"Parching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stony plain lying between us and the hills, the heated and parching blasts that came upon us, were more than we could bear. We were in the centre of the plain, when Mr. Browne drew my attention to a number of small black specks in the upper air. These spots increasing momentarily in size, were evidently approaching ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... is generally of a class suited to resist the droughts, having hard, coriaceous leaves. Such is the shrubbery described in a former chapter, which, exempt from severe frosts on the one hand, and thriving in an arid soil and parching heat on the other, clothes half the surface of the island with perpetual verdure. There have been seasons when even these shrubs were so burnt up that the slightest accident might have caused a wide-spread conflagration. When we travelled, the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... knives, like the priests of Baal. I have seen others, who, from supposed devotion, put such massy fetters of iron on their legs, that they are hardly able to move, yet walk in that manner many miles upon pilgrimages, barefooted, upon the parching ground, to visit the sepulchres of their deluding saints; thus, tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, taking more pains to go to hell than any Christian that I know does to attain heaven. These do not marry. Such Mahometans as choose to marry, are allowed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... such As tawny tigers feel in matted shades, Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... the winds are low, and when the tides are still, And the round moon rises inland over the naked hill, And o'er her parching seams the dry cloud-shadows pass, And dry along the land-rim lie the shadows of thin grass, Then aches her soul with longing to launch and sink away Where the fine silts lift and settle, and sea-things drift and ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... be changed into a monotonous and melancholy desert. It hardly ever rains in Chaldaea.[18] There are a few showers at the changes of the season, and, in winter, a few days of heavy rain. During the summer, for long months together, the sky remains inexorably blue while the temperature is hot and parching. In winter, clouds are almost as rare; but winds often play violently over the great tracts of unbroken country. When these blow from the south they soon lose their warmth and humidity at the contact of a soil which, but a short while ago, was at the bottom of the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... walked by the side of his cornfields in the early year, and a cloud was over his face, for there had been no rain for several weeks, and the earth was hard from the parching of the cold east winds, and the young wheat had not ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... risen, that icy wind which cracks the rocks, and leaves nothing alive on those deserted heights. It came in sudden gusts, more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!" Then he waited again. Everything was silent on the mountain! Then he shook with terror, and with a bound he was inside the inn. He shut and bolted the door, and then fell into a chair, trembling ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin then, sisters, of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may some gentle muse With lucky ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... kindness which fell like dew upon the parching misery of the day, Annie burst into tears. Mr Cowie was greatly distressed. He drew her between his knees, laid his cheek against hers, as was his way with children, and ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the man cleared his throat. It was parching, and he felt that words were impossible. What trick was this Peter had played on him? He longed to flee, yet in the face of all that crowd he could not. He knew he must smile, and with all the power of his body he set himself to ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... our love and wisdom, To each poor brother who offends against us— Most innocent, perhaps—and what if guilty? Is this the only cure? Merciful God! 5 Each pore and natural outlet shrivell'd up By Ignorance and parching Poverty, His energies roll back upon his heart, And stagnate and corrupt; till chang'd to poison, They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot; 10 Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks— And this is their best cure! uncomforted And friendless solitude, groaning and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the river were said not to be far off. From hence they advanced three days' march, through much snow and a level plain, a distance of fifteen parasangs; the third day's march was extremely troublesome, as the north wind blew full in their faces, completely parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind, and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to everyone manifestly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... music like a river rolls Among the mountains, and thy song is fed By living springs far up the watershed; No whirling flood nor parching drought controls The crystal current: even on the shoals It murmurs clear and sweet; and when its bed Deepens below mysterious cliffs of dread, Thy voice of peace grows deeper ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... from gray to gray; the parching north wind poured down the plain and darkened the air with gritty dust; the sky, though cloudless, grew murkier every day. Then the wind shifted to the south, and the sky grew darker yet with surging heaps of clouds, and at last down came the late November rain; and next morning Miss ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... am by birth a shepherd's daughter, My wit untrain'd in any kind of art. Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleased To shine on my contemptible estate: Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs And to sun's parching heat display'd my cheeks, God's mother deigned to appear to me, And in a vision full of majesty Will'd me to leave my base vocation, And free my country from calamity: Her aid she promised and assured success: In complete ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... had already perished, when the horrors of the fourth night renewed all our miseries. Weak, distracted, and destitute of every thing, we envied the fate of those whose lifeless corpses no longer wanted sustenance.—The sense of hunger was already lost, but a parching thirst consumed our vitals. Recourse was had to urine and salt water, which only increased the wants; half a hogshead of vinegar indeed floated up, of which each had half a wine glass; it afforded a ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... parching wind, drying up the fountain of pity, the dew of mercy, the streams of grace. For doth not that rightly seem to be lost which is ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... they continued to fire as directed, until they are either sent down to the cock-pit themselves, or have a momentary respite from their exertions, when, choked with smoke and gunpowder, they go aft to the scuttle-butt, to remove their parching thirst. So much for the lower and main deck. We will now ascend to the quarter-deck, where we shall find old Adams at the conn, and little Willy ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the mold of the plowing on his fretted garments. Then he choked and spluttered, for the hot fluid scalded him, and a roar of laughter saved the situation. Made as it was over a cup of very smoky tea, that compact was carried out faithfully under parching heat and bitter cold, in the biting dust of alkali and under the silence of the primeval bush. For an hour we lounged smoking and chatting in ox-hide chairs, watching the red glow from the range door flicker upon the guns and axes on the wall, or the moonlight broaden across the silent grass ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... he procures a glass, returns, and, holding it to the sufferer's lips, supports his head while he drinks: "And did they let you lie here, my poor sir, racked with this parching thirst?" ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... cast him down: and there he sat all alone, astonished and confounded, like Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, when she sat alone upon the parching rock. Like Rizpah, he watched the dead corpses of all his hopes and plans, all for which he had lived, and which made life worth having, withering away there by his side. But it was told David what Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, had ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... felt as brisk as bees, and immediately set about preparing breakfast. They gathered a capful of the pinon cones—the seeds of which Lucien knew how to prepare by parching and pounding. These, with the bear's meat, gave them a good hunter's breakfast. They then thought of their dinner, and dug up a quantity of "segos" and prairie-turnips. They found also a mallow—the Malva involucrata—whose long tapering ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... walked by the side of his cornfields in the springtime. A frown was on his face, for there had been no rain for several weeks, and the earth was hard from the parching of the east winds. The young wheat had not been ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... than an alkali country, the lack of water for the same length of time would have meant little more than discomfort, but the parching, drying effect of the deadly white dust entailed untold suffering upon the traveller caught unprepared as ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... either annihilates or suspends the former impulse; the second motive becomes stronger than the preceding; that is, the fear of death, or the desire of preserving himself, necessarily prevails over the painful sensation caused by his eagerness to drink. But, (it will be said) if the thirst is very parching, an inconsiderate man, without regarding the danger, will risque swallowing the water. Nothing is gained by this remark: in this case, the anterior impulse only regains the ascendency; he is persuaded, that life may possibly ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... night in the swamp, so I am to lay by, make the drawings, and draw up the report, while Mr. Currie and Randolf do my work over again, all my marks having been effaced by his majesty the Fire King, and the clearing done to our hand. If I could only get rid of the intolerable parching and thirst, and the burning of my brains! I should not wonder if I were in for a touch ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been dazzling stone all day, Hollowed in smooth hard brightness, now dissolved To infinite soft depth, and smoulder'd down Low as the roofs, dark burning blue, and soared Clear to that winking drop of liquid silver, The first exquisite star. Now the half-light Tidied away the dusty litter parching Among the cobbles, veiled in the colour of distance Shabby slates and brickwork mouldering, turn'd The hunchback houses into patient things Resting; and golden windows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... testify the powers of Heaven—once more mortal, the witness of immortality; I drew a new being from the grave. O faded—O lost Jerusalem!—Him from whom came my life, I beheld adjudged to the agonized and parching death! Far in the mighty crowd I saw the light rest and glimmer over the cross; I heard the hooting mob, I cried aloud, I raved, I threatened—none heeded me—I was lost in the whirl and the roar of thousands! But even then, in my agony and His own, methought the glazing ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... about tenne foot high, of the stalks some beare foure heads, some three, some one, and some two: euery head containing fiue, sixe, or seuen hundred graines, within a few more or lesse. Of these graines, besides bread, the inhabitants make victuall, either by parching them, or seething them whole vntill they be broken: or boiling the flowre with water into ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... this infant colony, of which we are especially speaking, has already been peopled! The majestic rusa, captured in the sultry forests of Bengal, and the elegant gazelle, which has once bounded over the parching deserts of Barbary, have become intimate and make their couch with the white reindeer, brought from the icy wastes of Lapland. The misshapen but harmless kangaroo of New Holland is a fellow-lodger with the ferocious gnu of Southern Africa; and the patient llama, who has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... were in the poisonous desert, where I might gulp mephitic winds and drop dead; or in a moment be buried in tornados of burning sand! Would that my scull were grinning there, and blanching; rather than as it is consciously parching, scorched by fires ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... 'Parching summer hath no warrant To consume this crystal well; Rains, that make each brook a torrent, Neither sully ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and then rejoined in an altered tone, "Then, then will this parching thirst be quenched at last. I tell you, woman, that it is many months since I have known a day—night—hour, in which my life has been as the life of other men. My whole soul has been melted down into one burning, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been recently shaven off, there was a white blueness on the upper lip, that contrasted unpleasantly with the dark tinge which he had gallantly wrought for on the glowing sands of Egypt, and the bronzing of his general features from fierce suns and parching winds. His bare neck and hands were delicately fair, the former firm and muscular, the latter slender and tapering, like a woman's. He was reading a gazette, or some printed paper, when we entered; and although there was a tolerable clatter ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... day was spent in the church. She crouched into an angle behind one of the large pillars. Like the dew that freshens and vivifies the vegetation that has been dried up by the parching sun, the exhilarating breathings of the divine Spirit spread over her soul that peace which surpasseth all understanding. In the fervor of her first real moments of prayer, the hours passed as seconds; unmindful of food, of the duties incumbent on her military profession, and of the busy world ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... with summer fired; For parching fields, for pining flowers, The spirits of the air desired The brook's bright life to ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... liquid rill of Nature's life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the madness of contending hosts—the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell's heat and noise and competition above and around—should come melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God's hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the Crimea and in these regions generally, has been greatly increased by the disappearance of the forests of central and southern Russia, which formerly to some extent protected the coast-provinces from the parching northeast wind. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... unavailing attempts to ford the creek with infantry,—their entire right and centre, marched out the Charles City Road, and gave impetuous battle at New Market. The accounts and the results indicate that the Federals won the day at New Market, sheerly by good fighting. They were parching with thirst, weak with hunger, and it might have been supposed that reverses had broken their spirit. On the contrary they did not fall back a rod, during the whole day, and at evening Heintzelman's corps crowned their success by a grand ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... like raging hounds, they rushed to search for a spring; for besides their suffering and anguish, a parching thirst lay upon them, and not in vain did they wander; but they came to the sacred plain where Ladon, the serpent of the land, till yesterday kept watch over the golden apples in the garden of Atlas; and all around the nymphs, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others." Had the crowds worn the flouting robes of the East, the picture would have lacked nothing but the presence of the Son of Man to make it complete. Here were the burning sands and parching sun; hither came scores of groups of three or four comrades, laboriously staggering under the weight of a blanket in which they had carried a disabled and dying friend from some distant part of the Stockade. Beside them hobbled the scorbutics with swollen and distorted limbs, each more loathsome ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways Thy verse distils like ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had been unusually warm, so much so that the thermometer stood during the whole of it at 76 degrees (the usual noonday heat) and so parching was the air that no one could sleep. A hot wind blew from the north-east in the morning, and the barometer fell 4/10 of an inch; there ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... summer-time, and there was no need of a fire. A fire indeed would have been insupportable, for the sultry, breathless atmosphere of August, with the fever-heat of its sun burning in the narrow streets and close yards, made the temperature as parching as an oven. I panted for the cool cliffs and ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... to tell you where to find A treasure, which I left behind: I had not time to let you know it, But follow me, and now I'll shew it." John trembled at the awful sight, But hopes of gain suppress'd his fright; Oft will the parching thirst of gold, Make even errant ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... linen. Half-way we watered our horses and had a fearful jostle with a Yeomanry corps (who were on the march with us), the Indians, and a whole tribe of mules which turned up from somewhere. In the afternoon we arrived at our camp, a bare, dusty hill, parching under ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... flood shall be dearth, And the rain no longer shall fall On the parching fields; and a pall, As of ashes, shall cover the earth; And dust-clouds shall darken the sky; And the deep ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... your mind the blessings of his deeds, While thro' the fever-heated, loathsome holds, Of floating hulks, dungeons obscene, where ne'er The dewy breeze of morn, or evening's coolness, Breath'd on our parching skins, he pass'd along, Diffusing blessings; still his power exerting, To alleviate the woes which ruthless war, Perhaps, thro' dire necessity, heap'd on us; Surely, the scene would move you to forget His late intent—(tho' only serving then, As duty prompted)—and turn the rigour Of War's ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... exposed to cold, raw, and foggy winter air, and serious derangements of the respiratory organs are the natural consequence. If, moreover, this pernicious habit of breathing be once contracted, we shall soon also sleep with open mouths, thus parching our throats, and sowing the seeds of many ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... pain their souls, He bids their parching thirst be gone, And spreads the shadow of his wings To screen ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... had been long and fatiguing, amongst sand hills under a noonday sun. We fully appreciated the luxury of a swim, and especially as we were lucky enough to find a hole of fresh water on the edge of the lake, to slake our parching thirst. Ducks, teal, and pigeons were numerous, and the recent traces of natives apparent everywhere. It was after sunset when we returned, tired and ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such a mass of combustibles,—loose straw from the mattress, dry old furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for a score or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of the newspaper reports, "a perfect tinder-box," and would probably be a heap of ashes in half an hour. And there was this unfortunate deserted sick man lying between ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a wonderful change on the face of the country. The grass soon becomes dry and withered; the rivers subside very rapidly, and many of the trees shed their leaves. About this period is commonly felt the harmattan, a dry and parching wind, blowing from the north-east, and accompanied by a thick smoky haze, through which the sun appears of a dull red colour. This wind, in passing over the Great Desert of Sahara, acquires a very strong attraction for humidity, and parches ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... a pallid woman, in wild-eyed fear, With her wooden noggin of milk drew near. "Drink, poor hearts!" a rude hand smote Her draught away from a parching throat. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Turkish rugs, and all the art lumber and fabricated rubbish of a bric-a-brac dealer's. It seemed a wonderful place to him; but, oh! was there one drop of water in it all? That was his single thought; for his tongue was parching, and his throat felt on fire, and his chest began to be dry and choked as with dust. There was not a drop of water, but there was a lattice window grated, and beyond the window was a wide stone ledge covered with snow. August cast one look at the locked door, darted out of his hiding-place, ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... admiring state of mind. Meanwhile, in the manifest pleasure her singing gave at Brackenshaw Castle, the Firs, and elsewhere, she recovered her equanimity, being disposed to think approval more trustworthy than objection, and not being one of the exceptional persons who have a parching thirst for a perfection undemanded by their neighbors. Perhaps it would have been rash to say then that she was at all exceptional inwardly, or that the unusual in her was more than her rare grace of movement and bearing, and a certain daring which gave piquancy ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... his keen eyes he may penetrate All mists and fogs that baser spells create. Love? What is love? Not the wild feverish thrill, When heart to heart the thronging pulses fill, And lips that close in parching kisses find No speech but those;—the best remains behind. The tranquil spirit—the divine assurance That this life's seemings have a high endurance— Thoughts that allay this restless striving, calm The passionate heart, ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... and noise as the old tree tried to rise from its recumbent position. The sun's rays were fast parching its roots, causing sharp pains ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... that at first. After a while you begin to think of how delightful it is, and what a change from pacing over the burning sand in the daylight with the sun making the air quiver and glow like a furnace, and your mouth turn dry and lips crack with the parching you ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... they had tasted the bitter cup of persecution. Happy is he whose moral sense has not been corrupted by bigotry, whose heart is not hardened by misfortune, whose soul—the spring of generous impulse—has never been dried up by the parching adversities of life! The founders of Maryland brought with them, in the Ark and the Dove, the elements of that liberty they had so much desired, themselves, in the Old World, and which to others in the New, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... concealed in the bed of some stream far away in the gloomy forest, and wherever that river may wander, or however brightly its waters may sparkle in the sunny glades, no mortal who values his life may cool his parching lips with its freshness, or bathe his aching limbs in its clear depths. Only for solemn festivals is the Juruparis brought out by night and blown outside the place of meeting, and it is restored to its forest ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... was in the midst of an arid, sandy desert. The sun's rays seemed to pelt down with blistering intensity on my uncovered head. There was not a single tree, nor a scrap of foliage anywhere in sight, to afford a moment's shelter:—all was barrenness; parching heat; death! ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the afternoon of a sultry parching day when he at last arrived at Hillah. This dull little town, built at the beginning of the twelfth century out of the then plentifully scattered fragments of Babylon, has nothing to offer to the modern traveller save various annoyances in the shape of excessive heat, dust, or rather fine blown ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... dreamed that she was a skeleton lying up the canon—the sunshine parching her naked bones; that Dr. Earle came along with a pack-train going to the mill, and picking her up carefully, laid her on top of a bundle of wood; that the Mexican driver covered her up with a blanket, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... without difficulty. In it the woman, like unto the goddesses, had mixed for them Pramnian wine, and grated over it a goat's-milk cheese with a brazen rasp, and sprinkled white flour upon it: then bade them drink, as soon as she had prepared the potion. But when drinking they had removed parching thirst, they amused themselves, addressing each other in conversation. And Patroclus stood at ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... moment a brilliant red juice dyed his lips, and he closed his eyes in happy contentment, oblivious, for the time, of the sand and fallen trunks that seemed to dance in the parching rays of the sun, oblivious, even, of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... immediately preceded and followed. It is then that Nature, who seems from the creation to have bestowed all of grandeur and sublimity on the stupendous Americas, looks gladly and complacently on her work; and, staying the course of parching suns and desolating frosts, loves to luxuriate for a period in the broad and teeming bosom of her gigantic offspring. It is then that the forest-leaves, alike free from the influence of the howling ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... pit in which he stood. He was oblivious of the perilous steel that whirred and throbbed about him. He was unconscious of the hot hand rails and the greasy foot-ways and the mingling odor of steam and parching lubricant and ammonia-gas from a leaking "beef engine." He quite forgot the fact that his dungaree jumper was wet with sweat, that his cap was already fouled with oil. All he knew was that he and Binhart were ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... village, and began their homeward voyage on the seventeenth of July. It was no easy task to urge their way upward, in the heat of midsummer, against the current of the dark and gloomy stream, toiling all day under the parching sun, and sleeping at night in the exhalations of the unwholesome shore, or in the narrow confines of their birchen vessels, anchored on the river. Marquette was attacked with dysentery. Languid and well-nigh spent, he invoked ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... taking her by the arme, conducted her vnto his castell, deuising of pleasaunt matters. And he was greatlye astonned, to see so rare a beautie, as appeared in the Princesse: whiche neither the wearinesse of the waye, nor the parching beames of the Sunne, coulde in any wyse so appaire, but that there rested ynough, to drawe vnto her the very hartes of the moste colde and frosen men of the world. And albeit the Lorde of Mendozza tooke great pleasure ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... neighbouring chapel, were now forming themselves into groups: the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance,—all to be gay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and careless ignorance, contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies and that parching desire for wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and burned at his own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazing on them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory of all he had been content ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... we brought up alongside a jetty for the night. When darkness had set in, the wild melancholy howl of the jackal was borne across the desert by the evening breeze, a sound sufficiently startling and inexplicable if you don't happen to know its origin. What these animals can find to eat in a parching desert is, and remains to me, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... terrestrial surface, which tend respectively to impede and to facilitate the physical degradation both of new countries and of old. If the precipitation, whether great or small in amount, be equally distributed through the seasons, so that there are neither torrential rains nor parching droughts, and if, further, the general inclination of ground be moderate, so that the superficial waters are carried off without destructive rapidity of flow, and without sudden accumulation in the channels of natural drainage, there is little danger ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... see the flowery race Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign, Before the parching beam? So fade the fair, When fever revels in their azure veins But one, the lofty follower of the sun, Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves, Drooping all night, and when he warm return, Points her enamoured bosom to ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... a sense of a parching and suffocating heat. She started up with the idea of fire in her drowsy mind. But a glance at him revealed the real cause. His face was fiery red, and from his lips came rambling sentences, muttered, whispered, that indicated the delirium of a high fever. She had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... thunder shower just before he had set out, and now, although rain had ceased, the sky remained blackly overcast and a curious, dull stillness was come. The air had a welcome freshness and the glistening pavements looked delightfully cool after the parching heat of the day. In the quiet square, no doubt, it was always restful in contrast with the more busy highroads, and in the murmur of distant traffic he found something very soothing. About him then ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... shorter, the chill came back into the morning air, and the great thunder-caps which all Summer had mantled the Peaks, scattering precarious and insufficient showers across the parching lowlands, faded away before the fresh breeze from the coast. Autumn had come, and, though the feed was scant, Creede started his round-up early, to finish ahead of the sheep. Out on The Rolls the wild and runty cows were hiding their newborn ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... of hospitality in a most unbecoming manner. We must have you give your testimony why you have come so late, for the flowers are all hanging their heads, the nightingales will not sing any more, and the lambs in the meadow will not touch the sweetest grass. Every thing is parching and dying because you are not here, and with desire to ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... regions of the world. The next instant its blazing summit breaks into splinters on every side. Occasionally fearful hail-storms sweep over the plains; and at other times the air from the south comes heated, as from a furnace, drying up all moisture from the skin, and parching the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... change, and consequently grew worse to bear, the parching and scorching of each day being carried over into the next. What the newspapers call a heat-wave was drawing to its culmination, which generally reaches the verge of the unbearable, even to the well and ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... avenues of palms, with here and there a lovely pool by the wayside—all this I cannot here describe. But most wonderful of all is the monsoon which rages over the country, wrapping the earth sometimes in sheets of lightning which turn sea, sky and earth to one vivid world of flame. The wind is dry and parching, so that all windows are kept carefully closed at night; but, indeed, the mosquitoes are sufficient excuse for that. I have seen nothing of ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... woman. There are so few unaffected, natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to contemplate our little girl's guileless purity and ingenuous simplicity, as to gaze upon cool green meadows on a sultry, parching August day. Keep her ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... white, hot sands with open mouth, protruding tongue, black face and sightless eyes. The picture sent a thrill of horror through him and moved his dizzy, flagging brain to fresh resolution. He stumbled on through the blazing, parching, cruel heat, sometimes falling and lying motionless for a time, then pulling himself up and going on with will newly braced by the fear that he might not rise again. Once he sank, groaning, his courage quite broken, and mumbled to himself that he could go no farther. As he fell the ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... them afraid. At nightfall, where they rested, one stayed in that place, and the next night another dropped behind; and so it was at the end of each day's journey. They crossed a great plain where waters of mirage rolled over a cracked and parching earth, and the rim of the world was hidden in a bluish mist. So they came at last to another range of hills, not so high, but tumbled thickly together; and beyond these, at the end of the hundred days, to the Big Water, quaking along ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... of parched barley to be mingled, and honey, and the strength of wine, and curds with pressed milk. Secretly, she added drugs to be concealed beneath this sweetness. We received the cups presented by her sacred right hand. Soon as, in our thirst, we quaffed them with parching mouth, and the ruthless Goddess, with her wand, touched the extremity of our hair (I am both ashamed, and {yet} I will tell of it), I began to grow rough with bristles, and no longer to be able ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Jews and Christians with deeper amazement than did the report of the change of Saul from persecutor to protector of God's people. But this is sometimes God's way. Often does he send us blessings and do wonders when we least expect them. Day breaks at the darkest hour. In the midst of parching dryness the refreshing shower comes. The hardest pain is just before the birth. A sleepless night ends in a joyful morning. In this way he shows us that the "excellency of the power is not of men, but ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... the "spirit" of the rivulets and waters of spring, and his name signified literally "the son of life" or "of the spirit." But among the Semites he became the young and beautiful shepherd, the beloved of Istar, slain by the boar's tusk of winter, or, as others held, of the parching heats of the summer. He symbolized the fresh vegetation of the spring and the Sun-god who called it forth. Once each year, in the sultry heats of June, the women wept and tore their hair in memory of his untimely death, and ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... that boy but prou'd, Who died for loue, and yet not any lou'd, Neuer had riuer beene adorned so, To burie more then all the world could shew. Her sweetest breath from out those sweeter lips, Much like coole winde which from the valleys skips In parching heat of Summer, stealeth forth, Wandring amongst her haire; her wel formd mouth: No art hath left vs such proportion, To modell out so true perfection. Her smoothe moist hands the sheets kept from his sight, Lest by comparing, they should staine their white. As thus she lay like Venus in ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... utmost bounds 290 Of Scandinavia; thence the eye returns: And lo! great Lebanon—abrupt and dark With pines, and airy Carmel, rising slow Above the midland main, where hang the capes Of Italy and Greece; swart Africa, Beneath the parching sun, her long domain Reveals, the mountains of the Moon, the source Of Nile, the wild mysterious Niger, lost Amid the torrid sands; and to the south Her stormy cape. Beyond the misty main 300 The weary eye scarce wanders, when behold Plata, through vaster territory poured; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... pulling off to the sea, he sailed some three leagues, sitting up to the waist continually in water, and at every surge of the wave to the arm-pits, for the space of six hours, upon this raft: what with the parching of the sun and what with the beating of the salt water, they had all of them their skins ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... colors of crimson and gold. We should remember, however, that not only the glow of autumn and the flush of summer are beautiful, but that every season, every climate, every aspect in the shifting panorama of Nature, has a beauty as real. Our own region, be it arid with parching suns, or wet with frequent rains; be it always winter there, or always summer, is full of beauty. There is sunset on the desert, moonrise on mid-ocean, gorgeous coloring and crowding life in the tropics, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... down the drive to the gate, and out upon the sunny road. The dust rose in clouds, whitening the elder, the stickweed, and the blackberry bushes. The locusts shrilled in the parching trees. The sky was cloudless and intensely blue, marked only by the slow circling of a buzzard far above the pine-tops. There were many pines, and the heat drew out their fragrance, sharp and strong. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... world's renown, And should have won it, had my bow not been; These that I love were very king and queen; I have discrowned them, shall I not crown too? Ye know, Beloved, what sharp bitter dew, What parching torment of unresting day Falls on the garden of my deathless bay: Hands that have gathered it and feet that came Beneath its shadow have known flint and flame; Therefore I love them; and they love no less Each furlong of the road of past distress. —Ah, Faithful, tell me for what rest ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the dry; heavy fogs forming during the transition. These last till the end of September. Occasional showers, too, continue till November. Then the weather becomes really clear and dry, until, towards the end of January, the dry parching wind, called the Harmattan, sets in, with its over-stimulant action upon the human system, and clouds of penetrating impalpable sand. If this is not blowing, the atmosphere is loaded with moisture; and this it is, combined ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... purpose, did the night resemble When he lay couched in the Ominous Horse, Hath now this dread and blacke Complexion smear'd With Heraldry more dismall: Head to foote Now is he to take Geulles, horridly Trick'd With blood of Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sonnes, Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous, and damned light To their vilde Murthers, roasted in wrath and fire, And thus o're-sized with coagulate gore, With eyes like Carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... this sand tempest all the fortitude of man fails, and all his efforts are vain. To Providence alone must we look. It passed us, burying one of my camels. As soon as we rose from the earth, with uplifted hands for its preservation, we awoke to fresh horrors. Its parching tongue had lapped the water from our water-skins, and having escaped the fiery hour, we had to fear the still more awful ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... to be dug and, as luck would have it, this digging, which ought to have been nothing to our men fit as they were, in ordinary weather, was turned into a very high trial indeed by a khamsin. This red-hot and parching wind, blowing off the desert, makes thirst a positive torture when water is limited, and it was very limited at that time. We were getting rather less than half a gallon per man for all purposes, which is perhaps just about ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... very bad indeed for the doughty defenders of little Gueldersdorp—certainly up to afternoon-tea time, when a couple of Scotch girls crossed the two hundred yards of veld that lay between the Fort and the town, carrying cans of steaming tea for the parching Britons penned up there. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... lies beyond a desert 'cross which hosts of Death are marching, And a hot sirocco wanders under skies all red and parching, Lined with skeletons of armies through the centuries fierce and acre Bones of heroes and of sages marking Time's lapse year by year, Unmoistened by the night-dews 'mid the solitudes of fear —As Time ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... "she drives me mad, and I believe she would look on, if I was parching with thirst in the torments of hell, and not give me ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... and the certainty of disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The machine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up and withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, any release from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more insupportable than the pangs which we endure. We are suspended between tormenting desires and the horrors of ennui. The impulse ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... that was almost semi-tropical. This they accounted for by its total immunity from cold, the density of the air at sea-level, and the warm moist breezes it received from the tepid ocean. The climate was about the same as that of the Riviera or of Florida in winter, and there was, of course, no parching summer. "This shows me," said Bearwarden, "that a country's climate depends less on the amount of heat it receives from the sun than on the amount it retains; proof of which we have in the tops of the Himalayas perpetually ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... march of some days we came to an opening between the mountains, the only passage out of Dancali into Abyssinia. Heaven seems to have made this place on purpose for the repose of weary travellers, who here exchange the tortures of parching thirst, burning sands, and a sultry climate, for the pleasures of shady trees, the refreshment of a clear stream, and the luxury of a cooling breeze. We arrived at this happy place about noon, and the next day at evening left those ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... thy loved one's side, though hour by hour "The path runs on; though Summer's parching star "Burn all the fields, or blackest tempests lower, "Or monitory rainbows threaten far. "If he would hasten o'er the purple sea, "Thyself the helmsman or the oarsman be. "Endure, unmurmuring, each unwelcome toil, "Nor fear thy ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... poor returns. But my head akes at the bare thought of letter writing. I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shivering [? shrivelling] up in the candle flame, like parching martyrs. The same indisposit'n to write it is has stopt my Elias, but you will see a futile Effort in the next No., "wrung from me with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... relief to sit down on the sandy soil, with his back propped against his saddle, and watch the shimmering haze of heat across the sun-scorched plains. It made him think of the stories he had heard of the weary traveller lost in the desert, no water with which to moisten his parching throat, his tongue swollen, black, and immovable in his mouth, with already the first signs of delirium and insanity showing in his erratic and aimless actions. He shuddered as the picture presented itself, and thanked his ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... different times during this uncomfortable day distant thunder was heard, the air darkened, and some few large drops of rain fell. The apparent danger from the fires drew all persons out of their houses; and on going into the parching air, it was scarcely possible to breathe; the heat was insupportable; vegetation seemed to suffer much, the leaves of many culinary plants being reduced to a powder. The thermometer in the shade rose above one hundred degrees. Some rain falling ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... did In all my life! I peered into my heart: I saw myself Judas to innocence, Betraying lightly with a careless kiss A mortal body and immortal soul; I saw no thing in all my days to claim A sane man's approbation; one by one Each glittering bauble that I late had loved Crumbled to dust beneath the parching fire Of reason.... And that night, I walked ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... "the sum of two hundred crowns for the expenses of myself and master; but before the end of the year, all our money went away in the smoke of our furnaces. My master, at the same time, died of a fever, brought on by the parching heat of our laboratory, from which he seldom or never stirred, and which was scarcely less hot than the arsenal of Venice. His death was the more unfortunate for me, as my parents took the opportunity of reducing my allowance, and sending me ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... consisted of grits, bacon, syrup, corn bread and vegetables. On Sundays and holidays the meals varied to the extent that they were allowed to have biscuits which they called "cake bread." The slaves made coffee by parching corn meal, okra seed or Irish potatoes. When sufficiently parched any one of the above named would make a vile type of coffee. Syrup was used for all sweetening purposes. The produce from the gardens which the master allowed them could only be used for home consumption ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... that had given him his fearless judgment and steadfast, courageous spirit—we felt his cheery "Half-past eleven four weeks" must be prophetic, in spite of those long dry stages, with their beating heat and parching dust eddies—stages eked out now at each end with other ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... glass houses, and where the soil produces no stones of a throwable size. There will be no saloons there, clubs or dinner parties, but drugstores with their alluring lights will decorate every corner. There with your palates parching with pain your motto should be 'Speak Easy' for the sake of the Cause. The lives of the inhabitants will be regulated by priestesses and preachers, and to them will be submitted the most intimate affairs of the family. Yours will be a maternal government; to each ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... statuette of Gotama Buddha grinning at him from the mantelpiece, welcoming him to Nirwana. There stands my easel, empty and shrouded; and here, from day to day, I sit idle, not lacking ideas, but the will to clothe them. Unlike poor Maurice de Guerin, who said that his 'head was parching; that, like a tree which had lived its life, he felt as though every passing wind were blowing through dead branches in his top,' I feel that my brain is as vigorous and restless as ever, while my will alone is paralyzed, and my heart withered and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... been swearing at the east wind for parching your verdure, and are now weeping for the rain that drowns your hay. I have these calamities in common, and my constant and particular one,-people that come to see my house, which unfortunately is more in request than ever. Already I have had ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... hardy and prolific; and, though not late, should have the benefit of the whole season. For parching, it is inferior to the Common Parching Corn before described, though it yields as much bulk in proportion to the size of the kernel, and is equally as white: but the sharp points often remain sound; and it is, consequently, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... his eyes as if from a distant prospect, and they dropped to the stove, where I had corn parching. He nodded, as if amused, but did not answer at once, and taking from my hand the feather with which I stirred the corn, softly whisked some off for himself, and smiled at the remaining kernels as they danced upon the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... realized that he was alone—just as much alone as ever—which mattered quite a lot. All this and the chill shivering and the vast, aching weariness. He fell asleep and dreamed of desolate wastes and wanderings and parching heat. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... skies, blessing the grateful dew that cools the upland air and moistens the bunch-grass that has been bleaching all day in the fierce rays of the summer sun, a little column of infantry is swinging steadily southward. Long and toilsome has been the march; hot, dusty, and parching the day. Halts have been few and far between, and every man, from the colonel down, is coated with a gray mask of powdered alkali, the contribution of a two hours' tramp through Deadman's Canon just before the sun went down. Now, however, they are climbing the ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... much as from nervousness. He had gone all day without water. And a collie, more perhaps than any other dog, needs plenty of fresh, cool water to drink; at any and all times. The hot wind and the smoke were parching his throat. His ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... sufferer. Etienne glared at him with lacklustre eyes, but knew him not, and continued his inarticulate ravings. His forgiving nurse moistened his lips from time to time with water, and by him was a decoction of cooling herbs, with which she assuaged his parching thirst. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... their parching thirst that induced the horses to remain anywhere near the camels, and immediately they got sufficient water, they de-camped, though short-hobbled, at a gallop over the high red sandhills from whence we had come; ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... who can avoid labour enjoy as much rest and shade as possible. There is a sense of heat and quiet all over nature. The birds are silent. The little brooks are dried up. The earth is chapped with parching. The shadows of the trees are particularly grateful, heavy, and still. The oaks, which are freshest because latest in leaf, form noble clumpy canopies; looking, as you lie under them, of a strong and emulous green against the blue sky. The traveller delights to cut across the country through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... feeling; not a state of the soul in which the characteristics are the sighs and starting tears of memory and apprehension. It is an everlasting spring, in which the mighty but temperate Sun of Salvation is shining, and will not set; not parching but quickening all day long. "We exult." It is a happy life, not only with the happiness of a cheerful contentment, beautiful as that is; ours is the happiness of wondering discovery, and rich possession, and ever-opening prospects; it is "quick and ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... a score of steps before he saw a star reflected in a spring at his feet. Timokles dropped upon his knees, and with thankfulness drank of the refreshing water. How he had longed for some, as he had lain on the roof under the parching sun this day! He bathed his scratched arm, which had ceased to bleed but ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... couple of hours, landed on the opposite bank, and paid a visit to their friends, the Bernards, who lived a mile or two below them. The air was delightful, the country looked beautiful—fresher, perhaps, than at midsummer; for the heat was no longer parching, and the September showers had washed away the dust, and brought out the green grass again. Harry had become interested in the conversation, and was particularly agreeable; Miss Agnes was pleased with his remarks, and Elinor ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes,—extremes by change more fierce; From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... for her. For her sake he aspired to make the best of himself; to make this hillside yield its purple banners from the secret storehouses within. So he had struggled with soil and season, with suns that scorched and winds that chilled, with parching days that opened the earth in great crevices, and with torrents that made the paths between the vines ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... not his only solace. For now, under the parching African sun, we catch glimpses, for the first time, of Gordon's hand stretching out towards stimulants of a more material quality. For months together, we are told, he would drink nothing but pure water; and then ... water that was not so pure. In his fits ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... them. The horses hung their tongues out of their mouths, and refused to face the torrents of sand. A sheep that accompanied the kafila, the last of their stock, lay down in the road, and they were obliged to kill him and throw the carcass on a camel; a parching thirst oppressed them, which nothing alleviated. They had made but little way by three o'clock in the afternoon, when the wind got round to the eastward, and imparted to them a little refreshment. With this change they moved on until about five, when they ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... followed, lured by love Of their shepherd's crook): He turned neither east nor west, Neither north nor south, But knelt right down to May, for love Of her sweet-singing mouth; Forgot his flocks, his panting flocks In parching hillside drouth; Forgot ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... circumstances attendant on a love of flowers—that sort of love which leads us into the woods for the earliest primrose, or to the river side for the latest forget-me-not, and carries us to the parching heath or the watery mere to procure for the cultivated, or, if I may use the expression, the tame beauties of the parterre, the soil that they love; amongst the many gratifications which such pursuits bring with them, such as seeing in the seasons in which it shows best, the ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... at the commencement of the rainy season is delightful. The doors are thrown open, and the dry, parching wind gives place to a refreshing coolness. When the rain ceases, the heat returns; the weather is very muggy, the skin is irritated by the excessive perspiration, and many suffer more than during the hot season. When the rain is abundant ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... sufficient dampness apparent on scraping the surface of the ground with his foot in passing, and a crop of beans was planted, grown and gathered therefrom, without as much rain as will usually fall in a shower of fifteen minutes' duration, while vegetation on the next field was parching for lack ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... with compassion and with fear, now gazed at her little hands, which became as white as paper, and bitterly reproached himself because, having lost so much time in the preparation and in drilling the negroes to shoot, he had exposed her to a journey in a season of the year so parching. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
