"Cloven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... form of belief held during the Middle Ages. Scarcely anything that was fanciful and diabolical was not conjured up to the mind and said to happen at these Sabbaths. There was also a certain amount of ingenious theorizing afoot in order to account for certain facts, as, for instance, the cloven hoof, which it was said must always appear, no matter how concealed—it being due to the fact that the devil took the form of a goat so often that he finally acquired the hoof. Sir Thomas Browne explains it ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... furniture that adorns the homes of grocers, where they are universally found, as they are in those of barbers; but they are essentially the furniture of perdition; I can never see them without alarm. It has always seemed to me that there the devil himself is lurking with his horns and cloven foot. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Peter whirled his sword on high, and, shouting "Margaret!" struck downwards with all his strength. It fell as lightning falls, swift, keen, dazzling the eyes of all who watched. Morella raised his arm to break the blow. In vain! The weapon that he held was shattered, the casque beneath was cloven, and, throwing his arms wide, he fell heavily to the ground and ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... came, Sharp and sudden the lightning's flame; And an earthquake ran—the sooth I say, From Besancon city to Wissant Bay; From Saint Michael's Mount to thy shrine, Cologne, House unrifted was there none. And a darkness spread in the noontide high— No light, save gleams from the cloven sky. On all who saw came a mighty fear. They said, "The end of the world is near." Alas, they spake but with idle breath,— 'Tis the great lament ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... match his head, and both proceed in the Great March under the divine Oriflamine, he goes as near to the angel as humanity will permit: if not, if he has but a penn'orth of heart to a pound of brains, I say, "Bon jour, mon ange! I see not the starry upward wings, but the grovelling cloven-hoof." I 'd rather be obfuscated by the Squire of Hazeldean than en lightened by Randal Leslie. Every man to his taste. But intellect itself (not in the philosophical but the ordinary sense of the term) is rarely, if ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than their own to the Apostolic model. What would seem exaggerated now was then perfectly in place. Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the tongues of angels too melodious. As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the interminable period must ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... for the foreknowledge of his death had overshadowed him. Once as he stood by the cell, scanning the shape of the mountain and musing on the clefts and chasms in the huge rocks, it was borne in upon him that the mountain had been thus torn and cloven in the Ninth Hour when our Lord cried with a loud voice, and the rocks were rent. And beside this beech-tree St. Francis was many times uplifted into the air in rapture, and many times Angels came to him, and walked with him ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... thrown it away. He seized an oar to steer with in its place; he saw that they, in their ignorance fast edging on the flats, would shortly be aground; more fisherman than sailor, he knew a thousand tricks of boat-craft that they had never heard of. We flew, we flew through cloven ridges, we became a wind ourselves, and while I tell it he was beside them, had gathered himself as if to leap the chasm between time and eternity, and had landed among them in the Speed. The wherry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... county there's many a roof Well known to him of the cloven hoof; The small square windows are full in view Which the midnight hags went sailing through, On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high, Seen like shadows against the sky; Crossing the track of owls and bats, Hugging ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... walles abated and beten doun and tombled in to the vale, and that thei han ben so filled azen, and the ground enhaunced; and for that skylle, is the chirche so lowe with in the erthe: and natheles men seyn there comounly, that the erthe hathe so ben cloven, sythe the tyme, that oure Lady was there buryed: and zit men seyn there, that it wexethe and growethe every day, with outen dowte. In that chirche were wont to ben blake monkes, that hadden hire abbot. And besyde that chirche, is a chapelle, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... accompanied by their wives or daughters, who ride like the men, but with the knees tucked up higher. On the slippery tracks which traverse this western slope, bulls are often used as beasts of burden, the cloven hoofs enabling them to descend with great security. But mules are better than horses or asses. "That a hybrid (muses Darwin) should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... to walking, now drawing near and now moving away,[FN380] and wiping his gray hairs with his right hand, whilst the heart of the crowd was cloven asunder for awe of him. When he looked upon the boy, his eyes were dazzled and his wit confounded, and exemplified in him was the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... apt to escape as the men were, the one for her age, and the other being encumbered with a young child, we took. The old wretch, whom divers of our sailors supposed to be either a devil or a witch, had her buskins plucked off to see if she were cloven-footed, and for her ugly hue and deformity we let her go; the young woman and the child we brought away. We named the place where they were slain Bloody Point, and the bay or harbour Yorke's Sound, after the name of one of the captains ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... show thee our country and the city of Japhet[FN31] son of Noah (on whom be peace!)" Quoth Gharib, "O King, do what seemeth good to thee." So he called for three noble steeds and mounting, he and Gharib and Sahim, set out with a thousand Marids, as they were a piece of a mountain cloven lengthwise. They fared on, solacing themselves with the sight of valleys and mountains, till they came to Jabarsa,[FN32] the city of Japhet son of Noah (on whom be peace!) where the townsfolk all, great and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... strode past scarcely deigning a look at the automobile, though it was as likely as not the first he had ever seen. His goats, equally unconcerned, strayed among our wheels without hurry, and when they chose clattered off with much play of little cloven hoofs on cobblestones. A sharper note of contrast could hardly have been struck, Dick and I said to each other. A meeting between the automobile, latest product of man's restless invention, made to fly across states ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fronted "The Revelations" she found evident proof of Gethin's depravity; and she quailed a little as she saw a vivid and realistic pen and ink drawing of a fire of leaping flames, standing over which was a monster in human shape, though boasting of a tail and cloven hoofs. With fiendish glee the creature was toasting on a long fork something which looked fearfully like a man, whose starting eyes and writhing limbs showed plainly that he was not as happy as his tormentor. It was very horrible, ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... rock, which lifts its furrowed and wrinkled battlements far above the Plym, was the "Rock of Tiw," that powerful god of the Saxons from whom comes the name of Tuesday. Once, we are told, in the deep snow traces of a human foot and a cloven hoof were found ascending to the highest point of the rock, which His Satanic Majesty seems to have claimed for his own domain. From this lofty outpost of the moor, if he stayed there, our all-time enemy certainly had a wide lookout. On the one hand is a grand solitude, and on the other a hilly country ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... does not possess—wings; to that of a devil it has added all those organs of the brute creation that are most hideous or most harmful. Advancing civilization has almost exterminated the belief in a being with horns, cloven hoofs, goggle eyes, and scaly tail, that was held up to many yet living as the avenger of childish disobedience in their earlier days, together perhaps with some strength of conviction of the moral hideousness of the evil he was intended, in a rough way, to typify; but this hazily retained ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... howling and pounding that hammered in the valley like the pulsating of a colossal fever. Shell hole upon shell hole yawned down there. From time to time thick, black pillars of earth leaped up and for moments hid small parts of this desert burned to ashes, where the cloven stumps of trees, whittled as by pen-knives, stuck up like a jeering challenge to the impotent imagination, a challenge to recognize in this field of death and refuse, the landscape it once had been, before the great madness had swept over it and sown it with ruins, leaving it like a dancing floor ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... with him, if successful will react on the American people sadly to their detriment. The wonderful activity of American industries call loudly for the world as a market for their goods. The dark races of the world, now backward in the matter of manufacturing, must largely furnish these markets. The cloven foot of America's race prejudice will make itself manifest, and its owner will find it increasingly difficult to secure a ready purchaser for ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... from the solemn Past, Outliving the Poet-lyre, Borne down on the rush of Time's fitful blast. Like the cloven tongues ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... brought the first specimens to the country, quite a good many years previously. Indeed some people said that a few of the swords owned by these Dervishes were real, original, Crusaders' swords, the very weapons whose hilts were once grasped by Norman hands, and whose blades had cloven Paynim heads in the name of Christianity and the interests of the Sepulchre. I do not know—but it is a wonderfully dry climate, and swords are there kept, cherished, and bequeathed, even more religiously than were the ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... disapproval. It is as if you clipped the wing of the eagle, and then asked him to soar to the sun, to cut a curve on the sky with the instrument dislodged; or as if you asked the deer to roam the wood with its cloven hoofs removed. You can not cut the main artery of the body and expect it to continue functioning. Depriving the redman of his one enviable gesture would be cutting the artery of racial instinct, emptying the beautiful chamber of his soul of its enduring ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... with eating of them, when behold, they saw from afar, somewhat lying in the road, a hideous creature as it were a column of silver. So they went up to it and one of the men gave it a kick, when lo! it was a thing of human semblance, long of eyes and cloven of head and hidden under one of his ears, for he was wont, whenas he lay down to sleep, to spread on ear under his head, and cover his face with the other ear.[FN402] He snatched up the Mameluke ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... made up of impudence and trick,[448:2] With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick, Rome's Brazen Serpent—boldly dares discuss The roasting of thy heart, O brave John Huss! 10 And with grim triumph and a truculent glee[448:3] Absolves anew the Pope-wrought perfidy, That made an empire's plighted faith a lie, And fix'd a broad ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the path is forever down—down into the shadowed vale, down into the abysmal canon, balustraded with sombre, cold gray rocks holding in the far recesses secret streams that make their way beneath the mountain to the cloven rock on the sunlit slope. Thither then they rode, solemn but steadfast. Once and again they turned upon their tired steeds to look back upon the far-reaching line of cliffs which to them seemed to float in ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the advantage and knocks down the other, right or wrong and he suffers the penalties of the law for having no more money to show in the case. He is a client by his order and votary of the long robe, and though he were sure the devil invented it to hide his cloven feet, he has the greater reverence for it; for, as evil manners produce good laws, the worse the inventor was the better the thing may be. He keeps as many Knights of the Post to swear for him, as ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... family. For many days I sat a fixture at his tomb, and, of the many dirges I composed upon his demise, this is one:—'On that day, when thy foot was pierced with the thorn of death, would to God the hand of fate had cloven my head with the sword of destruction, that my eyes might not this day have witnessed the world without thee. Such am I, seated at the head of thy dust, as the ashes are seated on my own:—whoever could not take his rest and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the cloven air Gouges Le Marchant's groin and rankles there; In Death's white sleep he soon joins Thomiere, And all he has fought ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... vanished, and John Louder, seizing a firebrand, searched the ground for the print of a cloven foot. He found it and, snatching up his rifle, ran home as rapidly as he could. It was late that night when he reached his house and, rapping on ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... and other miscellaneous pieces of silver used for table service. The pieces of the tea and coffee service are mounted on four feet that are fastened to the bowl with cattle heads with branched horns. Each foot stands on a cloven hoof. The knob of each of the pots is a tiny horse ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... night thy shroud. In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope. The eddying of her garments caught from thee The light of thy great presence; and the cope Of the half-attain'd futurity, Though deep not fathomless, Was cloven with the million stars which tremble O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy. Small thought was there of life's distress; For sure she deem'd no mist of earth could dull Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful: Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... filled with astonishment and went on: 'The author tells of an animal on the borders of Canada that resembles a horse. It has cloven hoofs, a shaggy mane, a horn right out of its forehead and a tail like that of a pig. When hunted it spews hot water upon the dogs. I wonder if you could have seen ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... language headier than that of his tongue. "I thought I'd tie the dern fool down to some good tough work and test him out. Well, ma'am, he hasn't quit on me this time. I think he won't. I've got a ball and chain round about that cloven foot." He drew at his cigarette, half-veiling in smoke the ardor of his look. "I'd like to show you my house, Miss Arundel. It's fine. I worked with a builder one season when I was a lad. I've got it peeled inside. The logs shine and I've got a fireplace twice the size of this in my living-room"—he ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... all inward opposition, through knowledge of the law and allegiance thereto, can conquer every outward phase of hybrid beast and human, whose selfish pride and cruel greed have been well imaged as a devil with cloven foot and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Then mark the cloven sphere that holds All thought in its mysterious folds, That feels sensation's faintest thrill And flashes forth the sovereign will; Think on the stormy world that dwells Locked in its dim and clustering cells! The lightning ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that are brighter, we ought no longer to talk of astronomy, but of the astronomies. There is the planetary, the cometary, the sidereal, perhaps also others; as, for instance, even yet the nebular; because, though Lord Rosse has smitten it with the son of Amram's rod, has made it open, and cloven a path through it, yet other and more fearful nebul may loom in sight, (if further improvements should be effected in the telescope,) that may puzzle even Lord Rosse. And when he tells his famulus—'Fire ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... opposition to our interest in this good town, and if any of their worthy teachers should chance to hit upon a text of scripture which they could interpret against us,—farewell to the expected aid! Nay," he added, laughing, "I believe there are already some, who fancy they see the cloven foot of popery beneath our plain exterior, and, if that should once shew itself, why, they would as soon fight for the devil, to whom they might think us very ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... themselves under him in the prosecution of this affair; and by the villainy of others, who, under various pretences of material discoveries they had to make, etc., had fastened themselves upon him, and continued to do all the mischief in their power, until the cloven foot was detected. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... his words in a voice no longer nasal, but deep—more than deep—a voice made purposely hollow and cavernous—"what! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the cloven tongues come down again? Where are they? The sound filled the whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action: Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... who, vine to stone, clung close to thee, The very base of life appeared to quake When first I knew thee fallen from us, to be A tower of strength among our foes, to make 'Twixt Jew and Jew deep-cloven enmity. I have wept gall and blood for thy dear sake. But now with temperate soul I calmly search Motive and cause that bound ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... knew the arms that embraced Had cloven a man from the brow to the waist: And little she knew that the loving lips Had ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... high.[1409] The promised baptism by fire and the Holy Ghost befell them on that day. "Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... that the Church lands would be adequate security for paper, making it equivalent to gold, but he was willing that the purchase money should be paid in assignats, doing away with bullion altogether. But the cloven hoof appeared when he assured the king that the plan which he defended would fail, and would involve France in ruin. He meant that it would ruin the Assembly, and would enable the king to dissolve. The same Machiavellian purpose guided him in Church ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... populace of crowding beauties, 100 Plebeian as patrician, cheered us on With dazzling smiles, and wishes audible, And waving kerchiefs, and applauding hands, Even to the goal!—How many a time have I Cloven with arm still lustier, breast more daring, The wave all roughened; with a swimmer's stroke Flinging the billows back from my drenched hair, And laughing from my lip the audacious brine, Which kissed it like a wine-cup, rising o'er The waves as they arose, and prouder still 110 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... that he put that lady he carried down to the ground. And he drew his sword and rushed at Sir Tristram very violently with intent to slay him. And when he came nigh to Sir Tristram he arose up on his stirrups and lashed so terrible a blow at him that, had it met its mark, it would have cloven Sir Tristram in twain. But Sir Tristram leaped aside and turned the blow very skilfully; and therewith a memory of his knightly prowess came upon him and he, upon his part, lashed a blow at Sir Tauleas that Sir Tauleas received very unexpectedly. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... trunks and boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as there were in the neighborhood ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... nature is ill constructed. If our nature is ill constructed, what warrants to us our reason? Nothing. What assures us that our axioms are good, and that our reasonings have any value? Nothing. The life of the soul cannot be arbitrarily cloven in twain; it must be held for good in all its constituent elements, or enveloped wholly and entirely in the shades of doubt. If the heart and conscience deceive us, then reason may lead us astray, and the very idea of truth disappears. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... of her hair bewilders me— Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide Swirling about the ears on either side And storming around the neck tumultuously: Or like the lights of old antiquity Through mullioned windows, in cathedrals wide, Spilled moltenly o'er figures deified In chastest marble, nude of drapery. And so I love it.—Either ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... his mind, having been derived from his former experience. But this is by no means universally the case. When we compare several objects and find them to agree in being white, or when we compare the various species of ruminating animals and find them to agree in being cloven-footed, we have just as much a general conception in our minds as Kepler had in his: we have the conception of "a white thing," or the conception of "a cloven-footed animal." But no one supposes that we necessarily bring these conceptions with us, and superinduce them (to adopt Dr. Whewell's ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... grey desert. Hence it gave to the mind and body a sharp and unearthly sensation when the ship cut and sank into the cloud as into any common mist, a thing without resistance. There was, as it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there was no shock. It was as if they had cloven into ancient cliffs like so much butter. But sensations awaited them which were much stranger than those of sinking through the solid earth. For a moment their eyes and nostrils were stopped with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness warmed into ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... report has made me? Look keenly at the monster, that nothing may escape you," returned the Rover, with a hollow laugh, in which scorn struggled to keep down the feelings of wounded pride. "Where are the horns, and the cloven foot? Snuff the air: Is it not tainted with sulphur? But enough of this. I knew of your inquiries, and liked your mien. In short, you were my study; and, though my approaches were made with some caution they were sufficiently nigh to effect the object. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... animals the humors are well absorbed, and their nature well balanced: for neither are they too moist, as is indicated by the hoof; nor are they too earthy, which is shown by their having not a flat but a cloven hoof. Of fishes they were allowed to partake of the drier kinds, of which the fins and scales are an indication, because thereby the moist nature of the fish is tempered. Of birds they were allowed ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... dreadful injury; but when he was close to her he controlled himself and stood still. For what seemed to her a very long time he stood there, looking at her as a man looks at the heap of his sins when the sword has cloven a way into the depths of his ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... went well enough; it takes ladies a few weeks to find out each other's weak points. But then the new Mrs. Tunnygate unexpectedly yet undeniably began to exhibit the serpent's tooth, the adder's tongue or the cloven hoof—as the reader's literary traditions may lead him to prefer. For no obvious reason at all she conceived a violent hatred of Mrs. Appleboy, a hatred that waxed all the more virulent on account of its object's innocently obstinate refusal ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... or sixty feet in length, startled by the light, came blundering out of the ferns, uttered a bellow, and melted into an amorphous mass. Birds dropped from their roosting places with a sound like that of falling hail. Black paths were cloven through the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... this eternal punishment are the barbarians of the nineteenth century. That man believed in a devil, that had a long tail terminating with a fiery dart; that had wings like a bat—a devil that had a cheerful habit of breathing brimstone, that had a cloven foot, such as some orthodox clergymen seem to think I have. And there has not been a patentable improvement made upon that devil in all the years since. The moment you drive the devil out of theology, there is ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... menaces and reproaches against him, he was so incapable of fear, that, without using any precautions against their violence, he immediately went to St. Benedict's church to hear vespers. They followed him thither, attacked him before the altar, and having cloven his head with many blows, retired without meeting any opposition. [MN 1170. Dec. 29. Murder of Thomas a Becket.] This was the tragical end of Thomas a Becket, a prelate of the most lofty, intrepid, and ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... eating from these trees, the roots of which are struck in Men, not earth, - so many lives were lost, that within my recollection, generations afterwards, a churchyard full of bones, and dust of bones, and chips of cloven skulls, has been dug up from underneath our feet here. Yet not a hundred people in that battle knew for what they fought, or why; not a hundred of the inconsiderate rejoicers in the victory, why they rejoiced. ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... of Numidia, sent out of the country of Africa to Grangousier the most hideously great mare that ever was seen, and of the strangest form, for you know well enough how it is said that Africa always is productive of some new thing. She was as big as six elephants, and had her feet cloven into fingers, like Julius Caesar's horse, with slouch-hanging ears, like the goats in Languedoc, and a little horn on her buttock. She was of a burnt sorrel hue, with a little mixture of dapple-grey spots, but above all she had a horrible tail; for it was little more or less than every ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the land, So humbly at the world's command, As thy old cloven foot; Like lightning dost thou fly, when called, And yet no pickpocket's so mauled As ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... shall not disturb thee, nor can it; See, closed are the curtains, the lights Gleam down on the cloven pomegranate, Whose thirst-slaking nectar invites; The red wine of Hebron glows brightly In yon goblet—the draught of a king; And through the silk awning steals lightly The sweet song ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... "And lo! cloven in twain at a stroke Fell King Helge's gold shield from its pillar of oak: At the clang of the blow, The live started above, the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... slope of shore, it would still have been conspicuous to traveller and to voyager but for the tall trees around it. These hid the moat, and the relics of the drawbridge, the groined archway, and cloven tower of the keep—which had twice been struck by lightning—as well as the windows of the armoury, and the chapel hushed with ivy. The banqueting hall was in better repair, for the Carnes had been hospitable to the last; but the windows kept no wind off, neither did the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... sand after sweep of sand, Here ivory smooth, here cloven and ridged with flow Of channelled waters soft as rain or snow, Stretch their lone length at ease beneath the bland Grey gleam of skies whose smile on wave and strand Shines weary like a man's who smiles to know That now no dream can mock his faith with show, Nor cloud for him seem living ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in light From her own beauty: deep her eyes as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a temple's cloven roof; her hair Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar; And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new. SHELLEY, The Witch ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... there, the world consigned to thyself and thy people may have rocks and gulfs which divide it from that in which I rejoin those of my race that have gone before, and I may be powerless to cleave way to regain thee as I have cloven way to lose." ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the General Election which followed the passing of the new Reform Bill, Mr. Gladstone gave notice of his Bill for Home Rule for Ireland and the party feeling aroused was of such intensity that the Liberal party was cloven in twain. The Women's Suffrage movement was affected by the keen party strife, in which women were as deeply interested as men, and the question of their enfranchisement was no longer the only rallying point for their political activity. This period is marked by ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... sprang, whirling his heavy tomahawk round his head, as if it had been a child's toy, and preparing to bring it down on the white man's skull with a force that must have cloven it in two. But Standish saw the impending blow, and, quick as thought, he drew a pistol from his belt, and fired it at the savage. The ball passed through his arm, and the tomahawk fell bloodless to the ground. Had it but drunk the life-blood of Rodolph, Coubitant would have been content to ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Chilmark he could not tell. Down went the track, plunging towards a stream that brawled in a wild bottom: up over a rough hillside ruby-red with willowherb: then down again to a pool shaded by two willows and a silver birch, and lying so cool and solitary in its own cloven nook, bounded in every direction by half a furlong of chalky hillside, that Lawrence was seized with a desire to strip and bathe, and sun himself dry on the brilliant mossy lawn at its brink. But out of regard for the Wanhope lunch hour he walked ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... his sword the cross from out The flag, and cloven the May-pole down, Harried the heathen round about, And whipped the Quakers from town to town. Earnest and honest, a man at need To burn like a torch for his own harsh creed, He kept with the flaming brand of his zeal The gate of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... run, But where the press was thickest thither flew The knight, and at each stroke felled, hurt, or slew. L Thus fought they long, yet neither shrink nor yield, In equal balance hung their hope and fear: All full of broken lances lay the field, All full of arms that cloven and shattered were; Of swords, some to the body nail the shield, Some cut men's throats, and some their bellies tear; Of bodies, some upright, some grovelling lay, And for themselves eat graves ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... they sailed to the island of Mocha on the coast of Chili, in lat. 38 deg. 22' S. and six miles [twenty English] from the continent. This island is remarkable by a high mountain in the middle, which is cloven at the top, and whence a water-course descends into the vale land at its foot. They here bartered knives and hatchets with the natives for sheep, poultry, maize, bartulas,[76] and other fruits. The town consisted ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... buggy and, with bent knees and his hands in his pockets, stretched the creased cloth of his trousers, where this had cut into his flesh. He was a big, brawny, handsome man, with a massive nose, a cloven chin, and the most companionable smile in the world. As he stood, he touched here a strap, there a buckle on the harness of his chestnut—a well-known trotter, with which he often made a match—and affectionately clapped the neck of Mahony's bay. He could not keep his hands off ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... those deep combinations of language in which the Indian philosophy and polytheism hide themselves, but gentle as the flower which in his brief recreation he loved to train; awful as the sage, simple as the child; speaking through the Eastern world in as many languages, perhaps, as 'the cloven tongues of fire' represented; to be remembered and blessed as long ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... quite forgotten her, and was looking intently before him. They had come to a break in the fringe of woodland, and upon a sudden view of the ocean. At this point the low line of coast-range which sheltered the valley of West Woodlands was abruptly cloven by a gorge that crumbled and fell away seaward to the shore of Horse Shoe Bay. On its northern trend stretched the settlement of Horse Shoe to the promontory of Whale Mouth Point, with its outlying reef of rocks curved inwards like ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... not repine if he is not canonized as his bones are hearsed in death, for "whenever was a god found agreeable to everybody? The regular way is to lynch, as the Baylorites did, to hang, to kill, to crucify and excoriate and trample them under their stupid hoofs, cloven or webbed, as the case may be, for a century or two; and then take to braying over them when you discover their divine origin, still in a very long-eared manner!" So speaks the sarcastic man, in his wild ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... him, "Long live the sun and the griffins; beware of punishing Zadig; he is a saint; he has griffins in his inner court and does not eat them; and his accuser is an heretic, who dares to maintain that rabbits have cloven feet ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was thereafter cloven with a golden arrow. Yima then built a refuge in which mankind and the domesticated animals might find shelter during a terrible winter. "The picture", says Professor Moulton, "strongly tempts us to recognize the influence of the Babylonian Flood-Legend."[240] ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... planted in noblemen's and great men's gardens against brick walls, and there continued long, it riseth up in time unto a very great height, with a great and woody stem of that compasse that, being cloven out into boards, it hath served to make lutes or such like instruments, and here with us carpenters' rules and to divers others purposes." It was the favourite evergreen wherever the occasion required an emblem of constancy and perpetual remembrance, such especially as weddings ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... pleasure, sighed, nay even wept. There to be poet need involve no strain, For though enough of coarseness, dung—nay, nay, And suffering too, be mingled with the life, 'Tis wedded to such air, Such water and sound health! What else might jar or fret chimes in attuned Like satyr's cloven hoof or lorn nymph's grief In a choice ode. Though lust, disease and death, As everywhere, are cruel tyrants, yet They all wear flowers, and each sings a song Such as the hilly echo loves to learn.' 'At last then even Delphis knows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... squirrel, who weighs his nuts and throws away the light, hollow shell.... And there are scarescrows, the harmlessness of which the human biped learns not in a a lifetime. How long is it since that horned, cloven-footed monster whom the monks made of Pan theos and called him Devil, was an object of fear? How 'the real, genuine, no mistake' (savin' his presence) must have laughed at his own effigy! Then there is Grim Death, too, a creation of the Dark Ages, for in no age of light could this horror ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... strove more and more vigorously, hoping to bear down all opposition by the violence of their fury. Darts, spears, and javelins never ceased; arrows pointed with iron were shot; while at the same time, in hand-to-hand conflict, sword struck sword, breastplates were cloven, and even the wounded, if not quite exhausted with loss of blood, rose up still to deeds of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... to go incognito, But on a gala-day one may his orders show. The Garter does not deck my suit, But honored and at home is here the cloven foot. Perceiv'st thou yonder snail? It cometh, slow and steady; So delicately its feelers pry, That it hath scented me already: I cannot here disguise me, if I try. But come! we'll go from this fire to a newer: I am the go-between, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the live oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... acceleration the gigantic body rose, and from outside there grew a moaning which was quickly a shrieking—a terrible, maddened sound as of a Titan dying in agony—the sound of the cloven atmosphere. Twenty miles of rock were hurled out by the firm hand on the space-stick, and that hand only increased its driving pressure when the screaming of the air died away in the ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... the touch of his trident a wonder! Virtue to earth from his deity flows; From the rift of the flinty rock, cloven asunder, A dark-watered fountain ebullient rose. Inly elastic, with airiest lightness It leapt, till it cheated the eyesight; and, lo! It showed in the sun, with a various brightness, The fine-woven hues of the heavenly bow. "WATER IS BEST!" cried the mighty, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... from haunted Spring and Dale, as ne'er smote human Ears before nor since: Nymphs and Wood-Gods, or they that had passed for such, breaking up House and retreating to their own Place. I warrant you, there was Trouble among the Sylvan People that Day—Satyrs hirsute and cloven-footed Fauns. ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... about Ralph and Bull, and the dead man; as for him, he had been dead some time, many days belike; but in that high and clear cold air, his carcase, whistled by the wind, had dried rather than rotted, and his face was clear to be seen with its great hooked nose and long black hair: and his skull was cloven. ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... visited from one twelvemonth's end to another: its floor was green with mould, and its ridgy walls and roof bristled over with slim pale stalactites, which looked like the pointed tags that roughen a dead-dress. It was certain, too, that it was haunted. Marks of a cloven foot might be seen freshly impressed on its floor, which had been produced either by a stray goat, or by something worse; and the few boys to whom its existence and character were known used to speak of it under their breath as "the Devil's Cave." My lads did at ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... draining you to supply the means; I had not had the same forbearance for the superfluous wealth of others. I had learned with what simple tools old locks may fly open; and none had ever suspected me, so I had no fear of danger, small need of premeditation: a nail on your mantelpiece, the cloven end of the hammer lying beside, to crook it when hot from the fire that blazed before me! I say this to show you that I did not come provided; nothing was planned beforehand; all was the project and work of the moment. Such was my haste, I burnt myself to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been saying, and that I might lose the hold upon her affections which I was beginning to feel pretty sure that I was obtaining, I began to let her have her own way, and to convince me; neither till after we were safely married did I show the cloven hoof again. ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill half ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... 77, 1851, is given an engraving of this animal, with the title, "Wild Animals of New Netherlands," taken from a Dutch work published in Amsterdam in 1671. In this work it is thus described: "On the borders of Canada animals are now and again seen somewhat resembling a horse; they have cloven hoofs, shaggy manes, a horn right out of the forehead, a tail like that of the wild hog, black eyes, a stag's neck, and love the gloomiest wildernesses, are shy of each other. So that the male never feeds with the female except when they associate for the purpose of increase. Then they lay aside ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... had seen all this excitement, but she had not lost sight of Cleve. He got up from a log and started after the others. Joan flew to him, grasped him, startled him with the suddenness of her onslaught. But her tongue seemed cloven to the roof of her mouth, her lips weak and mute. Twice she ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... on the assumption that the stars are uniformly distributed throughout space, Herschel, by his method of star-gauging, concluded that the sidereal system consists of an irregular stratum of evenly distributed suns, resembling in form a cloven flat disc, and that the apparent richness of some regions as compared with that of others could be accounted for by the position from which it was viewed by an observer. The stars would appear least numerous where the visual line was shortest, and, as it became lengthened, they would ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... praised, the day is ours! Mayenne hath turned his rein. D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish Count is slain. Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale; The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail. And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van, 'Remember St. Bartholomew,' was passed from man to man; But out spake gentle Henry: No Frenchman is my foe: Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.' Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... compare him to a man!)" Yet her description scarcely sounds attractive; he was a "large, black, hairy man, very cold, and I found his nature as cold within me as spring well-water." His foot was forked and cloven; he was sometimes like a deer, or a roe; and he would hold up his tail while the witches kissed that region (Pitcairn, Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. iii, Appendix VII; see, also, the illustrations at the end of Dr. A. Marie's Folie et ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ever ye were made knight, to see such a lad to match such a knight, as the weed overgrew the corn. Therewith the Green Knight was ashamed, and therewithal he gave a great stroke of might, and clave his shield through. When Beaumains saw his shield cloven asunder he was a little ashamed of that stroke and of her language; and then he gave him such a buffet upon the helm that he fell on his knees. And so suddenly Beaumains pulled him upon the ground ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture is of a different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and partake of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Peter came to understand more clearly there was some reason why they must be constantly on their guard. His master, he noticed, was thrillingly attentive whenever a sound came to their ears—perhaps the cracking of a twig, a mysterious movement of brush, or the tread of a cloven hoof. And instinctively he came to know they were evading Man. He remembered vividly their escape from Cassidy and their quiet hiding for many days in the mass of sun-baked rocks which Jolly Roger had called the Stew-Kettle. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... dishonest siege to Mistress Clo and been played with and flouted by her. But howsoever this might have been, he watched her that night, black with rage, and went back to town in an evil temper. Perhaps 'twas this temper undid him, and being in such mood he showed the cloven foot, for two weeks later all knew the match was broken off, Mistress Beaton went back to her estates in Scotland, his creditors descended upon him in hordes, such of his properties as could be seized were sold, and in a month his poor, distraught ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... she perished Surely seems as holy and lovely, seen aright, As desirable and as dearly to be cherished, As the haunt closed in with laurels from the light, Deep inwound with olive and wild vine inwoven, Where a godhead known and unknown makes men pale, But the darkness of the twilight noon is cloven Still with shrill sweet moan of many a nightingale. Closer clustering there they make sweet noise together, Where the fearful gods look gentler than our fear, And the grove thronged through with birds of holiest feather Grows nor pale nor dumb with sense of dark things near. There ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he crushed, he saw a long lean figure flying through the air seven feet aloft, with his heels higher than his head, on the further side of a deep broad ditch; and on the nearer side of the same one of his best men lying stark, with a cloven skull. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... suddenly rising twenty-four feet, and then retiring. There were also opened in the earth several large fissures, which discharged black, fetid salt water and petroleum. A mountain near the neighboring Gulf of Caracas was split in twain, and has since remained in its cloven condition. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... on, with hand unweaponed They swept toward our herds that browsed the green Hill grass. Great uddered kine then hadst thou seen Bellowing in sword-like hands that cleave and tear, A live steer riven asunder, and the air Tossed with rent ribs or limbs of cloven tread, And flesh upon the branches, and a red Rain from the deep green pines. Yea, bulls of pride, Horns swift to rage, were fronted and aside Flung stumbling, by those multitudinous hands Dragged pitilessly. And swifter were the bands ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... the diversity of kinds of Pigeons, that couple with one another; for I have known Swine that have been whole-footed, that have coupled with those that were clovenfooted, and the Pigs that were produced, were partaking of whole and cloven Hoofs, some one, some two cloven Hoofs, and the rest ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... space like that of a field. There are in addition a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of clinging ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines, filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stone, and at every step the aerial pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... red with spirted purple of the vats, Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk With Death and Morning on the silver horns, Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors: But follow; let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That like ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the heavy night, through the silence of the city which has turned from dreams to dreamless sleep as a weary lover whom no caresses move, the sound of hoofs upon the road. Not so faintly now as they come near the bridge; and in a moment, as they pass the darkened windows, the silence is cloven by alarm as by an arrow. They are heard now far away, hoofs that shine amid the heavy night as gems, hurrying beyond the sleeping fields to what journey's end—what ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... as slippery as if it were hair, and the sheep have fed it too close for a grip of the hand. Under the furze (still far from the summit) they have worn a path—a narrow ledge, cut by their cloven feet—through the sward. It is time to rest; and already, looking back, the sea has extended to an indefinite horizon. This climb of a few hundred feet opens a view of so many miles more. But the ships lose their individuality and human character; ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... (Jockey of), Moira, Henry Petty. As in our childish, innocence we used to look at these demons, now sprawling and tipsy in their cups; now scaling heaven, from which the angelic Pitt hurled them down; now cursing the light (their atrocious ringleader Fox was represented with hairy cloven feet, and a tail and horns); now kissing Boney's boot, but inevitably discomfited by Pitt and the other good angels: we hated these vicious wretches, as good children should; we were on the side of Virtue and Pitt and Grandpapa. But if our sisters wanted to look at the portfolios, the good ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... request'; they knew in what fashion He was wont to 'send away' such suppliants. They seem, then, more pitiful than He is. But their thoughts are more for themselves than for her. That 'us' shows the cloven foot. They did not like the noise, and they feared it might defeat His purpose of secrecy; and so, by their phrase, 'Send her away,' they unconsciously betray that what they wanted was not granting the prayer, but getting rid of the petitioner. Perhaps, too, they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... broad breast he wore a vest of dazzling whiteness—a long robe, in the ample fashion of the toga, descended to his feet and swept the floor. On his head he wore a fold of white cloth, in the centre of which shone a golden crown. But the crown was divided, or cloven, as it were, by the mystic ornament of a silver sword, which, attracting the universal attention, testified at once that this strange garb was worn, not from the vanity of display, but for the sake ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had a very faint and imperfect knowledge of the great peninsula of Africa, were sometimes tempted to believe, that the torrid zone must ever remain destitute of inhabitants; and they sometimes amused their fancy by filling the vacant space with headless men, or rather monsters; with horned and cloven-footed satyrs; with fabulous centaurs; and with human pygmies, who waged a bold and doubtful warfare against the cranes. Carthage would have trembled at the strange intelligence that the countries on either ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... covenant with Abraham, and the victims between which the covenanting parties were to pass, were divided, the presence of God was symbolized by "a burning lamp that passed between those pieces," Gen. 15:17. And the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, was manifested by "cloven tongues, like as of fire," which "sat upon each of them," Acts 2:3. In Zechariah 3:9, we read of the symbol of a stone laid before Joshua, that on it were engraved "seven eyes," which "are the eyes of the Lord which run to and fro, through the whole earth," (Zech. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... and sprang forward, but the great war tomahawk of Timmendiquas left his hand, and flew through the air so swiftly that the eye saw only a flash. The glittering edge struck the head of Braxton Wyatt, and he fell, cloven to the chin. He was dead before he ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... by the weapons of unpartial death, Is clove asunder and bereft of life, As when the sacred oak with thunderbolts, Sent from the fiery circuit of the heavens, Sliding along the air's celestial vaults, Is rent and cloven to the very roots. In vain, therefore, I strangle with this foe; Then welcome death, since God will have ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere!— By dusky fingers brought this morning here? And shown with boastful smiles,— I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the wood and the cloven ways With an old captain's eyes, And he thought how many a time had he Sought to see Doom he could not see; How ruin had come and victory, And both ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... gone now, and Norma free from pricking reminders of her supremacy, and as old friends of Mrs. Melrose began to include her in the summer's merrymaking, she had some happy times. But even here the cloven hoof intruded. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... Enthusiast have never such great Abilities, there is always something or other which proves his Pretensions to Revelation to be false; and as they tell us, that, let the Devil change himself into what Shape he will he can never conceal his Cloven Foot; so neither can the Enthusiast make himself pass for Inspired, with any Person of tolerable discerning; but there will appear some very considerable Flaw, which shall manifestly prove him a Deceiver, or at least a Person deceiv'd. This is the Fate of them, and our Author could not avoid ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... calamity, and the whitened bones of noble youths, valorous chieftains. In that horror of her dream she stood up suddenly, and thrust forth her hands as to avert an evil, and advanced a step; and with the act her dream was cloven and she awoke, and lo! it was sunrise; and where had been two warriors of the Beni-Asser, were now five, and besides her own steed five others, one the steed of Ruark, and Ruark with them that watched over her: pale was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it will be a sign that the millennium is at hand. The person who regards cricket as anything less than a business is no fit companion, gentle reader, for the likes of you and me. As long as the game goes in his favour the cloven hoof may not show itself. But give him a good steady spell of leather-hunting, and you will know him for what he is, a mere dilettante, a dabbler, in a word, a worm, who ought never to be allowed to play at all. The ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... like a fan; They spread with a blaze of rose-pink rays never yet seen of man. They writhed like a brood of angry snakes, hissing and sulphur pale; Then swift they changed to a dragon vast, lashing a cloven tail. It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an everlasting stare, The sky was a pit of bale and dread, and ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... court he must needs wait for nearly three hours. By the time he was ushered into the milky light of the audience chamber he was faint with rage and apprehension; he was dazzled, he stumbled over the blood-red carpet, arrived fainting at the throne. There he stayed, tongue-cloven, while the colourless Lord of Assassins blinked inscrutably upon him, with eyes so narrow that he could not tell whether he so much as saw him; and the adepts, rigid by the tribune-wall, stared at ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... among the huts Brian got a glimpse of the Dark Master. In vain he tried to break through the Millhaven men, however; they stood like a wall, dying as they fought, but giving no ground until the ax and the sword had cloven a way, although the remnant of the twenty pikemen ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... what was coming, and the instant the missile left the hand of Lone Bear, he dropped flat on his side, as if smitten by a thunderbolt. The shouting Pawnees, who were some distance behind, supposed his skull had been cloven by the fiercely-driven tomahawk, but ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... from the hollow and allure the bee and the humming-bird; Robert Hagburn, in a house of somewhat more pretension, a hundred yards or so nearer to the village, standing back from the road in the broader space which the retreating hill, cloven by a gap in that place, afforded; where some elms intervened between it and the road, offering a site which some person of a natural taste for the gently picturesque had seized upon. Those same elms, or their successors, still flung a noble shade over the same ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cynic, "I would give the whole world to live one day." He asserted that "it was lawful to make use of ill instruments to do ourselves good," and illustrated it thus:—"Were I cast into a deep pit, and the devil should put down his cloven foot, I would take hold of it to be drawn out by it." It must be allowed this is a philosophy which has a chance of being long popular; but it is not that of another order of human beings! Hobbes would not, like Curtius, have leaped into a "deep pit" for his country; or, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... code of New Hampshire, which comes under that genus; but if it be not legalized, we are not to thank Protestantism for that. Wherever it has sway in the family, in the town council, or the assembly, there the cloven foot of intolerance and persecution is seen from under the sanctimonious gown it puts on. Indeed, although the compulsion of the conscience is not enforced by State laws, it is attempted, as far as practicable, where its ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... forward, brandishing his key, roared that these reverend men should kneel to him; he held out a cloven foot and bade them kiss it. But a venerable bishop cried out, 'You be Antichrist. I know you. You be the Arch Devil. But from this book I will confound you. Thank God that we have one that leads us aright.' Coming forward he read in Latin from the ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... seen a woman who bore a child that had three feet. Bull gives a description of a female infant with the left foot double or cloven. There was only one heel, but the anterior portion consisted of an anterior and a posterior part. The anterior foot presented a great toe and four smaller ones, but deformed like an example of talipes ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... half a century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house (the cradle of Paradise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!" ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... laborer would call every animal by name in his powerful voice, trying to calm rather than to excite them; for the oxen, irritated by the sudden resistance, bounded, pawed the ground with their great cloven hoofs, and would have jumped aside and dragged the plow across the fields, if the young man had not kept the first four in order with his voice and goad, while the child controlled the four others. The little fellow shouted too, but the voice which he tried to ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... path, she swerved coquettishly and King William curvetted round his enemy with royal indifference. His subjects wisely followed his example; the procession divided and streamed noisily on both sides of the profane wedge which had cloven it, and which gallantly held its position waving its arms and howling forth derision until the last ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... have four hundred and fifty," said Amelia. "I do think he might have made it five hundred pounds. If I had it to give away, I never would show the cloven foot about ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... The ninth victim stood before her, and then fell, cloven to the chin; then the tenth, and the eleventh, and the twelfth, and the thirteenth, and the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, and the sixteenth-sixteen bound men killed by one woman in less than fifteen minutes. The four in that group who ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a most violent speech at a dinner given to him and old George Byng[13] at Drury Lane last week.[14] He called Sir R. Peel and some other Tories "the cloven foot," which I think rather strong. I think that great violence and striving such a pity, on both sides, don't you, dear Uncle? They irritate one another so uselessly by calling one another fools, blockheads, liars, and so forth for no purpose. I think violence so bad in everything. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... thy tears, when loud shall sound The trump, when flames shall scorch the ground, When from its hinge the cloven world Is loosed, in ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... that of the colossal chisel of Phidias,[255] or trowel of the Egyptians,[256] or the pen of Moses,[257] or Dante,[258] but different from all these. Not possible will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... smaller was not much bigger than the wagon. They lay almost contiguous to each other, with a narrow space, about a foot in width, forming a sort of alley between them. This space resembled a cleft, as if the two blocks had once been united, and some terrible force had cloven them asunder. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid |
