"Shimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my eyes to the room again. Now the blind was up, faint spectres of its furnishing came out of the darkness. There was a huge curtained bed, and the fireplace at its foot had a large white mantel with something of the shimmer of marble. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... friends. She knew that people were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white between two parts of the advertisement showed the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... my excuse: "Even bubbles have their use. They are perfect while they live, And their short career may give, As they shimmer, and are flown, Some suggestion ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... mischance on the way was that in the noontide halt, just as the shimmer of the Lake of Galilee met their eyes, under a huge terebinth-tree, growing on a rock, when all, except Sigbert, had composed themselves to a siesta, there was a sudden sound of loud and angry altercation, and, as the sleepers started up, the Emir was seen grasping the bridle of the horse on which ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eyes are brighter than the gems piled round gilded seat; Thy cheeks are softer than the silks that shimmer at my feet, And purer heart than thine in woman's ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... the midst of which her nimble voice tripped on an E flat, and, missing the staccato step, rolled helplessly down in a legato flood of melody; whereupon, with an impatient grimace she shut her eyes, weary of watching the wave-shimmer that almost dazzled her. After a few seconds, when she opened them, there stood just on the edge of the cliff, as if poised in air, a woman whose face and form were as sharply cut in profile on the azure sea and sky as white cameo features on black ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... vitality with which Nature seems deliberately to equip her more favoured female children at this age, as if to challenge the other sex to a definite attitude immediately. A quivering freshness—the "bloom" of the poets—gave a soft shimmer to her skin of which the powder of later years is such a palpably poor travesty; her limbs were nicely rounded and not too fragile; her teeth, like Cleopatra's, were perfect, and although she was a trifle smaller than her sister, she was broad ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... floor, at the turn of the corridor, a small vestibule between two glass doors led to a room flooded with a blond light from the south. Beyond the glass doors, their figures softened by the deep, doubled shimmer of the panes, they saw the little man in shabby tweeds, the two women, and the seven other men. This, Madame explained, was Dr. Donald McClane's Field Ambulance Corps. You could see it had thought it was the only one. As they entered they met the swoop of two beautiful, indignant eyes, ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... was gay! the wilderness was floral, The sea a bath of wine to the laughing swimmer; Dawn was a flaming fan; dusk was a glimmer Like undersea where sly dreams haunt the coral. The garden sang of fame when the golden shimmer Of sun glowed on the proud leaves of the laurel,— But time and love fought out their ancient quarrel; The songs are fainter now; ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... leaves cast a shimmer of green, Against our whited walls, And in the phlox, the courteous bees, Are paying ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... visioned future which glows before the sight of happy youth, and then vanished. The gold rim vanished also; still there appeared to be no disposition among the party to leave the scene. Twilight began to shimmer, and now the stars trembled forth from the dusky sky. At last night settled on the landscape, and the girls expressed a wish to see the hollow lighted up with torchlight. Scattering ourselves amongst the trees of the bank, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... this wandering patchwork of squares was earth, brown and gray, curried and disked, and rolled and combed and harrowed, with not a tiny leaf of green in all the miles. The other half had only a faint golden promise of mellow harvest; and at long distance it seemed to shimmer and retreat under the hot sun. A singularly beautiful effect of harmony lay in the long, slowly rising slopes, in the rounded hills, in the endless curving lines on all sides. The scene was heroic because of the labor of horny hands; it ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... and fantastic rock piles of twisted and pictured desert stone. In the other direction an irregular streak of light green trailed along, marking the winding of the river bound by twisted cottonwoods and vivid patches of corn fields. Through the shimmer of the heat far off, fifty miles distant, were flung up against a turquoise sky the peaks of the San Francisco mountains, across the front of which a trailing cloud had begun to form. On a slightly rising ledge of rock stood the mission ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... tagging around after you, suggesting by their mere presence that, unless you're watched, you'll do something desperate in the wild desire to break the monotony. Well, I drank deep of that life," Constance looked dreamily over the stretch of meadow and pine-edged woods, all dazzling with a shimmer of icy snow, "before ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... der Weyden of Brabant—river valleys surrounded by jagged rocks and mountains, isolated trees, and meadows bright with sappy green—is clearly the result of direct Nature study; it has a uniform transparent atmosphere, and a clear green shimmer lies over the foreground and gradually passes into blue ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... terraces of the amir, all glowing in the sunlight, with all its countless houses and cavern-openings and arching trees and pointing pyramids. Above was the canopy of heaven, no longer black, no longer studded with stars or glistening with the fitful shimmer of the aurora, but all radiant with the glorious sunlight, and disclosing all the splendors of the infinite blue. At that sight a thrill of joy passed through me. The long, long night at last was over; the darkness had passed ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... I battled round a point, I heard a rustle and a rush of something coming, and the bowsprit of a large sloop glided into view close by me. She was painted in stripes of all colors above her green bottom. The shimmer of the water shook the reflection of her hull, and made the edges of the stripes blend together. It was as if a rainbow had suddenly flung itself down ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... There is many a thing we could do better without than the hope of it, for our hopes ever point beyond the thing hoped for. The bow is the damask flower on the woven tear-drops of the world; hope is the shimmer on the dingy warp of trouble shot with the golden woof of God's intent. Nothing almost sees ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... animals, he noted a flickering tremor against the vast wall which formed the other side of the canyon. A faint, fleecy veil of moonlight having been lifted over the mountain crests, was now flung downward and caught against and suspended upon the projecting rocks and crags. It was but a frosty shimmer, but the veil dangled lower and lower, pendant here and there until the fringe rested on ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... cloud, and the other half sending forth spokes of flaming light which threw the old trees into striking relief as they stood there with their dense crowns of green showing against a blue patch of sky. The light and shimmer of that patch contrasted sharply with the heavy pink cloud which lay massed above a young birch-tree visible on the horizon before us, while, a little further to the right, the parti-coloured roofs of ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... into her lap and tilted her head back, looking at the blank white shimmer of the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and sat up with Jacky Hart that night, getting to the Cove at dark, when the sea was a shimmer of fairy tints and the boats were coming in from the fishing grounds. Jacky greeted her with a wonderful smile, and later on she found herself watching alone by his bed. The tiny lamp on the table burned dim, and outside, on the rocks, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in Farnham's house; they seemed to her a concrete idea of luxury. Her mind was crowded and warmed with every detail of her visit: the dim, wide hall; the white cravat of Budsey; the glimpse she caught of the dining-room through the open door; the shimmer of cut glass and porcelain; the rich softness of the carpets and rugs, the firelight dancing on the polished brass, the tender glow of light and repose of shadow on the painted walls and ceilings; the walk in the trim garden, amid the light and fragrance of the spring; the hot air of the ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... woman with a body generous as that of a chiefess and more wonderful, as she came upon us, across the wet sand, in the shimmer of the moonlight. Even the haole sailormen made pause of silence, and with open mouths stared upon her. Her walk! I have heard you talk, O Kanaka Oolea, of the woman Helen who caused the war of Troy. I say of ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the wonderful Yo Semite Valley,—itself a stupendous miracle of nature, with its Dome, its Capitan, its walls of three thousand feet of perpendicular height,—but a valley of streams, of waterfalls from the torrent to the mere shimmer of a bridal veil, only enough to reflect a rainbow, with their plunges of twenty-five hundred feet, or their smaller falls of eight hundred, with nothing at the base but thick mists, which form and trickle, and then run and at last plunge into the blue Merced ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... came the answer from 'Volaterrae.' They could see the shimmer of bronze armour in the beech crotch, and the friendly flash of ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... crystal throughout, freshly broken from the fountain or recently exposed to the air by turning over. But in all of them, old and new, there are azure caves and rifts of ineffable beauty, in which the purest tones of light pulse and shimmer, lovely and untainted as anything on ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... a good cigar. The pleasantness of the wide, cool piazza, with its flowers and vines and gay awnings; the charm of the summer morning, not yet dulled by wear and tear of the day; the steady, deliberate dash of the waves on the beach below; the play and shimmer of the big, quiet water, stretching out to the edge of the world; all this filled their minds, rested their souls. There was no need for words. The Bishop sighed comfortably as he pushed his great shoulders back against the cool wicker of the chair and swung one long leg across the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... on my knees, with feeble, fumbling hand. Look! in yon mountain cleft a radiance shines, Gleam of a primrose — see it thrill, expand, Grow glorious. Dear God be praised! it streams Into the cabin in a gush of gold. Look! there she stands, the angel of my dreams, All in the radiant shimmer aureoled; First as I saw her from my bed of pain; First as I loved her when the darkness passed. Now do I know that Life is not in vain; Now do I know God cares, at last, at last! Light outlives dark, joy grief, and ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth—that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... with Emmy Lou. It had certain treasures between its leaves. One expects to find faint sweet rose-leaves between the pages of the Green and Gold Book, and the scrap of tinsel recalls the gleam and shimmer of the goose girl's ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... with distorted joints, protruded painfully from her sleeves. All about her was the ever recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no favor,—the bees and flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and the kingbird in the poplars, the smell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer of corn-blades tossed gayly as banners in ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... turned, what he saw was the gun cabinet with a shimmer of light on the barrels. Then he knew. He selected his favorite Colt and drew it out. It was loaded, and the action in perfect condition. Many and many an hour he had practiced and blazed away hundreds of rounds of ammunition with it. It responded to his touch like ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Parker Mountain novel and bewitching. The North and South Mountains, Round Top, the jagged peaks bounding the Plattekill Clove, the narrow cleft of the Stony Clove, and the terraced slope of Clum's Hill swept across the horizon bathed in a soft September shimmer. A few birds were still piping, golden rods and purple asters lighted up the wayside, and luscious blackberries, large as Lawtons, hung in great clusters, from which no mortal hand had as yet plucked a single ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... blunder. And the girl's environment was wrong for him also. What had he to do with Chelsea? Chelsea was a parish; it was not the world. He had been gravely disappointed in Chelsea. Marguerite had no shimmer of romance. She was homely. And she was content with her sphere. And she was not elegant; she had no kind of smartness; who would look twice at her? And she was unjust, she was unfair. She had lacerated his highly sensitive pride. She had dealt his ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... lose their lustre, as many words lose it, by hackneyed use and common handling; the process is exactly opposite; by not being used enough, the phosphorescence of decay seems to attack them, and give them a kind of shimmer which makes them seem too fine for common occasions. But once a word falls out of colloquial speech its life is threatened; it may linger on in literature, but its radiance, at first perhaps brighter, will gradually ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... Isn't it foolish? The Di down there is the Diaphanous, too. Some pioneer poet named it for its shimmer, but what good did it do? Missouri promptly called it the 'Di.' No more good is it to name a child Salome in the backwoods of Missouri. She's bound to grow up Sally. I've always been Sally, except at school. I'll always be Sally down ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... bird-song another sound became audible. At first it merely repeated the three notes faintly, like an echo, but with a rich, sad undertone that brought tears. Then, timidly and still softly, it elaborated the theme, weaving in and out through the original three the glitter and shimmer of a splendid web of sound, spreading before the awakened imagination a broad river of woods-imagery that reflected on its surface all the subtler moods of the forest. The pine shadows, the calls of the wild creatures, the flow of the brook, the splashes of sunlight through the trees, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the most beautiful hair in the world," says he, touching with gentle, reverential fingers the silken coils that glint and shimmer in the sunlight. "And it is a name ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... passenger decks, pierced by innumerable bright points, with larger lights in constellations outside, while masts and funnels ran up, faintly indicated, into the gloom above. She scarcely moved to the lift of the languid swell, but as the undulations passed there was a pale-green shimmer about her waterline that magnified the height to her topmost deck. She looked unsubstantial, rather like a floating fairy palace than a ship, and as the noisy launch drew nearer Jake gave ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... Sometimes a section of yellow panes, through which the sun darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall, exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... painter-cousin in "Aliens." You will hire a sailboat at Lime Kiln Quay or the Jetty and bide a moving air and a going tide to drop down to Bawdsey ferry to hunt shark's teeth and amber among the shingle. You will pace the river walk to Kyson—perhaps the tide will be out and sunset tints shimmer over those glossy stretches of mud. Brown seaweed, vivid green samphire, purple flats of slime where the river ran a few hours before, a steel-gray trickle of water in the scour of the channel and a group of stately swans ruffling there; and the huddled red roofs of the town with the stately church ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... to deadly white. His eyes, fixed upon the floor, caught the rich shimmer of her skirts as she moved towards the door; a moment and she was gone, leaving the two men ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... house. He could see her plainly now—she stood clasping white gloves with firm, pink hands; her gaze was lowered upon the uneven flooring of the porch. He could see the soft contour of her chin, a shimmer of warm, brown hair. She was crisply fresh, incredibly young in the group of gaunt, worn forms; her ruffled fairness was an affront to the thin, rigid shoulders in rusty black, the sallow, deeply-bitten faces ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... night grew The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth Fell in ashen folds about the hills, Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them... There must have been a spent moon, For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver... ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... eyes again. A vision of Solomon in all his glory swept across her. Even to Walton had spread rumors of the immense fortunes acquired in the China and India trade, and the gold of Cathay seemed to shimmer over the form before her, so strong, so able to contend with, and compel, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... by groups of cheerful soldiers, their fresh faces glowing with the light of the flames. In the distance the moon rose grand and full, illuminating the scene with its silver rays, and blending its pale shimmer with the ruddy flames. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... completed; and when they passed out from the coppice into the whiter air, behold! the wild March skies had parted somewhat, and there was a shimmer of silver sunlight along the broad highway between the hedges. It was an auspicious omen—or, at least, their full hearts may have thought so; and then, again, there was a wedding chorus all around them ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... her own rightful throne was occupied by a stranger—what cared she for the blinding shimmer of a crown? Ah, it troubled her not that she was poor, and possessed not even the means of bestowing presents upon her favorites and friends. But she felt happy in her poverty, for she was free to love whom she would, to raise to herself whomsoever ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... boy, I stood beside Thy starlit shimmer, and asked my restless heart What secrets Nature to the herd denied, But might to earnest hierophant impart; When lo! beside me, around and o'er, Thought whispered, 'Arise, O seeker, and ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom A savor steals from linden trees in bloom And gardens ranged at many a palace door. Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour Their pale enchantment down the dim coast-line, Terrace and lawn, trim ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... bodilessness for ourselves, into treating and expecting everybody else to treat The People, the will, the vision, the glory, the destiny of The People as a Ghost—unholy, cowardly, voiceless, helpless—just a light in its eyes—just a vast national shimmer at a world, ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... yourself—the folds of your sash, the sharp narrow print of your slippers on the pavement or the matting or the rug, the ruffles about your hands. I have the feeling of you near me with your breathing disturbing the delicacy of your breast. There is the odor and shimmer of your hair ... your lips move ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sounding of the gong; from where Olive sat she could see all the entrances and exits—as in a glass darkly—in the clouded surface of a mirror that hung on the wall and reflected the white gleam of shirt fronts, the shimmer of silks, and she was quick to note that Filippo was interested in what she saw ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... completed receptors. Those that were still full bulked enormous, like ghostly moons. The Jovian gases that strained their tough elastomer did not much blur the stars seen through them; but they swelled high enough to catch the light of the hidden sun and shimmer with it. The nearly discharged balloons hung thin, straining outward. Two full ones passed in slow orbit against the constellations. They were waiting to be hauled in and coupled fast, to release their loads into the Station's hungry chemical plant. But ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... inasmuch as the study of English institutions was no part of his mission. On the other hand the day was charming; the blue sea, in Southampton Water, pricked all over with light, had no movement but that of its infinite shimmer. Moreover he was by no means sure that he should be happy in the United States, where doubtless he should find himself soon enough disembarked. He knew that this was not an important question and that happiness was an unscientific term, such as a ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... composer who appreciated the genius of the instrument, discovered its latent tone colors and developed its resources to their full capacity for artistic beauty and expression. Chopin was the first to make the pianoforte both shimmer and sing. Rubinstein said that the art of music could go no further than Chopin and called him the pianoforte bard, rhapsodist, mind and soul. "How he wrote for it I do not know, but only an entire passing over of one ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... night of that memorable day, the clouds of smoke lifting, revealed the French army in full and disastrous retreat. Rothschild took in the situation at once. True to his instincts, he saw in that awful carnage only the shimmer of his gold. Chance had overcome the most heroic valor, the most stubborn resistance, the best laid plans, and once more declared in the Hebrew's favor. He dashed into Brussels, whence a carriage in waiting whirled him into Ostend. At dawn he stood on the Belgian ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the screen, there was something like heat shimmer at the far end of the passage. Then she saw her cabin door ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... statue— had passed by and had not seen her. Indeed, the night at present was so dark, that one standing still and looking for her would hardly be able to define her figure. And yet, dark as it was, she could see something of the movement of the waters beneath her, some shimmer produced by the gliding movement of the stream. Ah! she would go now and have done with it. Every moment that she remained was but ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... wild Italian valley, a forest of blossoming fruit-trees, with the river winding and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad hills blue-grey at either side, and beyond the hills, peering over their shoulders, the snow-peaks of mountains, crisp against the sky, and in the level distance the hazy shimmer of the lake. ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... entire weight upon the sash in a last endeavour to close the window, but the man's upraised arm held both her weight and it, as if its muscles had been rods of steel. Gwen saw a long knife in his free hand,—saw the light shimmer along its blade, saw him raise it aloft to plunge it into her bosom, yet made no movement to withdraw beyond his reach and uttered no cry for help. It seemed to her that all this was happening to another and that she herself was only a fascinated spectator. She was wondering ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... had crossed it. A gap in a hedge made by a bull that morning, had removed the last screen. — Lady Euphrasia's window was so neglected and dusty, that it could reflect nothing more than a dim bluish shimmer. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Some shimmer from the lustred dawn Of hitherto unguessed to-morrows, Imperishable laurels drawn Mrs. Jones: I think he ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... the encircling horizon. Of course allowance must be made for a man in love. Other men have discovered a worldful of beauty, when in love; but I do not see what difference two figures on horseback against the southern sky-line could possibly make to the shimmer of purple above the plains, or the fragrance of prairie-roses lining the trail. It seems to me the lonely call of the meadow-lark high overhead—a mote in a sea of blue—or the drumming and chirruping of feathered creatures through the green, could not have sounded ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... colors the knight never saw before. Some of them seem to be made of hammered gold, and some of silver; some have stamens of precious stones, and some look like clear crystal, blood- red, deep purple, or orange, as if they were cut from solid gems; some of them have petals like flames, that shimmer and glow and are reflected by the others; the leaves are all glistening emerald and they are sprinkled with pearls like drops of evening dew. The stems twine about like serpents, and they seem to the knight to move and turn about to show him all their magic splendor. Some of them, with coiling tendrils, ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... sun setting down dark aisles of the Black Forest; the German peasants at work in the fields; the simple, cordial friendliness of that lovely land. He remembered French villages beside slow-moving rivers; white roads in a hot shimmer of sun; apple orchards of the Moselle. And England—dear green England, fairest of all—the rich blue line of the Chiltern Hills, and Buckinghamshire beech woods bronze and yellow in the autumn. He remembered thatched cottages ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... doubtful if any one in the town or its environs enjoyed that holiday more than these two, who, from different reasons, had probably never had so real a holiday before. They wandered over the great open tract of land, meeting no one; once they came near enough to the seaward edge to see the distant shimmer of water; once they found themselves in the part where there has been some little attempt at cultivation, and small patches of potatoes struggle for life, and a little railway crosses the sandhills. Twice they came upon the road ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. The curly grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned red as copper. There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in the stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breeze sank to stillness. In the ravine a ringdove ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... was racing up a sky smooth and clear as gray glass. It dropped on the torn green sea a shimmer that was almost dazzling; but ere was something incongruous about that—as though Nature had covered her victim with a spangled scarf. It brought out millions of sparkles in the white sand; and there seemed something calculating about that—as though she were bribing them with ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Immermann's own statement, he began Muenchhausen without a shimmer of an idea as to how he would finish it; but he finished it, having in the meantime gone through a complete inner transformation, in a way that surprised even himself and greatly pleased his readers. We have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... shot with light Like flashes in a northern night, Magnetic gleam that wrought a spell On whom its star-like shimmer fell— A spell of ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... sufficiently entrancing in itself to seem a fairy road to fairyland. Here and there some grand elm or beech tree, whose roots have hugged the soil for more than a century, spreads out broad protecting branches all a-shimmer with green leaves,—between the uneven tufts of grass, the dainty "ragged robin" sprays its rose-pink blossoms contrastingly against masses of snowy star-wort and wild strawberry,—the hedges lean close together, as though accustomed to conceal the shy confidences ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Out of the mercury shimmer of glass Over these daguerreotypes The balloon-like spread of a skirt of silk emerges With its little figure of flowers. And the enameled glair of parted hair Lies over the oval brow, From under which eyes of fiery blackness Look ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... sun sank in a splendour that transfigured the eternally white mountain-crest to a mighty shimmer of rose and gold, he turned at last and looked down at the white face pillowed upon his arm. The eyes were closed. The ineffable peace of Death seemed to dwell upon the quiet features. She had lain so for a long time, and he had fancied ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... and, clambering round an immense shoulder of rock, it emerged upon a long and comparatively level ridge of land that rolled in gentle undulations down into a wide park-like valley set out with clumps of birch and poplar, with here and there the shimmer of a lake showing between the yellow and ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... black hair was worn in a fringe of wavy locks that rested lightly on his flaring collar. His leathern doublet fitted close to his slight, strong figure, and through its slashed sleeves there was a shimmer of fine silk. In his right hand he held his plumed sombrero against his breast; his left rested carelessly on the ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... There was powdered gold in the sky till the moon rose, and then a wind of faint silver spread silently between the earth and stars. He saw the tips of the fir trees shimmer, and heard them whisper as the breeze turned their needles towards the light. The mountain air was indescribably sweet. The road shone like the foam of a river through the gloom. White moths flitted here and there like silent ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... so monotonous to some. Like other men whose souls dominate their bodies, he had a piercing sight which could reach to enormous distances and seize, with admirable ease and without fatigue, the fleeting tints of the clouds, the passing shimmer of the waters. On days of perfect stillness his eyes could see the manifold tints of the ocean, which to him, like the face of a woman, had its physiognomy, its smiles, ideas, caprices; there green and sombre; here smiling ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... from outstretched hands. And well windeth the river into grim old caves, and even the merriest boat that King Cole ever launched flitteth by the dark doors, intent only on the brilliant chateaux, that shimmer above in the gorgeous sunlight of a brave Espagne. But laughing imps, with flying feet, venture singly into these realms of the Unknown. Bright streameth the light there from carbuncles and glowing rubies; but of the melodies that there bewilder them, no returning ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... year puts on, When failing leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... intensely warm in the Marlborough Steel Works. Outdoors the sun beat fiercely upon the heads of toiling men and horses while the heat waves danced with a dazzling shimmer along the brick pavements. Indoors there was the steady thud of the engine, and the great hammers clanked and the belts swept through the air with a deafening whirr, while the workmen drew blackened hands across their grimy foreheads and John Randolph gave a sigh ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... of stately shade trees were still standing. A German shell, about an eight-inch, one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about the same height from the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carried across the splintered stump ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... silent hour, her life richer for the aspirations that uplifted her like beautiful strong angels, and left a blessing when they went. The smile of the June sky touched her lips, the morning red seemed to linger on her cheek, and in her eye arose a light kindled by the shimmer of that broad sea of gold; for Nature rewarded her young votary well, and gave her beauty, when she offered love. How long she leaned there Debby did not know; steps from below roused her from her reverie, and led her back into the world again. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... thought that the actual scene out-spread below her—the descending gardens, the tennis-courts, the farm-lands sloping away to the blue sea-like shimmer of the Hempstead plains—offered, at the moment, little material for her purpose; but that was to view them with a superficial eye. Mrs. Ansell's trained gaze was, for example, greatly enlightened by the fact that the tennis-courts were fringed by a group of people indolently ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... over this great sea, it was because a peculiar light brought to view every detail of it. It was not the light of the sun, with his dazzling shafts of brightness and the splendour of his rays; nor was it the pale and uncertain shimmer of the moonbeams, the dim reflection of a nobler body of light. No; the illuminating power of this light, its trembling diffusiveness, its bright, clear whiteness, and its low temperature, showed that it must be of electric origin. It was like an aurora borealis, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... he shook himself, straightened himself up, and endeavoured to throw off the sense of drowsy weight which increased upon him. He could not do so; he walked with bent back, and crept, as it were, over the iron land which radiated heat. A shimmer like that of water appeared in front; he quickened his pace, but could not get to it, and realized presently that it was a mirage which receded as he advanced. There was no pleasant summer twilight; the sunset was succeeded by an indefinite ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... may seem at first glance like visions; but I have always been taught that their spell lay in our innate sense that they were ourselves, as we really are. The wine of great truth is at first the most heady of all, making its revelations shimmer. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief. As Noel had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from her. The afflicted walk fast. He was soon down by the river, and turned West along its wall. The moon was up, bright and nearly full, and the steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water. A cruel night! He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it, overcome by a spasm of realisation. He seemed to see his dead wife's face staring at him out of the past, like an accusation. "How have you cared for Nollie, that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... say these things, my friend, when you know that they are useless?" she replied, with a look which grew in the end so soft that Wilfrid ceased to behold her eyes, but saw in their place a fluid light, the shimmer of which was like the last vibrations of ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... went floating under vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened long vistas of light and shade, through which they sailed into the pleasant land where summer reigned supreme. To Sylvia it seemed as if the inhabitants of these solitudes had flocked down ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... consists chiefly of trailless hills and intervening strips of desert, we wend our weary way, the bicycle often proving more of a drag than a benefit. The weather gets insufferably hot; in places the rocks fairly shimmer with heat, and are so hot that one can scarce hold the hand to them. We camp for the first night at a village, and on the second at an umbar that suggests our approach to Persia, and in the morning we make an early start with the object of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... superstition, which was but a spirit called from the deeps of an unfathomable and mighty love. And afar was heard the breaking of the lake in upon the shore—no other sound! And now, among the unwaving pines, there was a silver shimmer as the moon rose into her empire, and deepened at once, along the universal scene, the loveliness ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine; milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... skin, And about their bodies the sacks were tied, and they carried their harps within, With stitches of silver and golden thread each case for a harp was sewed; And, beneath the embroidery gleaming red, the shimmer of rubies showed! ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... denied it. Her eye roved over the gathering throng; the rustle of silks, the shimmer of lustrous satin, the falls of lace, the drapery of one or two magnificent camels'-hair shawls, the carefully dressed heads, the carefully gloved hands; for the ladies did not keep on their bonnets then; and the soft murmur of voices, which, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... captors in brief sentences strange to my ears, once pointing directly at us, once with sweeping gesture up the valley. A moment longer she remained motionless, bending slightly forward, permitting the rich, reddish gold of her hair to flash and shimmer in the sunshine; then she stepped swiftly back from the dizzy summit, vanishing instantly, as if ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... door on his right, through which we peered into a long, lovely room, gleaming with iridescent hues and sparkling with touches of gold and crystal. The bed was draped with cloudy lace through which a shimmer of pale rose-colour made itself visible, and the carpet of dark moss-green formed a perfect setting for the quaintly shaped furniture, which was all of sandal-wood inlaid with ivory. On a small table of carved ivory ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... begins to grow upon your once blank canvas, and some lucky pat matches the exact tone of blue-gray haze or shimmer of leaf, or some accidental blending of color delights you with its truth, a tingling goes down your backbone, and a rush surges through your veins that stirs you as nothing else in your whole life will ever do. The reaction ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... golden cream, Set in a silver shining row, Swam in my eyes like the shimmer and sheen Of arms and banners, and ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... never known old John Pontiac to jeer any one, but there was his face in that moon,—Peter made it out quite clearly. He looked up the road to where he could see, on the hill half a mile distant, the shimmer of John Pontiac's big tin-roofed house. He thought he could make out the outlines of all the buildings,—he knew them so well,—the big barn, the stable, the smoke-house, the store-house ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... of light, the darkness broken, In the dawn of things to be. Power crowned— Earth around Like a sun-song rolled the sound. Mute they wander. Sweet strains ending— Eye nor tongue dares yet the lending Speech to thought. But lo! quick blending, All things speak! They sound and shimmer, Bloom in fragrance, ring and glimmer, Tint and tone combining, nearer, Meet as one-with all their thinking In one beauty, higher, clearer,— Heaven itself ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... such incidents before they reached the village where they were to sleep that night; and Weaver lay awake in his downy bed, staring at the faint shimmer of reflected starlight on the carved roof-beams, and meditating soberly on the unexpected, the appalling magnitude of the task he ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... girl was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to the rhythmical chorus of that witches' cauldron in the heart of the defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... he fell back into his old shimmer of content and walked along, hearing Paul's voice only as one of the morning sounds of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... most of her aspects, will give us small chance for censuring her scant attractions. A field of grass and flowers, sunshine and chirping birds, the clinging, changing foliage, or the shimmer of snow and ice, the light of moon and stars, are in some of her commonest pictures. We are simply to give heed. As Carlyle suggests, it is not because we have such superior levity that we pay no attention to Nature. By not thinking, we simply cease ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... the Devil himself might have envied. But the man he looked at slept heavily on. And then—God! I feel the agony I felt in my dream then now!—then I saw the great yellow hand, with the great evil eye upon it, lifted murderously, and the bright steel it held shimmer as the assassin turned again and bent his yellow face down closer to that other face hidden from me in the shadow—the girl's face, that I ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour—nine o'clock—gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. "I will leave you by yourself, white dream," I said. "I am feverish: I hear the wind blowing: I will go out of ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... this would be in a country where there was never a house or a tree and scarcely anything that grew more than knee-high to a man. The long sand-swells, and the shimmer of heat-waves in the air looked even more like the sea now that they were level with it. Off to the right what seemed a vast sheet of water spread out like quicksilver on the plain; it moved with a crawling motion, and a coyote that trotted across their ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... bearing away to the eastward round the foot of the hill which they had that day ascended, they groped their way cautiously over the unfamiliar ground until, in the course of about half an hour, they caught the dim shimmer of starlight upon water, and, between them and it, a group of dark, shapeless blotches which, upon their nearer approach, they identified as the hovels constituting the fishing village which they had seen during the day from the top of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and clean after the day's climbing, sat chatting or reading. Among them was a young woman who interested Charles-Norton. She was slim and very fair, with hair that lay light upon her head as a golden vapor, and she wore upon her shoulders, negligently draped, a scarf within the white shimmer of which a color glowed like a flame. Beside her nearly always hovered a big young fellow, dark and handsome, but who did not seem ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... he said, "that which I never saw before—a vast white bird, with silver wings outstretched, sailing in the everlasting blue. And now it is as though a great fire burnt within my breast. It was but a sheen, a shimmer, a reflection in the water; but now I desire nothing more on ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... that he closed his eyes involuntarily and still he saw the vision in the dull-green gown, with the scarf of old gold about her dazzling white shoulders. And there were two lights, the barbaric red of the jewels in her hair, and the black shimmer of her eyes. He drew back a step more. It was a picture to be looked at ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... was fairly light they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D. forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... fellow, with long gliding steps, ragged and reluctant, and, without a word or a look, launched himself out into the cold, and sped away he knew not whither. As he left the door, the only suspicion of light was the dull and doubtful shimmer of the snow that covered the street, keen particles of which were blown in his face by the wind, which, having been up all night, had grown very cold, and seemed delighted to find one unprotected human being whom it might badger at its own bitter will. Outcast ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... that morning. For many miles in front of me the moor stretched out wild and treeless; the sun was shining brightly upon the mass of yellow furze and deep-red heather, drawing up the moisture from the ground, and causing a kind of watery haze to shimmer over the landscape; while the early mist was rising off the tors, or hill-tops, in the distance, curling in fanciful wreaths around the rugged and stony summits, as it dispersed gradually in the increasing heat of ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... his own hue and cry. Or, Seymour again doubted, had he merely constructed a figment of a scheme from his own imaginings and these attenuations of suggestion? For there seemed, after all, scant communication between the two, and this was even less when the moon was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds falling away from the great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with an incomparable splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the sheriff ordered the pace quickened. Along a definite cattle-trail they went at first, but presently they were following ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and I do not believe he can stand much longer. They have let up for the last few moments, but are still riding around us, their guns at 'ready.' Every now and then one of us fires, but the heat shimmer has come up over the ground since noon and the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the moon showed a slender rim above the horizon and threaded the darkness with a faint shimmer of light. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... time what had become of our mighty mountains and vast sea. If I had not caught sight of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharus tower, I assure you I should never have made out the Earth at all. But their height and projection, with the faint shimmer of Ocean in the sun, showed me it must be the Earth I was looking at. Then, when once I had got my sight properly focused, the whole human race was clear to me, not merely in the shape of nations and cities, but the individuals, sailing, fighting, ploughing, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... with the moonlight waking her dark hair into a somber luster and a gossamer shimmer on the white of her evening gown. Her hands lay unmoving in her lap and she slowly nodded ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... world around them, in the soft shimmer of the crescent moon, became an enchanted region, the land that never was on earth or sea, the land of love, in which all that dwell therein move in the glamour of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... there longer than would seem to have been permissible in the face of his longing to find Felicia again, by which he had hitherto been so restlessly urged onwards. But his longing was now grown weaker; it shaped itself in his heart like a fascinating dream, whose misty shimmer enveloped his life on all sides, so that he believed that all he did and thought, and all his artistic practice, were turned towards the higher supernatural regions of blissful intuitions. All the female figures which his now experienced artistic skill enabled him to create bore lovely Felicia's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Where the carved, age-yellowed balcony o'erjuts Yonder liquid, marble pavement, see the light Shimmer soft beneath the bridge, That abuts On a labyrinth of water-ways and shuts Half their sky off ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... rose up again in Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... love, Through the cautious lattice, Wondering why the stars above All are blinking at us; Wondering if his eyes from there Catch the moonbeam's shimmer As it lights the robe I wear ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... world. Still this soldier held on, saying nothing to his men, writing his intensely practical diary, and trusting as a soldier should to the Deus ex machina who finally allows discipline to triumph. He looked down into the valley, piercing the shimmer of its hazes with his gentle blue eyes, looking to his chief, who had said, "In three days ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... return from his evenings spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years younger than Maria had ever seen him. There was the humidity of youth in his eyes, the flush of youth on his cheeks, the triumph of youth in his expression. Harry Edgham, in spite of lines on his face, in spite, even, of a shimmer of gray and thinness of hair on the temples, looked as young as youth itself, in this rejuvenation of his affection, for he was very much in love with the woman whom he was to marry. He had been faithful to his wife ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tongue and made him eloquent as he described his experiences in trout-fishing. His words were so simple and vivid that he made his listeners hear the cool splash and see the foam of the mountain brooks. They saw the shimmer of the speckled beauties as they leaped for the fly, and felt the tingle of the rod as the line suddenly tightened, and hear the hum of the reel as the fish darted away in imagined safety. Burt saw his vantage—was not Amy listening with intent eyes and glowing cheeks?—and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... liberty, his memories. "Get the anchor up," he repeated harshly. "We'll go under the engine." The sudden jarring of the Gar's engine sounded muffled in a shut space like the flushed heart of a shell. The yacht moved forward, with a wake like folded gauze, into a shimmer of formless and ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Prisoner, and enable a Scheherazade to postpone from night to night her hour of death, are one and all pervaded by the same eternal magic. Pain, grief, terror, care, and bondage are all forgotten for a time when lakes of gems and enchanted waterfalls shimmer in the sunlight, when Rakshas's palaces rise, full-built, before our very eyes, or when Caballero's Knights of the Fish prance away on their magic chargers. "I wonder when!" "I wonder how!" "I wonder where!" we say as we follow them into the land of mystery. So Youngling said when he heard the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... miles long, and composed of great masses of men joined together by thinner lines. Behind and near to the flanks were large reserves. From the ridge they looked dark blurs and streaks, relieved and diversified with an odd-looking shimmer of light from the spear-points. At about ten minutes to six it was evident that the masses were in motion and advancing swiftly. Their Emirs galloped about and before their ranks. Scouts and patrols scattered themselves all over the front. Then they began to cheer. They ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... then, that the effort which has been again and again made to construct a universal language on a rational basis has at length succeeded, and that you have a language which has no uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms "familiar with forgotten years,"—a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects the purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of expression to science, but will never express ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... moment when Sam held back a tangle of blackberry-bushes and low-sweeping dogwood boughs, and we stepped out on a moss-covered rock-ledge that commanded a view of the Harpeth Valley, stretching away and away in an iridescent shimmer of springiness and sunshine, it completely vanished, for the time ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them: always, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... He began to hurry again, clambering recklessly over boulders, or through the underbrush where the sides of the stream were steep. When the upper cascade came in sight his heart leaped, for there he caught the fleeting shimmer of a skirt and the gleam ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... tide of intervening years—so full, and yet so short—I seem to see the shimmer of her golden hair—an aureole of light blazing on the borders of boyhood: "For this, and all thy bounties, our Father, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... her long train, flashing with jewels and the shimmer of silk, her delicate head bowed as if under the weight of a mass of fair hair, in which the silver threads were lost, the "first lady of Sulaco," as Captain Mitchell used to describe her, moved along the lighted corredor, wealthy beyond great dreams of wealth, considered, loved, respected, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Still she had those thousand pretty movements, those nameless graces of manner, those wavering shades of expression, that irresistibly enchained the eye and the imagination,—true Frenchwoman as she was, always in one rainbow shimmer of fancy and feeling, like one of those cloud-spotted April days which give you flowers and rain, sun and shadow, and snatches of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... speaker's lithe form straightened and her gaze went off to the left. "Here they come!" she said, and out where Camp Street emerges, a glint of steel, a gleam of brass, a swarming of the people that way, and again a shimmer of brass and steel, affirmed her word that the long, plumed, bristling column had got back to the arms of its ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the Sun one sometimes sees, now in the West, in the lingering shimmer of the twilight, now in the East, when the tender roseate dawn announces the advent of a clear day, a small star of the first magnitude which remains but a very short time above the horizon, and then plunges back into the flaming sun. This is Mercury, the agile and active messenger ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... neither knows what on earth the other is driving at, there is bound to be a certain amount of mental confusion: but at this point Jno. Peters, though still not wholly equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, began to see a faint shimmer of light behind the clouds. In a nebulous kind of way he began to understand that the girl had come to consult the firm about a breach-of-promise action. Some unknown man at Ealing West had been trifling with her heart—hardened lawyer's ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... hot-house flowers and rare wines. Just as the Christmas bells rang out along the streets of the city the joyful tidings "Christ is born" a sharp cry rang through the rooms of The Three Holy Kings and Melchior knelt beside his blighted flower that now was whiter even than the lily, for the last shimmer of red had faded forever from her wan cheeks, and he wrung his hands ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fabrics, and mamma was generally glad of her assistance in all such matters. However, perhaps it was only under-clothing and house-linen, and such things that she was buying. All that was the prosy part of shopping. It was the poetry of it that Hilda loved,—the shimmer of silk and satin, the rich shadows in velvet, the cool, airy fluttering of lawn and muslin and lace. So the girl went on her usual way, finding life a little dull, a little tiresome, and most people rather stupid, but everything on the whole much as usual, if her ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... very hot. The afternoon sun still flamed in the vividly blue Italian sky, and against the shimmer of azure and gold the tall, dark poplars ranked beside the road struck a sombre note of relief. But the man himself seemed unconscious of the heat. He covered the ground with the lithe, long-limbed stride of youth and supple muscles, and presently swung aside into a garden where, betwixt the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... arm on the mantel, dropped his forehead upon it and stood so, the wonderful glowing colors of the painting seeming to shimmer on his bronze hair. At last, at the sound of Jonas's footstep in the hall, he lifted his head, turned off the light above the painting, crossed to his desk and, dropping the still unopened envelope into a secret drawer, locked it and put the key ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the good Mother herself,—something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset and died off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to be furnished, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... her back to the south window, so that her head and shoulders appeared somewhat indistinct against the outer world, a background of flower-beds and green grass and sky, covered with the criss-cross of the leaded lozenge panes and the watery shimmer of the glass. The outline of her head was indicated by a little line of light that threaded her hair and tipped the curve of her small ears. He knew every change of her face, from its serene, faint-tinted morning look, to its flower-like ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... primroses were blooming in sheltered nooks, where the keen east wind—the curse and the strength of Scotland—could not blight them, and the sun had them for his wooing; there were signs of foliage on the trees as the buds began to burgeon, and send a shimmer of green along the branches; the grass, reviving after winter, was showing its first freshness, and the bare earth took a softer color in the caressing sunlight. The birds had taken heart again and were seeking for their mates, some were already building their summer homes. Life ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... of the hills veils of smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured the air—crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, and the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, showered them, drowned them in a storm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fancied the policeman was watching her, and this sent her hastening down the nearest side street... After that she walked a long time, vaguely... Night had fallen, and now and then, through the windows of a passing carriage, she caught the expanse of an evening waistcoat or the shimmer ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... chant of the boys cleaning out their nets, of the girls sickling the grass under the olives, Amor—amor—amor, and all this is the great goddess Venus. And opposite to me, as I write, between the branches of the ilexes, across the blue sea, streaked like a Ravenna mosaic with purple and green, shimmer the white houses and walls, the steeple and towers, an enchanted Fata Morgana city, of dim Porto Venere; ... and I mumble to myself the verse of Catullus, but addressing a greater and more terrible goddess than ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee |
