberated with courage and energy; she moved the supine, she braced the timid; she brought the wavering firmness and the nervous strength; she said what Adone had taught her to say, but she put into it all her own immense faith in him, all ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... from virtue's glance, yon clouds retire, Before the smile of one benignant ray, Sleepless and sad, my soul would fain aspire, Promethean like, to snatch ethereal fire, And draw relief from thee! bright harbinger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... of Savoy, with the power of the King of France, gathered together twenty thousand knights and came beyond Tolosa, to hold the road against King Don Ferrando. And he met with his harbinger the Cid, who went before him to prepare lodgings, and they had a hard battle; and the men of the Count were discomfited, and he himself made prisoner and many with him, and many were slain. And the Count besought the Cid of his mercy ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... night passes to one tipping and swinging along in a slowly moving stage! But the harbinger of the day came at last. When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burst out of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus was strong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distant more than an eighth of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "the cessation of your pains is a sure harbinger of death. Already has mortification set in, and the best surgeon in the world ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... selfishness seeks to obliterate the loftier ideal. But while he summons all his strength to prevent the embodiment of the new thought, there are other faculties that perceive the star of promise and follow it as a harbinger of truth. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... left, so high is he, there is yet black night, hiding innumerable Cities, Towns, villages, and all those places where soon teeming multitudes of men shall awake, and by their unceasing toil and the spirit within them produce marvels of which the Aeroplane is but the harbinger. ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... Ch'i-chao—the most brilliant scholar living—we have a Chinese of the New or Liberal China, who in spite of a complete ignorance of foreign languages shows a marvellous grasp of political absolutes, and is a harbinger of the great days which must come again to Cathay. In other chapters dealing with the monarchist plot we see the official mind at work, the telegraphic despatches exchanged between Peking and the provinces being of the highest diplomatic interest. These ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... meadows are dotted with timber like a park), began to echo my lovely little girl, 'cuckoo! cuckoo!' I have a prejudice very unpastoral and unpoetical (but I cannot help it, I have many such) against this 'harbinger of spring.' His note is so monotonous, so melancholy; and then the boys mimic him; one hears 'cuckoo! cuckoo!' in dirty streets, amongst smoky houses, and the bird is hated for faults not his own. But prejudices of taste, likings and dislikings, are not always vanquishable by ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... to mount," He cried, "here must ye turn. This way he goes, Who goes in quest of peace." His countenance Had dazzled me; and to my guides I fac'd Backward, like one who walks, as sound directs. As when, to harbinger the dawn, springs up On freshen'd wing the air of May, and breathes Of fragrance, all impregn'd with herb and flowers, E'en such a wind I felt upon my front Blow gently, and the moving of a wing Perceiv'd, that moving shed ambrosial smell; And then ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... same day the mysterious giant cannon of the Germans sent a shell into Paris, striking a church and killing seventy-five worshipers. And it was on a Good Friday that the men of Gott sent this harbinger ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... yesterday in the garden, advancing along one of the retired walks. The sun was shining with delicious warmth, making great masses of bright verdure, and deep blue shade. The cuckoo, that "harbinger of spring," was faintly heard from a distance; the thrush piped from the hawthorn, and the yellow butterflies sported, and toyed, and coquetted ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... politics, though it was well known that in a few minutes yonder door was to open, and that on its threshold the jailer would appear, list in hand; that from this list he would call out with his loud, croaking voice, as Death's harbinger, the names of those whose death-warrants had been yesterday signed by Robespierre, and who would have immediately to leave the hall, to mount the wagons which were already waiting at the prison's gate to drive them ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... externals. The true harbinger is the heart. When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is Spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five foot rattler killed in Squire ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... lightnings glow, And hears innocuous thunders roar below. ——Rife, great MONGOLFIER! urge thy venturous flight High o'er the Moon's pale ice-reflected light; High o'er the pearly Star, whose beamy horn. 50 Hangs in the east, gay harbinger of morn; Leave the red eye of Mars on rapid wing; Jove's silver guards, and Saturn's dusky ring; Leave the fair beams, which, issuing from afar; Play with new lustres round the Georgian star; 55 ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... tempest-tossed, but such a being as Saronia could not long sustain it. Her soul was a spirit in chase, pursuing something undefinable which she longed to obtain, that she might be for ever satisfied and her measure of happiness complete. A calm to her was like a summer day in winter-time, the harbinger of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the wings, attend you a little way into the Bay of Biscay. When it blows a hard gale of wind the stormy petrel makes its appearance. While the sea runs mountains high, and every wave threatens destruction to the labouring vessel, this little harbinger of storms is seen enjoying itself, on rapid pinion, up and down the roaring billows. When the storm is over it appears no more. It is known to every English sailor by the name of Mother Carey's chicken. It must have been hatched in Aeolus's cave, amongst a clutch of squalls and tempests, for whenever ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... writers, who have attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... worshipper of the Beautiful; his love for it was a consecrating passion, and herein he parts company with his illustrator. Poet or artist, Death at last transfigures all: within the shadow of his sable harbinger, Vedder's symbolic crayon aptly sets them face to face, but enfolds them with the mantle of immortal wisdom and power. An American woman has wrought the image of a star-eyed Genius with the final torch, the exquisite semblance of one whose vision beholds, but whose ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... Yaspard to encounter That fierce harbinger of gloom— Fain to dare the spells of magic, Fain to foil the wrath of doom. Hark! the solitary raven Croaks a note of death and pain, And a human call defiant Answers from the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... letters, the significant expression of "No petticoat government—no Scotch minister—no Lord George Sackville," prefigured those popular tumults which soon afterward disturbed the metropolis and extended to the American colonies. That placard was the harbinger of that great DECLARATION, the adoption of which by a representative Congress of the Anglo-American people fifteen years afterward, is the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... at Amoy in 1847 the total church membership was three. By 1850 it had grown to five. By the end of 1851 the seed had brought forth nearly fourfold. There were nineteen converts. This was the harbinger of brighter days. Even during the troublous times of 1853 signs of awakening appeared. In the midst of war and rumors of war the native brethren had proposed to enter the "regions beyond" Chiangchiu and Chinchew. The faithful preaching ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... thought of the same thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing: it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter Canaan. Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children. But your griefs ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... now a robin sing, I wonder if his English mate May not be hopping near your gate, A harbinger, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... times one feels that the profoundest answer which science can give to our questionings is but a superficial answer after all. At these moments, when the world seems fullest of beauty, one feels most strongly that it is but the harbinger of something else,—that the ceaseless play of phenomena is no mere sport of Titans, but an orderly scene, with its ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... multitude of perils, one of which was occasioned by the Cyanean rocks at the entrance of the Euxine, that had the quality of closing upon every vessel which attempted to make its way between them and crushing it to pieces, a danger that could only be avoided by sending a dove before as their harbinger, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... it as the harbinger of fortune. Has a cat insight into the future? Can it presage wealth or death? I am inclined to believe that certain cats can at all events foresee the advent of the latter; and that they do this in the same manner as the shark, crow, owl, jackal, hyena, etc., viz. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... elsewhere, do it by stealth; Muffle your false love with some show of blindness: Let not my sister read it in your eye; Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; 10 Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? 15 What simple thief brags of his own attaint? 'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed, And let her read it in ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... began to fill with company; and one that was acting as Groom of the Chambers, and marshalling the guests to their places, I heard whisper to the Harbinger, who first called out the names at the Stair-head, that Clarencieux king-at-arms (who was then wont to attend the funerals of the Quality, and to be gratified with heavy fees for his office; although in our days 'tis only public noblemen, generals, ambassadors, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... tints, and all aglow with fire. The natives, notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always rare, and quickly disposed of. While the ancients considered the opal a harbinger of good fortune to the possessor, it has been deemed in our day to be exactly the reverse; and many lovers of the gem have denied themselves the pleasure of wearing it from a secret superstition as to its unlucky attributes. This fancy has been gradually dispelled, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... atmosphere, charged with bygone romance. And yet it was among these "distant dreams of dreams" that my ears became first awake to the nearer sounds of some vague social disturbance of which Ruskin's gospel of Labor, as I heard it at Oxford without any clear comprehension of it, had been a harbinger. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... COUN. I would recall the days gone by, and live A moment in the past; if but to fly The dreary present pressing on my brain, Woe's omened harbinger. In exiled love The scene he drew so fair! Ye castled crags, The sunbeam plays on your embattled cliffs, And softens your stern visage, as his love Softened our early sorrows. But my sun Has set for ever! Once we talked of cares And deemed that we were sad. Men fancy sorrows Until time brings the ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... persons of literary eminence, was published in May 1839, but failed to attract general interest. This unhappy result deeply affected the health of the poet, whose constitution had already been much shattered by repeated attacks of illness. He was seized with a complaint which proved the harbinger of pulmonary consumption. He died at Mount Pleasant on the 1st September 1839, in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall, fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a little of what is called the 'Norman' type—having a certain firm regularity of feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the bridge—but that which in the elder man ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... young again in our children," he said, as they sallied forth just as the east was growing rosy with the harbinger of dawn. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... visibility in full daylight, burning for five months with unparalleled splendor, dominating all other stars of first magnitude; after which it died out gradually, disappearing at the end of seventeen months, to the terror of the peoples, who saw in it the harbinger of the world's end: that of 1604, in the Constellation of the Serpent, which shone for a year; of 1866, of second magnitude, in the Northern Crown, which appeared for a few weeks only; of 1876, in the Swan; of 1885, in the Nebula of Andromeda; of 1891, in the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... a ring like I relates, arms bent, an' back arched; "let all the sons of men b'ar witness; an' speshully let a cowerin' varmint, named Sam Enright, size me up an' shudder! I'm the maker of deserts an' the wall-eyed harbinger of desolation! I'm kin to rattlesnakes on my mother's side; I'm king of all the eagles an' full brother to the b'ars! I'm the bloo-eyed lynx of Whiskey Crossin', an' I weighs four thousand pounds! I'm a he- steamboat; I've put a crimp in a cat-a-mount with nothin' but my livin' hands! I broke a ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... considerable creek, near which basalt cropped out. This was the first igneous rock of more recent date, that we had met with since leaving Separation Creek, and the upper Lynd. Even my Blackfellows recognized at once the rock of Darling Downs; and we hailed it as the harbinger of western waters. The whole country up the creek had been lately burned, which induced me to follow it towards its head, in hope of finding the place where the natives had procured water. The bed ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... these heights. They are mournful, cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire and wish for had ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... your permission, I will notice. Some men, of whom I wish to speak with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge, they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, who have read a little poetry and a little history, is dangerous to the commonwealth. Such half-knowledge is worse than ignorance. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sound and invigorating sleep to the weary, nor in our opinion, a greater grievance than the loss of it; because wakefulness at those hours, which nature has destined for repose, is, in nine cases out of ten, sure to be the harbinger of peevishness, discontent, and ill humour, and not unfrequently induces languor, lassitude, and disease. No two individuals in the world have greater reason to complain of disturbed slumbers or nightly watching, than ourselves. Heretofore, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... caught the rain was soon drying in the warm sun, which was now smiling serenely upon them. The mock suns, or "sun dogs," as they were commonly called, all disappeared with the storm of which they seemed to have been the harbinger. Beautiful as had been their appearance, the boys all agreed that if their coming was to be so speedily followed by such a storm they would gladly dispense with them in the future; nor did they see them again until when, in the depth of winter, they showed up in their ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... was awe-struck. The air seemed filled with bright, descending messengers from the sky. It was about daybreak when I saw this sublime scene. I was not without the suggestion, at the moment, that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of Man; and, in my then state of mind, I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and deliverer. I had read, that the "stars shall fall from heaven"; and they were now falling. I was suffering much ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... I began to think at last that it must be near dawn, and turned our eyes eastward, in the expectation of seeing the pale red and yellow streaks which usher in the rich glow, the harbinger of the rising sun. That was my idea, not friend Obed's. He remarked, "Daylight will soon be on, I guess, and it is time we were back at camp to get some breakfast, before we begin our trudge over the mountains, for I'm mighty hungry, I calkilate; ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... navy for its co-operation with us. There is no finer spectacle to be seen at present than that complete and cordial co-operation which is existing between your fleet and ours. They work as one. I always think to myself and hope that the co-operation of our fleets, of our navies, is the harbinger of what is to come in the future when the war is over, of that which will still continue then. Magnificent is their work, and I glory always in the thought that an American admiral has taken charge of the British Fleet and the British policy, and that when the plans are ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... nothing more. When he passes a shop-window in which he sees such a card, he thinks of me; and not only does he think of me but he sends me his thoughts." Or was she mistaken. Ella was diffident; surely this could not be misconstrued. The Christmas card—was it not a harbinger? The two young couples on it and the words—surely he meant something by that. His enraptured eyes again rose before her; they seemed not only to envelop her, but to caress her. She thought neither of past nor future; she lived only in the present. ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... by her praise, to remove the chagrin which her ingenuous countenance (ever the faithful harbinger of her thoughts) betrayed so plainly—"I assure you, my dear," said she, "that for some time you performed very prettily; didn't ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... incident occurring worth mention. About half an hour before dawn one morning, the cook aroused the camp with the report that the herd was missing. The beeves had been bedded within two hundred yards of the wagon, and the last watch usually hailed the rekindling of the cook's fire as the first harbinger of day. But on this occasion the absence of the usual salutations from the bed-ground aroused Parent's suspicion. He rushed into camp, and laboring under the impression that the cattle had stampeded, trampled over our beds, yelling at the top of his lungs. Aroused in the darkness ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... split it and narrowed to a mere thread upon the horizon. The crowd of watching, waiting men saw smoke rise over that horizon line, and a dark, flat, creeping object. Through the big throng ran a restless murmur. The train was in sight. It might have been a harbinger of evil, for a subtle change, nervous, impatient, brooding, visited that multitude. A slow movement closed up the disintegrated crowd and a current of men worked forward to encounter resistance and opposing currents. They had begun to crowd for advantageous positions closer to the pay-car ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... services, which were eminent and various, secured Napoleon's advancement at every step of his rapid career from obscurity to the imperial throne; and that the loss of her influence and counsels was the necessary harbinger ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... apprehension. But they traveled comfortably and reached home in the evening where welcome waited. But an alarming chill overtook the mother before she had retired that night, and the doctor was hastily summoned. The chill was a harbinger of serious illness, and the cheerful house became shrouded in dread of coming sorrow. Winifred devoted herself eagerly to her mother, but professional skill was needed also. The telephone rang frequent calls from the office during the anxious days to ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... form return'd. Take courage; suffer not excessive dread 1000 To overwhelm thee, such a guide he hath And guardian, one whom many wish their friend, And ever at their side, knowing her pow'r, Minerva; she compassionates thy griefs, And I am here her harbinger, who speak As thou hast heard by her own kind command. Then thus Penelope the wise replied. Oh! if thou art a goddess, and hast heard A Goddess' voice, rehearse to me the lot Of that unhappy one, if yet he live 1010 Spectator of the cheerful beams of day, Or if, already ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... And flesh my hopes with vaine illusions? Why didst thou say, Pertillo should not dye, And yet, oh yet, hast done it cruelly? Oh but beholde, with what a smiling cheere, He intertain'd thy bloody harbinger! See, thou transformer of a heavenly face To Ashie palenesse and unpleasing lookes, That his fair countenance still retaineth grace Of perfect beauty in the very grave. The world would say such beauty should not dye; Yet like a theefe thou didst it cruelly. Ah, had thy eyes, deepe-sunke into ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature. This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... had bought this one, never questioning that fashion is recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as beheld. On the contrary, these staring women obviously failed to realize that what they were being shown was not an eccentric outburst, but the bright harbinger of an illustrious mode. Alice had applied a bit of artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks before she set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a ready colour of her own, which ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... to himself. He did not suspect sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... horrors of our situation. All on a sudden a white butterfly, of a species common in France, came fluttering above our heads, and settled on our sail. The first thought this little creature suggested was, that it was the harbinger of approaching land, and we clung to the hope with a delirium of joy. It was the ninth day we had been upon the raft; the torments of hunger consumed our entrails; and the soldiers and sailors already devoured with haggard eyes this wretched prey, and seemed ready to dispute about it. Others ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... eventful day of which this, merry morn was the harbinger, the arrivals of guests at the castle had been numerous and important. First came the brother of the duchess, with his countess, and their fair daughter the Lady Katherine, whose fate, unconsciously to herself, had already been sealed by her noble relatives. She was destined to be ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Cuckfield Place, Sussex, is not only interesting as a fine Elizabethan mansion, but as having suggested to Ainsworth the "Rookwood Hall" of his striking romance. "The supernatural occurrence," he says, "forming the groundwork of one of the ballads which I have made the harbinger of doom to the house of Rookwood, is ascribed, by popular superstition, to a family resident in Sussex, upon whose estate the fatal tree—a gigantic lime, with mighty arms and huge girth of trunk—is still carefully preserved." In the avenue that winds towards the house the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... edited by George Birkbeck Hill—Unwin, 1897). Only a few of them met with favour; and one of them, "The Germ," going to the vote along with "The Seed" and "The Scroll," was approved by a vote of six to four. The next best were, I think, "The Harbinger," "First Thoughts," "The Sower," "The Truth-Seeker," and "The Acorn." Appended to the new title we retained, as a sub-title, something of what had been previously proposed; and the serial appeared as "The Germ. Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature, and Art." At this same ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... the Night is past and sweet Morning reddens in the east, ... another Day is born,—a day in which to win God's grace and pardon,—another wonder of Light, Movement, Creation, Beauty, Love! Awake, awake! Be glad and grateful for the present joy of life,—this life, dear harbinger of life to come! open your eyes, ye drowsy mortals, to the divine blue of the beneficent sky, the golden beams of the sun, the color of flowers, the foliage of trees, the flash of sparkling waters!— open your ears to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... breezes from North-East with rain; at daylight weighed and made sail, the Harbinger in company; shaped a course to pass between Cape Direction and the low sandy island which lies off it; passed close to the latter; I observed the reef extending from the North-East end further than laid down on the chart; after passing it, and giving Cape Direction a good berth, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... Hannah! Trust me, not in vain My prison gates are opened. This small grace Is harbinger of greater happiness. No! I mistake not; 'tis the active hand Of love to which I owe this kind indulgence. I recognize in this the mighty arm Of Leicester. They will by degrees expand My prison; will accustom me, through ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... souls we have wounded are in unison with us, and with themselves, only in God.... And the sweet Christian symbolism invited him with its most enticing images: the Shades of Paradise; the Fountain of Living Water; the Repose in the Lord God; the green Branch of the Dove, harbinger of peace.... But the passions still resisted. "To-morrow! Wait a little yet! Shall we be no more with you, for ever? Non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum?..." What a dismal sound in these syllables, and how terrifying for a timid soul! They fell, heavy as bronze, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Joel admirably illustrates the intimate connection which subsisted for the prophetic mind between the sorrows and disasters of the present and the coming day of Jehovah: the one is the immediate harbinger of the other. In an unusually devastating plague of locusts, which, like an army of the Lord,[1] has stripped the land bare and brought misery alike upon city and country, man and beast—"for the beasts of the field ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... question. We all recall how our hopes revived, and how gladly we hailed the introduction of the bill recommended by a joint committee of conference of the Senate and House of Representatives. It was welcomed as the harbinger of peace by the entire people ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... for the sudden transition from a state of hopeless despair to that of comparative safety, is ever attended with a misgiving of its reality. Her deliverance from the power of the Moors appeared almost certain; the name of Aguilar was the harbinger of victory; yet the anticipation of her rescue caused so powerful a revulsion of feeling, that Theodora nearly sunk under its pressure. When she had a little recovered, she perceived, however, more clearly, that her destiny was still involved in threatening ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... may its faith impugn. Before I die thy humid pinions sweep Above me once, but O to stain forbear The heart which still immaculate I keep! But thou com'st not, and now, with rosy hair From Ganges hastening, to all things again Their native hue restores Day's harbinger. Perhaps thou'st come, and ah, my cruel pain And wakeful thoughts thee ingress have denied Into my eyes, or hurl'd thee out amain. Since, blundering archer, thou dost shoot aside, Or snapp'st thy every dart my breast upon, To me ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... laughed a blithe laugh and tossed another peeling to the yellow rooster, who had dropped the role of harbinger of evil and was posing as ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... as the sky began to turn a deep red in the east, and the "chuck me" chameleon, the harbinger of the early dawn, began his morning challenge. Our progress was very cautiously made through the cane-fields, banana groves, and bamboo jungles, halting and investigating the slightest noise, the rustling of a leaf or the breaking of a twig not escaping our attention. ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... prodigies foretold it; A feeble government, eluded laws, A factious populace, luxurious nobles, And all the maladies of sinking States. When publick villainy, too strong for justice, Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin, Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders, Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard? When some neglected fabrick nods beneath The weight of years, and totters to the tempest, Must heaven despatch the messengers of light, Or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... spring or summer evening you may hear its plaintive hoot among the apple-blossoms of an orchard, or the sheaves of a cornfield. Curiously enough, this simple sound earned the little bird the name of being the harbinger of death, and peasants believed that whenever its cry was heard where sickness was in the family, the ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... be the safe arrival of a convoyed naval collier, the Jupiter, which served as a harbinger of the fleet of transports conveying the American troops. It carried a cargo of army provisions, including over ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Rumour, harbinger of woe so great, That told of Pallas victor, fills again Evander's town. All hurry to the gate, With torches snatched, as ancient rites ordain. A line of fire, that parts the dusky plain, The long road gleams before them, as they go To meet the mourners. Soon the wailing train The Phrygians ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... was the youngest daughter of Hyperion and Theia, or, according to some, of Titan and Terra. Orpheus calls her the harbinger of Titan, for she is the personification of that light which precedes the appearance of the sun. The poets describe this goddess as rising out of the ocean in a saffron robe, seated in a flame-colored car, drawn by two or four horses, expanding with her ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... poppy in another; in another, she first taught the old Titans to mow. She is the mother of the vine also; and the assumed name by which she called herself in her wanderings, is Ds—a gift; the crane, as the harbinger of rain, is her messenger among the birds. She knows the magic powers of certain plants, cut from her bosom, to bane or bless; and, under one of her epithets, herself presides over the springs, as also coming from the secret places of the earth. She is the goddess, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... consequences, it may be widely and permanently prejudicial to the cause of truth. If viewed abstractedly, it might appear like a cloud in the horizon not larger than a man's hand; but that speck may be the harbinger of wind and tempest. With regard, indeed, to those natural appearances in the sky, the most experienced observer can do nothing towards arresting the progress of the threatened storm; his (p. 383) foresight ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... with tricolor. Nay motherly Paris has sent her Avengers sufficient 'cartloads of loaves;' which are shouted over, which are gratefully consumed. The Avengers, in return, are searching for grain-stores; loading them in fifty waggons; that so a National King, probable harbinger of all blessings, may be the evident ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, but the harbinger of tempest and terror. It yet remains to be shown what form that cloud assumed, and from what quarter the tempest came. The history of Charlotte Halliday has grown upon the writer; and the completion of that history, with the fate of John Haygarth's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... I won't. I might wound his feelings, for he is an exquisitely sensitive creature. As you have ingeniously discovered, he is a social reformer. At present he is only known to the public as the editor of the 'Humanitarian Harbinger;' but his select circle of friends are well aware that he is devoting his ripened genius to the production of a work called the 'Progressional Principia,' which will be in four volumes, and exhaust the whole subject of social science. This immense ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the bark-mill bright and early in the morning. As he trudged off, Birt Dicey stood watching the receding figure. His eyes were perplexed, his mind full of anxious foreboding. He hardly knew what he feared. He had only a vague sense of mischief in the air, as slight but as unmistakable as the harbinger of storm on a ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright, waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well, and all received me with an affection that should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange ecstasy. I am certain that they regarded me as the harbinger of others. The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so long absent were not far behind.... I felt that the house was all silent, the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were laid—in what narrow, dark dwellings—never more to reappear on earth.... ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... arrived within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves, floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... stillness of some tropic night, a single drop is the refreshing harbinger of a slower that clears the heavens, so even this slight expression relieved in an instant the intensity of his over-burthened feelings, and warm, quick, and gushing flowed the words that breathed his fervid ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... at that moment was satisfaction at the sudden appearance of Ranger's white head, the sure harbinger of his master and Alick, and she sprang up to meet them in the shrubbery path—all her morbid shyness at the sight of a fresh face passing away when her hand was within Alick's arm. When they came forth upon the lawn, Alick's brow darkened for a moment, and there was a ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... where pearl-tinted spikes of iris perfumed the air and great masses of peonies nodded along borders banked deep under the long wall. A few butterflies still flitted in the golden radiance, but already that solemn harbinger of sunset, the garden toad, had emerged from leafy obscurity into the gravel path, and hopped heavily forward ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... ourselves, find the same regard for self pervades the rest, and that there is no voluntary attendance—then the sight of the expiring wretch, in his last effort, turning his head over the side of his hammock, and throwing off the dreadful black vomit, harbinger of his ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... deep tone of the Castle death-bell came swelling across the river from the other side. In an instant I knew it was the harbinger of death—of the Princess Charlotte? I was right—she ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish forward the birth of immortal being; but divine Science ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... when the harbinger of night The torches of the sky doth light, How he admires th'immortall rayes breake forth, And their bright Orbes, more large then earth; How through his trickling teares, he heips his fight, Unto the open ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... you forgot, my jocund Boy! DAVUS, [12] the harbinger of childish joy; For ever foremost in the ranks of fun, The laughing herald of the harmless pun; Yet, with a breast of such materials made, Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid; 270 Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... companion, for, if not, why this joyous sense of re-acquisition on his part? He had never forgotten the pleasant, happy hours passed in La Belle France, and here they were come again, and he was visiting side by side with her whose smile had been their harbinger. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... Rosa's head from the thither rising ground, and in the belief that he was the harbinger of the approach she dreaded, she dislodged the envelope from its covert, with a quick touch of her little wand, and ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... were looking at the evidences of the violent breaking up of winter, the first phoebe-bird of the season alighted in a tree overhanging the torrent, and in her plaintive notes seemed to say, as interpreted by John Burroughs, "If you please, spring has come." They gave the brown little harbinger such an enthusiastic welcome that she speedily took flight to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... securely lashed, still remained. The mate quickly opened it, and took out the tools likely to prove most useful, with an ample supply of nails. Scarcely had they been transferred to the boat, when Alice, who had been the harbinger of good tidings, exclaimed, "See! see that large fish!" Walter seized one of the harpoons, and handed it to the mate, The fish was swimming round close to the raft; the harpoon flew from the grasp of the mate, and ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... not so much—I must have public knowledge and public opinion working with it. Well, it is God's cause, and I commit it altogether to him. I am, however, sadly disappointed, but how weak and short- sighted is man! This temporary failure may be the harbinger ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... parish to give, or for him or his heirs to hold. It was indeed a miserable commencement of his ministry, to introduce such a strife with a people who really seem to have had an earnest desire to receive him with united hearts, and make his settlement and ministry the harbinger of a better day. But he alienated many of them, at the very start, by his sharp practice in negotiating about the pecuniary details of his agreement with the parish. When, after all their care to prevent it, it became known that somehow or other a vote ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Lord, this must be done with haste, For night-swift Dragons cut the Clouds full fast, And yonder shines Auroras harbinger; At whose approach Ghosts wandring here and there, Troope home to Church-yards; damned spirits all, That in crosse-waies and flouds haue buriall, Alreadie to their wormie beds are gone; For feare least day should looke their shames vpon, They wilfully themselues exile from light, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... I told you but now, each is a harbinger of the Virgin. As to Joseph persecuted and sold, a slave raised almost to the throne, the merciful protector of his people, he is ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Cuthbert's had covered but a few fleeting years (oh, relentless ticking of the clock! at once the harbinger and the echo of eternity), when there came into our lives life's greatest earthly joy. Serene and peaceful our lives had been, every hour garlanded with love and every year ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... answered nearly all your arguments against the Sabbath and commandments, in my work on the Sabbath, and Waymarks, and lastly in my reply to the Advent Harbinger, under the head of the Four Pillar system, I shall be brief because I want to say a word upon another subject that you have named. You say, "to assume or infer that the Sabbath was commanded to men before the Exode from Egypt, is to walk ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... second volume. At half-past nine he retired to his bedroom. Lady Burton then repeated "the night prayers to him," and while she was speaking "a dog," to use her own words, "began that dreadful howl which the superstitious regard as the harbinger of death." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... becoming etherealized. Our solar parent has scarcely crossed the threshold of the sign Aquarius, and already we observe in many directions the activities of the peculiar influx. True, it is but the first flush of the dawn of a new era, the harbinger of a glorious day to our race. In the light of this truth, ponder well on the nature of the influx radiating from the solar center, each orb of his shining family absorbing a different ray, or attribute, of solar energy, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... is a huge, fat, religious gentleman ... big enough to be a pope. His gills are as rosy as a turkey-cock's. His big belly walks in state before him, like a harbinger; and his gouty legs come limping after it. Never was such a tun of devotion seen.—Dryden, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... place putting seed in the ground: in the cheer of the work hardships were forgotten, and we paused now and again to laugh at some sally of Terence McCann's or odd word of Swein Poulsson's. As the day wore on to afternoon a blue haze—harbinger of autumn—settled over fort and forest. Bees hummed in the air as they searched hither and thither amongst the flowers, or shot straight as a bullet for a distant hive. But presently a rifle cracked, and we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... noticed that the thought of a friend after a spell of forgetfulness is frequently the harbinger of a sudden meeting, or of the receipt of a letter or message. Such happenings are called "curious coincidences"; but personally I don't consider them curious at all, or at least no more curious than it is to send a message by telephone, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... seem to think, the war need go on until one country is beaten into a condition where it must accept the terms the victor chooses to impose, because it can no longer help itself to do else, the peace thus obtained will only be the harbinger of another war in the near or distant future, bloodier probably than the present sanguinary conflict, and through no compact which might be entered into will it be ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various |
