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verb
Throe  v. i.  To struggle in extreme pain; to be in agony; to agonize.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Throe" Quotes from Famous Books



... the stone of the Kaabah, keep the faith which has been throe and mine since my mother, dying, gave me to thy mother, whose milk gave me health and, in my youth, beauty—and, in my youth, beauty!" Suddenly she buried her face in her veil, and her body shook with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... things lasted nearly an hour, after which time nature seemed to recover herself by a sudden throe, for a brisk breeze, which was highly refreshing to our senses, and which was attended by the loud hollow subterranean sound I have before referred to, unexpectedly sprang up, and swept off, as if by magic, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... bitter-sweet as when the virgin band, the victors chaste, feel at the end the earthy garments drop, and rise with something of a rosy shame into immortal nakedness: so I lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill into the ecstasy and out-throb pain. I' the gray of the dawn it was I found myself facing the pillared front o' the Pieve—mine, my church: it seemed to say for the first time, 'But am not I the Bride, the mystic love o' the Lamb, who took thy plighted troth, my priest, to fold ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... and pure of soul, Mute in the throe of love's mysterious pain— Like thine own steel within the fire's glow, Flashed forth to me—then faded ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... mountains and spent the streams: Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, For all ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... distributed till the whole round of the compass of sects had felt it in turn, and the only principle of its prevention gradually dawned on the common consciousness! In every persecuted cause, honestly conducted, there was a throe towards the birth of this great principle. Every persecuted cause claimed at least a toleration for itself from the established power; and so, by a kind of accumulation, the cause that had been last persecuted had more of a tendency to toleration in it, and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... crash and jar that rocked the whole island. It was the final throe of the volcano's travail. The lurid light above the crater subsided. The dust began to fall thick upon the treasure seekers as they lay upon the ground. They sat up, dazed and horror-stricken. It was some time before ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... mood present, As on in lightsome files they fare, Shall die experienced ere three days are spent— Perish, enlightened by the vollied glare; Or shame survive, and, like to adamant, The throe of Second ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... religion in England is still a thing of free growth, we may, to my thinking, thank these Somerset yokels for it, who first showed how small a thing would shake the throne of an unpopular monarch. Monmouth's army was but the vanguard of that which marched throe years later into London, when James and his cruel ministers were flying as outcasts over the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... tho you send me A beggar from your door, You, my lord, whom I honour, And you, his sisters four, To whom there have come no children To make your bosoms feel How even a thought so full of throe Can make my sick ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... mourn! Give utterance to the inward throe, As wails of her first love forlorn The virgin ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... terrific power of the body, the mind, frightened and cornered, determined to dominate; a fierce delight in the battle raging behind her serene and smiling mask to the accompaniment of that vulgar blare of war where mind over matter was as powerless in the death throe as incantations ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... man makes no attempt to rise, nor movement of any kind, save a convulsive tremor through his frame; the last throe of parting life, which precedes the settled stillness of death. For surely is ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... pale gold hair blowing about his face. In the same instant he was aware of the pitiful inadequacy of speech. God! If he could so frame words that she could see what he then saw! And he felt the stir in him, like a throe of yearning pain, of the desire to paint these visions that flashed unsummoned on the mirror of his mind. Ah, that was it! He caught at the hem of the secret. It was the very thing that the great writers and master-poets did. That was why they were giants. They ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... moaned—more than moaned—among the boulders below the ruins, a throe of its tide being timed to regular intervals. These sounds were accompanied by an equally periodic moan from the interior of the cottage chamber; so that the articulate heave of water and the articulate heave of life seemed but ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... by that the throe blood's in him still. The rale gintleman to dale wid, for ever! We knew he only wanted to come at the thruth, an' thin he'd back us agin the villain that harrished us! To the divil wid skamin' upstarts, that hasn't the ould blood 'in thim! What ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... of the well-known hills, or the pink of the familiar sunsets. In her rummaging about the house she pulled open a chest of drawers which used to stand in the room where she slept when a child. It was full of her own childish clothing, a little girl's linen and muslin; and she thought with a throe of despair that she could as well hope to get hack into these outgrown garments, which the helpless piety of Mrs. Bolton had kept from the rag-bag, as to think of re-entering the relations of the life ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... muscles in my left arm stiffened. The big biceps—an heirloom of my athletic days—thickened up, and I turned my eyes away from the dying face, half hidden by the darkness. His struggles were very terrible, but with my weight upon his lower limbs, and my grasp upon his windpipe, that death-throe was as silent as it was horrible. The end came slowly. I could not bear the horror of it longer. I must finish it and be done with it. I put my right arm under the man's shoulders and raised the upper part of his body from the berth. Then a desperate wrench with my left arm, and ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... upheaval going on a little further south being here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a table before me. It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, never felt one shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to the bottom of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... touching to listen to his gratitude to you and your mother. It's only conceivable on the ground that he has never had friends before in the world. He seems like another man, or the same man come to life. And it isn't his fault that he's a priest. I suppose," he added, with a sort of final throe, "that a Venetian family wouldn't use him with the frank hospitality you've shown, not because they distrusted him at all, perhaps, but because they would be afraid of ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... The last expiring throe of a mighty superstition was about to convulse the little society at Salem, and, as usual in such cases, ignorance and prejudice went hand in hand for the destruction of reason and humanity. The last of the great religious persecutions was to begin, when eminent divines ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... throe of the conflict had come. It was no longer to be a duel at a distance—no more a contest between rifle-bullets and barbed arrows; but the close, desperate, hand-to-hand contest of pistol, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... knew it well, had heard it often by his camp fire in his old prospecting days—the yell of a California lion in the mountains beyond. The night was drawing toward its last deep hours when he came to a straight uprearing of rock, a ledge, broken and heaved upward in some ancient earth-throe. He felt along its face, glazed by water films, close-curtained by shrubs and ferns, found an opening and ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... and called on the troops to remain with him. They wavered; but they are a pampered army, personally much attached to the king, who pays them well and indulges them at the expense of his people, that they may be his support against that people when in a throe of nature it rises and striven for its rights. For the same reason, the sentiment of patriotism was little diffused among them in comparison with the other troops. And the alternative presented was one in which it required a very clear sense of higher duty to act against habit. Generally, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... whistling. I dashed out, slamming the door and locking it. I leant a little against the opposite wall of the corridor, feeling rather funny; for it had been a narrow squeak.... 'Theyr be noe sayfetie to be gained bye gayrds of holieness when the monyster hath pow'r to speak throe woode and stoene.' So runs the passage in the Sigsand MS., and I proved it in that 'Nodding Door' business. There is no protection against this particular form of monster, except, possibly, for a fractional period of time; for it can reproduce itself in, or take to its purpose, the very protective ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... earth were capable of the sentiments and emotions of justice and virtue, which in human mortal beings are the evidences and the pledge of our divine origin and immortal destiny, it would heave and throe with the energy of the elemental forces of nature, and project this enemy of two races of men into that vast region, there forever to exist, in a solitude as eternal as life, or as the absence of life, emblematical of, if not ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... what seemed to be a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes—those eyes that shone like heaven—being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... of mine! Soul, soul, soul of throe! Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine, And sing thy ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... head, thou undaunted youth! Though some hope may now break, forsooth, Brighter a new one and higher Shall throe ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... seen in shaded situations, and the ice still disfigures the bays and indentations of the shore in some places, as if it were animated with a determination to hold out against the power of the sun to the utmost. Nature, however, indicates its great vernal throe. White fish were first taken during the season, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... vital part had been struck. For some minutes the huge leviathan lashed and rolled and tossed in the trembling waves in his agony, while he spouted up gallons of blood with every throe; then he rolled over on his back, and lay extended a lifeless mass ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... my heart-cure a heart that goes; * And from hill-foot of eyelids the tear-rill flows: And parting and sorrow and exile and dole * And farness from country and throe that o'erthrows: Naught am I save a lover distracted by love, * Far parted from loved one and wilted by woes. And 'tis Love that hath brought me such sorrow, say where * Is the noble of soul who ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... and the whole country from the sea foam to the foothills looked tumbled and new, with the newness of infinite antiquity. The last thunders of creation seemed scarcely to have died away, the last throe scarcely to have ceased, leaving million-ton rock cast on rock and the new, shear-cut cliffs spitting back their first taste ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... dead silence for a moment. Then the stranger stretched forth his hand. "Yet in that leaving him, remember;—It is not the act, but the will, which marks the soul of the man. He who has crushed a nation sins no more than he who rejoices in the death throe of the meanest creature. The stagnant pool is not less poisonous drop for drop than the mighty swamp, though its reach be smaller. He who has desired to be and accomplish what this man has been and accomplished, is as this man; though ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner

... Ah! sweet and peerless dye. At last—the sun, an Eastern king, Comes forth in rested pride; And soars, with bright and burning wing, Above the hill and tide. Above yon Blue Ridge, towering piles, Uptorn by Nature's throe— He speeds, he speeds, through myriad miles, To his meridian glow. The birds sink down, amid the copse, And sing a feeble song; At last, each sound, on sudden, stops, And Silence holds the throng. But Evening, comes, a sober maid, With one bright, starry eye; And throws her mantle—star-inlaid— ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... hale Unto thy couch in the cave. 'Mother! mother!' I shrieked out my wail— Wroughtest the pleasure of Kypris; no shame made the god-lover quail. Wretched I bare thee a child, and I cast him with shuddering throe Forth on thy couch where thou forcedst thy victim, a bride-bed of woe. Lost—my poor baby and thine! for the eagles devoured him: and lo! Victory-songs to thy lyre dost thou chant!—Ho, I call to thee, son Born to Latona, Dispenser of boding, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... animal remains. 3. That they grow or shoot as crystals do. I find that I could swallow the last opinion, sooner than either of the others; but I have not yet swallowed it. Another opinion might have been added, that some throe of nature has forced up parts which had been the bed of the ocean. But have we any better proof of such an effort of nature, than of her shooting a lapidific juice into the form of a shell? No such convulsion has taken place in our time, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the wrist as he could, Mainwaring snatched up the empty weapon and struck once and again at the bald, narrow forehead beneath him. A third blow he delivered with all the force he could command, and then with a violent and convulsive throe the straining muscles beneath him relaxed and grew limp and the fight ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... look at creeds as things to be changed like coats, whenever they seem not to fit them, little know what we Catholic-hearted ones suffer. . . . If they did, they would be more merciful and more chary in the requirements of us, just as we are in the very throe of a new-born existence. The excellent man, to whose care I have committed myself, has a wise and a tender heart . . . he saw no harm in my concealing from my father the spiritual reason of my giving up my curacy (for I have given it up), and only giving the outward, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... second time before speaking, for I feared to betray myself. The choice of a friend might be a momentous occasion for me. I had already ground for hope, that she had asked me to help her in the first throe of her trouble; but love makes its own doubtings, and I feared. My thoughts seemed to whirl with lightning rapidity, and in a few seconds a whole process of reasoning became formulated. I must not volunteer to be the friend that the father advised his ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... that he had spoken. The name upon his tongue, a name he had said low to himself often to-day and yesterday, was born of the throe which made fire-currents of his veins, the passion which at the instant seized imperiously upon his being. She could not see his face, and hers to him was a half-veiled glory, yet each knew the wild gaze, the all but terror, in the other's eyes, that anguish which indicates ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... sick, child, sure enough. Ho, ho! sir, you have taken drows; what, another throe! writhe, sir, writhe, the hog died by the drow of gypsies; I saw him stretched at evening. That's yourself, sir. There is no hope, sir, no help, you have taken drow; shall I tell you your fortune, sir, your dukkerin? God bless ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Columbus River—pass me two or throe skeins of thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and the rat trap for Stone's Landing-Napoleon, I mean—and you can see how much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your railroad ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... that hour of mortal strife I thought I felt the throe, The birth-pang of a grief, whose life Must soothe my tearless woe, must soothe And ease me of ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... wounds! Who hath, dead one, summoned thee to light? Back to gaping Orcus' fearful bonds, Haughty mourner! triumph not to-night! On Philippi's iron altar, lo! Reeks now freedom's final victim's blood; Rome o'er Brutus' bier feels her death-throe,— He seeks Minos.—Back ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... soft—yet dreams will still Convert that couch to snow, And in my slumbers shot and shout Are ringing from Glencoe." That stalwart man arose and paced The chamber to and fro, While to his brow the sweat-drop sprung Like one in mortal throe. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... it was as though a shuttle shot all across the sea in one breath, and a second head and neck tore through the levels, driving a whispering wall of water to right and left. The two Things met—the one untouched and the other in its death-throe—male and female, we said, the female coming to the male. She circled round him bellowing, and laid her neck across the curve of his great turtle-back, and he disappeared under water for an instant, but flung up again, grunting ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... "can the good come without a struggle? Is the beautiful accomplished without strife? Recall the tales of primeval chaos, when, as sang the Ascraean singer, love first darted into the midst; imagine the heave and throe of joining elements; conjure up the first living shapes, born of the fluctuating slime and vapour. Surely they were things incomplete, deformed ghastly fragments of being, as are the dreams of a maniac. Had ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... goddess, Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled, Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he woo'd thee and won thee! Fair was thy blush, the fairest and first of the blushes of morning! Deep was the shudder, O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention: Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre! Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith Myriad myriads of lives teem'd forth from the mighty embracement. Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impell'd ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether the ear: thus it is with 'draft' and 'draught'; 'plain' and 'plane'; 'coign' and 'coin'; 'flower' and 'flour'; 'check' and 'cheque'; 'straight' and 'strait'; 'ton' and 'tun'; 'road' and 'rode'; 'throw' and 'throe'; 'wrack' and 'rack'; 'gait' and 'gate'; 'hoard' and 'horde'{117}; 'knoll' and 'noll'; 'chord' and 'cord'; 'drachm' and 'dram'; 'sergeant' and 'serjeant'; 'mask' and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... not yet too late to withdraw and throw thyself into the mighty throe of the great world's agony. Which shall it be? It is for thee to decide. No one is pressed into the service of the great goddess Diana, neither may any follow her as ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... of a forest, a singular mass of rocks, sometimes rising in smooth perpendicular columns, some of them capped by a huge flat rock laying as regularly as if placed there by the hand of mechanical skill, and then again they were thrown down and lay scattered around as if by some violent throe of nature. Though there were vast fields of rock, not a shrub, nor any sign of vegetation could be seen. All was desolate, sand and rock. What struck them as being very singular about these rocks, was the ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... particular, the people seem to have laid aside the monarchical, and taken up the republican government, with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes. Not a single throe has attended this important transformation. A half dozen aristocratical gentlemen, agonizing under the loss of pre-eminence, have sometimes ventured their sarcasms on our political metamorphosis. They have been thought fitter objects of pity than of punishment. We are at present ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... mi wife,—an soa aw thowt Aw'd introduce her, as aw owt. Mi hont wor pleeased to see us booath,— To mak fowk welcome nivver looath,— An th' table grooaned wi richest fare, An one an all wor pressed to share, Mi sweetheart made noa moor to do. Shoo buckled on an sooin gate throe; Mi hont sed, as shoo filled her glass,— "Well, God ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... courage to live out every throe of anguish fate assigned me, and principle to contend for justice and liberty to ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... chocolate. The committee having taken these points into deliberation, agreed to the two resolutions we have already mentioned with respect to the consolidation; and a bill was brought in for adding those annuities granted in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine, to the joint stock of throe per centum annuities consolidated by the acts of the twenty-fifth, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirty-second years of his majesty's reign, and for several duties therein mentioned, to the sinking fund. The committee was afterwards empowered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... growths of genius are of a certain total character, that does not advance the elect individual first over John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority,—but by every throe of growth the man expands there where he works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, populations, of men. With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... huge live-oaks. The grass beneath them was burnt gray and was brittle and slippery. The massive trees, some round and compact and so densely leaved that they were impervious to rain as an umbrella, others throwing out long, gnarled arms as if spellbound in some giant throe of pain, cast vast slanting shadows upon the parched ground. Some seemed, like trees in Dore's drawings, to be endowed with a grotesque, weird humanness of aspect, as though an imprisoned dryad or gnome were struggling to escape, causing the mighty trunk to ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... helpful victory If, in this earth without a refuge, Buddh Winning the way had deemed it all too hard For mortal feet, and passed, none following him. Yet pondered the compassion of our Lord, But in that hour there rang a voice as sharp As cry of travail, so as if the earth Moaned in birth-throe "Nasyami aham bhu Nasyati loka! Surely I Am Lost, I And My Creatures:" then a pause, and next A pleading sigh borne on the western wind, "Sruyatam dharma, Bhagwat!" Oh, Supreme Let Thy Great Law Be Uttered! Whereupon The Master cast his ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... the most wild, shrill and unearthly that ever came from the death-throe of a breaking heart, arose upon the air, and echoed through the woods, and the widow sunk, fainting, to the ground. They raised her up—the blood was flowing in torrents from her mouth. They bore her to the house, and laid ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... from her left hand—the hand that held her skirts—such a thrill as is known only to the sex that wills to have its pocket there. She made one or two convulsive confirmatory clutches at it from the outside, then, with a throe of actual despair, she thrust her hand into her pocket. It was a crushing fact, her purse was gone—her purse that held the possibilities of her journalistic future molten and stamped in eight golden ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall, Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss With long bared arms. There the glass still is. And, as said, if I thrust my arm below Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe From the past awakens a sense of that time, And the glass both used, and the cascade's rhyme. The basin seems the pool, and its edge The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge, And the leafy pattern ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... deep slumbers of the Scottish soldier, who lay motionless, with rough countenance as immovable as if it were cast in bronze—the pale and anxious face of Oliver, who at one time assumed the appearance of slumber, and again opened his eyes and raised his head hastily, as if stung by some internal throe, or awakened by some distant sound—the discontented, savage, bulldog aspect of the Provost, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... although streaming with blood from a score of wounds. Once, indeed, as a deep-searching thrust entered her very vitals, she raised her massy flukes high in air with an apparently involuntary movement of agony; but even in that dire throe she remembered the possible danger to her young one, and laid the tremendous weapon as softly down upon the water as if ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... appearances, but in nearly the same centre; here existing as an augitic rock, there as a syenite, yonder as a basalt or amygdaloid. At one place it uptilted the sandstone; at another it overflowed it; the dark central masses raised their heads above the surface, higher and higher with every earthquake throe from beneath; till at length the gigantic Ben More attained to its present altitude of two thousand three hundred feet over the sea-level, and the sandstone, borne up from beneath like floating sea-wrack on the back of a porpoise, reached in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... by thirst; Land, by the oceans passed; Transport, by throe; Peace, by its battles told; Love, by memorial ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... further than my force would go, * And for them made me suffer resurrection throe: Oh, have compassion, cruel! on this soul of mine * Which, since ye fared, is pitied by each envious foe; Nor grudge the tender mercy of one passing glance * My case to lighten, easing this excess of woe: Quoth I 'Heart, bear this loss in patience!' Patience cried * 'Take heed! no patience ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... the wild unfathered mass no birth In divine seats hath known; In the blank echoing solitude, if earth, Rocking her obscure body to and fro, Ceases not from all time to heave and groan, Unfruitful oft, and, at her happiest throe, Forms what she ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable, without increasing them by throe own invention; and art miserable enough by nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essential deformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary. Dost thou think thou art too much at ease unless half thy ease is ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... In entering alone this gorge, I had not the faintest idea that I would have occasion to regret my foolish imprudence. I had not realized its character. It was simply an enormous crevasse, rent by some Titanic throe of nature, some tremendous earthquake, which had split the granite mountain. In its bottom I could just distinguish a hardly perceptible white thread, an impetuous torrent, the dull roar of which filled the defile with mysterious and ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... Mother! [He drinks. The anguish of it hath taken hold of me, And I am gripped by Nature. O, it comes Upon me, this too natural remorse. I faint! I flinch from the raw agony! I cannot face this common human throe! Ah! Ah! the crude stab of reality! I am a son, and I have killed my mother! Why! I am now no more than him who tills Or reaps: and I am seized by primal pangs. Mother! [He drinks. The thunder crieth motherless. Ah! how this sword of lightning thrusts at me! O, all the artist in my soul is shattered, ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... be understood now that this was not a conclusion with Ben-Hur, but an impression merely; and while it was forming, while yet he gazed at the wonderful countenance, his memory began to throe and struggle. "Surely," he said to himself, "I have seen the man; but where and when?" That the look, so calm, so pitiful, so loving, had somewhere in a past time beamed upon him as that moment it was beaming upon Balthasar became an assurance. Faintly at first, at last a clear light, a burst ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... white-hot, to the daily issues of private and public life, in a way to make pampered ladies hold their breath, and men of the world their brows. Such a man, to whom the least sin seemed black and bottomless, yet who appeared to know by experience the soul's every throe in the foulest crimes, was not going to show his joys on the ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... Worm had done his work, but he had hardly reckoned on the strength of this man. With a vast throe of fear Locasto tried to free himself. Tenser, tenser grew the thongs; they strained, they bit into his flesh, but they would not break. Yet as he relaxed it seemed to him they were less tight. Then he rested for ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... rich and poor, man, woman and child. These shows were their very life; they constituted the essence of their entire being; for these they rose at midnight and stood waiting, hour upon hour, that they might be near enough to smell the blood when it reddened the sand of the arena, and to see the last throe of agony on the face of those who fell ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... peers in glorious glow: But death made drink a brimming cup, what day * He fared from natal country fain to go: His home left he and went from us to grief; * Nor to his brethren could he say adieu: Yea, his loss wounded me with parting pangs, * And separation cost me many a throe: He fared farewelling, as he fared, our eyes; * Whenas ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... lonely way Met in the heavenly height, And they dreamed a dream they might shine alway With undivided light; Melt into one with a breathless throe, And beam as one ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... nor meat will she bestow; And were I only young again! Said "Hate ye shall have and the hunger throe"— To honied words we list ...
— The Return of the Dead - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... were seated together, regarding with impatience the brief preparations to embark. Boone, Roughgrove, Sneak, and Joe were busily engaged lading the vessel. Sneak had hastily brought thither his effects, and without a throe of regret abandoned his house for ever to the owls. Joe succeeded with but little difficulty in getting the horses on board. The fawn, the kitten, the hounds, and the chickens were ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... climax. A pang of exquisite suffering—a throe of true despair—rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned—I wrung my hands—I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... beside the tortured man and wept, And cried to Heaven for mercy. As I prayed, My soul cast off its shameful enterprise; And when it fell, I saw my godless self— My own degraded, tainted, guilty heart, Which it had hidden from me. Oh, the pang— The poignant throe of uttermost despair— That followed the discovery! I felt That I was lost beyond the grace of God; And my heart turned with instinct sure and swift To the strong struggler, praying at my side, And begged his succor and his prayers. I felt That he must ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... barbarian's lips; and then came the sound of his footsteps, as he darted, with a cry still wilder, into the forest, pursued by the sound of other steps; and then all again was silent,—all save groans, and the rustling in the grass of limbs convulsed in the death-throe ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... one of the jays came. Not many, in fact, had been asked, and when Jeff Durgin actually appeared, it was not known that he was both the first and the last of his kind. The lady who was matronizing the tea recognized him, with a throe of her quickened conscience, as the young fellow whom she had met two winters before at the studio tea which Mr. Westover had given to those queer Florentine friends of his, and whom she had never thought of since, though she had then ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... that's just the thing I'd like especially to sing; But at the task my spirits faint, For 'tis not every one can paint Battalions, with their bristling wall Of pikes, and make you see the Gaul, With, shivered spear, in death-throe bleed, Or Parthian ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... a definition of love according to thy idea. What can it be—for thou seest it exists out of romances. This worthy youngster undertook these little conspiracies through love. Thou heardst it thyself with throe unworthy ears. Come, what is love? For my part, I know nothing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... of Earth, and there With torment and with tension does prepare The lush disclosures of the vernal time. All joys draw inward to their icy urns, Tormented by constraining rime, And there With undelight and throe prepare The bounteous efflux of the vernal time. Nor less beneath compulsive Law Rebuk-ed draw The numb-ed musics back upon my heart; Whose yet-triumphant course I know And prevalent pulses forth shall start, Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... search the world, wherever woe Of high or low the bosom wrings, There, gasp for gasp, and throe for throe, Is answer'd from ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... tone of inexorable sadness, the sadness of fate itself in Andrew's voice. He had, as he spoke, the full realization of that stage of progress which is simply for the next, which passes to make room for it. He felt his own nothingness. It was the throe of the present before the future; it was the pang of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... who had learnt to believe it mere dishonour and tameness to forgive the son for his father's deeds. A cloistered priest could hardly do so: pardon to a hostile family came only with the last mortal throe; and here was this warlike king forgiving as ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gaze, forth from the recesses of the gynaeceum there breaks a cry, expressing rather wrath and surprise than mere pain. Then there comes another, more plaintive—the moan of a strong man in the death-throe. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... of the managers, The Adelphi might overflow—the Surrey might quake with reiterated "pitsfull"—still there remained over and above the feast-crumbs sufficient for the battenings of other than theatrical appetites. Immediately the press-gang—we beg pardon, the press—arose, and with a mighty throe spawned many monsters. Great drama! Greater Press! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... nose to the ground, set up a fierce bark. When arrived at the spot, the party halted, and perceived the body of an Indian, slightly covered with earth, leaves, and a few dry bushes. Hastily throwing off the covering from his head, they discovered hideous features, wildly distorted by the last throe of death, and bloody from a wound in his forehead made by a ball. His scalp had been taken off also, by those who buried him—from fear, probably, that he would be found by enemies, and this secured as a trophy—a matter of disgrace which the savage, under all ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... that matchless arrow cleft, The deer's bright form Maricha left, Resumed his giant shape and size And closed in death his languid eyes. When Rama saw his awful foe Gasp, smeared with blood, in deadly throe, His anxious thoughts to Sita sped, And the wise words that Lakshman said, That this was false Maricha's art, Returned again upon his heart. He knew the foe he triumphed o'er The name of great Maricha bore. "The fiend," he pondered, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... called my life was a garment about my feet, For the web of the years was rent with the throe of a yearning strong. With a sweep as of winds in heaven, with a rush as of flames that meet, The Flesh and the Spirit clasped; and I cried, "Was I ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... tinged with faint colors, that submerged his will and his consciousness, till they sank, gathering impetus, into a void below—the vacancy of the spirit that looses its hold on the body and is rudderless. He knew the blackness which is death, the momentary throe of entering it, the shock, the sense of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... pistol clenched in his failing hand, With the death mist spread o'er his fading eyes, He saw the sun go down on the sand, And he slept, and never saw it rise; 'Twas well; he toil'd till his task was done, Constant and calm in his latest throe; The storm was weathered, the battle was won, When he went, my friends, where we all ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... last be distinguished from recruits. The new regiments were instantly gone, lost, scattered, as if they never had been. But the sweeping failure of the charge, the battle, could not make the veterans forget their business. With a last throe, the band of maniacs drew itself up and blazed a volley at the hill, insignificant to those iron intrenchments, but nevertheless expressing that singular final despair which enables men coolly to defy the walls of a ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... professorship, promised a trip to Germany, and at last, staggering home one night, on his way to his wife and little boy and girl, fell in his tracks and in four days was dead, at the age of thirty-seven. They say that in his death-throe he arose and facing some great, ghostly choir raised his last baton, while all around the massive silence rang with the last mist-music of his ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois



Words linked to "Throe" :   excruciation, distress



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