"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rope, thinking that Grettir was killed. Grettir then drew his sword Jokulsnaut, cut off the head of the howedweller and laid it between his thighs. Then he went with the treasure to the rope, but finding Audun gone he had to swarm up the rope with his hands. First he tied the treasure to the lower end of the rope, so that he could haul it up after him. He was very stiff from his struggle with Kar, but he turned his steps towards Thorfinn's house, carrying the treasure along with him. He found them ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... to be clapped down to some new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers (though there WAS a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and held that ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Dudley Norton, O.S.I., Deputy Commissioner, and ruler-in-chief of the station, fought him no less energetically in the bazaar and native city; an even more heart-breaking task. For here was no disciplined body of men, but a swarm of prejudiced individuals, caring nothing for infection, and everything for the sanctity of house and caste. Precautions and sanitary measures had to be carried at the point of the bayonet; and they were so carried. For Dudley Norton, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... sincerity. He affected to be afraid that his own performance would not sustain a comparison with the version of the fourth Georgic, by "the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." "After his bees," added Dryden, "my latter swarm is ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... among the lower classes; and as soon as they discovered the disposition of the new President, they took one Don Antonio Haro y Tamirez, set him up as a counter-President, and installed him at Puebla, the second city of the Republic, where priests swarm, and priestly influence is unbounded. At the same time, they tried a pronunciamiento in the capital; but the President got the better of them after a slight struggle, and marched all his regular soldiers ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... afternoon a drunken Swede threw a stone into a butcher's window in Ironville and, putting forth a horny hand, seized a side of bacon and set forth, reeling, down the street. Two hours later the startled chief accountant, from a window in his office, saw a swarm of a thousand men surge through the big gates of the works and, trampling ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... that the streams now swarm with trout and grayling as they did when honest Isaac Walton sung their praises in quaint poetical prose, although they still twine and foam along their rocky beds all overhung with willows and tufted shrubs; but, where the waters are preserved, there ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the family lived in the village, and Pearl was left to mind the swarm of boys while her mother was out working, she had raced to the window just to see him drive by, and, having seen him and perhaps caught a smile or nod, if he noticed her, she would go back to her strenuous ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... of boys swarmed up over everything that would raise them more prominently into view, pushing aside any one in their way, and both looking and acting like a hive of bees getting ready to swarm, until they stood ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... M. the chapel-bell rings, and at once the huts swarm. We follow the crowd. They enter the chapel by a door at the end nearest their dens, and seat themselves, the women at the farther, the men at the hither extreme, all facing a raised desk at the middle of one side. Behind them, opposite this pulpit, is an organ. Presently, from a door ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Divine powers within us, which shames us into trusting them when anything great is to be done. What god are you praying to, we ask in dismay, when you lift up your hands and your eyes, or turn to east or west, or kneel or lie? Is there any god in the wastes of infinity, in a sunstar, a swarm of worlds, who is not in that miraculous soul of yours? Is there aught anywhere greater than a son of God? Is a stone, a star, a heaven studded with infinite glories, a greater place than your eternal soul? Then look within you. Speak with yourself, commune with your ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... wasn't absolutely and entirely his. The porphyry pillar for instance; he had only half a share in it; the other half belonged to Number Forty-five; and you couldn't rightly tell where Number Forty-five's share ended and his began. Still it wasn't as if anybody ever wanted to swarm up the pillar. But there was a party wall, and that was a serious thing. It was so low that a child could clear it at a stride. And when the postman and errand boys and tradespeople went their rounds, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... place of my birth," it was for the Mare d'Auteuil I longed the most; that was the loadstar, the very pole of my home-sick desires; always thither the wings of my hopeless fancy bore me first of all; it was, oh! to tread that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... wi' me an' Bill Simmons, two summers ago, ye'd have had more nor enough o' shootin'. The grizzlies are thick as paes, and the buffaloes swarm in the valleys like muskaitoes, not to mintion wolves, and beavers, and badgers, and deer, an' sich like—forby the red Injuns; we shot six o' them critters about the legs an' arms in self defence, an' they shot us ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... conceptacular cavity as special cells of branched filaments, are similarly discharged whole, the antherozoids only escaping when the antheridia are clear of the conceptacle. The antherozoids are attracted to the oospheres, round each of which they swarm in great numbers. Suddenly the attraction ceases, and the oosphere is fertilized, probably at that moment, by the entry of a single antherozoid into the substance of the oosphere; a cell-wall is formed thereupon, in some cases in so short an interval as five minutes. Remarkable changes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with shouts and yells, amid a volley of arrows, drag the tower into position. The Iroquois swarm upon the walls, and the fight begins—the Frenchmen firing from the top of the tower, the Iroquois sending ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... could see. But he could discern nothing except mosquitoes. And then he thought he saw a mosquito larger than all the others. He waved at it, but it remained where it was. A slight breeze momentarily wafted the swarm away, and he still saw the big mosquito hovering over the horizon. Then he ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... a close, a day of joyful excitement for the people of the Tyuonyi. The dance terminated. As the sun went down the dancers crowded out of the passage-way; so did the visitors; it grew quieter and quieter on and about the large house. The swarm of people leaving it scattered toward the cliffs in little bands and thin streams, separating and diverging from each other like the branches of an open fan. And yet, after night had come and the moon had risen in a cloudless sky, there was still bustle everywhere. Households ravaged ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... British aviators are prepared to swarm to the attack has been responsible for a display of commendable ingenuity on the part of the German airman. Nature has provided some of its creatures, such as the octopus, for instance, with the ways ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... became aware of a curious humming sound in the air. The cause was soon apparent and the mystery that had puzzled them was solved when they reached the beast. The carcase was covered with bees while close above it hummed a swarm of others watching for an exposed place to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... dressed as fancy as a pair of plush sofas, a maid or so, and a pie-faced scared-lookin' gink that it was easy to guess must be the butler. Everybody had been so busy talkin' that they hadn't heard us swarm up ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... to Tarzan was the impact of three bodies as the three apes leaped upon him and hurled him to the ground, where he alighted half stunned beneath their combined weight and was immediately set upon by the fifty hairy men or as many of them as could swarm upon his person. Instantly the ape-man became the center of a whirling, striking, biting maelstrom of horror. He fought nobly but the odds against him were too great. Slowly they overcame him though there was scarce one of them that did not feel the weight of ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... let the mullah and his men into the Caves and to join forces with him in there, he would at least have time to hurry back to India with his eighty men and give warning. He might have time to call up the Khyber jezailchis and blockade the Caves before the hive could swarm, and he chuckled to think ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... in this part of my history. While raking, with curious hand but pious heart, among the mouldering remains of former days, anxious to draw therefrom the honey of wisdom, I may fare somewhat like that valiant worthy, Samson, who, in meddling with the carcase of a dead lion, drew a swarm of bees about his ears. Thus, while narrating the many misdeeds of the Yanokie or Yankee race, it is ten chances to one but I offend the morbid sensibilities of certain of their unreasonable descendants, who may fly out ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... contributed prizes to thousands of the scholars; and let no one omit to call to mind what these children were, whence they came, and whither they were going without this merciful intervention. They would have been added to the perilous swarm of the wild, the lawless, the wretched, and the ignorant, instead of being, as by God's blessing they are, decent and comfortable, earning an honest livelihood, and adorning the community to which they belong." Letter ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Hollis (op. cit., p. 6 f.) relates that on a certain occasion when his party was driven from its wagons by a swarm of bees, a Nandi man appeared, announced that he was of the bee totem, and volunteered to restore quiet, which he did, going stark naked into the swarm. His success was doubtless due to his knowledge of the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... passage and possession. They are the poetical part of the theatre of the art of war." If the day ever comes, as come it may, when the kingly powers of the world combine to crush the republican institutions of the United States, and swarm the harbors and bays of our Atlantic seaboard with their allied navies, the defiles of the Alleghanies will prove the Thermopylaes of the Union; and against their eastern base the surging wave of invasion must be stayed, if stayed at all. Like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... borrow it from someone—but then he could offer no security. A sense of his own helplessness came on him as he saw this golden tide flowing past his door, and yet was unable to take advantage of it. Five hundred pounds! The sum kept buzzing in his head like a swarm of bees, and he threw himself down again in his chair to try and think where he ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... man was left alone; and hardly did he find himself so, when, like a swarm of demons, the recollection of all his sins of omission and commission, rendered even more terrible by the scrupulousness with which he had been educated, rushed on his mind, and, like furies armed with fiery scourges, seemed determined to drive him to despair. As ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... falls: this place is without question the most pleasant in all this country and most convenient for habitation; the air temperate in summer and not violent in winter. The river aboundeth in all manner of fish, and for deer, buffalos, bears and turkeys, the woods do swarm with them and the ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... harbour at the Molucca Islands we witnessed the most remarkable display I have ever beheld. The islands are well wooded, and amongst the trees by night, through the whole island, did show themselves an infinite swarm of fiery worms flying in the air, whose bodies, being no larger than common house-flies, made such a show and light as if every twig or tree had been a burning candle. In the dark recesses of the woods, also, appeared wonderful black ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... not matter that the crew was of high average. They would not be playing such a game unless they were a reckless lot. At any moment they might take it into their heads to swarm over Cunningham and obliterate him. Then what? If the episode of the morning had not convinced Jane, what would? The man Flint had dropped his mask; the others were content to wear theirs yet awhile. Torture for her sake, the fear of what might actually be in store for her, and she expected ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... of the pitcher of water, and, hoping that it might have some magic power, she ran to fetch it, and sprinkled a few drops over the fierce-looking swarm of rats. In a moment not a tail or a whisker was to be seen. Each one had made for his hole as fast as his legs could carry him, so that the Princess could safely take her pot of pinks. She found them nearly dying for want of water, and hastily ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... seemed pleasant, but I doubt I shall never be demure enough to conciliate Mr. Gough. Then I have a wicked quality in an antiquary, nay, one that annihilates the essence: that is, I cannot bring myself to a habit of minute accuracy about very indifferent points. I do not doubt but there is a swarm of diminutive inaccuracies in my Anecdotes—well! if there is, I bequeath free leave of correction to the microscopic intellects of my continuators. I took dates and facts from the sedulous and faithful Vertue,(467) and piqued myself on little but on giving an idea of the spirit of the times ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... at home in the evening, for when I attempted to occupy myself in my apartments the lamplight brought in a swarm of noxious insects, and it was too hot for closed windows. Accordingly I spent the late hours either on the water (the moonlight of Venice is famous), or in the splendid square which serves as a vast forecourt to the strange old basilica of ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... felled for the box, and lay the chips on the stump from which the wood was cut, and then go again on the night of the funeral to the same place, you will see Buso. Stand near the stump, and you will see passing before you (1) a swarm of fireflies; (2) the intestines of the dead person; (3) many heads of the dead person; (4) many arms of the dead person; (5) many legs of the dead person; (6) the entire body passing before you; (7) shadows flitting before you; and finally (8) the Buso. But no one yet ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... indeed the greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numbrous kind of writing which is called verse: indeed but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and no cause to poetry: sith there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets. For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently, as to give us effigiem justi imperii the portraiture of a just empire under the name of Cyrus (as Cicero says of him), made therein an ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... one of them fancy names for a corset or a patent lamp," he complained. "It's this here summer business that done it. They swarm in here with their private hacks and their hired help all togged out till you'd think they was generals in the army, and they play that game of sissy-shinny (drop-the-handkerchief for mine, if I got to play any such game), and they're such ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... successful in making treaties with his ecclesiastical brethren. Thus, he is said to have made overtures to Colman mac Luachain of Lann (now Lynn, Co. Westmeath)—a remarkable feat in itself, as Colman died about a century after his time—but not only did Colman refuse, but he sent a swarm of demons in the shape of wasps to repel Ciaran and his followers, who were journeying towards him. Ciaran then made a more moderate offer, which Colman again refused.[26] Lann was in the territory of the Delbna, who, although friendly to Clonmacnois in the middle of the eleventh century, plundered ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... of the next day was spent in rowing around Lake Narsac. They did not linger around the north shore, for it was wild and uninviting, and they had no desire to make the acquaintance of the snakes said to swarm there. They spent two hours inspecting a large cove to the westward, and finally concluded that this spot offered the best place for a permanent camp. There was a sandy beach, where swimming would be good, plenty of the right kind of growth for firewood, and from the rocks some distance ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... way was long, strange, and full of perils; but I kept resolutely on up Hanover Street, being familiar with that part of my route, till I came to a puzzling corner. There I stopped, utterly bewildered by the tangle of streets, the roar of traffic, the giddy swarm of pedestrians. With the precious manuscript tightly clasped, I balanced myself on the curbstone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the crossing. Every time I made a start, a clanging street car snatched up the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... much more irritating than the bites of flies, partly because the barbed sting is left in the wound and partly because of the quantity and quality of the venom. When a swarm attacks an animal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... sweetness. At last, weary with anxiety on his behalf, she threw herself, fully dressed, on her low-hung hammock, this being Mr. Fenshawe's clever device to protect European skins from the attacks of the insects that swarm in the desert wherever there is any sign of dampness. She slept a few fitful hours, and her first waking thought was a ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... drowned. To guard against this, the divers always carry a sharp-pointed knife, and on seeing any of these fish above them, present the point over their heads, and stick it into the fish's belly. They are also subject to great danger from alligators, which swarm in this part of the sea; and some of us fancied we saw one swimming below the surface near Mariato Point, only a few leagues from hence. This island has a great variety of birds, also great numbers of black monkeys and guanoes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... nearing the southern shore; again she came about. Adair gave proof that he was a good seaman, and his crew in prime order, or it could never have been done. He was seen standing aft conning the brig; the topmen were in the rigging, ready to swarm aloft to shorten sail; a party of the hands stood on the forecastle with the second lieutenant and boatswain, ready to secure the hawsers. The rest of the hands were at their stations on deck. The work, to be done successfully, must be done smartly; everyone knew that. Rapidly the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... almost epic dignity. New York, since it took to doing business in towers, has become interesting to look at from the sea; nor is it possible to walk through the overshadowed streets without feeling a pleasing wonder. A city, when enough people swarm in it, is as fascinating as an ant-hill, and its buildings, whatever other charms they may have, are at least as curious and delightful as sea-shells or birds' nests. The purpose of improvements in modern structures may be economic, just as the purpose of castles was ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... entitled him to your forgiving love, but not to the ignoring of the fact that he was guilty.... Temptations come sometimes in swarms, like bees, and running away does no good, and fighting only exasperates them. The only help must come from Him who understands and can control the whole swarm. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... a number of scaling ladders, with stout ropes and hooks. The first who got up with the ladders were to fix on the hooks, so that the others might swarm up, and we might all ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... as in this town. Hardly has the stranger reached the convent-gates before these urchins are seen rapidly approaching from all quarters. One rushes forward to hold the horse, while a second grasps the stirrup; a third and a fourth present their arm to help you to dismount; and in the end the whole swarm unanimously stretch forth their hands for "backsheesh." In cases like these it is quite necessary to come furnished either with a multiplicity of small coins or with a riding-whip, in order to be delivered in one way or another from the horrible importunity ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... corn's dim motion, against the blue Dark sky of night, the wandering glitter, the swarm Of questing brilliant things:—you joy, you true Spirit of careless joy: ah, how I warm My poor and perished soul at the ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... could," Robertson replied, "but it looks as if he did. How could a man swarm a post with a sleeping ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... A swarm of naked brats infested the place; they were the colour of the soil, most of them black, some fair, with blue eyes. As if already they felt the degradation of their poverty, these urchins neither shouted ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay, A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon. A swarm of bees in July Is not worth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... from the towns of Hindustan. In Nepal, they have numerous large windows, which are shut by wooden lattices curiously carved, and which, in some measure, hang over the street, the upper end of the lattice projecting much more than the lower. Within, the houses are exceedingly mean and dirty, and swarm with vermin, which, added to all manner of filth, including the offals of the shambles, and the blood of sacrifices, that is allowed to corrupt in the streets, renders an abode in any of their ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... lexicographers and commentators, who are themselves overwhelmed by subsequent collectors, that equally destroy the memory of their predecessors by amplification, transposition, or contraction. Every new system of nature gives birth to a swarm of expositors, whose business is to explain and illustrate it, and who can hope to exist no longer than the founder of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... into the hold. A huge hold it showed itself to be when we bowed our heads and stepped into it through the square door. Yes, they could cram battalions here. What a hive the Clyde was when they hurled it ashore! And what a swarm of bees it housed! In this hold, now so silent and empty, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... up his Kathleen, and rushed to the door, He leaped on his horse, and he swung her before; And they all were so bothered that not a man stirred Till the galloping hoofs on the pavement were heard. Then up they all started, like bees in a swarm, And they riz a great shout, like the burst of a storm; And they ran, and they jumped, and they shouted galore; But Phadrig or Kathleen ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... and all at once became as active as a swarm of bees after some one has kicked over the hive. He wanted to get to that automobile and give his father a filial embrace—and he was in a hurry. The Chinese dragon was in the way, but Hiram didn't mind a ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... limited number of cases, I trust. In a degraded community like this there will always be some who had a different childhood from that of the crowds of young heathen who swarm its courts and alleys; some who in early life had religious training, and in whose memories were stored up holy things from Scripture; some who have tender and sweet recollection of a mother and home and family prayer and service in God's temples. In the hearts of ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Crnagora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and broke the storm Has breathed a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... his followers broke from trot to canter—canter to gallop—and soon were cracking their hard hoofs on the stony court. Like a swarm of bees the riders swooped down upon the racers, caught them, and ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... with, a gentle smile, "I have. They wished no harm, it might be, to any one, but people stood in their way. It is as if you were going to the arbor after grapes, and there were a swarm of ants in the path. You have no malice against the ants, but you want the grapes,—so you walk on, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... priests and courtiers foul, The losel swarm of crown and cowl, White-robed walked Francois Fenelon, Stainless as Uriel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... vessels have been wrecked in this locality," said the viscount; "and in a little while you will get in among the multitude of fishing-craft that swarm off the islands." ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... summon'd all his creditors by the drum, And they swarm about him like so many soldiers On the pay day; and has found such a new way To pay his old debts, as, 'tis very likely, He shall ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... and count the hosts of the faithful waiting the old alarm, 'To your tents, O Israel!'—count the many in Persia, children of those who chose not to return with the returning; count the brethren who swarm the marts of Egypt and Farther Africa; count the Hebrew colonists eking profit in the West—in Lodinum and the trade-courts of Spain; count the pure of blood and the proselytes in Greece and in the isles of the sea, and over in Pontus, and here in Antioch, and, for ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... interests, of people, principles, things. Ambitions and affections, tastes and prejudices, are fighting for your attention. Your poor, worried consciousness flies to and fro amongst them; it has become a restless and a complicated thing. At this very moment your thoughts are buzzing like a swarm of bees. The reduction of this fevered complex to a unity appears to be a task beyond all human power. Yet the situation is not as hopeless for you as it seems. All this is only happening upon the periphery of the mind, where ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... wire fences. Then one will be permitted to ride along a trail between rows of squalid homesteads flanked by piles of old boots and provision-cans. We will have exchanged the stockrider for the slouching farmer with a swarm of unkempt children and a slatternly, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... doing! have I not said—lure them not, for they swarm too early upon us! And here they are! and, perhaps, in five minutes all will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mother queen leads off a swarm, A young queen they release, And she may take another swarm, And leave ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... two genera. One is purely an epiphyte, growing attached to a tree like many of the orchids. In both genera the gouty stems are hollow, a feature of which ants take advantage; they are merely occupiers, not the makers of their homes. Few, if any, of the plants are uninhabited by a resentful swarm, ready to attack whomsoever may presume to interfere with it. It is discomposing to the uninitiated to find the curious "orchid," laboriously wrenched from a tree, overflowing with stinging and pungent ants, nor is he likely to reflect that the association ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... to mar this record of beauty, but one thing must be mentioned. The luxuriance of the flowers is already greatly diminished by the unscrupulousness of the tourists who swarm in the flower season, especially, I am sorry to say, women. Not content with filling their hands with flowers, they fill their arms and even their carriage, if they have one. Moreover, the hold of the plant on the light, sandy soil is very slight; and the careless gatherer, not provided ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... landlady, Mrs. Williams, I saw little. She was a rather hard but no doubt heavily-laden woman, who had to "do" for a swarm of children, besides two young men lodgers who lived in the kitchen and slept in the room behind mine. Her husband was a quiet man (a carter at the dairy) whom I never saw at all except on the staircase at ten o'clock at night, when, after winding the tall clock on the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... something to popularize him, but he can never be made what he was really capable of being, the poet of the people. His circle of readers will always be small, but it will be of the world's best. The thinkers will never make a vast throng in this world, while the highways of folly will always swarm with a great multitude which no man can number. But there is a day after to-day, and sometime, when the thought of the world shall have risen to a higher level, the name of Robert Browning will be oftener than now upon the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... — Awoke to find an innumerable swarm of mosquitoes buzzing about our habitation, and apparently endeavouring to carry it off bodily. Letting down, however, the muslin curtains, which the foreknowledge of the faithful Q.M.G. had provided us with, we succeeded ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... watchdog slumberously rests, They half-attentive to the clarion of their king, Resplendent in the sunshine op'ning wing— There stood a cow, with neck-bell jingling light, Superb, enormous, dappled red and white— Soft, gentle, patient as a hind unto its young, Letting the children swarm until they hung Around her, under—rustics with their teeth Whiter than marble their ripe lips beneath, And bushy hair fresh and more brown Than mossy walls at old gates of a town, Calling to one another with loud cries For younger imps to be in at the prize; Stealing without ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... with their carts and wagons, whence the women threw arrows and darts to help the men; and when, after three days of hard fighting, all hope was over, they set fire to the enclosure and killed their children and themselves. The whole swarm was destroyed. Marius marched away, and no one was left to bury the dead, so that the spot was called the Putrid Fields, and is ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... jealous," she thought, and she enjoyed the idea. Beverly's earnest manliness made her admire him greatly. It almost reconciled her to Octavie's silliness! He was so different from the swarm of social bees who sipped only the sweets of pleasure. He was a worker, a sincere worker, and his promised appointment to the diplomatic service, notwithstanding his youth, attested the fact that he was unusual. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... their tents, to reinforce the teeth of the Dons, and to sell them ploughs and sewing-machines. Its railroads have waked it up to a new life, and the Revolution has set free the thought of its people to an extent which would have been hardly credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm with newsboys and strangers,—the agencies that are to bring its people into the movement of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Mississippi, and Texas) had not yet complied with the conditions imposed by Congress, and were still refused seats in the House and Senate. No sooner had the others complied with the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and given the negro the right to vote, than a swarm of Northern politicians, generally of the worst sort, went down and, as they said, "ran things." They began by persuading the negroes that their old masters were about to put them back into slavery, that it was only by electing Union men to office ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... get the cash, and it will do for pocket money." And the two others, triumphant in success, became idiots and assented. Making out a check for L5,000, Noyes started for the bank, check in hand, and entering, instantly found himself with a hot and angry swarm of hornets ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... and protected by all, old and young. He said that the swallows had all disappeared in a body, about a week previous to my visit, adding, "You don't know what a lovely spectacle it is to witness the evolutions of these birds on a summer evening, when they are teaching their young ones to fly. They swarm around the building like bees, and their music ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... people take the precaution of having their ears and noses bored in their lifetime. Life in the other world goes on just like life in this one. Houses are built exactly like houses on earth, and there as here pigs swarm in the streets. Fields are tilled and crops are got in; ghostly men marry ghostly women, who give birth to ghostly children. The same old round of love and hate, of quarrelling and fighting, of battle, murder and sudden ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... blaze the playhouses, their wide portals aflame with crackling globes, toward which swarm bevies of pleasure-seeking moths, their eyes dazzled by the glare. Some with heads and throats bare dart from costly broughams, the mountings of their sleek, rain-varnished horses glittering in the flash of the electric lamps. Others ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that it is obvious English people do without the word for the delightful reason that they have not got the thing. We have it here very badly; an epidemic raging at the end of nearly every summer, when cottages and farms swarm with soldiers and horses, when all the female part of the population gets engaged to be married and will not work, when all the male part is jealous and wants to fight, and when my house is crowded with individuals so brilliant and decorative in their dazzling uniforms ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in July last, I ran into a swarm of them on Moose River and got badly bitten. I had carelessly left my medicine behind. On the first of October the bites had not ceased to be painful, and it was three months before they disappeared entirely. Frank Forester says, in his Fish and Fishing, page ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... now, as the two started down the hill, he could see in the dusty road that ran through the old battlefield Southern interest and sympathy taking visible shape. For a hundred miles around, the human swarm had risen from the earth and was moving toward him on wagon, bicycle, horseback, foot; in omnibus, carriage, cart; in barges on wheels, with projecting additions, and other land-craft beyond classification or description. And the people—the American Southerners; ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... INGER. Peace, I say! look how the people swarm. (A funeral hymn is heard from the room within.) There comes the procession. What a throng! All bow themselves before the King's mother. Ay, ay; has she not fought for her son— even till her hands grew red withal?—Where are my daughters? ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... world explored in vain, And foes triumphant show but half my pain. Dissembling friends, each early joy who gave, And fired my youth the storms of fate to brave, Swarm'd in the sunshine of my happier days, Pursued the fortune and partook the praise, Now pass my cell with smiles of sour disdain, Insult my woes ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... animal had to haul three sleigh-loads of equipment to the Town Hall before the scouts could even start the task of decorating. As soon as the coils of wire arrived a dozen scouts began to swarm the big Christmas tree, looping the wires from branch to branch and fastening them securely. Other scouts followed in their wake and screwed red, white and blue, green and yellow lamps into the vacant sockets. And while ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... people swarm like summer flies, And whither fly the gnats but to the sun? And who shines now but Henry's enemies?" (Act ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... honeysuckle did not reach here, and when they stopped presently at the beginning of Tin Pot Alley, there floated out to them the sharp acrid odour of huddled negroes. In these squalid alleys, where the lamps burned at longer distances, the more primitive forms of life appeared to swarm like distorted images under the transparent civilization of the town. The sound of banjo strumming came faintly from the dimness beyond, while at their feet the Problem of the South sprawled innocently amid tomato cans ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... where dawn was a glittering carpet, rolled From sky to shore on level and endless seas, Hardly their eyes discerned in a dazzle of gold That here in fifties, yonder in twos and threes, The ships they sought, like a swarm of drowning bees By a wanton gust on the pool of a mill-dam hurled, Floated forsaken of life-giving tide and breeze, Their oars broken, their sails for ever furled, For ever deserted the bulwarks that guarded the wealth ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... same side with the Russian people who have seen the Nazi hordes swarm up to the very gates of Moscow, and who with almost superhuman will and courage have forced the invaders back ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the names which have been bestowed upon this species are sufficiently, or at all, descriptive of it. Passenger, the English expression, and Migratoria, the Latin name, fall equally short, inasmuch as every known pigeon is to a greater or less extent migratory as well as this one. The "swarm" pigeon, the "flood" pigeon, or even the "deluge" pigeon would be a more appropriate appellation; for the weight of their numbers breaks down the forest with scarcely less havoc than if the stream of the Mississippi were poured ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... his head as if to dissipate a swarm of annoying thoughts, and went back into his ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Midsummer brought the annual swarm of Hurons to the trading fair at Quebec. For a week the all but naked savages overran the little settlement, their animal curiosity almost driving the French to distraction, and their casual peculations causing much annoyance. But their presence ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... down in a queer manner, and pulled away to investigate. He found it to be a dead mule swollen to gigantic size. While looking at it its tail flipped out of the water as though it were alive. It was then he became aware of the fact that a swarm of alligators were feeding on it, and he pulled away with about as much speed as he has ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... search of. I supposed it had fallen down with the boxes, having either been placed upon them or assisting to support them. It appeared, as far as I could judge, to be twelve or fourteen feet long, and was thick enough to enable me to swarm up it, and thus to serve the purpose of a ladder. I first tried to reach the roof of the large vault with it, but it was not long enough, though I lifted it as high as I could; and then carrying it in my hands went back to the recess, and, eager to ascertain the height, I struck upwards. It at once ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... were so slight they were repaired by the close of the following day, when she got under sail with her prize. Despite the swarm of cruisers that were hunting for him, Jones passed unscathed through North Channel, along the western coast of Ireland and arrived at Brest, in France, within a month of the day he left the port, his cruise having been one of the most ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... ground. There was a panicky "Chee! Chee!" from behind him, and Murgatroyd came dashing to swarm up his body and cling apprehensively to ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... the word was given, and like a swarm of angry bees the French sprang from their trenches and rushed in mad haste across the narrow space dividing them from the Malakoff. The place, a moment before quiet and apparently deserted, seemed suddenly alive. A few bounds ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... A swarm of small white animals ran wildly past them from behind, and after them came a howling, laughing, scrambling mob that filled the street. Someone had loosed a few score rabbits for the delight of ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Victor, mighty lord, Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born? —Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded Vessel ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... They turned an immense fire upon the point where stood Sherman and McClernand, now united by imminent peril. Their ranks were searched by shot and shell, and the bullets whizzed among them like a continuous swarm of hornets. ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... weak."—Id. "I would not have little children much tormented about punctilios, or niceties of breeding."—Id. "To fill his head with suitable ideas."—Id. "The Burgusdisciuses and the Scheiblers did not swarm in those days, as they do now."—Id. "To see the various ways of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... drinking the "nectareous juice of immortal life." His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the "Last Day" he hopes to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at the "Trump of Doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the tinkling of a pan. The Prophet says of Tyre that "her merchants are princes." Young says ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... days later a swarm of Bees settled in each ear. Every Sky-Scraper gave an imitation of ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... religion and cultivation of the Greeks, banished from their minds the conviction that these events really occurred, yet an enthusiastic sympathy with the god and his fortunes, as with real events, always remained. The swarm of subordinate beings by whom Bacchus was surrounded—satyrs, nymphs, and a variety of beautiful and grotesque forms—were ever present to the fancy of the Greeks, and it was not necessary to depart very widely from the ordinary course of ideas to imagine them visible to human eyes ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... why this groundless panic, the prowess of our enemy untried in closer conflict? Ocean's myriad fry would drain the fountain, and before the swarm of hostile gnats the mighty lion falls." Kumbhakarna is killed by Rama; on which Indrajit, a son of Ravana, proceeds against the brethren. By the arrow called Nagapasa, presented him by Brahma, he casts Rama and Lakshmana senseless on the ground, and then goes to Nikumbhila mountain to obtain ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... not so very far away now," Jack said, "and we ought to swarm down there and take him back with us. We ought to take the big lobster Jimmie seems to have on his mind back with ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to swarm over the Alpine landscape at their own convenience; on the Calvary of Mount Terrible they erected a dwarf wireless station; a hundred men came from Delle with radio- impedimenta; six American airmen arrived; American planes circled over the northern ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... when the midnight storm Enfolds the welkin in its robe of clouds, Through the dim vapours of the cauldron swarm The sheeted ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... the door been built, long ago, when attacking forces, battering in the doors below, might swarm through the lower floors, held back on staircases by fighting men who retreated, step by step, until, driven at last to the very top, they were apparently lost. More than once; in bygone times the royal family had escaped by that upper ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a tragic venture to attempt to make the Levantine mind understand something off the course, that the new arrival's first thought was to establish a knowlege of the whereabouts of some of his friends rather than to swarm helter-skelter into that part of the hotel for which he was willing to pay rent. In fact he failed to thus impress them; failed in dark wrath, but, nevertheless, failed. At last he was simply forced to concede the travel of files of men up the broad, redcarpeted ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the city murmured like a swarm of wasps, and next day at dawn, so far as the eye could reach, the streets and market place were filled with tens of thousands of armed warriors. They threw themselves like a wave upon the walls of the palace of Axa, and like a wave from a rock they were driven ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... to the Lillooet illihae (country) with the glad tidings, and at the close of two days a swarm of smootlatches (women), and keekas (girls), rushed into camp breathless, and began hysterically searching for their respective sweethearts or husbands among the prisoners. The scene was more than poetic; and it was pathetic in the extreme. It was a scene that had not occurred before ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... is for you, not for myself, that I am afraid. It is horrible to think of you going out alone among those foothills, which swarm with Indians." ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... the day, and in the subbasement of the Titanic store the morning following her laughter was ready enough. But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday swarm of Sixth Avenue. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... those times come back again," said young Harden piously, "else shall we soon be turned into a pack of old wives. The changes that have come to Harden be more than I can stand, Willie. Not so many years past we were aye as busy as a swarm of bees. When we had a mind, and had nought else to do, we leaped on our horses and headed towards Cumberland. There were ever some kine to be driven, or a house or two to be burned, or some poor widow to be avenged, or some ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... our troubles. But begorra, there's more ways o' killin' a dog than by chokin' him wid butther." There is a growing feeling among the farmers that the land will be heavily taxed to raise revenue, and that this means expatriation to the labouring classes, who will swarm to England ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... other Malefactors, so that they are convicted of a Capital Crime, he shall be pardon'd and dismiss'd with a Reward in Money. There is no Doubt but this is a good and wise Law; for without such an Expedient, the Country would swarm with Robbers and Highwaymen Ten-times more than it does; for by this Means we are not only deliver'd from a greater Number of Villains, than we could expect to be from any other; but it likewise stops the Growth of them, breaks their Gangs, and hinders them from ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... men swarm up on the other side. Again the bayonets drive these new foes down the rocky cliffs. No sooner do the redcoats retire, than up comes Shelby again at the head of his men, ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... and shouts. Frantic now, the animals wheeled back. But few of them ran up out of the winding shallow ground along which the fence had been cunningly built. He drove them back, up over the slow ascent, toward the great dusty swarm of horses that ran ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... "when I feel that perhaps I ought at least to risk even my life in order to do something here, in this country. But what is one man's life in the face of this sea of blunders? What is even a giant's effort, against the Lilliputian swarm of modern men who are determined to gain ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... had adroitly selected a spot where they could fight Indian fashion, from behind trees and logs. The battle lasted a whole day. We are not informed how many of either party fell in the fray. But the Indians seemed to swarm around the trappers in countless numbers, and the white men were, greatly to their chagrin, driven back with the loss ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... get this superior result out of his labor group, that is one way; if he can reach his end by introducing children under age, or by any other questionable device, the temptation is there in the subtlest form it can assume for the average man. When, recently, a swarm of sharp practices came out in another of the great concerns whose products reach half the homes of the nation, the man at the top doubtless told the truth when he replied: "In my position, it is not my business to know ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... holes for weeks. There was quite a crowd of children visible, and Katherine, whose heart always warmed to the pitiable little objects, with their mournful black eyes, produced a packet of sweets, which speedily brought a swarm of youngsters round her, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... thickest, blackest clouds. They had watched them settle down on tree, bush, bright green meadow, and fields of waving corn. And they had trembled. For they knew that in an incredibly short time not a vestige of anything green would be left. For a swarm of locusts to visit the land they had thought one of the direst calamities that could come upon them. But now invaders as numerous and far more terrible ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... understanding. Round about this group, were smaller sketches, miniatures of pure fancy. It seemed as if the artist had sought relief in painting these from the pressure of his chief design. Here, for instance, Day and Night were chasing one another through the rings of Saturn; there a swarm of silver stars was settling down through ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and south he knew he had the troopers of the New York State Constabulary to deal with, and in addition every game warden and fire warden in the State Forests, a swarm of lain clothes men from the Metropolis, and the rural constabulary of every town along the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... Tadmor in the Desert could not seem more remote from life,—the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against the half-sunken pillars,—why should I tell of these things, that I should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots we must be not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... dark and silent. We caught the loom of buildings; and behind them a dull glow as from a fire, and guessed tall minarets, and heard the rising and falling of chanting. Numerous small boats hovered near, floating in and out of the patches of light we ourselves cast, waiting for permission to swarm at the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the barracks of the Chasseurs of the Guards, and the line of cafes all filled with uniforms. I caught a glimpse as I went by of the blue and gold of some of my comrades, amid the swarm of dark infantry coats and the light green of the Guides. There they sat, sipping their wine and smoking their cigars, little dreaming what their comrade had on hand. One of them, the chief of my squadron, caught sight of me in the lamplight, ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all hands were saved; and now, since the boats lay forlorn on the vast, with nothing but the Boodah's swarm of moons to move to, for the Boodah they started, while Frankl cast twinkling fingers to the sky, and cursed that night, as the oars with slow wash journeyed through turgid murk toward the very den ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel |
