"Wrack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compass'd by the power of the King, Enforced she was to wed him in her tears, And with a shameful swiftness: afterward, Not many moons, King Uther died himself, Moaning and wailing for an heir to rule After him, lest the realm should go to wrack. And that same night, the night of the new year, By reason of the bitterness and grief That vext his mother, all before his time Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born Deliver'd at a secret postern-gate ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... dey allus say, Is des' befo' de dawn, But it's moughty ha'd a-waitin' Were de night goes frownin' on; An' it's moughty ha'd a-hopin' When de clouds is big and black, An' all de t'ings you's waited fu' Has failed, er gone to wrack— But des' keep on a joggin' ind a little bit o song. De moon is allus brightah w'en de ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... to your conquering eyes Love owes its chiefest victories, And borrows those bright arms from you With which he does the world subdue; Yet you yourselves are not above The empire nor the griefs of love. Then wrack not lovers with disdain, Lest love on you revenge their pain; You are not free, because you're fair, The boy did not his mother spare: Though beauty be a killing dart, It is no armour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... never found time to wrack his brains for the passages that eluded him. But all that had been merely a subterfuge to soothe his conscience, while he slowly felt his way ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... heat broke from the pillar-stove and spread through the shop, strewing the heavier smells like a wrack behind it. And through it all, with every swing of the great mahogany doors, there stole into his young senses a something delicious and disturbing, faintly ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... crime. As to your third reason, it scarselie merites an answere. For if the deuill their master were not bridled, as the scriptures teacheth vs, suppose there were no men nor women to be his instrumentes, he could finde waies inough without anie helpe of others to wrack al mankinde: wherevnto he employes his whole study, and goeth about like a roaring Lyon (as PETER saith) (M16) to that effect, but the limites of his power were set down before the foundations of the world were laid, which he hath not power in the least jote ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... You must know that on the top of this mountain you will find a ruined house, which was built long ago, time out of mind. The walls are cracked, the foundations crumbling away, the doors worm-eaten, the furniture all worn out—and, in short, everything is gone to wrack and ruin. On one side are seen shattered columns, on another broken statues; and nothing is left in a good state except a coat-of-arms over the door, quartered on which you will see a serpent biting its tail, a stag, a raven, and a phoenix. ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... replied Humphrey; "although I think now that I could get on by myself; but still, Edward, you know we cannot tell what a day may bring forth, and I might fall sick, or something happen which might prevent my attending to anything; and then, without you or Pablo, everything might have gone to wrack and ruin. Certainly, when we think how we were left, by the death of old Jacob, to our own resources, we have much to thank God for in ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... shall be so: by heaven there's life in this! The wrack of clouds is driving on the winds, And shews a break of sunshine— Go Grillon, give my orders to Byron, And see your soldiers well disposed within, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... salaried wit; and is there aught in nature more ridiculous? A poor, dull, heart-broken man, who must needs be merry, or he will be whipped; who must rejoice, lest he starve; who must jest you, jibe you, quip you, crank you, wrack you, riddle you, from hour to hour, from day to day, from year to year, lest he dwindle, perish, starve, pine,and die! Why, when there's naught else to laugh at, I laugh at myself ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have you ever seen fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply, blazing wide and spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel, dying fast away, leaving not a wrack behind? So they have kindled their accusation with abuse and fanned it with words, but it lacks the fuel of facts and, your verdict once given, is destined to leave not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole of Aemilianus' calumnious accusation was centred ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... somewhat lest his mind should fail him through grievous wrack of pain of body, but that trouble was ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... one tree, either of pine or of pitch trees; a wood not commonly known to our people, nor found growing in England. They have no edge-tools to make them withal; if they have any they are very few, and those, it seems, they had twenty years since, which, as those two men declared, was out of a wrack, which happened upon their coast, of some Christian ship, being beaten that way by some storm and outrageous weather, whereof none of the people were saved, but only the ship, or some part of her, being cast upon the sand, out of whose sides they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... a broad balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us. Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of the clouds. Holmes drove in silence, with his head sunk upon his breast, and the air of a man who is lost in thought, while I sat beside him, curious to learn what ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... away the rain That all day long had soaked the level plain. Against the horizon's fiery wrack, The sheds loomed black. And higher, in their tumultuous concourse met, The streaming clouds, shot-riddled banners, wet With the flickering storm, Drifted and smouldered, warm With flashes sent From the lower firmament. And they concealed— They only here and there through rifts revealed ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... Armado to wrack, And Travell'd all o'er the old World, and came back, In his old Ship, laden with Gold and old Sack, Like an ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... crafty. Instead of pushing straightway for the bar and hoisting sail—which might have brought a charge of grape-shot after him—he kept in the gloom of the piles nearly into the left bank, and then hugged the shadow it afforded. Nothing but the desolate sands surveyed him, and the piles of wrack cast up by gales from the west. Then with a stout heart he stepped his little mast, and the breeze, which freshened towards the rising of the sun, carried him briskly through the tumble of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... blow no harder," and presently the gale would give them the lie with a piercing shriek, and drive their breath back into their throats. A fierce squall seemed to burst asunder the thick mass of sooty vapours; and above the wrack of torn clouds glimpses could be caught of the high moon rushing backwards with frightful speed over the sky, right into the wind's eye. Many hung their heads, muttering that it "turned their inwards out" to look at it. Soon the clouds closed ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... shut, and I closed the secret one behind me before opening the other and peering out through a wrack of bluish smoke; and there lay Captain Harris, sure enough, breathing his last in the arms of one constable, while another was seated on the table with a very wry face, twisting a tourniquet round his arm, from which the blood ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... A formless wrack of clouds streams across the awful sky, and the rain sweeps almost parallel with the horizon. Beyond, the heath stretches off into endless blackness, in the extreme of which either fancy or art has conjured up some undefinable shapes that seem riding into space. At the base of the huge oak stands ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... may bring In the small compass of a lady's ring; Figured by hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow, And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow. Involved in sea-wrack, here you find a race Which science, doubting, knows not where to place; On shell or stone is dropp'd the embryo-seed, And quickly vegetates a vital breed. While thus with pleasing wonder you inspect Treasures the vulgar in their scorn reject, See as they float along th' entangled weeds ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... spars. A thick cloud was coming up from the northwest, and the ragged tentacles which it threw out in front of it were drifting across the face of the moon, which only shone now and again through a rift in the wrack. The Captain paced rapidly backwards and forwards, and then seeing me still dogging him, he came across and hinted that he thought I should be better below—which, I need hardly say, had the effect of strengthening my resolution to remain ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the night before still lingered in a wrack of flying clouds, scurrying one after the other, veiling the stars—and the moon was hidden—and hidden too was the sudden whiteness of Helena's face. She knew what he had to say, knew it before she had come to him—and yet she was there—and she had come resolutely ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... both oars hard, missed the water with his right and fell backwards to the bottom of the boat. His two feet stuck up ridiculously. Priscilla laughed. The boat, swept forward by the tide, grounded softly on the sea wrack which ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted. He could ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did he think I did not know, I did not feel— what wrack, what weal for him: golden one, golden one, turn again Aphrodite with the yellow zone, I am cursed, cursed, undone! Ah and my face, Aphrodite, beside your gold, is cut out of ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... kraken huge and black, She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp! Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, With a sudden shudder of death, And the cannon's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... and mead, The rounding noon hangs hard and white; Into the gathering heats recede The hollows of the Chelsea height; But under all to one quiet tune, A spirit in cool depths withdrawn, With logs, and dust, and wrack bestrewn, ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... its fairy-foam of lace, the ivorine loveliness of glossy shoulders and jewelled throats, the glimmering of satin-slippered feet,—than to watch the raging of the flood without, or the flying of the wrack ... ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... appearance. Diving for it, and bringing it up in its bill, the canvas-back readily breaks off the long lanceolate leaves, which float off, either to be eaten by another species—the pochard—or to form immense banks of wrack, that are thrown ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... day this servant of God was accustomed to seat himself on the cliff, in the place that is to-day still called St. Mael's chair. At his feet the rocks bristling with green seaweed and tawny wrack seemed like black dragons as they faced the foam of the waves with their monstrous breasts. He watched the sun descending into the ocean like a red Host whose glorious blood gave a purple tone to the clouds and ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... lives in ev'ry page, And sits archbishop still, to vex the age. Had he foreseen—and who knows but he did?— This fatal wrack, which deep in time lay hid, 'Tis but just to believe, that little hand Which clouded him, but now benights our land, Had never—like Elias—driv'n him hence, A sad retirer for a slight offence. For were he now, like the returning year, Restor'd, to view these desolations here, He would ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... it was evident that she was fast regaining the use of the treasures stored in her brain by years of dogged and methodical work. But the facts and personalities which had made her own life seemed to have vanished, leaving "not a wrack behind." ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... superintendent said the Sunday School was going to wrack and ruin, also the Christian Endeavour. The condition of the church for dust was something scandalous, and strangers were making a mockery of the singing. And the carpet had to be paid for. He supposed they would have to let the women have ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... say so. To my best remembrance, he lay crying out all one night for fear; and at times he would so tremble that he would make the very bed shake under him. But O! how the thoughts of death, of hell-fire, and of eternal judgment, did then wrack his conscience. Fear might be seen in his face, and in his tossings to and fro; it might also be heard in his words, and be understood by his heavy groans. He would often cry, I am undone, I am undone; my vile life ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... vision of magic, the unsubstantial work of Iris, an illusionary cloud of coral, amber, and amethyst. It was the bare bones of this old earth, as sombre and foreboding as any ruin of granite under the wrack of ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... Parliament of an Act of Oblivion in favour of the lords, which he urged on the unkingly ground that, if severe measures were taken against them, they would go 'to armes and get forean assistance quhilk might wrack King, Country, ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... here. He's got a duty and a responsibility. Your dear father didn't leave him the estate for him to let it go to wrack and ruin. It's most cruel and ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... wishes may be right, and our confidence may be firm that God will give us what we ask; yet how often there is no vivid thought of Him filling the mind! How often our prayers are offered to a mere name! How seldom through the cloud-wrack beneath His feet do we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... this world but to love and do God's will. All else is nought. This is solid. 'The world passeth away, ... but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' Everything besides is show and delusion, and a life directed to it is fleeting as the cloud-wrack that sweeps across the sky, and, whether it is shone on or is black, is equally melting away. Happy the child who begins with such surrender of self to be God's instrument, and who, like Samuel, can stand up at the end and challenge men's judgment ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the surface of the planet. The cloud-wrack got thinner and thinner, and presently they found themselves floating in a clear atmosphere between two seas of cloud, the one above them being much less dense ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... led Archie through the musty corridors and cells the boy perceived that the old building had long ago gone to wrack. It was a place of rust and dust and dry rot, of crumbling masonry, of rotted casements, of rust-eaten bars, of creaking hinges and broken locks. He had the impression that a strong man could break in the doors with his fist ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... I Suffolk and the cardinal's broker. Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near To call them both a pair of crafty knaves. Well, so its stands; and thus, I fear, at last Hume's knavery will be the duchess' wrack, And her attainture will be Humphrey's fall. Sort how it will, I shall have ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... the ocean is,— The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark, inferior far to his, On your broad main doth wilfully appear. Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride; Or, being wrack'd, I am a worthless boat, He of tall building, and of goodly pride: Then if he thrive and I be cast away, The worst was this,—my love was ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... at town land till all have gone to wrack, The very straws may wrangle till they've thrown down the stack; The very door-posts bicker till they've pulled in the door, The very ale-jars jostle till the ale is on the floor, But this shall ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... zigzag rift was passed, and then the rugged stony flooring gave place to dark, deep water, beautifully transparent—so clear that the many-tinted fronds of bladder-wrack and other weeds could be seen swaying to and fro under the influence of the tide which rose ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... heere, made both her ioy and woe, And spight that (but herself) commendeth none, Of force must say, this was a rarer one Then either nature did, or ere shall make, whose life holdes vp her age, whose deathe's her wrack. ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... happiness! Wretched beyond an unutterable woe! And none knew! What was she to pray for? To what purpose and end ought she to steel herself? Ought she to hope, or ought she to despair? "O God, help me!" she kept whispering to Jehovah whenever the heavenly vision shone through the wrack of her meditation. "O God, help me!" She had a conscience that, when it was in the mood for severity, could be unspeakably ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... lovely fair was Hero, Venus' nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she took more from her than she left, And of such wondrous beauty her bereft. Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack, Since Hero's time hath half the ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... beneath the dust of life and death, Would wait for centuries of centuries, Ages of ages, until God remembered, And, through that perishing cloud-wrack, face looked up ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sun, flying blindly through space, plunge into a vast cloud of meteoric particles, and, under the lashing impact of so many myriads of missiles, break into superficial incandescence, while the cosmical wrack through which it had driven remained glowing with nebulous luminosity? Such an explanation has been offered by Seeliger. Or was Vogel right when he suggested that Nova Aurigae could be accounted for by supposing that a wandering dark body had run into collision ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... a hundred yards, he lost his first zest in the adventure. The darkness had thickened; and the vagrant wind-gusts had tightened into a steady gale; a gale which carried before it a blinding wrack of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... of swirling mists. On the right there is the same fretwork of land and water, but wrought in less high relief—a tract of lonely strands, where shells and daisies whiten the grass, and pink-belled creepers trail, entangled with tawny-podded wrack, across the shingle. You are apt thereabouts to happen on clattering pebble-banks and curling foam when you are apparently deep among meadows and corn-land, or to come on sturdy green potato-drills round some corner where you had confidently supposed the unstable ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... some ob dem ole Firginians do so lub to rule a woman. But I kep' naggin at him, till I specs he got tired of my tongue, an' he went and buyed dis piece ob lan'. Dis house war on it, an' war all gwine to wrack. It used to belong to John's ole marster. His wife died right in dis house, an' arter dat her husband went right to de dorgs; an' now he's in de pore-house. My! but ain't dem tables turned. When we knowed it war our own, warn't my ole man proud! I seed it in him, but he wouldn't let ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... veered as much to the south, he might have chanced the run through Concepcion Strait, or even weathered Duke of York Island. He nodded to his junior, whose presence on the bridge was a mere matter of form, owing to the powerless condition of the ship and the impenetrable wrack of foam and mist that barred vision ahead, and strode off on a tour of inspection. As wind and sea were now beating more directly on the port side, there was some degree of shelter along the covered-in deck to starboard. He found that two boats had been cleared ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... back o'er many a track Of his old life-toil free; The enchanted calm, the fiery wrack, Far off, far off ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... atoms," had for once realised itself. There was not a visible particle of Plattner to be seen; not a drop of blood nor a stitch of clothing to be found. Apparently he had been blown clean out of existence and left not a wrack behind. Not so much as would cover a sixpenny piece, to quote a proverbial expression! The evidence of his absolute disappearance as a consequence ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... that he feared were fixed upon him. He gasped for words, he felt like a drunkard who clutches the air as he reels over a precipice, and the shades of his ancestors seemed to crowd menacingly around him. He strove against his fears until a thin face with luminous eyes shone through the drifting wrack ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... gaunt west-looking bedroom, the one in which Heritage and Dickson had camped the night before, they opened a fold of the shutters and looked out into a world of grey wrack and driving rain. The Tower roof showed mistily beyond the ridge of down, but its environs were not in their prospect. The lower regions of the House had been gloomy enough, but this bleak place with its ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... confidence of distinguished commanders. He had looked upon the strangeness and beauty of the world in its most remote and least-known quarters, had witnessed fights with savages, threaded unmapped straits, and had, to crown his youthful achievements, striven amidst the wrack and thunder of grim-visaged war. We may picture his welcome: the strong grasp of his father's hand, the crowding enthusiasm of his brother and sisters fondly glorying in their hero's prowess. The warnings of uncle John were all forgotten now. When the midshipman's younger brother, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... can first lift tired eyes On her changed world of ruin, waste and wrack, Ah, what a pang of aching sharp surprise Brings all sweet memories of the lost past back, With wild self-pitying grief of one betrayed, Duped in a land of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... 'gin to be aweary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.— Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind! Come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... I stood in the shadow of the window curtains staring out upon a moon hidden ever and anon in flying cloud-wrack; but at last I turned and wandered away with some vague idea of finding Anthony, and as I went, the lights and glitter, the sounds of voices and laughter grew ever more distasteful, and turning my back on ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... devil nor Spaniard feared, Their cities he put to the sack; He singed his Catholic Majesty's beard, And harried his ships to wrack. He was playing at Plymouth a rubber of bowls When the great Armada came; But he said, "They must wait their turn, good souls," And he stooped, and ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... which lay directly on the summit of these cliffs were smugglers to the extent of their power, only partially checked by the coast-guard distributed, at pretty nearly equal interspaces of eight miles, all along the north-eastern seaboard. Still sea-wrack was a good manure, and there was no law against carrying it up in great osier baskets for the purpose of tillage, and many a secret thing was lodged in hidden crevices in the rocks till the farmer sent trusty people down to ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... really intimate acquaintance with the sea-wrack, crabs, sea-nettles, jelly-fish, and the thousand and one other small creatures that inhabit the ocean, dates from this visit to ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... cold clans of the wave With spray and surge and splash appeared: Up from each wrack-strewn, lightless cave Dim day-struck eyes ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... still stood at equipoise. A formless moon soared through a white cloud wrack, and broken gold lay in the rising tide. The sonorous steps of the policeman on the bridge startled him, and obeying the impulse of the moment, he gave the officer the letter, asking him to post it. He waited for some minutes, as if ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... he ran on and on over the salt grass or the old wrack that the sea-spray wet to a new slime, never pausing but for a moment now and then to try and understand what the men on ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Eagerly she gazed at the place where last the white sail had been seen. Was it not possible that Ceyx, having weathered the gale, might for the present have foregone his voyage to Ionia, and was returning to her to bring peace to her heart? But the sea-beach was strewn with wrack and the winds still blew bits of tattered surf along the shore, and for her there was only the heavy labour of waiting, of waiting and of watching for the ship that never came. The incense from her altars blew out, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... case,—vast quantities of material substances, both vegetable and animal, are drifted together; where they are held, to a certain extent, stationary; or circling around in great ocean eddies. The wrack of sea-weed,—waifs from the distant shores,—birds that have fallen lifeless into the ocean, or drop their excrement to float on its surface,—fish that have died of disease, violence, or naturally,—for the finny tribes are not exempt from the natural laws of decay ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... wrack every fibre of my brain—was, what were they after? The Chinese gentleman in the flamboyant pyjamas had without doubt, repaired to his compatriots in the galley, forward: at that moment they were, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... dreadful thought Haunted Savitri's anxious mind, Which would have fain its stress forgot; It came as chainless as the wind, Oft and again: thus on the spot Marked with his heart-blood oft comes back The murdered man, to see the clot! Death's final blow,—the fatal wrack Of every hope, whence will it fall? For fall, by Narad's words, it must; Persistent rising to appall This thought ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... of relief to the Poor are old, cumbrous, unequal, as stupid as those who administer them. Forth steps the Reformer, and cries out—"Clear this wrack away! Get rid of your antiquated Bumbledom, your parochial and non-parochial distinctions, your complicated map of local authorities; re-distribute the kingdom on some more practical system, redress the injustice of unequal rating, improve the machinery and spirit of relief, and so on." You ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... workers in the laboratory of Concarneau. The need for covering themselves experienced by these Crabs is so strong that in aquariums when their sponge is taken away they will apply to the back a fragment of wrack or of anything which comes to hand. A little white cloak with the arms of Brittany was manufactured for one of these captives, and it was very amusing to see him put on his overcoat when he had nothing else wherewith ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... hung down her back; Within her side she felt a stitch; And once the moon behind the wrack Came out and ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... in those extremities, for we desired to save the men by every possible means. But all in vain, sith God had determined their ruin; yet all that day, and part of the next, we beat up and down as near unto the wrack as was possible for us, looking out if by good hap we might espy ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... thousands—and yet, again, it mustn't," which had totally disappeared since the day of the murder. Diligent search had been made for the pocket-book everywhere by the landlord and the police, but it had vanished into space, "leaving not a wrack behind," as junior counsel for the prosecution poetically ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... breast is torn with the voice of despair: So the lion-like woman idly wearied the air For a while, and pierced men's hearing in vain, and wounded their hearts. But as when the weather changes at sea, in dangerous parts, And sudden the hurricane wrack unrolls up the front of the sky, At once the ship lies idle, the sails hang silent on high, The breath of the wind that blew is blown out like the flame of a lamp, And the silent armies of death draw near with inaudible tramp: So sudden, the voice of her weeping ceased; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stops, turns round abrupt, an' sets down on his tail; an' then upliftin' his muzzle he busts into shrieks an' yells an' howls an' cries, a complete case of dog hysterics! That's what he is, a great yeller dog; his reason is now a wrack because we harasses ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... delay. Of course, this was another postponement of Mrs. Benton's own meal, but she didn't mind that, so long as she had an opportunity to deal with the small lads. Explaining to them, as she undressed and bathed them: "You'd go to wrack and ruin if 'twasn't for me takin' a hand in your upbringin' now and then. You pull the wool over Gabriella's eyes the worst ever was. My! What you doing now, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... ask for the impossible. Thagaste had columns—nay, perhaps a whole street between a double range of columns, as at Thimgad. That would be quite enough to delight the eyes of a little wondering boy. A column, even injured, or scarcely cleansed from wrack and rubbish, has about it something impressive. It is like a free melody singing among the heavy masses of the building. To this hour, in our Algerian villages, the mere sight of a broken column entrances and cheers us—a white ghost ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... find herself wondering if, after all, the barque of her life had been steered by a guiding Hand, which, although it had taken her over storm-tossed seas and stranded her on lone beaches, had brought her safely, if troubled by the wrack of the waters she had ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the thunder's crack; I tremble not at noise of war; I swound not at the news of wrack; I shrink not at a blazing star; I fear not loss, I hope not gain, I ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing-smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. So, for better and for worse, Herve ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his back. So within that green-veiled air, Within that white-walled quiet, where Innocent water thought aloud,— Childish prattle that must make The wise sunlight with laughter shake ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... deep below us, the next a mighty billow would toss itself aloft and vanish utterly into space. Everywhere wreaths of mist with ragged fringes were withering away into empty air, and, more remarkable yet, was the conflict of wind which sent the cloud wrack flying simply in ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... old Dame Safford herself, and was continually "straightening things out," as she called it. Her temper, like her hair, was somewhat fiery; and when her work did not suit her, she was prone to a gloomy view of life. If she was to be believed, things were always "going to wrack and ruin" about the house; and she had a queer way of taking time by the forelock. In the morning it was "going on to twelve o'clock," and at noon it was ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... fingers were deep into the honest pain-wrack of his calf, and in her he could observe ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... of delight And queene of beautie, now thou maist go pack; For lo! thy kingdoms is defaced quight, Thy scepter rent, and power put to wrack; 400 And thy gay sonne, that winged God of Love, May now goe prune his plumes like ruffed* ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... only of the world around it but also of the doings of previous generations. For since 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for historical research as for natural science. If mankind is now to go down in a wrack of war, starvation, bankruptcy, and ruin, the sunset ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... to the sunset Reels to the wrack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long" — Maybe I'll tell you then ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the neighbouring Hills uptore; So Hills amid the Air encounterd Hills Hurl'd to and fro with jaculation dire, That under ground they fought in dismal shade; Infernal noise; Warr seem'd a civil Game To this uproar; horrid confusion heapt Upon confusion rose: and now all Heav'n Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspred, 670 Had not th' Almightie Father where he sits Shrin'd in his Sanctuarie of Heav'n secure, Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen This tumult, and permitted all, advis'd: That his great purpose he might so fulfill, To ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... they are! "Whip, whip the fool!" We wrack Our weary brains to make a jest and then, In payment, we are whipped if they so feel Inclined! They treat us more like ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... consumption; disorganization. fall, downfall, devastation, ruin, perdition, crash; eboulement[French], smash, havoc, delabrement[French], debacle; break down, break up, fall apart; prostration; desolation, bouleversement[Fr], wreck, wrack, shipwreck, cataclysm; washout. extinction, annihilation; destruction of life &c. 361; knock-down blow; doom, crack of doom. destroying &c. v.; demolition, demolishment; overthrow, subversion, suppression; abolition ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... there took his rest. So lovely-fair was Hero, Venus' nun, As Nature wept, thinking she was undone, Because she took more from her than she left, And of such wondrous beauty her bereft: Therefore, in sign her treasure suffer'd wrack, Since Hero's time hath half the world been black. Amorous Leander, beautiful and young, (Whose tragedy divine Musaeus sung,) Dwelt at Abydos; since him dwelt there none For whom succeeding times make greater moan. His dangling tresses, that were never shorn, Had they been cut, and unto Colchos ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... left their imprint; he had the appearance of a desperately dogged traveller. He penetrated into gloomy caverns into which the water of the ocean oozed drop by drop, and flowed like tears along the sea wrack, forming pools on the uneven ground where countless crustaceans increased and multiplied into hideous shapes. Enormous crabs, crayfish, giant lobsters and sea spiders crackled under the dwarfs feet, then crawled away leaving some of their claws ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... shortly lift its voice against the church. To think of them Daggetts' fitting out a schooner to follow my craft about the 'arth in this unheard-of manner; just as if she was a pilot-boat, and young Gar'ner a pilot! I do hope the fellows will make a wrack of it, among the ice of the antarctic seas! That would be a fit punishment ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... exiles in Virginia were skillful with the pen. William Strachey's "True Reportory of the Wrack of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt., vpon and from the islands of the Bermudas" may or may not have given a hint to Shakespeare for the storm-scene in "The Tempest." In either case it is admirable writing, flexible, sensitive, shrewdly observant. Whitaker, the apostle ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... (when he saw his countries go to wrack), From bick'ring with his folk, to keep the Britons back, Cast up that mightly mound of eighty miles in length, Athwart from sea ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
