"Raven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon's dying light; As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream 15 Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there, And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair, That shook ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and by day that green which you perceive where the sea is a hundred fathoms deep. With the light upon her eye there was a glint of emerald, that witching glare which made Becky Sharpe irresistible. Now imagine an eyebrow, dark as the raven's quill, overarching such an eye, and contrasting itself with the burning gold of the hair, and a skin of Parian white and purity. Then contemplate a softness beside which the velvet upon the petal of a pansy would seem rigid; and this eye large ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... mountainous cliffs, built their nests; but wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... hamlet, there was a boy of this name, who tended sheep on the hill sides. His father was a hard working farmer, who every year tried to coax to grow out of the stony ground some oats, barley, leeks and cabbage. In summer, he worked hard, from the first croak of the raven to the last hoot of the owl, to provide food for his wife and baby daughter. When his boy was born, he took him to the church to be christened Gruffyd, but every body called him "Gruff." In time several little sisters came to ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... splendor-loving sisters. Long sprays of Scotch laburnum mingled their golden bells with the dark tresses of Eulalia and Rosen Blumen; a cluster of golden wheat mixed its shining threads with Flora's black curls; and a long, soft feather, like "the raven down of darkness," dusted with gold, drooped over the edge of Mrs. King's riding-cap, fastened to its band by a golden star. Even Mrs. Fitzgerald so far changed her livery of the moon as to wear golden buds mixed ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... your people and dominions; Cut the trees within the forest, Bend the lindens of the valley, Let our vessel sail in safety!" Then the reckless Lemminkainen, Handsome wizard, Kaukomieli, Spake these words in supplication: "Come, O eagle, Turyalander, Bring three feathers from thy pinions, Three, O raven, three, O eagle, To protect this bark from evil!" All the heroes of Wainola Call their forces to the rescue, And repair the sinking vessel. By the aid of master-magic, Wainamoinen saved his war-ship, Saved his people from destruction, Well repaired his ship to battle With the roughest ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... eyes and my skinniness. I can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I CANNOT imagine that red hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, 'Now my hair is a glorious black, black as the raven's wing.' But all the time I KNOW it is just plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow. I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn't red hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow. What is an alabaster brow? ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mistress, "Cataract of fluid Tallow," Countess of Darlington, whom I take to have been a Half-Sister rather, sat sorrowful at Isleworth; and kept for many years a Black Raven, which had come flying in upon her; which she somehow understood to be the soul, or connected with the soul, of his Majesty of happy memory. [Horace Walpole, Reminiscences.] Good Heavens, what fat ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not whether he who stilled the raven's hunger Should of me be praised as of the living or the dead, Since of a truth his men tell either tale (Bootless of himself to question) though wounded was ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... croaking raven," shouted the Broom-Squire. "If you think to mock me, you are wrong. I know well enough what I am about. As for that painting chap, he ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... an anti-scorbutic character, in order to preserve the officers and crew from the common Arctic maladies. The vessel was furnished with a heater, in order to preserve an even temperature, and also with a portable observatory called a "raven's nest," which they could hoist to the top of the highest mast, in those regions where they meet with floating ice, to signal the approach ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... OF HADDA PADDA (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... bright upon this beechen spray! Spring wakes thy harp! I hear—I see—again, Thy wild steeds foaming thro' the crimson fray, The raven on the white breast of thy slain, The tumult of thy chariots, far away, The weeping in the glens, the lustrous hair Dishevelled over the stricken eagle's fall, And in thy Druid groves, at fall of day ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... promised the Duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The Duchess, on his death, so much expected the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isteworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the royal bird or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... my wife, M'seur. Ah, ma belle Mariane—ma cheri—the daughter of an Indian princess and the granddaughter of a chef de bataillon, M'seur! Could there be better than that? And she is be-e-e-utiful, M'seur, with hair like the top side of a raven's wing with the sun shining on ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... attracted many to his retreat; appointed to an abbey, but left it; founded 12 monasteries of his own; though possessed of no scholarship, composed his "Regula Monachorum," which formed the rule of his order; represented in art as accompanied by a raven with sometimes a loaf in his bill, or surrounded by thorns or by howling demons (480-543). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... alone in the minister's pew, a strange gentleman was shown into it, whose appearance and demeanor strongly arrested her attention. The slenderness of his frame, the pale yellow of his complexion, and the raven blackness of his hair, seemed only to bring out into grander relief his ample forehead, and to heighten the effect of his deep-set, brilliant eyes. At this period of his life there was an air of delicacy and refinement about his face, joined to a ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the wonder of this raven-haired woman whom, knowing her for half a century as he had, he had just known so little ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... crawl, Enlivened like the bird in his poor cage. Close by the door, no further, in his chair The old man sits; and sitteth there His soul within him, like a child that lies Half dreaming, with his half-shut eyes, At close of a long afternoon in summer; High ruins round him, ancient ruins, where The raven is almost the only comer; And there he broods in wonderment On the celestial glory sent Through the rough loopholes, on the golden bloom That waves above the cornice on the wall, Where lately dwelt the echoes of the room; ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... describes the event:—"Suspectful of a butcher who had been heard to threaten, I had the body opened. There were no traces of poison, and it appeared he died of influenza. He has left considerable property, chiefly in cheese and halfpence, buried in different parts of the garden. The new raven (I have a new one, but he is comparatively of weak intellect) administered to his effects, and turns up something every day. The last piece of bijouterie was a hammer of considerable size, supposed to have been stolen from a vindictive carpenter, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... tore up the fifty-thousand-dollar check he had just written. "Joe, if your boy is such easy game for a pair of old duffers like us, just think what soft picking he must have been for that nimble-footed lady with the raven hair, the pearly teeth and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... fair complexions. I have seen, nevertheless, some families of sandy hair and fair skins; but, certainly, the barbarossa ("red beard,") or flaxen locks, are not esteemed. These children of the sun prefer the raven-black beard, the tanned skin, and the gazelle eye. The united population amounts to about 3,000, but there are many Ghadamsee families established in Soudan and Timbuctoo. I may add, six languages are spoken daily in Ghadames, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... trap for him and his; and even where, here and there, he passed the mouth of a lagoon, there was no opening, no relief—nothing but the dark ring of mangroves. Wailing sadly, sad-colored mangrove-hens ran off across the mud into the dreary dark. The hoarse night-raven, hid among the roots, startled the voyagers with a sudden shout, and then all was again silent as a grave. The loathy alligators lounging in the slime lifted their horny eyelids lazily, and leered upon him as he passed with stupid savageness. Lines of tall herons stood ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... had not feare of that presumptuous might, With which the giaunts did the gods assay: But all so soone as scortching sunne had brent* His wings which wont the earth to overspredd, The earth out of her massie wombe forth sent That antique horror which made heaven adredd. Then was the Germane raven in disguise That Romane eagle seene to cleave asunder, And towards heaven freshly to arise Out of these mountaines, now consum'd to pouder. In which the foule that serves to beare the lightning Is now no more seen flying ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... sepulchres, greatly more wonderful than those of Thebes or Petraea, and mayhap a thousand times more ancient. There is no lack of life along the shores of the solitary little bay. The shriek of the sparrow-hawk mingles from the cliffs with the hoarse deep croak of the raven; the cormorant on some wave-encircled ledge, hangs out his dark wing to the breeze; the spotted diver, plying his vocation on the shallows beyond, dives and then appears, and dives and appears again, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... aspect and form of the men when seen are these," said the hunter: "they have the colour of the raven on their hair, their skin like swan on the wave in whiteness, and their cheeks as the blood of the brindled red calf, and their speed and their leap are those of the salmon of the torrent and the deer of the grey mountain side. And Naois is head and shoulders ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... out for the blood of the emperor; but at Appomattox, veneration and love only met the eyes of the troops who looked upon their commander. I will not trespass upon your time much farther. When I last saw him the raven hair had turned white. In a small village church his reverent head was bowed in prayer. The humblest step was that of Robert E. Lee, as he entered the portals of the temple erected to God. In broken responses he answered to the services ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... their steps to the forest depths, where the Tinker was to live henceforth. For many a day he sang ballads to the band, until the famous Allan a Dale joined them, before whose sweet voice all others seemed as harsh as a raven's; but of him we ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... height, And garbed in all the elegance of fashion. His large black eyes were full of fire and passion, And in expression fearless, firm, and bright. His hair was like the very deeps of night, And hung in raven clusters 'round a face Of dark and flashing beauty. He was more Like some romantic maiden's grand ideal Than like a common being. As I gazed Upon the handsome face to mine upraised, I saw before me, living, breathing, real, The hero of my early day-dreams: ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of their sorciers and sorciares victches that they have their assembles and dances wt the Dewill, especially the evening of Marde gras. They look on the corbique or raven as a bad prognostick of death; the pie tells that some strangers's ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... now Progressive storms prevail Election blizzards chill; The Primroses seem sparse and pale In valley and on hill. Yon cloud looks black as raven's wing! Things did not menace so. In the days when we went Primrosing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... of the wind and the sleet, (Flotsam and jetsam from over the sea. The dead—do they walk again?) Wilder the roar of the surf that beat; Whose was the form that it bore to her feet Swayed with the swell of the unquiet sea, While the raven croaked in the rowan tree. (Hark to the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... of the grave That now o'er care-worn temples wave, Oh! what change hath pass'd since ye O'er youthful brows fell carelessly! In silken curls of ebon hue That with such wild luxuriance grew, The raven's dark and glossy wing A richer shadow scarce could fling. The brow that tells a tale of Care That Sorrow's pen hath written there, In characters too deeply traced Ever on earth to be effaced, Was then ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... auburn like her parent's, was as black as the raven's wing. It hung in luxuriant wavy masses below her waist, being gathered by a white clasp of burnished silver at the back of the neck, without which it would have enveloped all the upper part of her body ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... Time's transforming chisel Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well, In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle - Pits, ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... pesky part on 't: there's such a lot to choose from; I don't know much about any of 'em," began Uncle Enos, looking like a perplexed raven with a treasure which it ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and bloody ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... mounted upon a sturdy horse, but so changed that he hardly knew him, for he was wearing a Danish helmet ornamented with a pair of grey gull's wings, half-opened and pointed back, while in his left hand he carried a Danish shield painted with a black raven, and in his right ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... his mask, and bareheaded: but every eye glanced away from the helmets and barettes, waving with plumes, and sparkling with jewels, to gaze on Flodoardo's raven locks, as they floated on the air in wild luxuriance. A murmur of admiration rose from every corner of the saloon, but it rose unmarked by those who were the objects of it. Neither Rosabella nor Flodoardo ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... thin. His hair, formerly black as a raven's wing, was turning gray. He repeated his accusation in ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... walked in my garden to-day, I saw a family sweet. Many wee faces looked up, From their cool and shady retreat. Some had blue eyes and golden curls, Some dark eyes and raven locks, Some were dressed in velvets so rare, And some wore quaint, gay frocks. I asked these babies so dear, To come and live ever with me! Then laughing so gaily they said; "We ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... like a beautiful Italian child, whose proper place was among fountains and statues and pictured forms of art. The skill of no Parisian coiffeur could produce a result so pleasing as the profusion of raven hair, that would roll itself into ringlets. Octoroons! He repeated the word to himself, but it did not disenchant him. It was merely something foreign and new to his experience, like Spanish or Italian beauty. Yet he ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... Challenge" illustrated one sentimental motto throughout the three days' tourney. The first day they were apparelled in purple satin, "broched" with gold, and covered with black-ravens' feathers, buckled into a circle. The first syllable of "corbyn" (a raven) is cor, a "hart" (heart). A feather in French is pennac. "And so it stode." The feather in a circle was endless, and "betokened sothe fastnesse." Then was the device ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... boyish face with its coat of tan,—its broad, whimsical mouth and the white, even teeth that once on a dare had cracked a walnut for her; its rugged jaw and the long, straight nose; its wide forehead and the straight eyebrows; and the thick hair as black as the raven's wing, rumpled by fingers that strove desperately to encourage a recalcitrant brain; and those big, bony hands, so large that her little brown paws were lost in them; and the broad shoulders hunched over the table, supported by widespread elbows that encroached ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... travelling through Mecklenburg was witness to the following curious circumstance in an inn at which he was staying. After dinner, the landlord placed on the floor a large dish of soup, and gave a loud whistle. Immediately there came into the room a mastiff, a fine Angora cat, an old raven, and a remarkably large rat with a bell about its neck. These four animals went to the dish, and without disturbing each other, fed together; after which the dog, cat, and rat lay before the fire, while the raven ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... he cried. "Who sent thee here to me, with thy scarf of gold and pearl, thy raven locks and thy dewy lips, with bells upon thine ankles, and a tambour in thy hand? See, our lord cometh! Let us dance for him that perhaps we may find favor in ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... apostleship. Though ragged and dirty, there was about him no touch of vulgarity; for, by nature, his manner was not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared the more so from the broad, untanned frontlet of his brow, tangled over with a disheveled mass of raven curls, throwing a still deeper tinge upon a complexion like that of a shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed his look of picturesque Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by what seemed just one glimmering peep of reason, insufficient to do him any lasting good, but enough, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... one ray the less, Had half impair'd the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... of New York." Then there was the house in Waverly Place, the home of Anne Lynch, the poet of "The Battle of Life," which was a kind of literary salon of its day, where Poe once read aloud the newly published "Raven," and where Bayard Taylor visited, and Taylor's friend Caroline Kirkland, and Margaret Fuller, and Lydia Child, and Ann S. Stephens, who wrote "Fashion and Famine" and "Mary Derwent," and young Richard Henry Stoddard, and Elizabeth Barstow, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... is how it was. You know the waterfall at the head of Raven's Nook? Well, I have long wanted to take that, so I went up with father and Mr Mabberly. We found the captain and McGregor sitting there smoking their pipes, and when I was arranging the camera, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... death." "If so," exclaimed the affrighted sultan, "there is no refuge or help but from the omnipotent Allah: well has the proverb remarked, that the nestling would not be restrained from the air, when suddenly the raven pounced upon it and bore it away. Heaven guard my son from the consequences of his imprudence." Having said thus, the sultan commanded preparations for the requisites of travel, and ordered a force to accompany the headstrong prince; who, having taken leave of his afflicted parents, began ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... to the wind, while she stood erect looking at something that had been pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in the air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was burning, in whose dark eye a veiled lustre was shining, around whose creamy brow the raven hair escaped in countless tendril-like ringlets, and whose smile, as she seemed to speak to some one while she stood in the low sunset light, had a radiance of its own. As Lilian looked upon this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... consequently, is soon adorned with a rich growth of beard. The ancient Greeks thought that to eat the flesh of the wakeful nightingale would prevent a man from sleeping; that to smear the eyes of a blear-sighted person with the gall of an eagle would give him the eagle's vision; and that a raven's eggs would restore the blackness of the raven to silvery hair. Only the person who adopted this last mode of concealing the ravages of time had to be most careful to keep his mouth full of oil all the time he applied ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... tour. I could not resist the impulse of writing to you from this place. The situation of the old castle corresponds exactly to Shakspeare's description. While we were there to-day, it happened oddly, that a raven perched upon one of the chimney-tops, and croaked. Then I in ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... unrecognizable in her a few short weeks ago. There was a melting lustre in her dark eyes, a gentleness in the smiling corners of her irresistible mouth. Her cheeks, even, seemed to have gained an added softness of contour. While the masses of dark hair revealed beneath her hat shone with the burnish of the raven's wing. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... Louise. A Georgian by birth, her beauty and ingenuousness had won her great popularity at the court of St. Petersburg, to which she had been introduced by the Governor of Tiflis. She was neither tall nor short, possessed a wealth of raven black hair, perfect teeth, lustrous black eyes, a smile that would inspire poets and a voice that was all music and melody. When Count Drentell carried her off in the face of a hundred admirers, he was considered lucky indeed. Dimitri never confessed, even to himself, that he regretted ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... modish raven, "'twill be the quality that will suffer. The lower 'classis' has paid its penalty, and only the strong and hardy are left. We. have plenty of weaklings and corrupt constitutions that will take fire at a spark. I should not wonder were the contagion to rage worst at Whitehall. The buildings ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... like each other immensely, and therefore are happy. Ah me! I feel I could have liked Aniela, and we might have been as happy! Better not think about it. As to Laura, she will meet many who may fall in love with her raven hair and statuesque beauty, but she will never inspire real liking. This singular woman attracts irresistibly, and at the same time repulses. I have said that beyond beauty there is nothing else; for even her uncommon intelligence ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and Josie felt a keen interest in all three. The woman was young—under thirty. She was handsome, with raven black hair and well-cut features. Her face was pale and her eyes gloomy. She carried herself with a slow, lazy grace. The good lines of her tall figure asserted themselves in spite of the cheap, ill-fitting serge suit. ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... one day, and sat on the organ enjoying the music; for every one was singing, and I joined in, though I didn't know the air. Opposite me were two great tablets with golden letters on them. I can read a little, thanks to my friend, the learned raven; and so I spelt out some of the words. One was, 'Love thy neighbor;' and as I sat there, looking down on the people, I wondered how they could see those words week after week, and yet pay so little heed to them. Goodness knows, I don't consider myself a perfect ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... husband sat silent and moody beside her. A pang went through his heart as he gazed upon her bright countenance, and remembered her youth, whose sunshine was extinguished by her marriage with him. He looked at the smooth, full cheek of her companion, the purple gloss of his raven locks, the fire of his eye, and listening to his gay tones, his brilliant repartees, and enthusiastic expressions, pictured him with a shudder the husband of Pauline. What would have been her life compared to the one ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... quoth an old raven, who sat on the fence-rail, and was condescending enough to acknowledge that we are all like little birds in the sight of Heaven, and therefore was not above speaking to the sparrows, and giving them information. "I know who the old man is. It is Winter, the old man of last year. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... have England, and England shall be mine. The Saxons are scattered and at rest, not dreaming of battle and blood. Now is our time. A hard and sudden blow will end the war, and the fair isle of England will be the Raven's spoil." ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... The Raven's croak, the chirping of the Sparrow, The scream of Jays, the creaking of Wheelbarrow, And hoot of Owls,—all join the soul to harrow, And grate the ear. We listen to thy quaint soliloquizing, As if all creatures thou wert catechizing, Tuning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... near that in a couple of springs he would be over the frontier. The youth now began to consider how he should act, for if he had to push the iron horse from behind he could not ride upon it as the sorcerer had said he must. But a raven unexpectedly gave him this advice: 'Ride upon the horse, and push the spear against the ground, as if you were pushing off a boat from the land.' The youth did so, and found that in this way he could easily move forwards. The Dragon had ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... to horse! Sir Nicholas, the clarion's note is high! To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas, the big drum makes reply! Ere this hath Lucas marched, with his gallant cavaliers, And the bray of Rupert's trumpets grows fainter in our ears. To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas! White Guy is at the door, And the raven whets his beak o'er the field of ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... no doubt writing to that beautiful barmaid at the hotel of the Black Raven at Amsterdam, who declined the attentions of the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... "Helen, thy beauty is to me," in "The Haunted Palace," "The Valley of Unrest," and "The City in the Sea." But by some Nemesis which might, perhaps, have been foreseen, you are, to the world, the poet of one poem—"The Raven:" a piece in which the music is highly artificial, and the "exaltation" (what there is of it) by no means particularly "vague." So a portion of the public know little of Shelley but the "Skylark," and those two incongruous birds, the lark and the raven, bear each of them a poet's name, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... decoration by Mr. Sumner. Next comes "Sintram" (1883), a notable edition of De la Motte Fouque's romance, followed by "Undine" (in 1885). With a book on the "Parables," by A.L.O.E., published about 1884; "The Besom Maker" (1880), a volume of country ditties with the old music, and "Jacob and the Raven," with thirty-nine illustrations (Allen, 1896), the best example of his later manner, and a book which all admirers of the more severe order of "decorative illustration" will do well to preserve, the list is complete. Whether ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... river. There were wanting many fragments, Half the head, a hand, a fore-arm, Many other smaller portions, Life, above all else, was missing. Then the mother, well reflecting, Spake these words in bitter weeping: "From these fragments, with my magic, I will bring to life my hero." Hearing this, the raven answered, Spake these measures to the mother: "There is not in these a hero, Thou canst not revive these fragments; Eels have fed upon his body, On his eyes have fed the whiting; Cast the dead upon the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... words o' comfort, air they?" cried Wingrove, exasperated to a pitch of fury. "Durned if I'll bar sech talk! I won't stan' it any longer. Clar out now! We want no croakin' raven hyar. Clar out! or—" ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... flourish of trumpets heralded the advance; no gaudy costumes clothed the attending Knights. The bugles were hushed, save where necessary to convey an order; the banners were bound in sable; upon every man was the badge of mourning; Richard himself was clad in black, and the trappings of his horse were raven-hued. Not since the great Henry died at Vincennes, sixty and more years before, had England mourned for a King; and as they passed along the highway and through the straggling villages, the people wondered at the soberly garbed and quiet column, forgetting, for ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... Equidistant from the end of Main street and from each other, stood, in these cradle days, the two hotels of which the Capital could boast. Montgomery Hall, of bitter memory—like the much-sung "Raven of Zurich," for uncleanliness of nest and length of bill—had been the resort of country merchants, horse and cattle-men; but now the Solon of the hour dwelt therein, with the possible hero of many a field. The Exchange—of rather more pretensions and vastly more comfort—was at ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Autumn's sober light, A grave of full dimensions; 'twas for one Whose hair had changed its raven hue to white, Whose course had finished with the setting sun; I wondered, as I toiled with pick and spade, Where, and by whom, would ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the barn-owl has all but disappeared from some districts, and the wood-owl is local. The raven is extinct—quite put out. The birds are said to exist near the sea-coast; but it is certain that any one may walk over inland country for years without seeing one. These, being all more or less birds of prey, could not but ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... hearts' content. Presently we saw a moderately-sized bird, like a plover, darting here and there, and uttering a peculiar sound. "Tine—tine—tine," cried Leo; "what is that you say?" Presently a white-necked raven, which was sitting on a stump some way down, flew off, shrieking with fear, as ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... descended to the palace court. On the stairs they saw a magpie and a raven. The raven cried; "Fight it out, fight it out!" the magpie, "Do not fight!" This made the Prince laugh. The rivals scarcely noticed ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... raven's croak, the low wind choked and drear, The baffled stream, the grey wolf's doleful cry, Were all the sounds that mariner could hear, As through the wood he wandered painfully; But as unto the house he drew anigh, The pillars of a ruined ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... is a struggle of wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered a comedy, for, although the plot ends in the discomfiture and imprisonment of the most vicious, it involves no mortal catastrophe. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... 1837, Poe left the Messenger and went north, after which most of his work was done in New York and Philadelphia. "The Fall of the House of Usher" was written when he lived on Sixth Avenue, near Waverley Place, and "The Raven" perched above his chamber door in a house on the Bloomingdale Road, ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... foster-sister named Ada, who was also very beautiful. She was unusually dark for a Norse maiden. Her akin indeed was fair, but her hair and eyes were black like the raven's wing. Her father ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... This Storri did not belong to the Russian legation, did not indeed reside in town, and had been vouched into the club by one of his countrymen. He had onyx eyes, with blue-black beard and mustaches which half covered his face, and hair as raven as his beard. Also he valued himself for that a favorite dish with him was raw meat chopped fine with peppers ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... oily peaked cap until the straight raven hair flowed out from under like a cataract, and gave his thin, waterfall moustache a twist, while his swarthy, parchment face cracked ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... pipe from his mouth on seeing the coach, stood up, and cut some solemn capers high on his beam, and shook a new rope in the air, crying with a voice high and distant as the caw of a raven hovering over a gibbet, "A ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... nights, they were gloomy days; but the raven sat on the bough and croaked nevertheless: "brah, brah!" The raven and the crow sat on the topmost bough: they have a large family, and they all said: "brah, brah! caw, caw!" and the majority ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... refused the opportunity to have his lawn treated with the Metamorphizer. He had left an incoherent suicidenote: "Pigeons in the grass alas. Too many pigeons, too much grass. Pigeons are doves, but Noah expressed a raven. Contradiction lies. Roses are red, violets are blue. The grass is green and I am thru. Too too too. Darling kiddies." He then, in full view of the helpless weedfighters, marched on into the grass and was ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... its drama can be pretty clearly understood from what remains. It is a poem with nothing superfluous in it. The death of Sigurd does not seem to have been given in any detail, except for the commentary spoken by the eagle and the raven, prophetic of the doom of the Niblungs. The mystery of Brynhild's character is curiously recognised by a sort of informal chorus. It is said that "they were stricken silent as she spoke, and none could understand her bearing, that she should weep to speak of ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... were the only ones who ventured to protect me when all London was crying out against me on the separation, and they behaved courageously and kindly ... Poor dear Lady [Jersey]! Does she still retain her beautiful cream-coloured complexion and raven hair? I used to long to tell her that she spoiled her looks by her excessive animation; for eyes, tongue, head, and arms were all in movement at once, and were only relieved from their active service by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... had she uttered the words, than the child was indeed changed into a raven, and fluttered from her arms out of the window. And she flew into a dark wood and stayed there a long time, and her parents knew nothing of her. Once a man was passing through the wood, and he heard the raven cry, and ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... list of signs obtained from O-QO-HIS'-SA (the Mare, better known as Little Raven) and NA'-WATC (Left Hand), members of a delegation of Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians, from Darlington, Ind. T., who visited Washington during the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... twenty-five inches it would have been inaudible, begged to know to which department he could have the pleasure of directing them. He was a very good-looking, or perhaps it would be more correct to say a very beautiful young man, with raven-black hair, glossy and curled, and parted down the middle of his shapely head, and a beautiful small moustache to match. His eyes were also dark and fine, and all his features regular. His figure was as perfect as his face; many a wealthy man, made ugly by that mocker Nature, would ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... fallen; all was still. He could hear the rustle of the tide, and the chuckle of jackdaws. Overhead a raven flapped by with ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... doth come; Nor heeds the whitened flowing mane, but flies, While clouds of dust him follow, and arise Behind him o'er the road like black storm clouds, While Zu[5] the storm-bird onward fiercely goads The seven[6] raven spirits of the air, And Nus-ku[7] opens wide the fiery glare Of pent-up lightnings for fierce Gibil's[8] hand, Who hurls them forth at Nergal's[9] stern command, And Rimmon[10] rides triumphant on the air, And Ninazu[11] for victims ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... protection to the heaven of Anu. Six days the storm lasts. On the seventh conies calm. Hasisadra opens a window and sees the mountain of Nizir, sends forth a dove, which returns; then a swallow, which returns; then a raven, which does not return; then, knowing that the flood has passed, sends out the animals, builds an altar, and offers sacrifice, over which the gods gather like flies. Ea remonstrates with Bel, and urges that hereafter, when he is angry with men, instead ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... name of Tom Rowley (after one of the officers of the regiment). He had accompanied Mr. Raven, in the Britannia, to Bengal, in the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... of some sort of Genius in all things; they all believe there is a Master of Life, as they call him, but hereof they make various applications; some of them have a lean Raven, which they carry always along with them, and which they say is the Master of their Life; others have an Owl, and some again a Bone, a Sea-Shell, or ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... Homer's Arete: Ariel and Caliban are respectively the spirits of faithful and imaginative labour, opposed to rebellious, hurtful and slavish labour. Prospero ("for hope"), a true governor, is opposed to Sycorax, the mother of slavery, her name "Swine-raven," indicating at once brutality and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the mountain path we'll go, And leave the Raven Rocks below, And creep inside the caves of snow, To hear their ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... entertwined the pearls amid the wealth of her raven hair, and clasped them upon her beautifully ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... their secret homage pay, And proffer up to Heaven the warm request That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest, And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride, Would, in the way his wisdom sees the best, For them, and for their little ones provide; But chiefly, in their hearts with grace ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... a hawk had crossed her vision, so now a raven sailed by, black as coal, uttering ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... confusion waits; As doth the raven on a sick-fall'n beast, The imminent decay of wrested pomp. Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can Hold out ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... are you soundly sleeping, and there is your parrot conceitedly thinking he can do the work of his lazy little mistress, and in another minute it will be all destroyed. Wake up, little sleeper, wake up, and collect those long curls floating like a raven curtain about you. Think what Madame will say if she catches but a glimpse of you. A little apart from all stands one tall figure, taller than all the rest, her dark hair folded back from her forehead, her dark eyes watching each beloved group, while she spins ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonny brow was brent. 1109 BURNS: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... influence known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone. I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funereal song! She tells of time misspent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone forever by; Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed, Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die; For what, except the instinctive fear Lest she survive, detains me here, When all the 'Life of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... which causes invisibility is found in Grimm's tale of the raven. See Grimm's Fairy Tales, Columbus Series, p. 30. In a Pampanga tale the possessor of a magic stone becomes invisible when squeezes it. See Bayliss, (Jour. Am. Folk-Lore, Vol. XXI, ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... struck two, Kalli entered the College-gates. With hair black as the raven's wing, and eyes sparkling with good-humour, he made his appearance; and soon showed a desire to do the honours of the College. His dress was neat, like that of a young English gentleman, and he had a gaiety of look and manner, but far removed from foppery of apparel or demeanour. ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... height, with a small head of almost perfect contour, a symmetrical face, dark almost to swarthiness, black eyes, which moved somewhat restlessly, curly hair of raven tint, a slight mustache, small hands and feet, and fashionable attire, Tom Delamere, the grandson of the old gentleman who had already arrived, was easily the handsomest young man in Wellington. But no discriminating observer would have characterized his beauty as manly. It conveyed no impression ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Besides, a Raven from a wither'd oak, Left of their lodging, was observed to croak. That omen liked him not; so his advice Was present safety, bought at any price; A seeming pious care, that cover'd cowardice. To strengthen ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... addition to its use as a dining-room, the Hall also served as a lecture-room, and for the production of stage plays. On these latter occasions it seems to have been specially decorated, for Roger Ascham, writing 1st October 1550, from Antwerp, to his brother Fellow, Edward Raven, tried to picture to him the magnificence of the city by saying that it surpassed all others which he had visited, as much as the Hall at St. John's, when decorated for a play at Christmas, surpassed ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... to each of the following nouns: age, error, idea, omen, urn, arch, bird, cage, dream, empire, farm, grain, horse, idol, jay, king, lady, man, novice, opinion, pony, quail, raven, sample, trade, uncle, vessel, window, youth, zone, whirlwind, union, onion, unit, eagle, house, honour, hour, herald, habitation, hospital, harper, harpoon, ewer, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... or eighteen species, among which is the Raven, which here takes the place of the Crow, the two species not being able to live together, as the stronger robber drives away the weaker. Of the insectivorous birds, some sixty or seventy species are found here, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... felt that if she wanted to make a raven of herself for life, she no need to dye the feathers of the hull family in logwood, and tie 'em all up clost to ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... hand hath put on nature's power, Fairing the soul with art's false borrow'd face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Slandering creation with a false esteem: Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe That every tongue ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Anlaf the Dane. It tells how five young kings and seven earls of Anlaf's host fell on the field of battle, and lay there "quieted by swords," while their fellow-Northmen fled, and left their friends and comrades to "the screamers of war— the black raven, the eagle, the greedy battle-hawk, and the grey wolf in the wood." The Song of the Fight at Maldon tells us of the heroic deeds and death of Byrhtnoth, an ealdorman of Northumbria, in battle against the Danes at Maldon, in Essex. The speeches of the chiefs are ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... said Miss Laura, "animals are often spoken of. The dove and the raven, the wolf and the lamb, and the leopard, and the cattle that God says are his, and the little sparrow that can't fall to the ground without ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders |
